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Soviet Polonia, the Polish State, and the New Mythology of National Origins, 1943-1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Joan S. Skurnowicz
Joan S. Skurnowicz*
Affiliation:
Loras College, Dubuque, Iowa, USA
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Extract

In a time of international crisis, a small group of Polish Communist intellectuals on Soviet territory, with approval from the Stalinist government, harnessed the national myths of a people faced with total destruction in the name of fascist Aryan supremacy. These intellectuals, ethnic Poles and Polish Jews, rejected, revitalized, or revolutionized old national myths and created a new mythology. They coordinated their efforts closely with the anti-Hitlerite National Front Strategy adopted by the Comintern following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June, 1941. They sincerely, albeit naïvely, believed that their creation manifestly assured the Poles of their national identity. They also believed that the new mythology promised not only the survival of an honorable people but also the rebirth of their state in a brighter future in solidarity with fellow Slavs, and ultimately with the Stalinist Soviet state which they admired.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 22 , Issue S1: Special Issue - Ethnopolitics in Poland , Summer 1994 , pp. 93 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities of the USSR and Eastern Europe, Inc. 

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References

Notes

1. Poliakov, Leon, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas ln Europe, translated by Edmund Howard (New York: Basic Books, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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18. Wasilewska, , Archiwum Ruchu Robotniczego, VII, 344-49. Also Putrament, 23-7. Putrament, a Polish Jew and war exile from Wilna, recalled that Soviet authorities never expected to find such a “nest of creative Polish intellectuals, sympathetic leftists, and politically active communists,” e.g., such as the self-professed Communist Putrament, among the refugees in Lwów and only belatedly took advantage.Google Scholar

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22. Tudor, Henry, Political Myth (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972), 114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Wasilewska, , Archiwum Ruchu Robotniczego, VII, 358-60. Also Putrament, 56-7. Lwów and Białtystok were the main centers of the Polish communist emigration between 1939 and 1940. Also Przygónski, 34-40.Google Scholar

24. Nowe Widnokręgi, January 1, 1941, quoted by Syzdek, 100-01. The editors deliberately avoided addressing the prospects of the resurrection of the Polish state. The Nazi-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty of 28 September 1939 had stipulated that the Soviet-German border would be the (later called) Ribbentrop-Molotov line. Karski, 39-41.Google Scholar

25. Nowe Widnokręgi, January 1, 1941, quoted in Syzdek, 100-01.Google Scholar

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27. Seven issues of Nowe Widnokręgi (January, 1941-July, 1941) were published as a monthly organ of the Union of Soviet Writers. The temporary suspension occurred between August, 1941 and April, 1942. Then it reappeared as a bi-weekly, published by the ZPP in the USSR. See Jan Kowalek, Bibliografia czasopism Polskich (Lublin: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski, 1976), II, 166.Google Scholar

28. Dokumenty i materiałty, VII, 236-38.Google Scholar

29. Wasilewska, , Archiwum Ruchu Robotniczego, VII, 358. Broniewska, 23-34. Putrament, 140-45. Also Bronislaw Kusnierz, Stalin and the Poles (Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1981), 159. Wasilewska served at the front at this time. She is listed with Lampe as editor, but she claims she had little contact with Nowe Widnokręgi in Kuibishev. Wasilewska, Archiwum Ruchu Robotniczego, VII, 376-79. Broniewska, 8-28, describes the background, in March, 1942, when Nowe Widnokręgi started up again.Google Scholar

30. The first issue appeared on March 1. Wasilewska recalled how the “troika” (Hilary Minc, Wiktor Grosz, and she) put out the first three issues. Wasilewska, Archiwum Ruchu Robotniczego, VII, 383-87.Google Scholar

31. Four months after the German invasion of the USSR, a new Polish communist party, the Polish Workers's Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza - PPR) was created with Moscow's official blessing, but Stalin officially began to support them only in May, 1943, after Katyn and the rupture of diplomatic relations with the London Poles. Coutouvidis and Reynolds, 127; Dokumenty i materiałty, VII, 432. See Also M. Remiszewska (editor), Publicystyka Związku Patriotów Polskich, 1943-44: Wybór (Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza, 1967), 64.Google Scholar

32. Wasilewska, , “O czećź narodu,” Wolna Polska, March 1, 1943, 3. Also Dokumenty i materiałty VII, 408-09. Broniewska, 88, noted that Lampe decided on a politicized military force and that the Polish communists would assume the responsibility for mounting a “real national front against fascism.”Google Scholar

33. Wasilewska was elected Head (przewodniczka) of the Central Committee of the Presidium of the ZPP (June 10, 1943), a post she held, at least nominally, until the ZPP disbanded. As head of the ZPP and editor of and contributor to Nowe Widnokręgi and Wolna Polska her role is of special significance. Of added interest: By mid-March, 1943, Nowe Widnokręgi and Wolna Polska shared interlocking editorial boards. Both publications were dominated by the same people, yet each retained its public individuality. Nowe Widnokręgi was designed to appeal to intellectuals and Wolna Polska to Soviet Polonia at large. Wasilewska, Archiwum Ruchu Robotniczego, VII, 387-88. Also Jerzy Myslinski, “Prasa terenowa Związku Patriotów Polskich w ZSRR,” Z Pola Walki, Rocznik XV, nr 2 (1972), 51-70. Radio Kosciuszko is also an important factor in the activities of the Poles in the USSR. It is beyond the scope of this essay but is worthy of a separate study.Google Scholar

