Leon "Leo" Jogiches (Russian: Лев "Лео" Йогихес; 17 July 1867 – 10 March 1919), also commonly known by the party name Jan Tyszka, was a Polish Marxist revolutionary and politician, active in Poland, Lithuania, and Germany.
Jogiches was a founder of the political party known as the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (main forerunner of the Communist Party of Poland) in 1893 and a key figure in the underground Spartacus League in Germany, the predecessor of the Communist Party of Germany, during the years of World War I.
For many years the personal companion and a close political ally of internationally famous revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, Jogiches was assassinated in Berlin by right-wing paramilitary forces in March 1919 while investigating Luxemburg's murder some weeks before.
Early life
Leon Jogiches was born on 17 July 1867 to a wealthy Polish-Jewish family in Vilnius, now Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. Little is known of his childhood years, although it is perhaps instructive that Jogiches spoke no Hebrew and had no more than a rudimentary grasp of Yiddish, indicating a closer familiarity with other regional languages and cultures than those of his Jewish heritage. The family mostly spoke Polish at home and Russian elsewhere.
As a young man of 18, Jogiches founded one of the earliest underground socialist study circles in Vilnius, its 1885 origin predating the foundation of the first mass international socialist organization in the Russian Empire by a dozen years. Using the first of many pseudonyms, Liofka (little Leo), Jogiches attained an almost legendary local status for his tenacious dedication to the anti-Tsarist cause. This commitment led to two arrests and short terms in jail, in both 1888 and 1889.
Zurich emigration
With the threat of conscription into the Tsar's army looming — possibly a penal battalion — Jogiches escaped to Zurich, Switzerland. He brought with him during his furtive departure a considerable sum of money, including both personal and donated funds earmarked for the publication and distribution of socialist literature. A few months after his arrival in Zurich, the 23-year old Jogiches met a fellow 20-year old ethnic Jewish political émigré from Tsarist autocracy, Rosa Luxemburg. The pair fell in love and became both close political allies and personal companions.
Shortly after his arrival in Switzerland, Jogiches made contact with pioneer Russian Marxist Georgy Plekhanov and proposed a business partnership for the publication of radical literature, in which Jogiches' money and publishing expertise would be complemented by Plekhanov's prestige and copyright control of Russian editions of works by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
A financial split of 50-50 was proposed by Jogiches, which was abruptly rejected by Plekhanov and an ongoing personal frostiness between the pair ensued. Not to be deterred by the clash of egos and the dispute over money, Jogiches would nevertheless proceed to establish his publishing house, The Social-Democratic Library (Sotsialdemokraticheskaya Biblioteka) in 1892, issuing pirated editions of works by Marx, Karl Kautsky, and others — further poisoning relations with Plekhanov.
The bitter battle with Plekhanov over publishing had the effect of isolating Jogiches (and his companion Luxemburg) from the bulk of the exile Russian colony in Switzerland. Jogiches turned his primary attention to Polish affairs for the next several years, doubtlessly influenced in the decision to a great extent by Luxemburg. In July 1893 Jogiches financed a new Paris-based socialist publication in the Polish language, Sprawa Robotnicza (The Workers' Cause), which emphasized close cooperation between Polish and Russian radicals in their joint goal of overthrowing Tsarist autocracy and emphasizing the internationalist essence of the socialist movement. Writing as Rosa Luxemburg played a key role in contributing content to this paper, soon taking over the editorship. The paper's internationalist political line proved somewhat at odds with the program of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), however, with the latter emphasizing the aspect of Polish national liberation from Russian control, and consequently no support of the paper by the PPS leadership was to be forthcoming.