Edward Próchniak

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Edward Próchniak (1888-1937) was a leading Polish communist purged by Stalin. He joined the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania in 1903. After the Russian Revolution he headed a department in the Polish Commissariat of the People's Commissariat for Nationalities in Russia and was a member of the Polish Section of the Bolshevik Party. From 1921 to 1924 he represented the Communist Party of Poland (KPP) Central Committee on the executive of the Communist International, and was a member of the Comintern executive 1922–37, and of its Presidium in 1925–30.

As a member of the politburo of the KPP in 1936–37, he was summoned from Paris to Moscow in July 1937 and immediately arrested by the NKVD. He was imprisoned initially in the Lubyanka prison, and then interrogated in Butyrek, where he had been a prisoner in Czarist times. Despite severe torture, he allegedly denied accusations of being an agent of the Polish Military Organization (POW).
He was shot, probably on 21 August 1937.