Wanda Wasilewska

Wanda Wasilewska , also known by her Russian name Vanda Lvovna Vasilevskaya (21 January 1905 – 29 July 1964), was a Polish and Soviet novelist and journalist and a left-wing political activist.

She was a socialist who became a devoted communist. Wasilewska was often criticised for her radical left-wing views and supported an alliance of all the left-wing parties, including the communists, against the ruling Sanation. Wasilewska was closely associated with the communists from the mid-1930s.

She was involved with various communist organisations uniting local Polish and Ukrainian communists. She was a journalist for Czerwony Sztandar ('The Red Banner'), a pro-Soviet newspaper printed in Lviv in Polish from October 1939. It later caused problems at the Potsdam Conference, because the British wanted to preserve this part of Lower Silesia for the future German state.

Wasilewska explained away Stalin's deadly purges by arguing that death of an innocent person was preferable to the risk of demise of the Soviet Union.