Falkowski, Edward

Edward Falkowski, a journalist and writer, trade-unionist, and radical, who was politically close to the communist movement in the 1920s-1940s, was born in 1901 in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. His parents had immigrated from Poland in the 1880's and his father had found employment in the region's anthracite mines. As a teenager, Edward Falkowski also began working in the coal mines. The hazardous conditions and low pay spurred Edward Falkowski's involvement in labor activities of the United Mine Workers. In 1926, Falkowski began attending Brookwood Labor College in Katonah, New York, on a UMW scholarship. During this time, his articles and poetry first appeared in Labor Age and New Masses. After graduating from Brookwood in 1928, he traveled to Germany as a work-exchange student.

Encouraged by friends and attracted politically to the Russian Revolution, he decided to provided a first-hand account of the social and economic achievements taking place in the Soviet Union, arriving in May, 1930. Although he had originally planned to stay only a few months, Falkowski remained for seven years, during which time he worked as a journalist for the Moscow News (an English language paper), married, and began raising a family. However, in August 1937, he left the Soviet Union and returned to the United States. His reasons for leaving are not entirely clear but his papers indicate a growing discontent with the political atmosphere and its effect on his journalistic expression.

Upon returning to the United States, he settled in Toledo, Ohio, taught for a time at Commonwealth College in Mena, Arkansas, was drafted into the army, remarried, and continued his writing activities. In the mid-1940s, at the urging of Lew Krzycki, he helped organize, and worked for the American Slav Congress. Later he directed a Polish press agency. As a factory worker at Emerson Electric Company in the 1950s, Falkowski was active in his union, UAW Local 365 in Queens, New York, and eventually moved into a management position. He died in New York in 1984.