First World War did not spare the Polish lands. It was here that the Eastern Front passed. The participants in the divisions of Poland - Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary - ended up, due to disagreements between them, in opposing military blocs, and therefore it was to be expected that the Polish question would become the subject of a political game, and the “Polish card” would become important in the course of hostilities. .

None of the three powers that divided Poland, starting the war, was going to grant freedom to the Polish people. However, they all wanted to use the Poles and Polish lands to their advantage. In the first weeks of the war, army commanders published appeals, in which they appealed to a sense of community (Western European or Slavic) and recalled the years of successful and supposedly joint development. From the first days of the war, Polish figures of various political orientations in public speeches and in the silence of government offices reminded of the right of the Polish people to an independent state existence. Henryk Sienkiewicz, Nobel Prize winner in literature, author of the novel "Quo vadis", and virtuoso pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski used their popularity to make Western politicians turn their attention to the unresolved Polish issue.

As a result February Revolution, which came to power, the Provisional Government declared the restoration of the Polish state in all territories with a predominantly Polish population and the convocation in Warsaw, after the liberation of Polish lands, of a constituent assembly. Russia was supported by France, its president published a decree on the formation of a "Polish autonomous army", which was joined by over 20 thousand volunteers from among Polish emigrants living in the United States and Brazil.

In September 1917, the German Emperor Wilhelm II and the Austrian Emperor Charles I established the Regency Council, giving it legislative and executive powers until the transfer of Polish lands under the authority of the king, or regent. At the same time, in Paris, with the support of the governments of France, Great Britain, Italy, and the United States, a Polish National Committee headed by Roman Dmowski is being created.

In January 1918, US President Woodrow Wilson, speaking in Congress, in paragraph 13 of his Declaration, stressed the need to create an independent Polish state with access to the sea. In the summer of 1918, Germany lost several major battles on the western front, thereby making the defeat of the Central Powers obvious in the war. In addition to the Regency Council and the Polish National Committee, politicians of various orientations claimed power. Jozef Pilsudski enjoyed great influence in society.

In early October, the Regency Council announced preparations for elections to the Seimas. A few days later, the command of the army, previously subordinate to the Germans, passed into his hands. At the same time, the Poles began to spontaneously eliminate the German and Austrian occupiers and create new centers of power. In Krakow, the Polish Liquidation Commission was established, in Cieszyn the National Council of the Cieszyn Principality began to work, announcing the annexation of this part of Silesia to Poland; The Polish National Council was formed in Poznań. However, there was still no government.

In such a situation, the leaders of the left, who fought for the independence of the parties and the Air Defense Forces (Polish Military Organization), decided to take over the power “lying on the street”. In early November, the Provisional People's Government of the Polish Republic headed by Ignacy Daszyński was formed in Lublin, which promulgated the principles of the socio-political structure of the newly created state. When Piłsudski arrived in Warsaw on November 10, he was met at the station by a member of the Regency Council, Prince Zdzisław Lubomirski, and the organizer of the POV, Adam Kotz. The next day, the Prime Minister of the Lublin government, Ignacy Daszyński, and the commander of the POV, Edward Rydz-Smigly, placed themselves at the disposal of Piłsudski, and the Regency Council transferred military power to him. On the same day, November 11, 1918, an armistice was signed on the Western Front, which ended the hostilities of the First World War.

“Pilsudski has won such fame for himself that probably will not fall to anyone in Poland for the next couple of centuries.” Over time, November 11 began to be celebrated as a public holiday - Poland's Independence Day.

Dmitry Mezentsev

The history of the restoration of the independence of the Polish state

On the eve of the First World War, two camps were formed in Polish society, oriented towards one of the two military-political blocs that had developed in Europe. The participants in the divisions of Poland - Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary - found themselves in opposing military blocs, and therefore it was to be expected that the Polish question would become the subject of a political game, and the "Polish card" would become important in the course of hostilities. In their forecasts regarding the development of events Polish politicians reckoned with the victory of one side or another of the conflict. , depending on the expected denouement, they made their own plans on how to use the situation in the interests of restoring the Commonwealth as a state. Each of the parties sought to convince as many compatriots as possible of the correctness of their choice.

Initially, two solutions were envisaged: either an alliance with Russia and the unification of Polish lands under the royal scepter, or interaction with Austria-Hungary and the restoration of Polish statehood under the rule of the Habsburgs. The division into supporters of pro-Russian orientation and orientation towards the Central Powers coincided more or less with the division along party lines.

Most of the Galician parties, as well as part of the parties and political groups operating in the Kingdom of Poland, headed by the PPS - faction, relied on Austria-Hungary as "the best of the invaders." Therefore, J. Pilsudski in 1906 established contact with the military circles of Austria-Hungary. In 1908, under the leadership of K. Sosnkovsky, the Union of Active Struggle was created in Galicia, on the basis of which, with the support of the Austrian authorities, in 1910 archery squads began to arise. The NDP\endeki\ of Galicia, connected by vital interests with Austria, has repeatedly declared loyalty to it. Endeks also formed military detachments on the basis of the Sokol gymnastic society. The conservatives of Galicia did not intend to associate themselves with the archery movement. Pilsudski and politicians close to him sought to liberate the Kingdom of Poland and unite it into a single state body with Galicia as part of Austria. The day after the declaration of war on Russia by Austria-Hungary, on August 6, 1914, a regular company of riflemen left Krakow to raise an uprising among the inhabitants of the Polish lands under Russian rule. Calculations did not come true - the uprising did not break out.

