The Bezdany raid was a train robbery carried out on the night of 26/27 September 1908[a] in the vicinity of Bezdany (since 1946 Bezdonys) near Vilnius on a Russian Empire passenger and mail train by a group of the Combat Organization of the Polish Socialist Party led by Józef Piłsudski.

[2] Bojówki were certainly not above robbing Russian authorities to obtain funds for their operations, and by 1908 Piłsudski and his organization were desperately short on cash.

[3] Piłsudski expressed his thoughts about this violent action in a last will[4] or obituary that he wrote to a friend before the raid:[3] In September 1908, the Bojówki assaulted a Russian mail train travelling on the Saint Petersburg–Warsaw railway near Vilna (Vilnius).

[4] The group that took part in the robbery numbered 20 people – 16 men and 4 women[5] Among the members of the Bojówki who took part in that action was his lover and future wife, Aleksandra,[5][6] and three future Polish Prime Ministers: Tomasz Arciszewski,[7] Aleksander Prystor[5] and Walery Sławek,[5] and other notable politicians and activists of the Second Polish Republic era, like PSP activists Edward Gibalski[7] (or Franciszek), Jerzy Sawicki, and W.

Piłsudski with others prepared the final dynamite charge which opened the mail car and destroyed the iron boxes within.