Russia at war
Page 72
were not followed up. What they were doing was small stuff compared with Stalingrad
and the rest.
What nettled the British and Americans even more was that, after paying a warm tribute to Soviet industry, Stalin should have made no mention at all of Lend-Lease and other Western supplies which were now beginning to arrive in very substantial quantities,
partly along the newly-reorganised Persian route. It was this Stalin Order of February 23
which was really at the root of the "Standley incident" described in the last chapter.
A strange dual phenomenon was to characterise Soviet foreign policy during the rest of 1943: an almost constantly growing cordiality towards the United States and Britain (all, as it were, in preparation for Teheran at the end of the year) but, at the same time, an extremely "anti-Western" stand on the Polish issue. It already looked as though Stalin, while anxious to cultivate the best possible relations with the Western Allies, had made up his mind that Poland was an issue which the Soviet Union was going to settle her own way. It was the biggest test-case of all; and one, as de Gaulle was to observe during his visit to Moscow at the end of 1944, which was "the principal object of his (Stalin's) passion, and the centre of his policy".
[C. de Gaulle, Salvation, 1944-6 (New York, 1956), p. 74.]
From the end of March until early July there was a relative lull on the Soviet-German Front—in fact the longest lull from then until the end of the war. But both sides were preparing feverishly for the summer campaign which was to begin on July 5 with the
stupendous Battle of Kursk, the last major battle that most (though not all) Germans were still confidently expecting to win—thanks largely to their new Panther and Tiger tanks and Ferdinand mobile guns. Yet within five days the Germans had lost the battle, and the Russians then were able to fight their way to the Dnieper and beyond.
But this long three-months' lull was marked by political events of far-reaching
importance, among them a further rapprochement with Britain and the United States, characterised by such "gestures of goodwill" as the dissolution of the Comintern and, on the other hand, the breach with the Polish Government in London and the laying of the foundations for an entirely new Polish régime.
Chapter VI THE TECHNIQUE OF BUILDING A NEW POLAND
The Breach with the London Poles
Poland occupies the central place in the diplomatic battle between Russia and her
Western Allies—a battle which began long before the war was over. Despite all official attempts to play it down or to localise it, it was the problem which had, since the early part of 1943 (and even before) tended to poison East-West relations.
Throughout the Soviet Union's Battle of Survival of 1941-2, from the invasion to the Stalingrad victory, the Soviet Government had been on its best behaviour—at least most of the time—in its relations with the outside world. There had been a strident outcry, largely for home consumption, for a Second Front during the agonising summer of 1942, but apart from that and the snarling about Hess, the Soviet Union was, in the main, being thoroughly conciliatory in her relations with the West.
The only allied and "friendly" country with whose government relations were continuously strained was Poland. This was, indeed, a very special case. The trouble inevitably went back to the fact that Germany and Russia had "partitioned" Poland in 1939, and that several hundred thousand Poles had been taken prisoner or deported by the Russians; there were Poles scattered all over the Soviet Union; and among these Poles there were numerous war prisoners, including some twelve to fifteen thousand officers and N.C.O.'s.
According to the Polish Government, the officers had been in three large camps—at
Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov until the spring of 1940; but by the end of 1941,
despite pressing inquiries, no trace could be found of any of them, except for some 400
who had been transferred from one of these camps in the spring of 1940 to the camp of Griazovetz, near Vologda.
The fate of these missing officers was to become a major bone of contention between the Russians and the "London" Poles. It was also to provide the basis for one of the master-strokes of Goebbels's propaganda machine—the story of the mass-graves in Katyn forest, near Smolensk, which we shall discuss later in this chapter.
Under the terms of the Sikorski-Maisky Agreement of July 30, 1941, concluded in
London, diplomatic relations between the two Governments were restored, and a Polish Army was to be organised in Russia "under the orders of a chief appointed by the Polish Government, but approved by the Soviet Government". It would be under the Supreme Soviet Command, but this would include a Polish representative.
The Agreement further said that, after the restoration of diplomatic relations, the USSR
would "grant an amnesty to all Polish citizens imprisoned in Soviet territory whether as war prisoners or for any other reason." The very word "amnesty" in this context was, of course, more than distasteful to the Polish Government, but conditions were too serious for quibbling.
General Sikorski went to Moscow in December, 1941—with the Germans still only a few
miles from the Soviet capital—and confirmed the Polish promise to set up a Polish Army on Soviet territory, which would fight the Germans beside the Soviet Army. Even with Russia in a highly precarious military position, Stalin would not agree during the meeting with Sikorski to the restoration of Poland within her pre-September 1939 frontiers, and the Polish territorial claims continued to be a chronic subject of dispute between the Russian and Polish "allies". But a more serious and immediate problem was the Polish Army in the Soviet Union.
*
This army began to be formed in 1941 by General Anders, who had himself been a
prisoner of the Russians, and was understandably anti-Russian at heart.
Later, after the breach with the London Poles, Vyshinsky made a savage indictment
against Anders and the Polish government in London. He began by recalling that the
Polish-Soviet agreements of 1941 provided for:
A Polish Army to be formed on Soviet soil, the number being fixed at 30,000 men.