34. Wolna Polska, March 1, 1943, 1.Google Scholar

35. Ibid. Google Scholar

36. Ibid. Google Scholar

37. Ibid. Google Scholar

38. Ibid., 3. Also see Wasilewska, Archiwum Ruchu Robotniczego, VII, 380.Google Scholar

39. Wolna Polska, March 1, 1943, 2. For the war, see Norman Davies, White Eagle-Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919-1920 (London: Orbis Books, 1983). For diplomacy see Piotr Wandycz,Soviet-Polish Relations, 1917-21 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

40. Wolna Polska, March 16, 1943, 2.Google Scholar

41. Wolna Polska, April 16, 1943, 2. Also Sokorski, 148.Google Scholar

42. Wolna Polska, May 8, 1943, 1. On June 6, 1943, the Soviet government announced that it had agreed, at the request of the ZPP in the USSR, to the formation of the Polish Division Kosciuszko. Dokumenty i materiałty, VII, 408-09 and 535.Google Scholar

43. Dokumenty i materiałty, VII, 439. Sokorski, 64-5, confirms that Lampe's and Wasilewska's views about this prevailed. See also F. Zbiniewicz, Armia Polska w ZSRR (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1963) and Klemens Nussbaum, “Jews in the Polish Army in the USSR, 1943-45,” Soviet Jewish Affairs (London), no 3 (1972), 94-104.Google Scholar

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45. The standard bore a large portrait of Kosciuszko, the Piast eagle, and two patriotic slogans: “Fatherland and Honor” and “For Your Freedom and Ours.” The latter slogan, a famous battle cry of the uprising of 1830, is attributed to Joachim Lelewel, the historian, political republican, and social democrat. Broniewska, 138. See also Kazimierz Sobczak, Lenino-Warszawa-Berlin (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Narodowego, 1978), 8-9.Google Scholar

46. Lang, Roman, “Imie Kosciuszko,” Wolna Polska, June 8, 1943, 2.Google Scholar

47. Dokumenty i materiałty, VII, 86.Google Scholar

48. Wolna Polska, June 8, 1943, 2.Google Scholar

49. Ibid. Google Scholar

50. Ibid. Google Scholar

51. Davies, , God's Playground, II, 34.Google Scholar

52. Sokorski, , 46. Putrament, 176. Sobczak, 48.Google Scholar

53. Jaworski, , East European Quarterly, XI, 358.Google Scholar

54. Broniewska, , 140, describes how with the help of an old Moscow art book dealer, she found a picture of the stone crypt of a late eleventh-early twelvth century descendant of the earlier Piasts (Boleslaw Krzywousty/Wrymouth) with an eagle on it. She sketched the eagle, at Wasilewska's request, and the latter, upon seeing it, promptly approved. Sobczak, 86, also mentions that a sketch was made of Casimir the Great's “Jagiellonian” eagle, but Wasilewska rejected it.Google Scholar

55. See Stephen P. Mizwa, “Tadeusz Kosciuszko,” Great Men and Women of Poland, 136.Google Scholar

56. Sokorski, , 65.Google Scholar

57. Dokumenty i materiałty, VII, 259 and 420-21. Sokorski fought at Lenino but afterward was sent to work in a Soviet factory beca.~se he had played a key role in formulating “Thesis I” which claimed the leading role for the army and not the Communist party in postwar Poland. Sokorski was relieved of his post in the Presidium of the ZPP and as political chief of the Ist Polish Corps for “ideological inconsistency.” Wilusz, II, 66.Google Scholar

58. Wolna Polska, August 16, 1943, 1. Wolna Polska, December 31, 1943, 1. Headline: THE YEAR OF VICTORY:Google Scholar

59. Wolna Polska, October 23, 1943, 1. Also Wanda Wasilewska, “Dywizja walczy,”Nowe Widnokręgi, October 20, 1943, 1, reprinted in Zatorska, 253-56. The II Infantry Division Henryk Dąbrowski, the III Infantry Division Romauld Tragutt, the IV Infantry Division Jan Kilinski all bore the names of heroes. Dokumenty i materiałty, VII, 464-66. Also Kusnierz, 164-5.Google Scholar

60. Wolna Polska, May 1, 1943, 3. Dokumenty i materiałty, VII, 404-06.Google Scholar

61. Ibid. Google Scholar

62. Wolna Polska, June 24, 1943. Wolna Polska, August 24, 1943, 1.Google Scholar

63. Wolna Polska, August 16, 1943, 2, 4.Google Scholar

64. Ibid. Also Wolna Polska, October 31, 1943, 2. Wolna Polska, December 16, 232, 1943, 4. Wolna Polska, January 8, 1944, 2. (A new numbering system begins.)Google Scholar

65. Wolna Polska, November 1, 1943, 3. All of page 3 is devoted to the question of the new Poland. Wolna Polska, December 1, 1943, 4. Wolna Polska, March 1, 1944, 4.Google Scholar

66. Wolna Polska, November 1, 1943, 3. Wolna Polska, December 16, 1943, 3. Wolna Polska, January 16, 1944, 1. Wolna Polska, April 24, 1944, 1. Wolna Polska, May 1, 1943, 1. The linkage is repeated the following year. Wolna Polska, May 1, 1944, 1.Google Scholar

67. Wolna Polska, November 7, 1943, 2. Coutouvidis and Reynolds, 153-5.Google Scholar

68. Davies, , God's Playground, II, Chapter 23.Google Scholar

69. The last issue of Wolna Polska is dated August 15, 1946. The ZPP officially disbanded on November 23, 1946. The last issue of Nowe Widnokręgi is dated January 30, 1946. Obviously Soviet Polonia no longer needed such organizations or their services.Google Scholar

70. Putrament, , e.g., became editor of Rzeczpospolita, a newspaper which began publication in August, 1944, in Lublin. It was described as a “national front” and not a communist party paper.Google Scholar

71. Davies, , God's Playground, II, 518.Google Scholar