The PDP of the Kingdom of Poland belonged to the political camp, oriented towards the victory of the Entente in the war and the unification of Polish lands under the scepter of the Romanovs. In 1909 it formed the Polish Democratic Society in the western Polish lands (since 1910 - national-democratic) society.

The war was a disaster for the population of the Polish lands. About 2 million inhabitants of the Kingdom of Poland were evacuated to the inner provinces of Russia. Some industrial enterprises and a number of educational institutions were moved. On the occupied Polish lands, the German authorities established a regime of military dictatorship. The authorities confiscated food, industrial raw materials, took out cars, machine tools, and workers were forcibly taken into the interior of Germany.

The war forced the governments of the countries that divided the Polish lands to look for ways to resolve the Polish issue. In August 1914, the commander-in-chief of the Russian army Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich appealed to the Polish people with an appeal stating that the Polish lands needed to be united "under the scepter of the Russian Tsar" and to be granted self-government. In 1916, the Central Powers proclaimed the creation of a state "with a hereditary monarchy and a constitutional system" "out of the Polish regions cut off from Russian domination." The solution of the issue of the borders of this state allied with the Central Powers was postponed for the future.

independence Polish state war

At the beginning of the war, the Endeks and their supporters formed the Polish National Committee in November 1914, in which R. Dmowski played a leading role. His appeal defined the task of uniting Poland under the scepter of the Russian monarch. Supporters of the Austro-German orientation created the Main National Committee under the leadership of V. Sikorsky, V. Vitos, P. Dashinsky. Pilsudski, with the active assistance of the PPS faction, created an illegal formation - the Polish military organization(POV). From October 1914, the POV established contact with the German command and undertook to carry out all its tasks. From these organizations it was supposed to create military formations that would fight on the side of the Central Powers. And although the rifle squads and unions were associated with different political groups, they, as a rule, interacted during combat training and did not dispute each other's influence on the inhabitants of the Polish lands under Russian rule and on the Polish emigration. Planning to recreate an independent state with the help of the Central Powers, Piłsudski and his supporters expressed their readiness to abandon the western Polish lands, but dreamed of including the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian territories that were once part of the Commonwealth in the future Poland.

Left wing of Polish social movement it was convinced that only the victory of the revolution in the countries that had seized Polish lands could liberate the Polish people and restore Polish statehood. These views did not meet with a response among the Polish population. The majority was closer to Pilsudski's program, although socially limited, but having a distinct national-patriotic coloring.

After February 1917, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies adopted an appeal to the Polish people, in which it proclaimed that "Poland has the right to be completely independent in state and international relations" and expressed the hope for the establishment of a "democratic republican system" in independent Poland. The provisional government promised to help create Polish state on lands populated mostly by Poles. With all the reservations with which these promises were furnished, it is difficult to overestimate the significance of the declaration on the reunification of the Polish lands.

Events in Russia caused a different reaction in the Polish lands. Part of the bourgeois-landlord elements began to consider the German occupiers as a defense against the revolution. For the working people, the news of the overthrow of tsarism was an incentive to fight against the invaders. In a number industrial centers but strikes and demonstrations took place on the initiative of the SDKPiL and the PPS-leftist. Polish bourgeois-landowner political organizations in Russia in August 1917 created the Polish Council of Inter-Party Association. On its basis, in August, R. Dmowski and others formed the Polish National Committee in Lausanne. The French government recognized the Committee, which moved to Paris, as something like the government of the future Polish state, at the same time it was recognized by England and Italy, and in December by the United States. These facts indicated that, in the current international situation, the Western powers took up the solution of the Polish question and their own interests. This was confirmed by the decree of the President of France of June 4, 1917 on the formation of the Polish army in France.

The activities of the POV continued. When in July many volunteers refused to take the oath of brotherhood with the armies of the Central Powers, they were interned by the German authorities. Pilsudski and his chief of staff K. . Sosnkovsky was isolated in the fortress of Magdeburg. In August, the Provisional State Council ceased to exist, on September 12, the occupiers announced the creation of a new authority, the Regency Council. But the real power was retained by the German and Austrian governors-general.

The October Revolution in Russia and the principles of the restructuring of international relations proclaimed in the Decree on Peace were of great importance to the Polish people. The Soviet government defended the reunification of the Polish people at the peace talks in Brest-Litovsk in late 1917 and early 1918. On January 25 (February 7), 1918, the Soviet delegation announced a declaration demanding that the inhabitants of three parts of Poland be given the right to freely arrange their lives. But the Central Powers rejected the discussion on the Polish question and did not allow representatives of the Regency Council to participate in the negotiations. Having concluded an agreement with the Ukrainian Central Rada, they undertook to assist in the establishment of its power in Ukraine, to cede to it the Kholmshchyna region and some other Polish lands, i.e. went to a new partial partition of Poland.

In an effort to weaken the resonance of the Decree on Peace and the proposals of the Soviet government to resolve the issue of Poland, British Prime Minister D. Lloyd George on January 5, 1918 declared that an independent Poland, "including all exclusively Polish elements who wish to become part of it," is a necessary condition for the stabilization of Eastern Europe. Three days later, US President Wilson's "14 Points" stated that "an independent Polish state should be created, including territories inhabited by an undeniably Polish population." The same meaning was contained in the joint declaration of the heads of government of England, France and Italy of June 2, 1918. All these statements did not promise reunification with the future Poland of Poznań, Silesia, Gdansk.

In August 1918, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a decree stating that all treaties concluded by the tsarist government concerning the partitions of Poland, "due to their contradiction to the principle of self-determination of nations and the revolutionary legal consciousness of the Russian people, who recognized the Polish people's inalienable right to independence and unity, are canceled truly irrevocably." The decree fixed the international legal basis for the restoration of Poland's independence.

