[Marcin] Kasprzak is no more. Bloody Nicholas the Last has finally prevailed over his irreconcilable foe.
Force and violence won out, falling upon the indefatigable fighter with a solid phalanx—first, of armed gendarmes, police, and plainclothesmen, then cutthroats in a prosecutor’s uniform and a judge’s robe, followed by traitorous doctors, and a governor-general thirsting for blood—thus the man was felled to the ground and handed over to the executioner, and thus they placed the noose around the neck of this unyielding fighter for the working class.
Kasprzak is no more. The life of a revolutionary proletarian has ended; a heroic death ended a heroic life. Twenty years of tireless struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat—in the “freedom” of Germany and in the underground of Russia under the rule of the knout, in the prisons of Poznań, Breslau, and Warsaw—in hunger and cold, in poverty and illness, caught between a rock and a hard place, sometimes stranded on a sickbed in a clinic, and under the constant threat of pursuit by gendarmes or police spies, constantly driven from place to place, without rest, without respite, a homeless proletarian. He was always inspired by a single thought—the burning desire to fight for the emancipation of his fellow proletarians, whose entire fate, the entire hell of whose existence, he had tasted throughout his own life. With [the power of his] thought he rose above and climbed beyond poverty, beyond sickness, and with iron tenacity moved toward enlightenment, toward knowledge, toward emancipation of the mind, gathering with highly focused attention every bit of enlightenment that he could attain in order to share it with others. He was not broken by any personal suffering, dozens of times leaving behind the comforts of having a beloved family—living without his wife and son, on the dangerous seas of the life of a vagabond, a footloose revolutionist—closed off all by himself, not having any especially close friends, sparing of words, but eloquent in deeds, simple and modest in the grayness of daily life, but immediately becoming an epic hero at any moment of danger or battle. That was Marcin Kasprzak.
He valued his life, offered it for humanity, and he fought with all the force of his will, unbending as steel. He defended his life against the nagaika-wielding hordes† of tsarism, defended it still when tied up and alone, thrown into a prison cell, defenseless. He defended his life like a lion till the last minute, to the last breath, during his unparalleled duel against the mobs, the life of a prisoner against his executioners; he defended that life with his lips pursed in contempt against the streams of slander, lies, perjury, and false witness. He fought, using only the power of his spirit, like a lion-tamer among the beasts—fought to the bitter end.
And when force and violence prevailed and he had to die—he died as do only those of great spirit. His last move was to make a fist, silently threatening the flunkey of the bloody tsar sitting at the prosecutor’s table. The last tune he hummed was that of “The Red Flag.” His last words “Long live the revolution!”
A half year in the deadly dungeons of the [Warsaw] Citadel took its toll. When worn out by the struggle, the hero of the Polish proletariat finally fell into the hawk-like claws of tsarism, trembling with the thirst for blood and desire for revenge. He was only a ruin of a man with a sunken chest as the result of consumption—the disease of proletarians—with white hair prematurely frosted by suffering and superhuman efforts of his will. His silhouette, once straight and strong as an oak tree, now was the bent-over shape of an old man, and his neck was swollen with ulcers from tuberculosis. They dragged him finally, those victors of Mukden, Port Arthur, Chișinău, and Łódź, and turned him over to the executioner.
Here in the face of the scaffold, Kasprzak, for the last time straightened up his concave chest, in which only measly scraps of lung remained, straightened up his body with his last strength, and from his wheezing chest came out a hoarse voice, a voice like a sword that has been [frequently] notched and chipped in the long, exhausting battle.
And in the hallway of the gravely silent Citadel, in the gray mists of dawn, amid the heavy stamping of gendarmes’ boots, one could hear for the last time some notes from the song “The Red Flag”: “The butchers have long been shedding our blood…”
He sang with the last effort of his hoarse larynx, this martyr of the labor struggle. He was ready to give his blood—his last possession—after having already sacrificed his youth, strength, personal happiness, freedom, health, marital and parental tenderness, spirit and body. He was ready to give his last drop of blood for the salvation and honor of the working class.
“But there will come the day of reckoning,” he continued to hum and walked onto the stage of the gallows. There he stood strong, quiet, and proud. And the deadly noose was placed around his neck, and the rope dug into the ulcerated swelling [on his neck] so as to cut off the life of this fighter. One more time Kasprzak opened his mouth, before it had to be closed forever and shouted:
Long live the revolution!
Workers! The sacrifice was great and terrible. The despotic government will be called to account, and will have to pay on the day of reckoning. Kasprzak’s death is a huge bloody stain calling for vengeance. The life and death of this doubly tormented hero of the proletariat struggle will shine forever in the pages of the history of the revolution against the Russian empire, and in the pages of international socialism, like a star of the first magnitude.
Even at the last moment of his life, a human ignominy tried to poison the peace of his spirit.
Even as he was walking toward his final torment, the scoundrels came crawling to the cross.
Those who for more than twelve years made false accusations against him to impugn his honor*—they crawled, so that with their reptile hissing they could “restore his honor”; to “restore honor” to a hero and martyr—honor that they do not have themselves!
And they were in a hurry after twelve years to make it up at the last minute, so that the executioner would not be faster than they were, and thus at the last moment, when he was facing the gallows, they wanted to act because it was impossible to hold onto that slander any longer.
They were hurrying to exonerate the victim of their false accusations, to lift their false charge from their victim before the further spreading of their slander would became impossible. They were trying to save themselves from general contempt and disgrace.
These hired-assassin “socialists” were in a hurry to pass along their long-term victim, to make room for the tsar’s hired assassin.
But this hideous blasphemy did not disturb the martyr’s last moments. He did not see or hear anything except the light within himself that illuminated the last hour of his life—or anything except those last words, which summed up the content of his entire tortured life and his martyr’s death:
Long live the revolution!