Grzegorz Hryciuk
Even before the severance of Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations in April 1943, following the German revelations of the NKVD mass murder of Polish officers in Katyn, the Soviet Union set about the establishing of an alternative political center to the Polish government. It brought together Polish communists grouped in the editorial office of the magazine “Nowe Widnokręgi” and several Polish-language editorial offices of Soviet radio. Wanda Wasilewska came to be the group’s most recognizable face.
The shortest way to Poland?
In March 1943, the first issue of the magazine “Free Poland” was published, with the founding congress of the Union of Polish Patriots taking place in June, which was intended as a social organization representing Poles and Polish citizens in the USSR. Simultaneously, in early May, the Soviet authorities decided to commence with the formation of the Polish 1st Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division, made up of Poles—formally volunteers, but in reality mobilized from among those Polish citizens who “didn’t make it to Anders”. In August, news of the formation of the Polish Corps was announced, which by December 1943 included over 30,000 soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and a small group of officers, who had been formerly deported. The division, and later the Corps, was commanded by one of the few high-ranking pre-war officers in the Polish Army, Lieutenant Colonel Zygmunt Berling (promoted to the rank of major general by the USSR authorities). He had already decided upon collaboration with the Soviets in 1940, and upon the evacuation of Anders’ Army, he deserted and remained in the Soviet Union. The “Berling men”, as they were sometimes called, were supposed to be—unlike General Anders’s soldiers—those who would return to Poland the fastest and by the “shortest route.” In fact, in the spring of 1944, units of the Corps, which had been reorganized into an Army after being reinforced with mobilized Poles from the Southeastern Borderlands of the Second Polish Republic, were transferred to Volhynia, which—to the soldiers’ surprise and disappointment—was no longer part of the Polish Republic. Political and educational officers attempted to convince them that postwar Poland would be confined to territories west of a line roughly following the Bug River (Curzon line).
The Union of Polish Patriots, although intended primarily for political and propaganda purposes, largely became an organization that took over a number of welfare functions previously performed by the Polish Embassy Delegations and representatives of the Polish Confederation. By 1945, its membership reached 94,000. Its branches coordinated material aid for Polish citizens, organized numerous orphanages (for 5,700 children), ran 93 kindergartens, 593 community centers, 248 schools, 636 libraries, 463 drama clubs, and represented Polish citizens before local Soviet authorities.
After the formation of the Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division and the establishment of the Union of Polish People’s Party (ZPP), the Soviet authorities’ attitude toward Polish citizens improved, but the deportees’ financial situation did not improve. The impoverishment was caused by the reduction in bread rations from November 21, 1943, as well as the general harvest failure in 1943, which also affected the yields from the exiles’ home gardens. The financial situation was particularly critical at the turn of 1943 and 1944 in the northern regions of the USSR, in the forestry settlements. One ZPP activist in Kirov recalled this in a letter to the Union’s Central Board in Moscow: The Polish population of the Komi ASSR, mostly from Noshula and Obyachevo, despite all the government’s measures, arrives in Murash in the spring. Along the way are scattered the corpses of those who have died from exhaustion, many of whom are children.
The only way to save thousands of people from extermination was to relocate them to regions with more favorable climatic conditions, where there was a chance of a better food supply.
After strenuous efforts by the ZPP authorities, on April 5, 1944, the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR approved the relocation of 26,885 people from Siberia and the northern regions of the Russian SFSR to the southern European part of the USSR – to the Saratov, Rostov, Kursk, Voronezh, Krasnodar, and Stavropol regions, and to the Kherson, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions of the Ukrainian SSR. The operation lasted from May to September 1944 and affected over 26,500 people. In late June 1944, the ZPP Presidium requested the resettlement of an additional 45,000 people from areas with unfavorable climatic conditions – from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Sverdlovsk, Molotov, Kemerovo, Omsk, and Vologda regions – to Ukraine. On July 11, 1944, the Soviet authorities approved the relocation of 30,000 people. Later that same month, another round of resettlement began in eastern and southern Ukraine, ending in December 1944. Unfortunately, the new settlement areas were affected by warfare, and living, housing, and health conditions were not much better than in the previous resettlement areas.
The resettlement of some Polish citizens to European Russia and southern and eastern Ukraine strengthened their hopes for a speedy return to their homeland. As late as the autumn of 1944 and the first half of 1945, some former exiles attempted to return to their homelands – the Eastern Borderlands of the Second Polish Republic.