On the neighboring lands of Poland - in Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine - there was a very high proportion of Polish landownership, as well as the Polish population in cities. Polish nationalist-minded circles opposed the establishment of Soviet power in these territories, created anti-Soviet “self-defense” units, and supported various anti-Soviet forces. If the endeks claimed only historical lands, then Pilsudski's supporters, abandoning the western Polish territories, put forward a demand for the creation of a federation of Eastern European powers under the auspices of Poland. They saw Polish territory as part of the Commonwealth until the partition of 1772.

In October 1918, the Polish Liquidation Commission headed by W. Witos was formed in Krakow. The tasks of the commission included the implementation of transitional measures to ensure the connection of Galicia with other Polish lands as part of a single state. The Austrian administration was eliminated relatively easily in the occupied Polish provinces of the former Russian Empire. In the administrative center of this zone - Lublin, on November 5, a Soviet of Workers' Deputies arose. In opposition to the Soviet in Lublin, the Provisional People's Government of the Polish Republic was created. It was headed by I. Dashinskiy.

In the face of retreat and inevitable capitulation, Germany took steps to ensure that in the process of re-establishing the Polish state, a power would be established in it that would be ready to keep the eastern border of Germany intact. The most suitable candidate for the implementation of this plan was Piłsudski. In October 1918, G. Kesler entered into negotiations with him, whom Pilsudski assured that the modern generation of Poles would not wage war for Poznan or East Prussia, that for Poland, as well as for Germany, the main danger was the threat of Bolshevism. First, the Regency Council transferred power to Pilsudski, and then the Lublin government and the Liquidation Commission. E. Morachevsky became the head of the government, Pilsudski was proclaimed "interim head of state" with the right to remove the government, approve or reject bills and the budget, etc.

November Pilsudski informed various countries peace on the formation of the Polish state. The telegram was not sent to the Soviet government, and the proposals of the Soviet Republic to establish diplomatic relations remained unanswered. At the same time, Pilsudski turned to the Entente countries with a request to send troops to protect the country from Bolshevism. On November 10, Pilsudski concluded an agreement with the German command on the evacuation of German troops from the territory, the western border of which corresponded to the Russian-German as part of Germany Poznań and Upper Silesia. The main people's council, located in Poznan, considered not the Warsaw government, but the Polish National Committee, which was also located in Paris, to be the representative of the whole country.

After the Council of People's Deputies formed on November 19, formed after the victory of the revolution in Germany, recognized the independent Polish Republic, which included the Polish lands that had previously been part of Austria-Hungary, the Warsaw government expanded military operations against the Western Ukrainian People's Republic. These hostilities ended in July 1919 with the occupation of Western Ukraine by Polish troops. Back in January 1919. they occupied Volhynia, and the "self-defense" detachments, formed with the assistance of the Poles, began to seize the Lithuanian and Belarusian lands.

Cooperation with Germany put the Warsaw government in a difficult position in relation to the Entente countries and made it difficult for Poland to participate in the forthcoming peace conference. Therefore, the Warsaw authorities in December 1918. severed diplomatic relations with Germany and intensified the search for ways to an agreement with the Polish National Committee in Paris. The Warsaw government and the Paris Committee came to an agreement that J. Pilsudski would retain his prerogatives, but from January 19, 1919, one of the prominent figures of the Paris Committee, J. Paderewski, would become the head of government.

On December 1918, a uniting congress of the SDKPiL and the PPS-leftist took place in Warsaw, which laid the foundation for the existence of the Communist Workers' Party of Poland (KPPP). In April 1919, a uniting congress of three parties took place - the PPS faction, the PPS of the former Prussian occupation, the Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Silesia (PPSD). The right-wing leaders managed to maintain their positions. The united teaching staff, having a strong organizational apparatus, had a great influence on the trade unions and cooperative organizations. All this weakened the movement for the Soviets. In September 1919, the PPS-opposition emerged from the new PPS, which later, in August 1920, became part of the KRPP, which, as early as April 1919, was forced to go underground. Around the same time, all the revolutionary Soviets were crushed.

In the spring and summer of 1919, the epicenter of the class struggle moved from the cities to countryside. The rural proletariat and the small landed peasants demanded the speedy implementation of the agrarian reform. In a number of places the peasants arbitrarily seized the landlords' lands and agricultural implements. Even the Endeks were forced to agree to a discussion of the agrarian question in the Sejm. The dispute was about the maximum size of land holdings not subject to division, about the methods of division, about the inviolability of church possessions, etc. In the final analysis, by a one-vote majority, the Sejm adopted the Fundamentals of Land Reform. Despite its extreme limitations, despite the fact that the resolution of the Sejm was not formalized into law, the prospect of obtaining land "legally" led to a weakening of revolutionary tension in the countryside.

March 1921 The Seimas adopted the Constitution of the Polish Republic. veto. The constitution of 1921 corresponded to the requirements of bourgeois democracy. Moreover, in a number of cases it went beyond the classical bourgeois constitutions, as it contained articles on labor protection, social assistance in case of unemployment and illness, on the protection of motherhood and infancy, on national-cultural autonomy for national minorities, etc. But in political practice of the ruling classes, constitutional articles that were inconvenient to them did not find application, and therefore the constitution could not open the way to solving the deep social and national problems that were tearing Poland apart. Be that as it may, the Constitution of 1921 completed the formation of the Polish state and stabilized for a while its internal structure.

The independence of Poland was recognized and announced the establishment of diplomatic relations with it by the United States (January 30, 1919), France (February 24), England (February 25) and other states. Poland was invited to participate in the peace conference that opened on January 18, 1919 in Paris. It was represented by I. Paderevsky and R. Dmovsky.

