Dariusz Węgrzyn
The crossing of the Curzon line by the Red Army meant a significant turn in Soviet repressive politics. The communist-governed Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) (also known as the Lublin Committee) was officially established on July 22, 1944. One of the main cases to be covered was the agreement on the new Polish–Soviet border. Suitably, and of course according to Józef Stalin’s will, the border treaty was signed in Moscow on 27th of July. In the treaty, the Eastern Borderlands of Poland were lost, but the newly established Polish authorities were initially unwilling to let this news reach Poland.
The real significance of the operations conducted by the Soviet security organs was the agreement signed with PKWN the day before. This concerned the relationship between the Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army and the administration established by the communists.
The Soviets could do anything…
The civilian population was to be subordinate to the legal jurisdiction of the Polish authorities. However, the clarification of this point was crucial: “[…] except for the crimes committed in the martial operations zone, which fall under the jurisdiction of the Soviet Commander-in-Chief”. How does this translate into normal language? In the war zone, which was not specified, i.e., de facto everywhere, civilians could be arrested by Soviet security organs. The Polish communist authorities allowed citizens of the new Polish state to be arrested, interned and deported by the security organs and sentenced by the courts of a third country on the basis of its penal law. Worst of all, the convicts were also to serve their sentences outside the country of which they were citizens. As a result, Soviet “security men” behind the fronts could operate completely freely, and the agreements signed with the Polish side gave their actions legal legitimacy. Why did the authorities of the PKWN allow this?
The answer was quite simple. These actions, aimed at communist adversaries, strengthened the position of the Polish Workers’ Party and enabled pacification of social resistance against the Red Army’s takeover of full power in Poland as it gradually occupied more territories. For the Soviets, the enemy remained the same as in the Eastern Borderlands: the Home Army and the structures of the Polish Underground State.
Disarmed by Soviets
The first attack was directed against members of the Lublin District of the Home Army, which numbered about 12 thousand soldiers who were relatively well armed and equipped considering the realities of the underground. They were reinforced by units of the 27th Volhynian Infantry Division of the Home Army, withdrawn from Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. This formation joined the “Burza” operation, which included the seizure of Lubartów, Michów, Kock and Kozłówka. Overall, the active participation of the Lublin structures of the Home Army (In Polish: Armia Krajowa, abbreviated to the AK ) in the “Burza” operation – which consisted of, among other things, liberating towns and attempting to establish a Polish local administration – actually facilitated the Soviets. This dynamic is well illustrated by the case of the aforementioned 27th WDP AK: on July 25, 1944, its officers were invited to Skrobów for talks with General Bakanow; on arrival, however, they were disarmed by the Russians, and the Polish units were surrounded. Patterns already seen in the Vilnius region were thus repeated.
The structures of the underground resistance movement in the Lublin region were so strong that initially there seemed to be a kind of dual power in the region, considering the weakness of the newly emerging communist system. The “fraternal help” of the Soviets proved necessary. As a consequence of the disarmament of the Home Army units, the district commander, Colonel Kazimierz Tumidajski “Marcin”, issued an order to disband all units on 29 July 1944 and was arrested in Lublin almost simultaneously. A few days later, the Government Delegate for the Country, Władysław Cholewa, shared the same fate, being seized at the airport in Świdnik and transported to the USSR. In their actions, the NKVD, NKGB and “SMERSH” (soviet military counterintelligence) formations repeated certain patterns: first, they arrested established officers and commanders of the conspiracy structures.
‘Too lenient stance towards the underground’
Meanwhile, the structures of the Rzeszów Sub-District of the Home Army, commanded by Colonel Kazimierz Putek, known as “Zworny”, were targeted. Here, too, at a critical moment, just after the frontline had passed by, repressive actions were carried out by the forces of the NKVD, NKGB, and the counterintelligence service “SMERSH”. The efficiency of the Soviet officers quickly filled the prison in the Lubomirski Castle in Rzeszów. Initially, the focus was on identifying and detaining the command staff of the underground structures; however, as the situation stabilised, the scale of repression expanded to include ordinary soldiers of the Home Army. The formations of the Office of Security Service often played an auxiliary role for the Soviets, handing over some of the arrested to the NKVD. Prisoners were held in UB and NKVD prisons, including those of Skrobów, Sokołów Podlaski, Lublin, Rembertów, Majdanek and Krześlin.
At the beginning of October 1944, a delegation from the State National Council and the PKWN went to Moscow for talks. There, they were probably admonished for “too soft a course towards the underground”. After their return, it was decided that the Home Army was to be ruthlessly combated. All Home Army officers were ordered to be interned, and the communist security apparatus and the structures of the Main Directorate of Information of the Polish Army (counterintelligence) were to be expanded. They were to be assisted at every step by “Soviet comrades”.
Arrested, interned, deported
In the autumn of 1944, a decision was made to strengthen the NKVD forces on Polish lands. Hence, the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, Lavrentiy Beria, issued an order on 13 October to establish the 64th Collective Infantry Division of the Internal Troops of the NKVD. Initially, the combat units focused on pacifying the areas of Lublin and Rzeszów, but over time they expanded to cover the whole of the Lublin region. From October, when the unit began operations, until the end of November, soldiers of this division detained almost 7,000 people, of whom 1,617 were “AK soldiers”. It was estimated that by 11 November, Soviet and Polish security structures had arrested a total of 4,200 people associated with the activities of the AK (soldiers and collaborators). By the end of the year, the Soviet military had detained a total of 16,820 people, including 2,604 Home Army soldiers, 691 deserters from the Polish Army and 1,083 men who had evaded military service. Again, we are working with very uncertain data. Some estimates suggest that by the end of 1944, 20,000 Poles had been arrested and interned in Lublin by the Soviets, of which 11,000–12,000 were sent by rail to the East.