General Anders himself had proposed that "when a division was ready for action, it should be immediately sent to the front."
The supplies given to the Polish Army were the same as those given to Soviet Army units in process of formation. Moreover the Soviet Government had granted the
Polish Government an interest-free loan of sixty-five million roubles, which, on
January 1, 1942, was increased to 300 millions, plus a free gift of equipment to
Polish officers, amounting to fifteen millions.
Vyshinsky said that, by October 25, 1941, the Polish Army already counted 41,561
men, including 2,630 officers. In December Sikorski proposed that this figure be
increased to 96,000 men, representing six divisions.
Despite great difficulties, there were already divisions with 73,415 men in the Polish Army in December 1941.
But at this point, according to Vyshinsky, it began to be increasingly clear that the Poles were double-crossing the Russians; that they had no intention of letting their men. be killed at the Russian front, and were making one excuse after another for not letting them fight.
Some of the troops (Vyshinsky claimed) were to be ready for action by October 1,
1941; but they were not. While the Soviet Government did not wish to hurry the
Poles, it began, after five months had elapsed since the beginning of the Army's
formation, to ask questions, in virtue of the Agreement of August 14, 1941. This had said that the Polish Army units would be sent to the front as soon as they were fully ready for action. As a rule, they would not go into action in less than one division, and would be used in accordance with the Soviet Command's operational plans.
Later, however, Anders declared that he considered the use of single divisions
>
undesirable, even though (Vyshinsky added) single brigades were used at other
fronts.
Then Anders promised that the whole Polish Army would be ready for action on
June 1, 1942; however, before long, the Polish Government finally refused to send any Polish troops to the Soviet front.
It is perhaps scarcely surprising that the Polish Army under Anders had no desire to fight on the Russian front after all that had happened since 1939. They had some very grim memories of the N.K.V.D. camps and also grave misgivings about the fate of the missing Polish officers, a crucial point Vyshinsky dodged.
In Ehrenburg's Memoirs—though he also dodges this question— there is this striking passage on the early stages of Polish-Russian "friendship":
At the beginning of December (1941) I happened to attend near Saratov a parade of General Anders's army, composed of Polish ex-war-prisoners. General Sikorski
arrived, accompanied by Vyshinsky. I don't know why Vyshinsky, of all people,
should have been chosen for this ceremony. Perhaps because he was of Polish
descent? I could not help remembering him in the rôle of Public Prosecutor in the Purge trials... He clicked glasses with Sikorski and there was a sugary smile on his face. Among the Poles there were many gloomy men, deeply embittered by what
they had lived through; many of them could not restrain themselves and openly
admitted that they hated us. I felt that these men could not let bygones be bygones.
Sikorski and Vyshinsky referred to each other as "allies", but behind these pleasant words one could feel deep animosity.
[ Novyi Mir, 1963, No. 1, p. 73.]
The "Anders' Poles" had certainly had a more than raw deal in Russia since 1939—
though it was perhaps tactless and ungracious of them to complain so frequently after the outbreak of the Soviet-German war of their miserable living and food conditions: after all, the Russian people as a whole were also suffering terrible hardships during that winter.
Nor is it surprising that the Russians were not especially anxious to have on Russian soil a "reactionary" Polish army, commanded by virulently anti-Russian officers—
particularly if it was being of no help in fighting the Germans—and that Stalin agreed to Churchill's proposal that the Anders' Poles should leave Russia via Iran. Many Russians regarded their departure as a good riddance:, but it so happened that the Anders' army left Russia on the eve of the Battle of Stalingrad. To the Russian people this looked like rats leaving a ship they thought was sinking. All this was very unfair; but it was all part of that tragic conflict which went back to 1939.
In any case, the Poles held rather a special place in the Russians' scheme of things; many Russian soldiers had taken part in the Polish campaign of 1939, and they had been struck by the almost general hostility of the Poles; similarly, there were Russian soldiers who, when abandoning cities like Lwow in 1941, claimed to have been fired on by Poles while the Germans were entering the city from the other end.
It is perhaps significant that on General Gundorov's "All Slav Committee" which was particularly active in 1942, and was marked by a special Russian affection for Yugoslavs, Czechs and pro-Soviet Bulgarians, the Poles played very little part. This was a curious movement with sentimental "Pan-Slav" and even Orthodox Church undertones.
In short, the Russians had many mental reservations in respect of the Poles—and no
doubt a very bad conscience as a result of the 1939 deportations. And among the top-
ranking Russians there was great uneasiness about the "missing officers" about whom the London Government never ceased asking questions.
But in any case Stalin had some definite ideas about the future of Poland. He was not going to subscribe to the "Riga frontiers" of 1921. Nor was he going to tolerate a Poland run by anti-Russian elements. Of one thing he was profoundly convinced— and that was the deep-seated hostility existing between Poles and Russians. Even in later years, long after the war, he continued to be highly sceptical about any assurances that the Poles and Russians were "getting on splendidly"—he used to say that it would, perhaps, take two generations or more to overcome the innate prejudices existing on both sides.