January at a meeting of the Council of Ten - the governing body of the conference - G. Dmowski outlined the territorial claims of Poland, which consisted in recognizing the borders of 1772 with their possible partial changes. Thus, if this plan were implemented, Lithuania, Belarus, most of Ukraine, and part of Latvia would be included in Poland. Piłsudski's supporters proposed a plan to create the most extensive federation of states in Eastern Europe under the hegemony of Poland. Commission on Polish affairs when determining the state border between Poland and Germany, took into account the nationality of the population of the respective territories. Lands with an undeniably Polish population were to become constituent parts of Poland. It was supposed to return to her Danzig (Gdansk) and the territories lying along the railway leading from Warsaw to Danzig, which, while retaining the main part of East Prussia for Germany, gave the Polish access to the sea the character of a corridor laid through German possessions. Ultimately, D. Lloyd-George, V. Wilson, J. Clemenceau agreed to make Gdansk a special public education- "free city". This deprived Poland of that free and reliable access to the sea, which was promised to her by the three Western powers. In addition, these same powers decided to form not one, as previously assumed, but several regions, the state affiliation of which was to be determined as a result of plebiscites. Among them was Upper Silesia, with its undeniably Polish ethnic majority and highly developed industry. The head of the Polish government did not object to such a decision, although he doubted the outcome of the plebiscite. In general, a plebiscite was to be held on territories with a total area of ​​27.7 thousand square kilometers with a population of 3 million people. Under German domination, 45 thousand square kilometers remained, the Polish population of these lands also amounted to 3 million people.

The Paris Peace Conference legally formalized the re-establishment of an independent Polish state. The great significance of the decisions of the conference for the history of Wormwood is undoubted. However, one should not forget that in some ways they infringed upon the vital interests of Wormwood. In particular, a number of Polish lands remained behind Germany, a bizarre, winding character was given to the border line, a strategic situation unfavorable for Poland was created, its maritime communications were actually placed under German control, almost all the vital centers of the country became easily vulnerable. But the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles signed on June 28, 1919, as well as the agreement concluded simultaneously with the victorious powers on the rights of national minorities in Poland, which contained articles on transit and trade that were beneficial to the great powers, were also largely unfavorable for Poland.

Although the Cambon Commission at one time, based on the actual boundaries of the settlement of the Poles, proposed to recognize the eastern border of Poland as passing along a line that later became known as the "Curzon Line", the Paris Peace Conference did not establish this border. The Western powers thus encouraged Poland in her aggressive policy. Already in January 1919, in the Vilna region, it came to clashes between Polish armed formations and units of the Red Army. In March 1919, Polish troops captured Slonim, then Pinsk, Lida, Vilnius. In April, J. Pilsudski's appeal to the population of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania was published, calling on all the peoples who lived in it to unite with Poland.

In April, the seventy-thousandth Polish army formed there arrived from France, commanded by General J. Galler. She was immediately thrown to the Western Ukrainian front, but about half of the state budget of Poland was absorbed by spending on military purposes. Numerous foreign loans were used for the same purposes.

Although, as a rule, the Polish authorities withheld and did not publish reports of Soviet peace proposals, they gradually became known in the country and contributed to the expansion of the struggle of the advanced circles of the Polish people for peace. The Supreme Council of the Entente, once again returning to Polish affairs, on December 8, 1919, decided to establish a Polish administration in the east of the country only up to the line recommended by the Cambon commission.

In order to facilitate the further seizure of Ukrainian lands, on April 21, 1920, the Polish government concluded an agreement with the Directory headed by S.V. Petliura. At the same time, Poland agreed to the fact that the power of the "chief ataman" extended to the border of 1772, i.e. extended to the lands that she would get from Russia by force of arms or through diplomacy. For their part, the Petliurists agreed to the annexation of Eastern Galicia, the western part of Volhynia, and also part of Polissya to Poland. Under this agreement, signed on April 24, the Petliura Directory, which agreed to conduct military operations under the leadership of the Polish command, undertook to ensure the food supply of the Polish army. Somewhat later, an agreement was signed between Poland and the Belarusian Highest Rada, which provided for the entry of Belarus on the basis of autonomy into Poland, recreated within the borders of 1772.

On April 14, 1920, the troops of the Western Front under the command of M.P. Tukhachevsky launched a counteroffensive.

In mid-August, on the near approaches to Warsaw, after the counterattack of the Polish troops, the Red Army units began to roll back to the east. However, having achieved a turning point in the course of hostilities, the Polish ruling circles did not even have the strength to try to return their troops to the line from which their offensive began in April 1920.

The peace negotiations that began on August 17 in Minsk ended on October 12, 1920 in Riga with the signing of the preliminary conditions for a future peace treaty. Poland agreed to sign the final text of the peace treaty only after the defeat of Wrangel and the futility of calculations for a new campaign of the Entente against Soviet Russia became apparent. Its conditions, signed in March 1921 in Riga, were unfair, as they established a border that left Western Ukraine and Western Belarus as part of Poland, but were more favorable for the Soviet side than those that she agreed to accept before the start of the 1920 war. At the same time, the peace treaty did not correspond to the plans for the implementation of which Piłsudski waged an armed struggle for more than two years, while neglecting the interests of the country in the west and north.

