Bierut was born in Rury, Congress Poland (then part of the Russian Empire), now a part of Lublin, to Wojciech and Marianna Salomea Wolska, peasants from the Tarnobrzeg area, the youngest of their six children. In 1900, he attended an elementary school in Lublin. In 1905, he was removed from the school for instigating anti-Russian protests. From the age of fourteen he was employed in various trades, but obtained further education through self-studies. Influenced by the leftist intellectual Jan Hempel, who in 1910 arrived in Lublin, before World War I Bierut joined the Polish Socialist Party – Left ("PPS – Lewica").