He was the son of Antoni, a bank clerk. As a young man, Broniewski joined in 1915
the legions of
Józef Piłsudski. As a member of the
1st Legions Infantry Regiment, he participated in the
Polish–Soviet War and in 1920 fought in the
Battle of Białystok. He was decorated for bravery with the order of
Virtuti Militari. Broniewski developed
leftist sympathies and by the late 1920s he was a
revolutionary poet. In summer 1931, he was arrested during a literary meeting of writers connected with the
Communist Party of Poland (KPP) along with Jan Hempel and
Aleksander Wat. He was helped by
Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski. in 1940 When Poland was
attacked in 1939 by
Germany, he wrote an important poem encouraging Poles to put away political differences and fight the aggressors. After Poland was
invaded by the
Soviet Union, Broniewski found himself in Soviet-occupied
Lwów. His poems were printed in a Soviet-published newspaper, but he was soon arrested by the
NKVD on trumped-up charges of "hooliganism". He refused to co-operate with the NKVD and after four months was transported to the
Lubianka prison in
Moscow, where he stayed for thirteen months. He left the Soviet Union with the
Polish army led by General
Władysław Anders and through
Iran came to
Iraq and then
Palestine. After World War II and the establishment of the
Polish People's Republic, he compromised by writing in 1951 a poem
Słowo o Stalinie ('A Word about
Stalin'). Subsequently, Broniewski became an important political figure and was proclaimed a foremost national poet by the authorities. He still managed to preserve a certain degree of independence, and some of his poems from this period are a testimony to his talent. He had also been an accomplished translator of poetry and prose, translating, among others,
Fyodor Dostoevsky,
Sergei Yesenin,
Vladimir Mayakovsky, and
Bertolt Brecht. During the last years of Broniewski's life, his health had been ruined by alcohol abuse. He died in
Warsaw. ==Poetry==