Success for Poland was only the capture of Vilna region. As early as December 15, 1918, the Vilnius Soviet of Workers' Deputies took power in the city. The next day, the Provisional Revolutionary Government, formed on December 8, proclaimed an independent Lithuanian Socialist Soviet Republic. On December 22, the government of the RSFSR recognized the independence of Soviet Lithuania. On the night of January 2, 1919, Polish troops entered Vilnius, but four days later, units of the Red Army liberated the city. Only on April 21, 1919, the Polish troops were able to gain a foothold there. From the end of August 1919, bourgeois power was established in Lithuania. On July 12, 1920, its government signed the Soviet-Lithuanian treaty in Moscow, and on July 14 the Red Army expelled the Polish invaders from Vilnius, and it was immediately transferred to Lithuania. September 22, 1920 Poland started a war against Lithuania. Under a temporary agreement concluded between the two states on October 7 in Suwalki, Poland recognized Vilnius and the Vilna region as part of Lithuania. However, a day later, General L. Zheligovsky, allegedly acting only on his own initiative, moved a division subordinate to him to the capital of Lithuania. On October 12, the Polish authorities announced the creation of the so-called Central Lithuania, which joined Poland in 1922. The government of Lithuania, after the end of the fighting in 1920, declared that it continued to consider itself in a state of war with Poland.

In August 1919, the strike of Polish workers in Upper Silesia developed into a liberation uprising. But it was quickly suppressed by the German authorities. In accordance with the Treaty of Versailles signed in June 1919, which provided for the holding of a plebiscite in Upper Silesia in one of the articles, during January-February 1920, military units of the Western armies and the Inter-Allied Government and Plebiscite Commission arrived on its territory. She practically did not oppose the activities of German nationalist circles and the aggravation of interethnic relations, which led to the second uprising of the Polish population of Upper Silesia, which lasted from August 18 to 28, 1920.

In an atmosphere of acute national and social conflicts On March 20, 1921, a plebiscite was held in Upper Silesia. Due to the fact that the solution of the issue was delayed, on the night of May 2-3, a significant part of Upper Silesia was in revolt. On October 12, 1921, the Council of the League of Nations decided to divide Upper Silesia. About 30% of the territory on which the plebiscite took place was transferred to Poland. With the establishment of Polish administrative bodies in this region in July 1922, it included an economically developed territory with a large number of coal and iron ore mines, many metallurgical and machine-building enterprises. A significant part of the indigenous Polish lands in the west was outside the state, but areas with Belarusian, Ukrainian and Lithuanian populations were included in Poland.

In the same years, the main foreign policy positions and relations of Poland were determined. France in February 1921 signed an alliance treaty and a military convention with Poland. Then, on March 3, 1921, an alliance treaty was concluded between Poland and Romania. Of the allies in the Little Entente, Poland established more or less close relations with Yugoslavia. Relations with Czechoslovakia remained tense in the future due to Poland's claims to the entire Cieszyn Silesia.

Poland was an agricultural country. IN agriculture about 65% of the population was employed, in industry - only 9%; 7% were engaged in handicraft production, 6% worked in trade and transport. The proportion of national minorities reached approximately 40%.

% of all peasant farms had less than 2 hectares, and 30% - from 2 to 5 hectares. At the other extreme, there were 18 thousand estates, which owned 45% of all land that was privately owned. In addition, there were 1.3 million landless agricultural workers in the Polish countryside. The Catholic Church remained a large landowner.

In terms of agricultural productivity, despite the rather favorable climatic and soil conditions, Poland was one of the last places in Europe.

Being a state with an average level of development of capitalism, Poland at the same time had a highly developed fuel and raw material base and heavy industry, concentrated in the Dąbrowa basin and Upper Silesia, an equally developed textile industry in the Lodz region and Bialystok, numerous sugar, distilleries and other enterprises. But the total volume of industrial production during the entire existence of the Second Rzeczpospolita did not rise to the level of industrial production, which was in 1913 in the corresponding territory. The main reasons for this were the narrowness of the domestic market, the difficulty of establishing a single national economic organism, and the weak competitiveness of Polish goods on the world market.

The commanding heights in industry were occupied by large enterprises belonging to a small number of cartels and syndicates, closely associated with banks and land magnates, with foreign , predominantly American and French capital.

The working class, whose number in 1921 was about 700 thousand people, from unemployment, which did not fall below 20%, in some years reached about half of the total number of workers. In small enterprises, numbering up to 15 people, three times more workers were employed than in large and medium-sized ones. In terms of living standards, Polish workers were in one of the last places in Europe.

Most of the workers had a low professional and cultural level. But according to official data, among the population aged 20 to 60 there were 35% of illiterates. In the territories included in the Polish state, there were significant differences in social structures and the political and legal system. The process of integration of the Polish society was complicated by the presence of foreign territories, as well as historically established regional specifics. Socio-political and cultural factors determined the multiplicity of parties, organizations and ideological currents.

The end of the Polish-Soviet war and the adoption of the basic law of the country led to a drop in the intensity of patriotic, and partly nationalist passions. The adoption of a democratic constitution aroused in many Polish citizens hope for the future. The process of normalization of the economic situation was hampered by the fact that, despite the constant deficit of the state budget, 42% of state expenditures were spent only on direct military purposes. Economic instability and the unresolved nature of many social issues led to the intensification of the strike struggle. If in 1921, according to official data, there were 720 strikes in the country, then in 1922 900 strikes were registered. The village was also agitated, striving for the implementation of the promised land reform. On the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, attacks by peasants on landowners' estates and clashes with the police became more frequent.

The government crisis ended with the formation on July 31, 1922. government headed by Y. Novak. The main task of the government of Yu. Novak was to hold parliamentary elections. A number of restrictive changes were made to the previously existing electoral law.

