CIAO DATE: 08/06

International Affairs:
A Russian Journal

No. 2, 2005

 

Tragedy in Polish Camps

Iu. Ivanov^*

Two tragic events in the Russian (Soviet)-Polish relations left their negative imprint on the historical memory of both nations. Here I have in mind mass deaths of Russian prisoners of war in 1919-1920 in Polish camps and the deaths in Katyn and Medny of Polish officers taken prisoner during the September 1939 campaign. They are still felt in the Russian-Polish relations. Russians find the deaths of their compatriots in the Polish camps no less painful than what the Poles feel about Katyn. The number of lost lives that exceeds an acceptable scale and reaches tens of thousands of deaths does not allow us to drop the subject. This huge figure causes concern and suggests that the Polish side should conduct investigations and supply explanations. The fact that Warsaw remains intent on distancing itself from the martyrdom of Russian POWs, the scale of which by far exceeded the Katyn tragedy adds urgency to the issue.

In November 1918, the Polish state reappeared on the map of Europe not without Russia's assistance: first the czarist, then the Provisional Government, the White leaders (Kolchak, Denikin, Vrangel) and, finally, Soviet Russia officially and resolutely supported Polish independence. It seemed that this would usher in a period of friendly and good-neighborly relations between the two states. This did not happen, however.

From the very beginning the newly restored state was nurturing imperial ambitions and planned a march on Moscow. Territorial claims on its neighbors and an attempt at knocking together an anti-Russian coalition of Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic States, Rumania, and Finland were Poland's first foreign policy moves. It was resolved to use military force to achieve its aims. Aided by the Entente it promptly created one of the largest armies in Europe. Early in 1919, the Polish troops moved eastward and, encountering no resistance, were advancing at a fast pace. It should be said that numerous official invitations to establish diplomatic relations and resolve the debatable issues in a peaceful way and through talks that came from Moscow were either rejected or ignored. The people never learned about them. In particular, on 22 January 1920 the R.S.F.S.R. Council of People's Commissars invited Poland to stop hostilities and enter into negotiations; on 2 February 1920, the All-Russia Central Executive Committee (the supreme body of power at that time) in its address confirmed Russia's position. Among other things the address spoke about Russia's readiness to make considerable territorial concessions to defuse tension between the two states.¹

The documents were ignored. In April 1920, Poland opened a wide-scale eastward offensive; it occupied Minsk and Kiev and was obviously intent to remain on the occupied lands. This poisoned the relations between the two countries for many years to come including the period of World War II. Their negative echo can be still heard.

International laws described Warsaw's moves of 1919-1920 as an armed attack at neighboring states. In the eyes of the world Poland was an aggressor. As a victor it imposed the crippling 1921 peace treaty on Russia. Having rejected what looked at the time as a democratic peace without annexations and contributions Poland demanded vast stretches of Byelorussian and Ukrainian territories as well as a large sum of money (that could be qualified as a contribution at the time when international practice had already abandoned this practice). ²

In addition, from the very beginning of hostilities Poland choose to ignore the international acts on the laws and customs of war in force at that time.³ Prisoners of war were shot on spot while wounded were abandoned to die on the battlefield. ⁴ The bulk of the Russian POWs was taken outside Warsaw after the decisive battle that began on 20 August 1920 and that Poland won.⁵ The imperfect statistics of the time does not allow us to establish the exact number of the Red Army men who were taken prisoner and perished in the camps. Their number is tentatively assessed as no less than 150,000-155,000 people (some Russian researchers insist on the figure of 200,000 ⁶) of which about 45,000-50,000 never returned.⁷

The Polish side never bothered itself with creating more or less adequate conditions for the prisoners who were dying in great numbers of cold, hunger and diseases. Degrading treatment sapped the prisoners' physical and moral strength and caused more deaths.⁸ Official documents bear witness to this. Here are several examples.

