Her father was Leon Wasilewski, a Polish Socialist Party (PPS) politician and first foreign minister of the newly re-emerging independent Poland.

However, she eventually chose to emphasize in her activism the broader class issues, remarked that it was easier to deal with men and criticized Warsaw feminists for coloring their movement with "feminism of half a century ago".

[9][10] Her radicalism grew gradually from the early 1930s and she began viewing the socialists as former revolutionaries turned conformists, compromised by collaboration with state authorities.

Writing to her mother in November 1931, Wasilewska characterized herself as "turning increasingly Bolshevik", and in the spring of 1932, she joined a radical youth faction that pushed for confrontation with the Sanation regime and advocated joint action with the communists within the newly established Popular Front alliance.

[11][12] As Wasilewska drew closer to the communists, her relations with the PPS deteriorated and she lost her seat in the party council, but never left the organization.

[13] Wasilewska was a journalist for various left-wing newspapers, among them Naprzód, Robotnik, Dziennik Popularny, Oblicze Dnia and Lewar,[8] and the chairperson of the Płomyk and Płomyczek monthlies for children.

In the aftermath, she was attacked in the Polish parliament by Prime Minister Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski, the printing ended up confiscated by the authorities, government restrictions and oversight were imposed on the activities of the Teachers' Union, and Wasilewska lost her job at the Editorial Division.

[13][16] Following this she was offered employment as the editor of the short lived Gazetka Miki for which, due to her notoriety, she wrote under the pen name Wanda Woskowska.

[2][8] In May 1936 Wasilewska, among other left-wing Polish and Western Ukrainian writers, participated in the Lviv Anti-Fascist Congress of Cultural Workers.

[16][18] The gathering of intellectuals and cultural activists passed a resolution declaring their support for international humanist values and opposition to fascism, nationalism, capitalism, imperialism and war; it did not invoke a Soviet leadership.

[18] Among the labour actions actively supported by Wasilewska was the 1937 strike of the Polish Teachers' Union, coordinated by her together with Janina Broniewska.

[13] Early in the period of her studies Wasilewska met Roman Szymański, a mathematics student and popular PPS activist.

Nikita Khrushchev later wrote: "Wasilewska believed that it was not the case of premeditation and continued active work";[23] according to him, Bogatko was killed by mistake.

Wasilewska soon came into prominence as a Soviet loyalist and diplomatic arrangements were made to bring members of her immediate family and her associates from Warsaw to Lviv.

As a result, a wide range of official political, military, social, cultural, educational and other Soviet-Polish projects and activities commenced in 1940 and continued during the years that followed.

[32] After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Wasilewska fled before the advancing Nazi army and in June 1941 arrived in Moscow.

According to Jakub Berman, the relationship between Stalin and Wasilewska became one of familiarity; she was free to contact him personally and had his private telephone number.

[36] Following a January 1943 letter written with Lampe to Vyacheslav Molotov and consultations with Stalin, Wasilewska became the head of the Union of Polish Patriots (Związek Patriotów Polskich, ZPP), a mass-membership political and social organization for Polish citizens in the Soviet Union, officially formed at its founding congress in Moscow in June 1943.

Wasilewska was very involved in organizing material help for Poles dispersed in many parts of the Soviet Union and Polish schools for children.

On 6 May 1943, in Wasilewska-edited Wolna Polska ('The Free Poland') periodical, the formation of the Polish 1st Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division was announced.

Now they accomplished their goal and Stalin's move signaled his definite intention to pursue Poland-related undertakings without regard to the government of Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski.

[39][40] On 15 July 1943, the newly trained and equipped Polish army was shown to the public and the audience included foreign war correspondents.

[30][43] It later caused problems at the Potsdam Conference, because the British wanted to preserve this part of Lower Silesia for the future German state.

She intervened when Poles whom she knew were deported to distant regions of the Soviet Union and engaged in relief activities, such as sending parcels to deportees.

[28] Wasilewska's interventions freed her fellow Polish communists (kept in detention by Lavrentiy Beria even after the official amnesty for Poles negotiated by the government of Władysław Sikorski), the poet Broniewski and his by then estranged wife Janina Broniewska.

[9] After the war, Wasilewska decided to stay in the Soviet Union and retired from public life,[34] thus rejecting the opportunity for becoming an active member of the political elites in communist Poland.

[51] Brought up in a patriotic, intellectual, left-wing but anti-Russian Polish establishment environment, Wanda Wasilewska gradually developed a communist identity and revolutionary outlook, to become a theorist, ideologue and promoter of communism in Poland.

For those strongly opposed to communism, radical leftism or the Soviet domination of Poland, she has been a "monstrosity" and represented "pathology" and "betrayal"; labels such as "renegade", "traitor" and "collaborator" have commonly been used.

In particular, her gender has been referenced to deny her as a woman individual agency and define her position relative to men, as in the primary characterizations of "Stalin's favorite" or "Leon's disgraced daughter".

Adam Ciołkosz, Wasilewska's colleague and friend in her PPS years and an anti-communist émigré in post-war London, wrote "biographical sketches" about her.