Elections to the Sejm took place on November 5, 1922. The bloc of right-wing parties sought to Polonize the country. Demanding the Polonization of industry and trade, the exclusion of non-Polish competitors from them, the extreme right-wing parties of the Endeks and Christian Democrats, as well as the Christian-national group, formed an electoral bloc - the Christian Union of National Unity (colloquially it was ironically called "Khiena").

On the other hand, in order to fight against nationalism, many Belarusian, German, Jewish, as well as some Ukrainian political organizations joined the Bloc of National Minorities. The common platform of its participants was the demand for national equality. No group received an absolute majority. The group supporting Pilsudski turned out to be weaker. Therefore, he did not dare to put forward his candidacy for the presidency. G. Narutowicz, elected by the left part of the Sejm, was killed. S. Wojciechowski, close to the Piast party, became president. The post of head of state was abolished, Pilsudski retired. In the spring of 1923, the Endeks and the Piast party formed the first parliamentary government.

the conference of the KRPP, held in February 1921, revised the erroneous position of the boycott of the Sejm. The next conference, held in April 1922, was attended by representatives of the Communist Party of Eastern Galicia (since 1923 - the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, KPZU) and the Communist Party of Western Belarus (KPZB). The party revised its negative attitude towards the very fact of the formation of a sovereign state. Ideas developed about the need for a policy of broad social alliances in order to fight for genuine freedom for the Polish and oppressed peoples, for land for the peasants, for workers' control in industry, for cheap bread, for providing housing for the urban population. They discussed the question of orientation not towards a direct transition to socialism, but towards the establishment of a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the broad masses of the people.

The year was marked in Poland by the growth of a new wave of the working-class movement. In October alone, according to official figures, 408,000 workers went on strike. The workers of Silesia, including the railway workers, led by a single strike committee set up on the initiative of the communists, achieved a 130% increase in wages. The strike of the machinists of the Krakow railway junction, which began on October 6, gradually covered all the railways of the country. Almost simultaneously, mass strikes of textile workers, miners, postal workers, and teachers unfolded. On October 29, hoping to seize the situation and break the opposition of the proletariat, the government of V. Vitos decided to introduce a state of emergency on iron thresholds and courts-martial. There were clashes with the police.

The frightened government canceled the order on the militarization of the railways and the introduction of courts-martial. On November 6, the leaders of the PPS issued an order to end the general strike.

In the conditions of the deepening economic crisis and the aggravation of political contradictions, in November 1923 a new split occurred in the PSL-Piast party. The Vitos government has resigned. In December 1923, an extra-parliamentary government headed by V. Grabsky was formed.

Grabsky's government considered the improvement of the financial situation of the state and the stabilization of the currency as its central task. In February 1924, the country's budget for the first time was reduced to a positive balance. In April 1924, the Polish Bank began its activities and a new currency, the zloty, was introduced. The situation of the working people was seriously affected by the crop failure that befell the country in 1924. Unemployment continued to grow, in almost all sectors. The strengthening of oppression in the national outskirts caused unrest in the Vilna region, a partisan movement in Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. On the initiative of a group of Belarusian deputies of the Seimas, in February 1925, the Belarusian Peasant-Working Community was created.

In November 1924, the Independent Peasant Party arose, which on the whole shared the position taken by the CPT on agrarian and some other issues. The Independent Peasant Party sought to carry out deep socio-economic reforms, replace the police and the army with the weapons of the working people, separate the church from the state and the school, recognize the right to self-determination for national minorities, and the policy of cooperation and alliance with the USSR.

The deterioration of the international situation, the partial failure of the plan for financial and economic stabilization, the sharp depreciation of the zloty forced Grabsky on November 14, 1925. announce his resignation. Piłsudski's supporters tried to use the government crisis.

The November government crisis was resolved on the basis of a compromise. The cabinet could not be stable, as it relied on a motley coalition. The formation of the new government coincided with a sharp deterioration in the economic situation. Demonstrations of the unemployed took place all over the country. In parallel with the political and economic crisis, a crisis unfolded in the army, expressed in the fact that, under pressure from Pilsudski's supporters, a whole group of very competent generals left and resigned, including Yu. Galler, T. Rozvadovsky, S. Sheptytsky. In an attempt to bring about the fall of the government, in February 1926, Piłsudski's longtime ally, Moračevski, left the government. In the government itself, there was a sharp struggle over ways to overcome the crisis. On May 5, the government resigned.

The new government was formed by Vitos. The population reasonably expected a new deterioration in their situation. The Sejm clubs issued a joint statement on the reactionary nature of the new government. Anti-government speeches by officers sympathetic to Piłsudski took place in public places. Piłsudski began to look like a defender of democracy. The CPT resolutely opposed the reactionary government of Vitos. On May 12, clashes began between the troops. Workers actively joined in the struggle against the government. On May 14, the government decided to resign.

K. Bartel became the head of the new government, and Pilsudski, not wanting to be bound by the rather democratic constitution of 1921, became Minister of War. I. Mostitsky was elected President.

Already the first actions of the new regime gave sufficient grounds to believe that the essence of the events was not in the improvement of the country, but in the search for new ways to establish the existing system. This was recognized by the supporters of "sanation". On August 2, 1926, an amendment to the constitution came into force, which limited the rights of the legislature, freeing the government and a number of issues from the control of the Sejm and the Senate, expanding the rights and powers of the president. Contrary to expectations, political prisoners were not amnestied, and politics on the national outskirts did not change.

The position of the new regime was strengthened by the fact that, in connection with the strike of its own miners, England had to resort to the purchase of Polish coal for the first time since the beginning of the summer. In 1926, E. Kvyatkovsky became the Minister of Industry and Trade, who proved himself to be a major economic leader. Transport transportation increased sharply, machine-building and other industries received new orders, unemployment decreased, the zloty exchange rate strengthened somewhat. 1926 turned out to be very fruitful. These changes in the economy stabilized the situation for some time.

