Polish-Soviet Realations

"An article summary: The Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Berlin in the light of Polish historiography and archival materials.

The Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Berlin was found on 10 November 1926 as a result of Ukrainian emigration environment efforts assembled by hetman Skoropadski. Those efforts were supported by German authorities mainly officers with high status in the German army (Reichswehr). This institute worked until the end of II World War. It wasn’t a school institute, it didn’t carry any course lectures, any exams and any diplomas. The main reason for its activity was dissemination of scientific material about Ukraine and its scientific connection with  West European science and culture. They wanted German elite to realise the importance and extensiveness of Ukrainian problem but Ukrainian emigration to integrate and live in the surrounding of patriotism. The other reason was talented emigrants supporting by giving them scholarships. The institute consisted of five departments: Ukrainian history, Ukrainian history of art, Ukrainian history of philosophy, economy and ethnography. Its activity was carried by four main spheres: lectures for students, talks and exhibitions for the general public, publishing trade and care of scholarship holders. The activity of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute wasn’t widely known in Polish historical literature. A large amount of materials about this place is found in  the Archive of New Records in Warsaw which  was the base of this article. elaboration."

Every war is not only the fight of the armies but also a war of the ideologies. One of the forms of the ideological war is propaganda posters. Over forty posters presented and analyzed in this article come from the Polish-Soviet war in 1919-1921. The research work is based on grounded theory procedures adopted for visual data analyses. Particularly useful was a method of coding families worked out by Barney Glaser and modified to the visual data analysis by Krzysztof Konecki. The author reconstructed several basic motifs, formal solutions, and Communications strategies (i.e., continuity and continuation versus avant-garde and revolution, image of the enemy and “one’s own” imagination, strategic conversion) used by artists-ideologists from both sides of the conflict.

Instructions to the Red Army Commanders Assuming Authority on Polish Territory in 1944–1945

The rapidly advancing digitisation of Russian archival collections opens up new possibilities for Polish historians. The Red Army troops entering the Polish territory in 1944 appointed military commanders in towns and villages, who for some time were the chief authority for the Polish population and the Red Army troops staying there. After launching of the January 1945 offensive, the Soviet Army occupied Central Western Poland and entered the territory of the Western and Northern Territories, which had belonged to Germany before the war. Military commanders were also established there, but due to the lack of Polish administration, their rule was more extensive and lasted longer, also in 1946. Under the commanders' rule, which lasted for months, about onethird of the area of the Polish state, where millions of Germans still lived, came under their rule. Thousands of murders of civilians, rapes and the large-scale transfer of looted property to the USSR took place. These events placed a heavy burden on the Soviet
military administration and the commanders. The paper aims to present three regulations concerning the work of Soviet military commanders in Poland. They were found in the resources of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. They show the changeability of the concept of activities of military commanders in the Polish lands. The scope of their influence also changed. The first one, from July 1944, concerned only Lublin. The second one, from August 1944, concerned the area of operation and stationing of the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front (Przemyśl, Rzeszow, Sanok). The last one, issued in October 1944,
came from the highest level, the General Staff of the Red Army, and regarded all troops stationed on Polish territory. The instructions indicated the intention to introduce ‘limited occupation’ in Poland, masked by the ‘sovereignty’ of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) (the Polish government subordinated to the Soviets). The commanders were to support PKWN, fight the representatives of the London government, but not to interfere with religious practices, probably in order not to escalate the conflict at all levels and not to alienate the villagers. The commanders had the right to impose compulsory labour on the Poles.
They also had police powers, i.e. to check the Polish population, confiscate weapons and documents. The wide range of control powers also over the Polish Army is noteworthy. For the Polish independence underground, the key regulation was to ‘disarm and arrest individuals, groups and units if they refused to surrender their weapons voluntarily’. The postulated description of the military commander's profile, his character traits and attitude towards the Polish population is also interesting. It was recommended not to interfere with the activities of the authorities depending on PKWN (i.e. the communist ones). It was ordered to respect places of religious cult, assuming that the Red Army soldiers brought up in atheism could by acts of vandalism deepen Poles' dislike of the Communists.

On 23 August 1939, foreign minister of the Third Reich, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Soviet commissar of foreign affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow, to which a secret protocol was attached assigning German and Soviet spheres of influence in the East-Central Europe. Stalin was satisfied. The threat of German attack on the East was decreasing and a hope for a long-term, bloody conflict between Western countries was rising, which would enable the Soviet Union to maintain a longed-for dominance and enable a change of the geopolitical situation in Europe. What is more, he was given the right to Baltic countries and more than a half of Poland, and a free hand as to what this half was to become in the future: another Russian republic or a part of Lithuanian and Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.

This article presents two previously unknown Soviet archival documents. The first deals with the visit of Fr. Stanislaw Orlemanski, a pro-Soviet Polish-American Catholic priest to Moscow and his meeting with Stalin. The second discusses the possible inclusion of Oscar Lange, a pro-Soviet Polish intellectual living and working in the United States into Poland's postwar, interim government. Both of these documents add historiography to the topic of the leftist Polish-Americans of World War II.

The article attempts to trace the sources of “polonophilia” in the Soviet culture of the sixties and to consider the strategies of the representation of the Polish text in Russian literature after the Khrushchev Thaw on the material of Stanislav Kunyaev, Boris Dubrovin and Emil Janvarev’s poetry. The special influence on the formation of the geo-cultural image of the Polish People’s Republic in this period is discussed in the context of Polish cinema (in particular Andrzej Wajda’s film Ashes and Diamonds).

Mit der erzwungenen Annahme der sowjetischen Staatsbürgerschaft gerie- ten die Bürger der im September 1939 annektierten Gebiete der UdSSR in den Einflussbereich einer repressiven sowjetischen Gesetzgebung. Die neuen Machthaber forderten von den ihnen formal „untergebenen“ Bürgern bedingungslose Unterordnung, absoluten Gehorsam, die Befolgung sämtli- cher Anordnungen und die Ächtung des polnischen Staates, der von der UdSSR als nicht existent betrachtet wurde.

У статті зроблено огляд радянсько-польських договорів, які стосуються депортації українського населення Закерзоння 1944-1946 та 1951 років, в результаті яких до УРСР та на понімецькі землі Польщі було депортовано близько 700 тис. осіб. А також міжнародні та українські нормативно-правові акти стосовно на разі безуспішних спроб засудження депортацій, визнання статусу депортованих та компенсації за втрати.