In its report for April 1921-February 1923 the Russian-Ukrainian Delegation (RUD) engaged in looking after the POWs in Poland registered the following:

"Probably, because of the hatred the Poles feel toward Russians for historical reasons or for other economic and political reasons the POWs in Poland were not regarded as disarmed members of the armed forces belonging to the party in the conflict but as slaves deprived of all rights. The POWs were forced to live in old wooden barracks built by Germans; inadequate food was insufficient for survival. As soon as they were captured the POWs were robbed of their uniforms and were left in underwear in which they had to live behind the barbed wire. When keeping these people in underwear the Poles treated the POWs as slaves rather than people of the same race. They were frequently beaten."⁹

The R.S.F.S.R. envoy plenipotentiary to Poland wrote on 6 January 1922 that the prisoners "were driven out every day. Rather than allowed to walk around the weakened people were forced to run, ordered to drop into mud and rise again. Those who refused to do this or those who, weakened by the harsh conditions of imprisonment, could not rise were beaten with rifle butts."¹⁰

Here is another example. The RUD representative in Baranovichi had the following to report on 3 December 1921 about the conditions in one of the POW camps:

"My concise description supplied in my report No. 14 pales in comparison with what I saw in barrack No. 6. Hundreds of people, half of them ill, one out of ten dying, were lying on the dirty and trampled earthen floor; outside temperature was -13o or -14o C. The barrack was cold, damp and dirty; there was not a single normal human face there. It was pitch dark… half of the people died while waiting for a permission to go home… People were dying of typhus in great numbers…"¹¹

In Strzalkovo and Tuchola Polish concentration camps people were treated with special cruelty and were forced to live in extremely harsh conditions.

On 1 February 1922, in his information letter about escapes from the concentration camps addressed to the heads of the Polish war ministry Colonel I. Matuszewski, head of the 2nd (intelligence) department of the General Staff of the Polish Army, wrote: "This is caused by the conditions in which the communists and the interned are kept (no fuel, underwear or clothes, bad food and the fact that they have to wait for a long time before allowed to go back). The Tuchola camp, known among the interned as the 'death camp' (about 22,000 Red Army men died there) is especially bad."¹² A Polish official who, because of his post was probably well informed about the true state of things, offered the figure of 22,000 dead in one camp alone.

The Polish side has somewhat shifted its position since the first publications in Russia about the fate of the Russian POWs in Poland. It has moved away from its flat denial of the fact of mass deaths among the POWs and no longer dismisses publications in the Russian press as "political and scholarly lie" or "distortions of history."¹³ Today, the Poles are out to prove that the number of deaths was much lower than that quoted by the Russian side. Their estimate is about 16,000 to 18,000,¹⁴ which is, in fact, more than enough. The Poles insist that the Russian POWs died not because of the Polish side's evil intentions but because the war-ravaged country had no material means to offer the prisoners more or less adequate conditions (the living premises, clothes, bedding, foodstuffs, medical aid, and medicines). One can probably agree with these extenuating circumstances but they do not relieve the Polish side of its administrative and moral responsibility for the Russians from the moment they were taken prisoners. Not a single Russian publication has accused Poland of deliberate murders. It can be accused of, let us say, inadequate efforts to save the lives of those who happened to be in its power. It should be added that at that time there was no hunger in Poland comparable to that in Russia the economic situation in which was much worse. There were no mass deaths, however, among the Polish POWs kept in Russian camps.

The Polish efforts to somewhat improve the situation cannot be denied yet they were never sufficient to considerably improve it. The effects became obvious after the massive loss of life in winter 1920/21.

Today, there is a widely supported opinion in Poland that the POW issue on which Russia insists is an artificial one invented, after a long period of silence, for the propaganda purposes and with an aim of creating a counterweight to the Katyn crime. Some people go even further: they assert that it was the RF head of state who personally instructed Russian historians, the conviction shared by some of the Russian authors. ¹⁵ As the author of the first publication about the mass deaths of Red Army men in the Polish camps that appeared in Russia ¹⁶ I can say that this is not true and that the Polish side insists on it with the sole aim of diverting the attention from its responsibility for the tragedy of the Russian POWs.

