Thread by @delong

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Kari Polanyi-Levitt on her mother, Ilona Duczynska:

"My mother [born in 1897] was a student of engineering in Zurich in 1915, when she was befriended by a community of representatives of the Russian Social Democratic Party opposed to the war... 1/

...including Lenin, his wife Krupskaya and Angelica Balabanoff. Together with delegations from Germany, France, and Britain, as well as other European Labour and Socialist parties, they met to draft a program of action against the war, known as the Zimmerwald Declaration... 2/

...As an 18-year-old Hungarian-speaking student unknown to any informant, Ilona was entrusted with delivering this call to action to the leaders of the Social Democratic Party in Vienna. When she presented herself to these gentlemen, they took one look at her and told her... 3/

...to go home, child, just go home. Having failed in this mission, she proceeded to Budapest where she received a warmer welcome from Ervin Szabo - a leading anarchist and head of the public library. With his counsel and advice, she found other young people to participate... 4/

...in a plan to distribute anti-war literature. She wrote the texts, found the printer and together with her comrade Tibor Sugar, they organized the distribution of leaflets in the great Weiss Manfred war factory and the army barracks. Eventually they were caught... 5/

...imprisoned, and charged with treason – it was not a small matter. The trial of Duczynska, a beautiful young woman from a very good family, and Tibor Sugar, who was briefly her partner in marriage before she met my father, aroused considerable public interest. They... 6/

...were liberated from prison by the 1918 revolution which terminated the war and established the first Hungarian Republic. Ilona was a founding member of the Hungarian Communist party, at that time largely composed of young people. With an excellent education and... 7/

...knowledge of several languages, she was called to Moscow to serve as translator to Karl Radek in the preparations for the historic Second International Congress of Communist Parties. Ilona returned to Vienna in 1920, and subsequently was expelled from the party for... 8/

...“Luxembourgist deviations” and a publication in a journal edited by Paul Levi, who also fell into disfavor with the party..... Many years later, following the destruction of the Austrian working class movement in February 1934, my mother rejoined the Communist Party... 9/

...in order to continue the struggle of the now-illegal Schutzbund, the military arm of the Austrian Social Democratic Party, until 1936 when she joined my father and myself in London. Subsequently, she was expelled from the Austrian Communist Party in London on orders... 10/

...from Moscow. No reasons were given. My mother was a very independent person and my father adored her. Karl and Ilona first met in 1920, at the Helmstreits Muhle, a villa provided as a refuge for political exiles from Hungary, by a Viennese well-wisher. My father left... 11/

...Budapest in 1919, and was soon joined by a larger exodus of communists, socialists, radicals and liberals following the accession of the reactionary regime of Admiral Horthy. The comrades in the villa were of my mother’s generation, and my father, who was 10 years older... 12/

...would sit by himself, quietly writing. In a letter he wrote much later in life about meeting my mother, he said that she was a revolutionary and her name was Polish, and that was close enough to his ideal of the Russian revolutionary young woman. Ilona recalled that... 13/

...he [Karl] seemed like a person whose life was behind him... 14/END