Kazimierz Cichowski

Kazimierz Cichowski (Russian: Kazimir Tsikhovsky, Казимир Генрихович Циховский) (7 December 1887, Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski - 29 October 1937) was a Polish-Soviet communist activist and politician.

Cichowski joined the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania in 1907. During the Russian Revolution, he joined the Bolshevik party and from November 1917 he was the deputy Commissar for Polish affairs of the Central Executive Committee of the Lithuanian–Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (LitBel), where he soon advanced to more prominent positions (Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets). After the end of the Polish-Soviet War in 1921, which saw the dissolution of LitBel, he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, operating in the Second Polish Republic. In 1923-1925, Cichowski was imprisoned by the Polish authorities; after release, he joined the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Poland, becoming a member of its Secretariat and the Political Bureau. In September 1932, he went to the USSR where he began working in the Comintern (ECCI). Around January–July 1937, he was in Spain where he was head of the Cadres Department of the International Brigades headquarters. In August 1937, Cichowski was recalled to Moscow, arrested in October during the Great Purge, convicted and shot.