Aleksander Sulkiewicz

Iskander Mirza Huzman Beg Sulkiewicz (8 December 1867 – 18 September 1916), known as Aleksander Sulkiewicz, was a Polish politician of Lipka Tatar ethnicity who campaigned for Polish independence and co-founded the Polish Socialist Party. Early life Sulkiewicz was born in Skirsobole Tatarskie, Congress Poland (now part of Lithuania) to a Tatar family with a tradition of support for the cause of Polish independence. He was the son of Aleksander Sulkiewicz, a rotmistrz in the Czarist army, and Rozalia Sulkiewicz (née Kryczyńska—the feminine form of Kryczyński, one of the few Tatar families officially acknowledged as princes by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth). His grandfather was Józef Bielak, a general in the Kościuszko Uprising, and one of the family's most cherished possessions was a letter from Tadeusz Kościuszko thanking Bielak for his service. As a child, Sulkiewicz attended a Turkish school in Istanbul, where he came into contact with the Polish émigré community. After his father died around 1877, he and his family moved to Suwałki, and later to Sejny, where he continued his studies. Underground political activity In Vilnius, then part of Poland, Sulkiewicz was introduced into socialist circles and became an active member of the Social-Revolutionary Party Proletariat. In November 1892, he attended the Paris convention that created the Organization of Polish Socialists Abroad (Polish: Związek Zagraniczny Socjalistów Polskich). Upon returning to Poland, he helped organize Polish Socialist Party (PPS) groups in Vilnius. With Józef Piłsudski, Stanisław Wojciechowski, Stefan Bielak and Ludwik Zajkowski, he took part in a meeting in a forest near Vilnius that was later recognized as the First Congress of the PPS.