Kresy Confiscation Real Reason a Weakened Poland Kemp

Stalinism in Poland, 1944-56: Selected Papers from the Fifth World Congress of Central and East European Studies, Warsaw, 1995, by A Kemp-Welch (Editor). 1990

Kresy Confiscated: Real Reason Was a Weaker Poland. Collective Farming, Under the Soviet-Imposed Communist Puppet, Encounters Successful Polish Resistance

This work has many papers. Owing to space limitations, I discuss only a few.

THE SOVIET ANNEXATION OF THE KRESY IN 1939 AND AGAIN IN 1944 (IN THE WAKE OF TEHERAN): THE REAL REASON (A WEAKENED POLAND)

Interestingly, Kudryashov (p. 38) cites an archived January 1944 position paper, sent by Maisky to Molotov, in which he notes that, “…we are not interested in the appearance of too big and too strong a Poland.” (p. 38). Obviously, all the talk about such things as the moral propriety of “ethnographic frontiers”, and the rights of Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Lithuanians, etc., had been a mere smokescreen for the Soviet confiscation of the Kresy.

NOT CONTENT WITH THE KRESY, THE SOVIETS STEAL EVEN MORE POLISH TERRITORY

This work includes interesting information. For instance, the 1951 change in the Soviet-Polish border was made so that Stalin would get Polish land on which coal had been discovered. (p. 69).

THE SOVIET ATTEMPT TO IMPOSE COLLECTIVE FARMING ON POLAND

Dariusz Jarosz has a fascinating chapter on the Soviet attempts to impose collective farming (KOLKHOZ) on Poland. Communist propaganda did not fool the peasantry. Many of them knew firsthand the poverty-causing effects of collective farming during the first Soviet occupation of the Kresy (1939-1941)(p. 60). Moreover, if collective farms were so wonderful, then why did Soviet soldiers, crossing Poland in 1944-1945, speak about the poverty of their KOLKHOZES, and express envy over the relative prosperity of Polish peasants? (p. 62).

TOP-DOWN BUREAUCRATIC DIRECTIVES

The peasants had various practical concerns. Would officials confiscate their produce, and only return a small amount to them? Could they borrow horses to travel to church services? Would the time of planting and harvest be governed according to the weather and plant biology, or would distant government officials make such decisions, causing crops to rot?

WHY SOCIALISM DOESN’T WORK, EVEN IF IT IS “BENIGN”

Anticipating the later, classic “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work” Achilles heel of collectivist ideologies, the peasants declared that, “Nobody will work as hard for co-operatives as on their own land.” (p. 62).

THE POLISH KULAKS SWING INTO ACTION

The Russian so-termed KULACTWO were not the only ones fiercely resisting the Communist confiscation of their lands. Poles did also–and with success.

Polish peasants, notably women, offered fierce resistant to collectivization. They blocked tractors and engaged in other constant protests. (p. 63-on). Wives physically attacked their husbands for signing papers, and contended that the papers were not binding upon their share of the property.
In the late 1940’s, there was a wave of arsons, beatings, and occasional killings of Party officials. (p. 64-65). There were also peaceful protests involving such things as mass letters of protests, petitions, etc.

COUNTERING SOVIET DISINFORMATION

To counter Communist propaganda, the peasants spread their own anti-collectivist counterpropaganda. What if women, and not only farms, also become state property, and children were raised by the state? What if elderly people were turned into soap? (p. 66). They also turned openly anti-Communist. Was the Polish ZLOTY to be forcibly converted to the Russian ruble? Was a new Soviet-Polish border to be made along the Vistula River—in effect, a new Partition of Poland? Was Poland about to be incorporated outright into the USSR as the seventeenth Soviet republic? (p. 68) Were the Communists about to destroy all traces of Poland’s religion? (pp. 70-71). Was WWIII on the horizon?

Note that many of the same valid concerns exist today, in modernized form, in the wake of Poland’s membership in the European Union.

THE LONG-TERM SIGNIFICANCE OF POLISH RESISTANCE TO COLLECTIVIZATION

Jarosz concludes that, “Peasant behavior towards communist agrarian policy was one of the basic causes which led to the collapse of Stalinism in Poland. (p. 77).

1956 POZNAN

Pawel Machcewicz (p. 108-on) has an interesting account of the 1956 Poznan revolt, and how it became defused so as not to end up a nationwide conflagration and bloodbath like that of Hungary that year. Polish workers went on strike over economic conditions. They also chanted patriotic slogans such as “Down with the red bourgeoisie.”; “We demand free elections under United Nations supervision.” (p. 110). Long before RADIO MARYJA had even been imagined, the strikers also invoked religious themes such as “We want God.”; “We want religion in schools.” (p. 111). Not surprisingly, there were calls for Russians to go home.

THE SPECTACULAR GROWTH IN THE POLISH INTELLIGENTSIA

On another subject entirely, “Starting from a figure of a few thousand in the nineteenth century, the Polish intelligentsia had increased to 862,000 by 1939. Despite the ravages of the Second World War, it had grown to several million by the mid-1980’s.” (p. 11).

DOUBLE GENOCIDE, AND THE STANDARD DOUBLE STANDARD ON NAZI CRIMES AND COMMUNIST CRIMES

Anthony Kemp-Welch notes that there were no Nuremberg Trials for the crimes of Communism, and suggests that this was in part because Soviet-style Communism was more skillful than Nazism in diffusing moral guilt. (p. 18). How about the fact that, owing to such things as pressures of western intellectuals and the presumed special significance of the Jews’ Holocaust, Communist crimes never were allowed to assume the same gravity as Nazi crimes in the first place? In fact, even nowadays, we hear complaints about Red=Brown, and the Double Genocide position, in academia, is treated as something bad.

CORRECTIONS NEEDED. DO NOT BLAME THE VICTIM

This book is generally free of egregious errors. However, Andrzej Friske (p. 147) repeats the myth that the NSZ (Narodowe Sily Zbrojne) had advocated a totalitarian ideology. Sergei Kudryashov (pp. 32-33), while understanding Polish anger over the Soviets and Katyn, faults the Polish government in exile for expressing hostility towards Stalin, and for not muting its response in the face of the inescapable reality of Soviet power. This is a classic case of blaming the victim. In addition, does Kudryashov SERIOUSLY suppose that Stalin would have recognized the Polish government in exile in London (the Sikorski government) as the rightful government of postwar Poland had it been docile on Katyn, and engaged in other unilateral concessions?