Only the KPP, which was subjected to repressions, came out sharply against the "sanation" regime. A lot of time and energy was consumed by the internal struggle at the KPP, which escalated as a result of different assessments of the position of the party leadership during the May events. Disagreements turned into a sharp factional struggle, during 1926-1929. tearing apart the party.

At the beginning of August 1926, the post of inspector general of the armed forces was established. The person who held this post was not responsible either to the government or to the Sejm. On August 27, Pilsudski took and actually retained this post for life, as well as the portfolio of Minister of War.

October he headed the new government. The military close to Piłsudski were called "groups of colonels".

The Nesvizh meeting with representatives of the largest Polish aristocracy demonstrated that the new government is not going to reckon even with the PPS, other democratic forces, is not going to soften its policy towards the nat. minorities. IN short term about 6,000 political prisoners were imprisoned.

In foreign policy, Poland established cooperation with England and Germany. In the course of secret negotiations, Poland promised Germany some territorial concessions in exchange for agreeing to the seizure of Lithuania by Poland, and, later on, a number of Soviet territories.

The political situation in the country, despite some economic recovery and repressive government measures, remained unstable. In November 1926, the PPS decided to go into opposition, seeking not to liquidate the existing regime, but only to reorganize the government, to remove the most reactionary ministers from it.

In the second half of 1928, signs of economic stagnation began to appear. Before others, they made themselves known in one of the leading branches of Polish industry - the textile industry. Textile workers in Łódź held a strike on September 17-22 On October 15, as a sign of solidarity with the textile workers, almost all workers in Łódź joined the strike. Although the strike of textile workers, which lasted until October 23, was not successful, it was the harbinger of a new period of sharp class struggles. Conflicts between the Sejm and the government became more frequent and took on an extremely acute character. A rather sharp struggle took place inside the "rehabilitation" camp.

A sign of a gradual reorientation foreign policy Poland to improve relations with Germany was carried out in 1932 and the liquidation of the French military mission in Poland. In July of the same year, Poland and the USSR signed a non-aggression pact (its three-year term was extended in May 1934 until December 31, 1945). Beck became Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was close to Pilsudski and focused on rapprochement with Germany. The ruling circles of Poland counted on using diplomatic actions to achieve cooperation with Germany, which in October 1933 withdrew from the League of Nations and left the disarmament conference. In early November 1933, Pilsudski and Beck instructed the Polish ambassador to Germany, J. Lipski, to tell the Führer that since the time when Hitler became head of the German government, Polish-German relations had improved.

The proposals of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs L. Barthou to conclude a multilateral pact on non-aggression and mutual assistance, made by him during a visit to Poland in April-May 1934, did not receive the support of Warsaw. Moreover, Pilsudski tried to "warn" Barthou against the policy of rapprochement, cooperation of France from the USSR. In relation to the French-Soviet project of the so-called Eastern Pact, Poland took a negative position.

In May 1933, Mościcki was re-elected President for the third time. On April 23, 1935, a new constitution was signed by the President.

The president was now elected for seven years by popular vote. Only two candidates were allowed to run for the presidency. According to the new constitution, the president was endowed with broad powers: he appointed the prime minister, and at the suggestion of the latter - ministers, convened and dissolved the Sejm and the Senate, was the supreme commander of the armed forces, resolved issues of war and peace, had the prerogative of issuing various acts without prior agreement with the prime minister or individual ministers, appointed a third of the Senate. With these and many other rights, the president was considered responsible for his actions "only before God and history."

Before the introduction of the new constitution, Slavek became prime minister for the third time. Piłsudski died shortly after its adoption, in May 1935. Following the constitution on July 8, 135, a new electoral law was introduced. The right to nominate candidates for deputies was granted only to district election commissions; no more than two candidates could be nominated for each deputy place. The dismantling of the principles of parliamentarism continued at an accelerated pace.

The mass anti-fascist, democratic, anti-war movement has grown since the establishment of Hitler's dictatorship in Germany. The population of the country demanded the liquidation of the concentration camp created in 1934 according to the Hitlerite model in Bereza Kartuzskaya. It was not without difficulty that the leadership of the CPT came to understand that the tasks of the struggle against fascism, for peace, for the independence of Poland dictated the need for united action with a wide range of social and political forces. It was precisely the unity of action that in 1934 ensured the success of the strikes of the Lodz and Czestochowa textile workers, the Warsaw foundry workers, and the tailors. In 1935, an agreement was reached between the CPT and the PPS that both parties would refrain from mutual attacks and jointly fight for the release of political prisoners. At the 7th Congress of the Comintern, Lensky noted that in Poland, due to the acuteness of the agrarian question and the scope of the peasant movement, a popular front could take shape before a united workers' front.

The failure of the "sanation" policy, the struggle in the ruling camp between the "presidential" or "castle" group, the "generals" or "belvedere" group headed by Rydz-Smigly, the "colonel" and other groups forced the ruling regime to put up with the legal the existence of petty-bourgeois and bourgeois opposition. The shuffling in the ruling elite could not stop a new wave of mass uprisings. If in 1934 there were 946 strikes in the country, then in 1935 - 1165, and in 1936 - 2040. A great revival came in the peasant movement. At a congress held by December 1935, the Mass Peasant Party put forward demands for the distribution without redemption of large land holdings, amnesty for political prisoners, liquidation of the concentration camp in Bereza Kartuzskaya. constitution, holding free elections, creating a government of people's trust.

