Written: 1893. Published as a leaflet Ein letztes Wort zur Frage des polnischen Mandats at the Zurich Congress of the 2nd International.
Source: International Institute of Social History archives, record IISG ARCH01299.59
Note: The pamphlet is signed by Miss Kruszynska, the pseudonym used at that time by Rosa Luxemburg.
Translation and notes: Graham Seaman for MIA, Feb 2026
Last updated: 15 Feb 2026
Comrades!
You all know that the mandate of the Polish social democratic newspaper and organization "Sprawa Robotnicza" (The Workers' Cause) was denied by decision of the Congress because it was anonymous, even though we countered this objection by pointing to the specific circumstances of our socialist activities, just as our report and the content of the newspaper were rejected.
Therefore we wanted to remove any basis for this objection, which was also riddled with suspicious insinuations. At our request, the editor of our paper sent a telegram to the Congress Bureau demanding acceptance of the contested mandate, stating his full name and address.
Nothing seemed to stand in the way of acceptance of the mandate. However, when this question came up for discussion in the Bureau in my (Krusyznska's) presence, it turned out that the "Polish delegation" had already submitted a statement in writing in response to the telegram.
In this statement, comrades, our editor, one of the first founders of social democratic organization in Russian Poland,[1] a man who had just escaped from the clutches of the police and fled abroad to escape a long prison sentence and exile, and here abroad immediately devoted his energies to social democratic affiars in a new area, while working with other comrades to found the first Social Democratic newspaper for Russian Poland — in this statement our comrade was portrayed as a suspicious individual and declared unworthy to mandate a delegate!
When I, Krusyznska, deeply outraged by this slander, urgently requested the floor to refute it immediately, I was, at the request of Mrs. Mendelsohn,[2] as a person not accepted by the Bureau, refused the floor! After 5 minutes, they moved on to the next item on the agenda.
Comrades! We are far from wanting to accuse the Congress or the Bureau in any way, since the whole matter is of very minor significance to the Congress, and moreover, the interest of the Congress absolutely requires the quickest possible resolution of the numerous incidents that occur. Trust had to be placed in our opponents, of course, because they are long-standing and well-known emigrants. In this particular case, however, this trust led to a great injustice. It resulted in the slander and silencing of people who were striving to unite the social democratic movement of Russian Poland with the international workers' movement.
This resulted in victory (meaning practical, not moral victory) being secured for people who, compared to us, have only the advantage of having lived abroad for many years; people who present themselves as representatives of a movement in which they did not participate at all and who also have as their main opposition — the social democratic movement of Russian Poland; people who use their representative position abroad to cast the movement in a false light by trying to impose a character on it that it does not have and hopefully never will have—a national-chauvinistic character.
And precisely because our newspaper takes its stand on the foundation of genuine international social democracy, because it already in its first issue demonstrated a clear and consistently social-democratic physiognomy and a strong promise to become a weapon for the social-democratic line, because the representation of this newspaper threatened to put an end to that fictitious representation — therefore the gentlemen decided to have our mandate rejected "at any price" (expression of H. Daszynski)[3], therefore they initially clung to a mere formal pretext, therefore they then, when we deprived them of that pretext with the telegram, resorted to slander, thus abusing the trust of comrades from other countries.
This drive is particularly dangerous in our circumstances. We must protect our ranks, our movement, from this danger. In the fight against this corruption, we now appeal to you, comrades!
We denounce "the representatives of Russian Poland" to you for the blatant injustice they instigated by abusing your trust to the detriment of our movement!
Comrades! We owe it to our cause, and also to the cause of the International Workers' Parliament, to circulate this protest among you!
And now a word in our defense!
The "Polish delegation" deemed it appropriate to dismiss our report with the following sentence: "Because this report is riddled with false statements and nonsense, we feel compelled to explain, etc."
Against that, we have to state:
Not only the initial statement, but also the following one: "that no member of the Polish delegation is responsible for this document," is a pure invention of the hon. gentlemen.[4] For the delegate, who was not once objected to by the "Polish delegation," the sole representative of the workers from Lodz and Warsaw,[5] fully endorses the report of the "Sprawa Robotnicza," and is also the only one capable of doing so, since the report has nothing in common with the views of the hon. gentlemen.
In conclusion, we declare that in the near future we will do everything possible to expose the slander directed against our comrade, the editor of our paper, to the entire socialist world.
Zürich, August 11, 1893
Miss Kruszynska, representative of "Sprawa Robotnicza"
Karski, delegate of the Social Democratic Workers of Lodz and Warsaw.[6]
1. i.e. Leo Jogiches. [Return]
2. Frau Maria Mendelsohn-Jankowska of the Ligue Étrangère des Socialistes Polonais, wife of Stanislave Mendelsohn of the Polish Socialist Party. Both were personal friends and frequent visitors of Engels while living in London. [Return]
3. Presumably a mistake for Ignacy Daszynski, co-founder of the Polish Social-Democratic Party and present at the Congress [Return]
4. The original says "qu. Herren". The translator does not know the abbreviation "qu." and has assumed it is sarcastic. [Return]
5. i.e. Karski, attending with a recognised mandate from a "social democratic group of Russian Poland", presumably the Związek Robotników Polskich, which he founded in 1888. [Return]
6. Pseudonym of Julian Balthasar Marchlewski [Return]