The “evacuation” agreement of July 6, 1945
Ultimately, the decision to repatriate Polish citizens residing in the USSR was formally made only on July 6, 1945, when a Polish-Soviet agreement was signed “on the right to change Soviet citizenship and evacuate persons of Polish and Jewish nationality residing in the USSR.” Under this agreement, the right to emigrate to Poland was granted to persons “of Polish and Jewish nationality who had been in possession of Polish citizenship by September 17, 1939.” Before departure, the procedure of renouncing one’s Soviet citizenship had to be completed. The so-called “option” and evacuation issues were to be handled by the Soviet-Polish Mixed Commission, headed by Henryk Wolpe (on the Polish side) and Alexei Andreyev (on the Soviet side). In reality, the resettlement was managed and supervised by the Main Board of the Union of Polish Employers (ZPP).
The deadline for registration for departure to Poland was November 1, 1945, and the departure itself – the end of 1945. Both proved to be completely unrealistic. Soviet authorities frequently demanded documents certifying Polish citizenship from exiles and refugees, which had often confiscated during the forced passporting process of early 1943. The departure of a quarter of a million people within two months of autumn and winter was even more unfeasible. In November 1945, an additional protocol to the agreement was signed, under which registration was to continue until the end of 1945 (in fact, it continued until the end of the departure operation), with the returns to take place in the first half of the following year. The Soviets managed to relax their restrictive approach to documenting the right to leave. According to the adopted schedule, deportees and refugees from Ukraine and European Russia were designated as the first to leave. The repatriation was to conclude with the resettlement of Poles and Jews from the Central Asian republics of the USSR. In fact, the first echelons departed at the end of January 1946, with the last small transport departing from Pskov on June 19, 1946.
“Under the leadership of the ZPP from the hospitable Soviet land to Poland”
The organizers intended the long-awaited departure after six years in the “inhuman land” as a manifestation of Polish-Soviet friendship. The local authorities, as well as ZPP activists, wishing to at least erase the unpleasant memories of their time in exile, distributed clothing and food aid among Poles and Jews (which often originated from American donations sent through the UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration] – editor’s note). In the Kherson Oblast.
In all regions, farewell parties and meetings were held in a cordial atmosphere of Polish-Soviet friendship […] with resolutions passed almost everywhere in honour of the President of the KRN, Citizen Bierut, Generalissimo Stalin, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Ukraine, Khrushchev, as well as thanks to the Main Board, the Representation in Ukraine, and the Polish Delegation for their care and protection of Poles over the course of their stay in the hospitable Soviet Land, as well as for their organized return to the country. Due to the efforts of the Regional Board, portraits of the President of the KRN, Citizen Bierut, state emblems, and banners were made. Literary material and newspapers were included with every transport.
The wagons were decked out with posters and slogans, portraits of the leaders of the Polish nation. Each transport, led by a representative of the Polish People’s Party (ZPP), was to be provided with medical care. Sanitary commissions, consisting of a doctor or paramedic, and a nurse, typically had at their disposal a first aid kit with medicines, medical instruments, aprons, blankets, and sheets.
The repatriated people were supposed to be vaccinated against infectious diseases before departure. As was typical of Soviet life, in certain places emigrants avoided vaccinations, due to distrust of both the local authorities and the health service, while in other places, vaccines proved scarce. Those departing were issued with bread (half a kilogram per day) and, in smaller quantities, other food products (groats, canned goods, fat, sugar) for 10 to 15 days. Many repatriates also received monetary support, ranging from a dozen to several thousand rubles per family.
The echelons consisted of freight cars adapted for human transport—that is, equipped with a stove (a so-called “koza” – free-standing stove), sleeping bunks, and rudimentary sanitary facilities (a hole in the floor). Because the transports were formed at larger railway stations, the repatriates, scattered across small towns and villages, collective farms, and state farms, were often forced to cover dozens or more kilometers with their meager belongings on foot, by horse-drawn cart, car, barge, and, in the Central Asian republics, even by such an exotic mode of transportation as the camel. The waiting time for the echelon to gather together and depart often lasted several weeks. The monotony of the journey and frequent stops was alleviated by the awareness of returning home, though not to one’s own home, and the relief of traveling—perhaps for the first time in the Soviet Union—in cars without barred windows, locked doors, and armed escort.
The resettlement operation reached its peak in the spring months – April and May 1946 – with a total of over 130,000 people arriving in Poland. Transports carrying repatriates scattered across over 100 districts and republics of the USSR – from Odessa and Kiev to Vladivostok, from Arkhangelsk to Bukhara and Samarkand – passed through the rail border crossings in Brest, Yagorod, and Medyka after several to a dozen days, from where they were directed onward to the Western and Northern Territories. There, in their new settlements, military families in particular, sometimes waited in vain to be reunited with their loved ones – demobilized soldiers of the Polish Army and the Polish Armed Forces in the West.