We have to admit that in the Soviet Union the fate of the Russian POWs for a long time remained outside the attention of the academic and journalist communities. In 1920-1922, Russia issued repeated protests against the inhuman conditions in the camps but as soon as the last survivors came back the lost war and the numerous deaths in the Polish camps were pushed to side and remained forgotten for many years. These were cruel times; millions died. They completely eclipsed several thousand dead POWs (the official attitude to POWs is well known) that came to be regarded as an unfortunate episode to be better ignored. It was comparatively recently that the subject was revived. This happened not on order from above but because many of the secret archival documents were declassified. The subject was widely discussed in the press.¹⁷

Had Warsaw shared Moscow's desire to normalize the relations between the two countries and had it been ready to remove or weaken the political undercurrent of the Russian POWs issue it would have tried to investigate the related circumstances in an objective and impartial way. Meanwhile, Poland is busy rejecting both the issue and its own responsibility. Russia could have expected Poland to supply a legal and objective assessment of massive violations of international laws on POWs. What is more, Poland as the legal successor of II Rzeczpospolita

(1919-1939) responsible for everything that was done at that time should offer its apologies or to repent in any form it might see fit to finally bury the issue. The Polish side, however, took the bit between its teeth.

Warsaw's unconstructive approach is best illustrated by its unprecedented and, in fact, purely formal, rejection issued in response to the application of the RF Prosecutor General's Office of Russia on 12 August 1998 to open a criminal case based on the fact of the deaths of tens of thousands of Russian POWs in concentration camps on the Polish territory in 1920-1922 because of the "violation of international legal acts regulating the conditions in which POWs should be kept" and because of "inhuman attitude of the Polish authorities of the time to the living conditions, food and medical aid offered to the POWs, and beatings and the degrading treatment of them by the security guards."¹⁸

There are indisputable grounds for a criminal case: a vast body of documents that have already appeared in research works and the press in both countries.¹⁹ They proved beyond doubt that the Polish side violated, on a massive scale, the fundamental human rights and the international legal acts in force at the time related to the conditions in which POWs should be kept. Warsaw has chosen the line far removed from Polish patriotism we all respect that boils down to the dubious rule it has armed itself with that says: "All other countries except Poland might be guilty in the past." Probably, this is how it sees its role in NATO Eastern policies.

Why do we believe it important that after a long period of time the Polish side should recognize its responsibility for the deaths of the imprisoned Russians and offer its apologies? First of all, we need to restore the truth and the memory of the dead. This is not all, though. The current situation is a test of sorts of Poland's ability (on which it insists) to sort out historical facts and help our countries and nations draw closer. Are its statements about cooperation mere propaganda ploys dictated by Warsaw's desire to delude the public in both countries and the international community as a whole? The negative answer supplied by the Polish prosecutor general will undoubtedly negatively affect the level of our confidence in the country's rulers.

We are witnessing a paradox: in their attitude to the tragic events that took place in the past Poland and Russia have shifted places. Warsaw's position on the POWs issue resembles the position of the Soviet Union that for many years refused to admit its responsibility for the Katyn crime. We all know that in the late 1980s-early 1990s our position underwent a radical change. In order to sort things out in our bilateral relations Moscow believed it necessary to made public the earlier classified documents of the highest echelons of power of that time. They showed beyond doubt that the Polish officers in Katyn and other places had been executed in spring 1940 by the structures of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs and not by Germans as had been earlier asserted. Moscow expected that these revelations would help remove misunderstandings between the sides and that the new Russian-Polish dialogue would normalize their bilateral relations on the principles of mutual respect, equality, and confidence. Moscow demonstrated its goodwill by officially transferring to the Polish side a packet of declassified documents while the President of Russia when on a visit to Warsaw in August 1993 laid the wreath with the words "Forgive us if you can" to the symbolic grave of the Katyn victims.

