Records Relating to Robotnik (the Worker), peri... | Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust
Robotnik (The Worker) was the bibuła (underground) newspaper published by the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) from the late 19th century, through the interwar period, until the end of German-Polish War of September 1939.
Robotnik was first published on 12 July 1894 in Lipniszki near Wilno in the amount of 1,200 copies by the local branch of the then-illegal PPS led by the future Chief of State of the Second Polish Republic, Józef Piłsudski. Among its other editors was Stanisław Wojciechowski, future president of Poland.
From 1919 to 1939 it became a normal, legal newspaper in the Second Polish Republic. Among its editors were Feliks Perl (died 1927) and Mieczysław Niedziałkowski (1927–1939). Its notable contributors included Zygmunt Zaremba, Stanisław Posner, Karol Irzykowski, Cezary Jellenta and Jan Nepomucen Miller, and its circulation reached 10–20,000 issues. The last issue was released on 23 September 1939, in the fourth week of the Polish September Campaign.
After the May Coup (in 1926) of Piłsudski, who after the First World War distanced himself from PPS, Robotnik took an opposition stance towards his government; in return, some of its editions were subject to confiscations (only from 1926 to 1935 about 500 issues were confiscated).The journal was a strong supporter of PPS and socialism in general; among the notable policies opposed by the journal was that of antisemitism.
