page_title: Feliks Kon
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Feliks Kon / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Polrewkom puppet government established by Soviets on July 30, 1920 during Soviet invasion of Poland (Polish-Soviet War) with Julian Marchlewski as a head. After Soviet defeat in August 1920 dissolved. In center left to right: Feliks Dzierżyński, Julian Marchlewski, Feliks Kon) Polski: Polrewkom początek sierpnia 1920. W centrum: Iwan Skworcow, Feliks Dzierżyński, Julian Marchlewski, Feliks Kon Deutsch: Das Provisorische Polnische Revolutionskomitee während des Polnisch-Sowjetischen Krieges 1920. Es wurde am 30. Juli 1920 während des Vordringens der Roten Armee nach Polen eingerichtet. Nach der Niederlage der Roten Armee vor Warschau im August 1920 wurde es wieder aufgelöst. Die mittlere Reihe markiert von links nach rechts: Iwan Skworcow, Felix Dserschinski (de facto Vorsitzender), Julian Marchlewski, Felix Kohn
context_page_description: Feliks Yakovlevich Kon was a Polish communist activist.
context_section_description: Born in Warsaw, Kon was the son of Yakov Kon (Hebrew: יעקב כון הכהן‎) and a Georgian Jewish woman whom was brought up in Russia. He was trained as a historian and a journalist, but was involved in politics. He had limited knowledge of Polish affairs at first, but intuitively felt the revolutionary element among Polish workers that he could mobilize.
  He was a member of the anti-Piłsudski faction of the Polish Socialist Party and gravitated towards the anti-independence & pro-communism point of view. In January 1897 the Tsarist government  at last taken took an administrative decision to banish him. He was exiled to Irkutsk and began working on the progressive newspaper "Vostochnoye Obozrenie" (Eastern Review).
  As the Bolsheviks began to prepare for the Polish-Soviet War, they summoned an increasing number of Polish communists, active elsewhere in Soviet service, to Moscow in order to form a cadre of party and state officials to move into ethnographic Poland with the Red Army. He was put on the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee (formed in Białystok on July 30, 1920 - dissolved August 20, 1920) during the Polish-Soviet War.
  During this period he was editor-in-chief of the Goniec Czerwony newspaper, the official organ of the temporary revolutionary committee. The first issue appeared on August 7. Its purpose was to agitate and it printed all the appeals issued by the Communist puppet government, as well as distinctly skewed news from the war. Twelve issues appeared, the last on August 20 as the Polish army approached the city. In the last issue he triumphantly proclaimed in an article entitled "Dwa światy" (Two Worlds): The old world disappears, but a new one is born: great, powerful and a genuinely independent Polish Socialist Republic will hold the prominent post in this world.
  After the war, he decided to remain in the Soviet Union, where he was an activist in the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, Comintern. However, letters written by Vladimir Lenin referred to Kon, whom he "couldn't stand", as simply an "old fool" (staryi duren).
  Kon also served as an editor at several newspapers including Krasnaya Zvezda. In 1941, he became the director of the Polish-directed propaganda section at Radio Moscow. The first broadcasts in Polish were on June 22, 1941. However, he died a natural death shortly afterwards at age 77, at Moscow's Khimki water station during the evacuation of the city before the advancing German army and the Battle of Moscow. Many of the other prominent members of the Polish Socialist Party-Left were later liquidated by the NKVD.
caption: Polrewkom 1920 (in center left to right: Felix Dzerzhinsky, Julian Marchlewski, Feliks Kon)
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