We can say that in the final analysis the Russian side demonstrated high state and moral principles in relation to the Katyn tragedy. It could have expected that Poland would believe the issue exhausted and closed.

The results of this dignified behavior proved unexpected. Warsaw refused to see the transfer of documents as a goodwill gesture, as Russia's sincere desire to clarify all details of this sad episode of our common past and, finally, as a step toward reconciliation. The Polish side failed to appreciate the act of official repentance performed by the President of Russia. It was rejected. We have to admit that our openness was probably interpreted as a sign of weakness.²⁰ The Polish side reduced to naught our attempts at presenting the Katyn crime as a common tragedy of both nations. It looks as if Warsaw does not need clarification: it wants Russia to remain guilty forever.

Early in the 1990s, the RF Main Military Prosecutor's Office undertook a detailed investigation of the Katyn case; this took ten years; the investigation was completed in fall 2004. The Military Prosecutor's Office qualified execution of the Polish officers by structures of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs as a crime; it established the guilt of those who passed the decision to execute the officers and of those who organized and carried it out. The case was close because of expiry of the term of the crime and because of the death of the guilty. The Polish side refused to accept this decision. Late in 2004, it launched its own investigation in which, it stated, besides the documents it had received from the RF Main Military Public Prosecutor's Office it would use materials of the U.S. Congress dated to the early 1950s and the materials gathered by Hitler Germany and the International Red Cross. It seems that we should expect a gigantic anti-Russian show because it is impossible to add anything new to the exhausting investigation of the RF Main Military Public Prosecutor's Office.

Polish investigation should clarify certain mysterious events related to the Katyn issue, including a detective story around the Katyn materials. It is a well-known fact that the German side gathered a vast archive that was later moved to Krakow where it disappeared.²¹ After the war the Polish side suggested that a criminal trial based on the Katyn facts should be held in Warsaw. In July 1945, Moscow agreed to receive the Prosecutor General of Poland in Moscow for consultations. ²² According to the Polish press ²³ the Polish side completed its investigation in Krakow in March 1946; shortly after that the investigator involved in the process was murdered under mysterious circumstances while the material he had gathered disappeared. The trial never took place. This was not the end of the story about the Krakow archives.

In 1953, a search in the building of the Krakow Catholic diocese and the Wawel Palace revealed 13 folders with Katyn-related documents, which were dispatched to the Ministry of Public Security in Warsaw.²⁴ Their content remained unknown.

There is another circumstance that needs clarification. So far, we have not established why the Polish officers were executed and why they were executed at that time.

One of the explanations deserves serious attention. In 1939-1940, the Soviet Union found itself in a difficult, or even critical, international situation. In the wake of the Munich deal of 1938 it was elbowed out from the European scene and virtually isolated on the eve of the war. In addition, the U.S.S.R. faced a threat of a war at several fronts (Finland in the northwest; Germany and Poland as well as the Baltic states in the west; Turkey and Rumania, in the south, and Japan, in the Far East). The notorious tripartite talks buried Moscow's hope for cooperation with the UK and France. The Soviet Union was left to cope with its far from easy security problems alone. On top of this, as soon as Moscow tried to defuse one of the threats by starting hostilities against Finland the Entente countries supported the suggestion that the Soviet Union should be excluded from the League of Nations; they were openly readying themselves to an attack, across Finland, at the Soviet Union, and to bombardment of the oil fields in Baku and elsewhere in the Caucasus.

