  At the age of thirteen, Luxemburg joined the girls’ Second High School in Warsaw, one of the country’s elite schools, dominated by the children of Russian officials, where the use of Polish even among students was forbidden and the places for children of Jewish families were extremely limited. Luxemburg rebelled to the oppressive atmosphere in the school, and developed an interest in the activities of the various illegal revolutionary groups agitating against both capitalist oppression and the despotic character of Russian rule. By the time she finished secondary school in 1887, her “rebellious attitude towards authorities” was already mentioned in official school reports and deprived her of the gold medal awarded to the highest performing students (Nettl 1966 [2019: 17]). It is also likely that during this time, she joined what was left of Proletariat, the first Polish socialist party, at that point in disarray after the imprisonment and execution of many of its leaders as a result of the repressive measures taken by Russian authorities following the assassination of Tzar Alexander II in 1881. Faced with imminent arrest herself, she was smuggled out of the country in 1889 and migrated to Zurich. There she enrolled in the faculty of philosophy, switched to law and wrote a doctoral dissertation on “The Industrial Development of Poland”, where she argued that the integration of the Polish economy into the Russian empire meant that the interests of the Polish working class would be held back by championing the cause of national self-determination – a position to which she would remain committed her entire life. In Zurich, Luxemburg also met several other Marxists from Russian and Polish emigres circles, including Leo Jogisches, her partner for many years and co-founder of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP), a Marxist party characterised by its opposition to the call for Polish independence and its staunch commitment to proletarian internationalism.