Stalin's Polish policy had been planned in advance, though it is doubtful whether he could have anticipated Goebbels's Katyn bombshell. But this bombshell, in fact, only
precipitated the process Stalin had planned. The all-out campaign against the Sikorski Government's territorial claims had started almost immediately after Stalingrad, and before the Katyn blow-up. It was indeed, after Stalingrad (and not before) that the diplomatic activity of the Russians became very intensive, complete with the production of (as yet secret) blue-prints for the future of Eastern Europe.
The trouble over Poland, which had been simmering for a long time, began to boil over in February, 1943.
The Russian post-Stalingrad winter offensive was still at its height and the Red Army was continuing its advance west of Kharkov. The Ukrainian Government arrived in Kharkov
(only to leave again a few days later, it is true), and in the official Ukrainian Government newspaper Radyanska Ukraina (Soviet Ukraine) printed in Kharkov on February 19, there appeared an article by Alexander Korneichuk, the well-known Ukrainian
playwright—who had written The Front in 1942—and in this article, reprinted on the following day in Pravda, the Soviet-Ukrainian point of view was clearly stated. For, apart from being a problem concerning the Soviet Union as a whole, Poland was also treated then, as later, as a problem specifically affecting the Ukrainian S.S.R.
Shortly afterwards, Korneichuk was, somewhat symbolically, appointed Soviet Vice-
Commissar for Foreign Affairs "in charge of Slav countries". He did not hold the job for very long though, partly perhaps because diplomacy was not quite in his line and partly perhaps because the foreign press tended to make the most of the fact that he was married to Wanda Wassilewska, a Polish Communist writer who had been a Soviet citizen since
1939, and was even a member of the Supreme Soviet.
Ever since the renewal of diplomatic relations between Poland and the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 the frontiers had been a bone of contention between the two
Governments. Sikorski himself, though willing, at heart, to take a realistic view of the situation, had never officially abandoned Poland's claims to the 1939 frontiers. He was always considering his own diehards; though the indications are that he was prepared, eventually, to compromise, and his "minimum" was the preservation by Poland of Lwow.
Later it was argued that, if only Sikorski had remained alive, relations between the Soviet Government and the Polish Government in London would not have deteriorated as much
as they did; but this is doubtful. Sikorski was still alive when the Soviet Government
"suspended" diplomatic relations; Sikorski was still alive when the Union of Polish Patriots—that first nucleus of a pro-Soviet Government in Poland—was set up and the
decision was taken to form the new Polish Army in Russia.
There are, however, indications that the Russians did not hold Sikorski personally
responsible for the "Katyn Scandal", but some of the diehards in and around his Government, especially their bête noire General Sosnkowski, the Chief of Staff; and it is also true that at no moment after the suspension of relations with the Polish Government in April 1943 did the Russian press attack Sikorski personally. But, looking back on it now, it is doubtful whether Sikorski would have been able to play a part much greater than that to be played later by Mikolajczyk.
The main lines of Russia's Polish policy may be said to have been laid down in the early part of 1943. The Katyn scandal only precipitated an inevitable breach.
The eastern frontier was to be, roughly, the Curzon line, and Poland was to expand
westwards instead, though no exact borderline was yet mentioned.
The Polish Government was to be a "frie
ndly Government".
A lasting settlement of Poland's frontiers was to be achieved, and although the Russians at first refrained from indicating officially what Poland's frontiers in the west would be, a new Polish paper published in Moscow, Wolna Polska (Free Poland) openly raised the question in March 1943. Somebody called Andrzei Marek wrote that Poland should be
given the essential parts of Silesia and, naturally, the mouth of the Vistula, "with wide access to the sea". The coastline from Danzig to Memel, he said, should be Polish and East Prussia should "cease to be an everlasting springboard for German aggression against the Poles, Russians, and the Baltic peoples. It should be Poland's bridge to the sea, and not the barrier between her and the sea". These still relatively modest claims were to be greatly exceeded later by the Oder-Neisse frontier.
The Poles, in short, were expected to sink their past differences with the Russians and Ukrainians, to become "good Slavs", and stop thinking about cordons sanitaires and other Pilsudskian heresies.
As already said, Korneichuk opened the debate on February 19:
It would seem (he wrote), that in the hard times through which the Polish people are living all layers of Polish society would be united by the same national feeling, and by the same sacred thought; to drive out the Germans... But no, there are large
groups of Poles in London who are doing their best to shatter the united front of Hitler's enemies. A Polish newspaper, printed on good English newsprint, recently dismissed the outcry for the Second Front as "cheap demagogy". And at a recent meeting in Edinburgh Professor W. Wielhorski said: "Every Pole must consider it his duty to fight for the inviolability of our eastern areas."
The Polish szlachta [landed gentry] have learned nothing. They have never recognised the Ukrainian people...
Korneichuk then gave a long list of the benefits that the Western Ukraine had derived during its incorporation in the Soviet Union, between 1939 and 1941—the creation of
schools and hospitals, land reform, struggle against illiteracy, unemployment and