The UK and France intended to dispatch to Finland an expeditionary corps (up to 150,000, according to certain sources). The main thing is that the Polish units stationed in France were earmarked for this march. V. Sipols, a prominent Russian historian, who has studied this question, found an archival document ²⁵ according to which "early in 1940 the French government asked the Polish government in emigration whether it agrees to Polish units' involvement in Finland together with the French and British. On 21 February, the Sikorski government agreed to involve the Polish units into the anti-Soviet action." ²⁶ He supported this with a reference to another source ²⁷ and has written: "Wladyslaw Sikorski agreed that a Polish 5,000-strong brigade be formed to be sent to Finland. Early in March 1940, it was ready to depart together with British and French troops." ²⁸

We may surmise that the Kremlin knew about this. This explains why the decision to execute the Polish officers in Katyn was taken at that time. Indeed, Great Britain and France, and a Polish brigade together with them, were threatening the Soviet Union in the northwest while not far from the state border, several thousands of hostile Polish officers were kept in the camps outside Smolensk. Nobody knew how the war would go: the Finnish campaign brought to light certain problems and shortcomings of the Soviet Union's defenses. Extreme measures were taken to avoid a possible risk. The above should not be taken for an attempt to justify the execution: the Russian side treats it as a crime.

When investigating the deaths of Russian POWs it would be logical to follow the line, which the Polish side selected when reviving the Katyn issue. For example, an official statement by the State Duma (analogous to the 1992 decision of the Polish Sejm on Katyn) will lead to an official application to the Polish parliament. It would be wise to ask once more the Polish General Prosecutor's Office to open a criminal case based on the fact of massive deaths of POWs in 1920-1922. This can be done within the Treaty on Legal Assistance and Legal Relations on Civilian and Criminal Cases signed on 16 September 1996. (It was not yet in force when the first application was filed.) We have acquired a solid legal basis in the form of a collection of documents from Russian and Polish archives entitled Sud'by krasnoarmeytsev v pol'skom plenu (Fates of Red Army Men in Polish Captivity) published in December 2004. If the Polish side refused to open the case Russia should follow Poland's example and launch it own investigation. This is my personal opinion.

Everything Warsaw is doing now confirms that it is not yet ready to assume responsibility for the deaths in the Polish concentration camps and has no moral or ethical considerations in this connection. It is not going to apologize or to repent. Poland is clearly demonstrating a dual approach suggested by purely materialistic considerations. We all know that repentance is not new for Poland: its Catholic bishops already apologized to Germany in 1966 while the state apologized to Israel and Ukraine.

Guilt cannot be attached to only one of the sides in the same way as none of them can be described only as a victim. Russia and Poland were guilty of different episodes of our common past. It seems that both sides need courage to admit their share of guilt and move toward reconciliation. There is no other way if we want to be honest with our past and ourselves and do not want our descendants to be burdened with the old problems. If the Polish side demonstrates its goodwill both problems can be resolved promptly and fairly. Warsaw's attempts, on the other hand, to decline all responsibility for what the Polish authorities did in the past and to continue exploiting the Katyn tragedy for political and propaganda purposes suggest that political considerations of today are much more important than common sense, that is, that the present Polish leaders do not want normal relations with Russia and that they want, by hook or by crook, continue exploiting the unresolved problems that aggravate our relations and fan anti-Russian sentiments among the Poles. This is unproductive, especially for the partner with which we are connected by the Treaty on Friendly and Good-neighborly Cooperation signed in Moscow on 22 May 1992.

Russia wants good relations with all countries, Poland included. We sincerely want to clarify our common part, to assess it in fair and objective terms, to remove the remaining "white" and "black" spots so as to establish mutual understanding and confidence between our countries and nations.

Our repeated attempts at reviving the issue of mass deaths of Russian soldiers in Polish camps is explained by our desire not to let the memory of them sink into oblivion. This is our duty to the dead and to history.

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Endnotes

Note *:  Iury Ivanov, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, ret., expert in Polish affairs. Back

Note 1: Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-pol'skikh otnosheniy, Vol. II, Moscow, pp. 84-89. Back

Note 2: The Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919, for example, makes no mention of contributions as a tribute due to the victor. Back

Note 3: Czarist Russia was party to The Hague Conventions on the Laws and Customs of War on Land of 1899 and 1907. As former part of Russia, independent Poland was naturally bound by these documents.
     See: "Poliaki zabyli o Zhenevskoy konventsii zadolgo do Gitlera," Strana.Ru electronic newspaper, 18 November 2004. Back

