Leo Jogiches
1867-1919
- Social revolutionary under the czars
- Co-founder of the KPD
- Murdered while in police custody in March 1919
Leo Jogiches was from Lithuania and championed a social revolution early on. He fled to Switzerland when the czar’s secret police started chasing him down. During World War I, he lived underground and during the November Revolution, he helped found the KPD. After Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered, the reins of the young party were put in his hands. True to Luxembourg’s policy, he too took a stance against the primacy of the Russian Bolshevists within the Communist International. During the Märzkämpfe, the bloody clashes in Berlin in March 1919, Leo Jogiches was arrested and murdered from behind while in police custody.