Today is the 115th anniversary of the armed attack by the Fighting Organisation of the Polish Socialist Party on a Russian postal train, which involved four later Prime Ministers of Poland.

During the partition period, the Fighting Organisation of the Polish Socialist Party (Organizacja Bojowa PPS) carried out numerous expropriation actions, raising funds to wage a national liberation struggle for the sovereign Poland. The most famous of such actions took place on 26 September 1908 at the railway station in Bezdany, near Vilnius. At that time, militants captured a Russian postal wagon, throwing two bombs and terrorising the telegraph staff. During the action, one Russian soldier was killed, and several were wounded. More than 200,000 roubles were then captured and bagged, after which members of the Combat Organisation scattered in several directions, foiling any possible pursuit.

Later, the captured money was used to pay off the organisation’s debts, to help the families of imprisoned fighters and, above all, to continue conspiratorial activities and create the Union of Active Struggle, a supra-partisan organisation of a military nature.

The 17-member group of fighters included four later Prime Ministers of Poland, such as the later Marshal Józef Piłsudski, Walery Sławek, Aleksander Prystor and Tomasz Arciszewski, the last Prime Minister of the Second Republic to head the government in exile after 1945. Women were also involved in the preparations for the action, particularly Aleksandra Szczerbińska, Piłsudski’s future wife.

In the inter-war period, many fighters were decorated with the Cross of Independence – a military state decoration created on the initiative of Aleksandra Piłsudska, to honour persons of merit in the fight for Poland’s independence.