Note 4: G.F. Matveyev, "Ostavleny na pole boya," Rodina, No. 7, 2004. Back

Note 5: To spite Russia Poland has been celebrating 20 August as the Army Day for over ten years now. Back

Note 6: G.F. Matveev, "O chislennosti plennykh krasnoarmeytsev vo vremia pol'sko-sovetskoy voyny 1919-1920 godov," Voprosy istorii, No. 9, 2001.. Back

Note 7: G.V. Chicherin's note dispatched to the Polish diplomatic mission in Moscow on 9 September 1921 said: "Sixty thousand out of the total 130,000 Russian prisoners of war in Poland died during two years." (Dokumenty vneshney politiki SSSR, Vol. IV, Moscow, 1960, p. 319). Back

Note 8: S.G. Nelipovich, "Tragedia plena," Voenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal, No. 12, 2001. Back

Note 9: Foreign Policy Archives of the Russian Federation, Record group 0122, Inventory 5, Folder 105a, File 38, pp. 2-4. Back

Note 10: RF FPA, Record group 0122, Inventory 5, Folder 102, File 4, pp. 267-269. Back

Note 11: RF FRA, Record group ÐÓÄ, Inventory 6, Folder 206, File 18898, p. 74. Back

Note 12: Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-pol'skikh otnosheniy, Vol. IV, Moscow, 1966, p. 138. Back

Note 13: M. Tarczynski, Polska Zbrojna, 6 May 1994. Back

Note 14: Z. Karpus, Jency i internowani rosyjscy i ukrainscy na terenie Polski w latach 1918-1924, Torun, 1997. Back

Note 15: "Vyrvatsia iz put proshlogo," Rodina, No. 12, 1994; "Poiski anti-Katyni," Novaia Pol'sha, No. 11, 2000. Back

Note 16: "Krasnoarmeytsy v adu pol'skikh kontslagerey," Voenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal, No. 12, 1993. Back

Note 17: See, for example, P. Pokrovskiy, "Sprosit by u Budennogo…" Komsomol'skaia pravda, 19 May 1994; I.V. Mikhutina, "Tak skol'ko zhe sovetskikh voennoplennykh pogiblo v Pol'she v 1919-1921 gg.," Novaia i noveyshaia istoria, No. 3, 1995; M.Filimoshin, "Rossia zhdet otvetnogo pokaiania," Rossiiskaia Federatsia, No. 11, 1996, etc. Back

Note 18: The answer said that the Prosecutor General of Poland "found no grounds for criminal responsibility connected with the fact of death of 83,500 prisoners of war, who were Red Army soldiers in concentration camps on the Polish territory in 1919-1920." Back

Note 19: See: collection of documents "Russkie v pol'skikh kontsentratsionnykh lageriakh 1920-1924 gg.," Istochnik, No. 3, 2001. Back

Note 20: "Uroki pokaiania. Rukovoditeli Pol'shi vosprinimaiut predlagaemuiu Rossiiey druzhbu kak kompleks nepolnotsennosti," Rossiiskaia Federatsia segodnia, No. 4, 2000. Back

Note 21: A collection of documents about Katyn appeared in Berlin in 1943 (RF FPA, Record Group 0122, Inventory 26a, File 226, p. 37). Back

Note 22: RF FPA, Record Group 0122, Inventory 27, Folder 195, File 7, p. 96. Back

Note 23: Katolik, No. 13, 27 March 1988. Back

Note 24: RF FPA, Record Group 0122, Inventory 36, Folder 298, File 14, p. 7. Back

Note 25: RF FPA, Record Group 06, Inventory 3, File 3, p. 21. Back

Note 26: V.Ia. Sipols, Tayny diplomaticheskie: Kanun Velikoy Otechestvennoy voyny. 1939-1941, Moscow, 1997, p. 187. Back

Note 27: M. Mourin, Les relations franco-sovietiques 1917-1967, Paris, 1967, p. 236. Back

Note 28: V.Ia. Sipols, Ibid., p.188. Back