I wonder how the fate of the world – including Poland – would have unfolded if a new state had not been created in 1922: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? Would we have heard about gulags, collectivization, enemies of the people, a great terror…? It is unbelievable how much harm this state has done, both to its own citizens and those of other countries.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was the first communist state in history. The decision to create it was taken on 30 December 1922. This behemoth state (which at one point covered more than 22 million square kilometers of land and had a population of almost 300 million) existed until December 1991. The Soviet Union was born on the ruins of the Russian empire. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the civil war, the assassination of the entire Tsar family, the bloody crackdown on opponents – all this happened before December 1922. The following decades showed that the ruthless way of wielding power developed between 1917 and 1922 had not been abandoned at all. On the contrary: terror increased, especially after Joseph Stalin came to power, reaching its peak in the second half of the 1930s. At the same time, the Soviet Union was undoubtedly successful in such areas as the industrialization of the country, electrification, and the fight against illiteracy. The whole world heard about this; however, what the country did not say was that all this was done, among other things, at the expense of the lives of millions of people who, as gulag prisoners, performed slave labour. Often, their only fault was that they thought differently than how the authorities wanted them to.

Photo: Part of the permanent exhibition at the Sybir Memorial Museum