An Uncertain Repatriation Balance.
According to the official data, approximately 233,000 repatriates (including over 5,300 children from orphanages) departed in 199 collective transports from January to June 1946, consisting of over 10,000 freight cars and 139 passenger cars. Among them, at least 115,000 were Jewish Polish citizens. This process was not immune from its share of tensions: with Poles sometimes refusing to travel in the same cars as Jews. Transports consisting almost exclusively of Jewish people were also formed. After crossing the Polish border, Jews especially were frequently exposed to hostility and open anti-Semitism.
Repatriation documentation is so rife with paradoxes and contradictory information that it is difficult to even precisely determine the number of those repatriated. If the statistics of the State Repatriation Office are to be believed, 22,000 repatriates from the USSR returned to Poland in the second half of 1945, not included in the overall transfer balance contained in the reports of the Joint Mixed Commission for Evacuation. Meanwhile, for example, fewer than 500 Jews left for Poland in transports from the Odessa Oblast, if the ZPP documentation is to be trusted, while according to data from the Central Committee of Jews in Poland, 1,210 arrived. Among those arriving in Poland was a small group of former Soviet citizens who had gotten married to Poles or Jews who had lived for six years in the depths of the USSR. Their departure posed the greatest challenges. Abuses were also common – residents of the USSR also sought to travel to Poland, attempting to obtain repatriation documents through bribery. One of the more dramatic stories transpired in the Odessa Oblast.
The local chairman of the ZPP District Board, Mikołaj Tarnowski, not only attempted to facilitate the departure to Poland of a group of Poles in Odessa, but together with ZPP instructor Halina Piotrowska, he also “organized” sham marriages for the purpose of allowing people to opt for Polish nationality. They publicly appealed to bachelors, widowers, single women, and widows to fulfill their patriotic duty and enter into sham marriages with local Poles. The “Agitated” often did so selflessly […] Such marriages were formalized by: Buzanowa-Wiewióra, Tarnowska-Kawczyński, Kolczanowa-Sienkiewicz, Zawalewska, and a number of others. […] Tarnowski was associated with a reactionary group of local Poles. One of them, Zawalewska, whom Tarnowski used and recruited into the movement, was arrested by the NKGB. Tarnowski constantly spread the rumor that the Soviet Union would not permit true Polish patriots to enter the country.
In addition to mass transports, 21,000 people were said to have arrived individually. These figures do not include those who emigrated to the Eastern Borderlands in 1945 and attempted to resettle on their own, taking advantage of the evacuation agreements concluded by the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) with the authorities of the Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian republics in September 1944. And this was no small number, as 860 people (25 percent of the former exiles) disappeared from the Mykolaiv Oblast alone between May 1 and September 1, 1945. This group is sometimes estimated at 30,000–40,000. Therefore, contrary to data contained in statistical yearbooks from that period, between 276,000 and as many as 306,000 may have arrived in Poland from the depths of the Soviet Union in 1945–1946. (i.e. more than were included in the lists of the ZPP and the Soviet authorities), including at least one hundred and thirty six thousand Polish Jews.
Repatriates from the Soviet Union, largely from the eastern territories of the Second Polish Republic, were settled primarily in the Western and Northern Territories. Jewish populations also emerged near Szczecin and in Lower Silesia, including Wrocław, Legnica, Wałbrzych, Dzierżoniów, Bielawa, Pieszyce, and Świdnica. However, these did not endure for very long. In the wakes of the Kielce pogrom in 1946, most Polish Jews, including those who survived the war in the USSR, either emigrated to Western Europe and the United States, or to their new national home, which was being established in Palestine.
The “Siberians” and wanderers who arrived from the USSR were condemned for decades to a kind of selective memory – while it was rare to speak of the ZPP’s activities and their return to Poland, and more common to speak of the formation and sacrificial combat trail of those “from Lenino” (where Poles fought alongside The Soviets against the Nazis), their tragic experiences from 1940–1943 were subject to intentional obliteration, conscious forgetting. For decades, their personal trauma remained just that, only for sharing with their loved ones, who had been similarly affected by the blows of fate.
Grzegorz Hryciuk is a professor of University of Wrocław
Polish version of the text – here: https://swiatsybiru.pl/pl/najkrotsza-droga-do-polski-repatriacja-obywateli-polskich-z-zsrs-w-latach-1945-1946/