While most of those arrested by the security forces subordinate to the PKWN were sent to penitentiary centres located in the Lublin region of Poland, some of those detained by the Soviets as internees were sent to Soviet labour camps. Between August 1944 and January 1945, three transports left the rear of the 1st Belorussian Front and the 1st Ukrainian Front (southern Poland) for camp No. 178–454 in Ryazan: from Lublin (23 August 1944), from Brest (29 September 1944) and from Przemyśl (4 October 1944). Four transports were sent to camp No. 270 in Borowicze: two from Sokołów Podlaski (13 and 30 November), one from Lublin (18 November 1944) and one from Przemyśl (23 November 1944). The last transports before the start of the Red Army’s Vistula-Oder Offensive were dispatched on 11 and 27 January 1945 to camp 283 in Stalinogorsk.
“Mścisław” was not fooled
Similar actions were carried out by the Soviet apparatus of repression in the northern areas of Poland, targeting the rear of the 2nd Belorussian Front. Here, the main action was aimed at the structures of the independence underground movement operating in the Białystok voivodeship. The commander of the Białystok Home Army District, Lieutenant Colonel Władysław Liniarski “Mścisław”, was cautious about launching Operation “Burza”, knowing what had happened to the structures of the Polish Underground State in the Eastern Borderlands. As a result, Operation Burza was carried out in only a limited form in his district, unlike in the Kresy or Lublin region. Liniarski could not act against the orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Army, which is why talks were held with representatives of the Red Army. Of course, such meetings usually resulted in the arrests of Home Army officers, but in general it was much more difficult for the Soviets to identify and break up the underground structures in the Białystok region.
At the same time, intensive searches were carried out to identify those collaborating with the Third Reich. This was part of the NKVD tactics, intending to demonstrate to the public that they were detaining “traitors” and “criminals”. It was therefore explained that “collaborators” were deprived of their freedom and were sent to the East alongside AK soldiers, who were outraged to be detained in the same labour camps as them. Partisan units were gradually broken up and the officers arrested. Ordinary AK members were sent to the camp in Dojlidy (Bialystok district ), where the 4th Reserve Infantry Regiment of the Polish Army was in the process of being created. The repressions caused the AK structures to once again go underground on 28 August 1944. The Voivodeship Office of Public Security (WUBP), established in Białystok, became intensively involved in the operation to pacify the underground. By January 1945, nine hundred detainees had been handed over to the Soviet authorities for “internment”. The first attack was aimed mainly at AK officers and the structures of the Polish Underground State, which was becoming the norm. Those detained were first sent to the gulag in Wołkowysk, but Białystok quickly became the central point for the concentration of prisoners.
No trial, no sentence, no amnesty
From October 1944, Soviet security structures (the NKVD, “SMERSH”, and the NKGB of the Belarusian SSR) began mass arrests and internments in the Białystok voivodeship. NKVD forces in this region were increased to around 4,500 soldiers. The Białystok Operational Group of the NKVD Troops was established, which operated until mid-December 1944. The effects of this strengthening of structures did not take long to materialise, with 499 people already arrested by the end of October. They were sent to the prison in Białystok, which quickly filled up. To remedy this, in November 1944, it was decided to send three transports carrying up to 3,000 people to the Ostashkov camp in the USSR. According to various estimates, soldiers of the Home Army and other independence organisations constituted about 80 percent of those deported to the USSR; the rest were referred to as collaborators of the Third Reich. The aforementioned camp quickly filled up with people from the Białystok region, therefore the last two transports from that region, in December 1944 and January of the following year, were sent to Stalinogorsk. These camp transportations were analogous to those sent to Ostashkov: the same operation, only with a different destination point for the detainees. In total, from July 1944 to early February 1945, approximately 5,000 people were deported from the Białystok area, of which approximately 3,300 were involved in the independence conspiracy.
Analysis of the above table clearly indicates that the deportations of interned AK soldiers from the Lublin region of Poland intensified from November 1944. This phenomenon is quite simple to explain. Initially, the detainees were held in prisons and camps established on the spot, but these facilities quickly became overcrowded. For the Soviets, the terrible living conditions were not a major problem; the possibility of rescue actions by Polish underground units was more of a concern. This was likely the reason for the decision to transport the detainees to camps located in the USSR. This guaranteed that these people, who were dangerous to the emerging “people’s power” in Poland, would remain outside the country’s borders for as long as Stalin deemed it appropriate. Such certainty was provided by the status of the detainees, i.e., internment: they were not convicted, they did not receive a sentence, and so they were not subject to amnesty. Internment, as an administrative decision, could be revoked by another decision of the highest Soviet authorities. Whether and how this happened depended solely on the decision of Generalissimo Stalin. The beginning of the last year of World War II was approaching, along with another turn in the USSR’s repressive policy, which led to the deportation to the East of more groups of arrested and interned people.
Dariusz Węgrzyn (PhD) – Silesian Center for Solidarity and Freedom.
Translated from Polish: Katarzyna Remża