The persecution and repression that the communists were subjected to was inevitable. But terror also fell upon the figures of the checkpoint who ended up on the territory of the Soviet Union. Back in 1931 S. Voevudsky was arrested. Since 1922, he was an active member of the left-wing peasant party PSL-Vyzvolene, then one of the organizers of the Independent Peasant Party, and in 1922-1927. - Deputy of the Seimas, constantly cooperating with the CPT. In 1933, E. Chesheiko-Sokhatsky, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was arrested in Moscow, since 1930, a representative of the Communist Party under the Executive Committee of the Comintern. Members of the Central Committee of the CPT K. Greser and S. Vudzynsky, members of the CPT V. Vrublevsky, T. Zharsky were arrested. Many members of the Belarusian peasant and working community, members of the KPZB and KPZU who ended up in the USSR, became victims of false accusations. In 1936, and especially in 1937, hundreds and thousands of those Polish communists who, since October 1917, had irreproachably served the cause of the state, socio-economic, political, military construction of the Soviet state, turned out to be victims of arbitrariness, violence, and lawlessness. The activities of the CPT were sharply criticized.

The fifth, which turned out to be the last, plenum of the Central Committee of the CPR was held in February 1937. It oriented the party towards the creation of a united workers' and people's front, the struggle for peace, for friendship with the USSR, against the threat of Hitlerite aggression and the policy of "sanation". A "draft resolution of the IKKP on the dissolution of the CPT" was prepared. On December 2, Stalin put his resolution on the draft resolution. So, in fact, the verdict was passed on the CPT, as well as the KSMP, KPZU, KPZB.

On August 1938, the Presidium of the ECCI approved a resolution to dissolve the CPT.

In the second half of the 30s. In Poland, a relatively favorable economic situation began to take shape. Under the leadership of the Minister of Finance E. Kwiatkowski, the development of the Central Industrial District continued, the creation of which was officially announced on February 5, 1935. A number of new industrial enterprises, mainly for military purposes, were being built in the interfluve of the Vistula and San. On the whole, industrial production, the level of development of which in 1932 was 54 points in relation to 1926, also rose in 1938 to 119 points. However, due to population growth, the total number of unemployed almost did not decrease. The four-year investment plan adopted in 1936 was successfully carried out. But Poland did not become one of the industrialized countries. For 1921-1939 its population increased from 27 to 35 million people, while the proportion of the rural population during this time decreased from 75 to 70%. National income growth lagged far behind population growth

In the context of the ongoing aggravation of social and national contradictions, there were certain tendencies towards the rapprochement of the bourgeois-landlord and clerical circles with the ruling elite. The legal opposition was unable to significantly influence the government's course to the right. Some, more realistic bourgeois circles have made efforts to unite in the struggle against sanitation. There was an unstable, purely top-level cooperation between influential political figures who tried to counteract the "sanation" - Paderevsky, Sikorsky, Haller, Korfanty.

Equally futile were the efforts of clubs of anti-fascist intelligentsia that began to take shape at the end of 1937 and served in 1939 as the base for the Democratic Party (Stronnitstvo demokratychne, SD). The entire anti-rehabilitation circle of socio-political forces lacked either energy, cohesion, or the desire and ability to rely on the emerging anti-fascist front.

In July 1933, Poland, together with a number of other states, signed the convention proposed by the USSR on the definition of an aggressor. When in September 1934 Berlin refused to participate in the creation of the Eastern Pact, Beck sent a memorandum to Paris stating that Poland could become a party to the pact only if Germany joined it, that she renounced joint obligations with respect to Lithuania and Czechoslovakia prefers bilateral treaties to multilateral ones.

The Polish government negatively assessed the Soviet-French and Soviet-Czechoslovak mutual assistance treaties signed in 1935. The attitude of the Polish government towards the Anti-Comintern Pact of Germany and Japan concluded in November 1937 was different.

In negotiations with Goering on February 23, 1938. Beck declared Poland's readiness to reckon with German interests in Austria, stressed Poland's interest in the Czech lands. At this moment of aggravation of the international situation, Poland made an attempt to achieve the complete subordination of Lithuania. The warning of the Soviet Union about the inadmissibility of fomenting a Polish-Lithuanian war forced the rulers of Poland to limit themselves to demanding that the Lithuanian government establish diplomatic relations with Poland, which meant recognition by Lithuania of the annexation of the Vilna region.

After the capture of Austria, Nazi Germany announced its claims to part of the territory of Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Union informed the Czechoslovak government of its readiness to take all measures to ensure its security. Poland ignored the advice of France to take the path of improving relations with the USSR and not only rejected the possibility of passing Soviet troops through its territory and flights of Soviet aviation through Polish airspace in order to help Czechoslovakia, but also provided diplomatic assistance to Nazi Germany, counting on support in the annexation of Cieszyn Silesia.

In a conversation between German representatives and Lipsky on August 11, it was said that after achieving its goals in relation to Czechoslovakia, Poland can count on Germany's understanding of its interest in the territory of Soviet Ukraine. Contributing to the Nazis, as well as supporters of the policy of appeasement of the aggressor, Beck instructed the Polish ambassador in England to notify the British government that Czechoslovakia, which comes into the flank of Poland from the south, is bound by an agreement with its potential enemy - the Soviet Union. A few days later, on September 19, he asked Lipsky to inform Hitler that Poland considers the Czechoslovak Republic an artificial formation and supports the Hungarian claims regarding Carpathian Rus (Transcarpathian Ukraine), that there is a concentration of Polish troops in the areas bordering Czechoslovakia. At a reception on September 20, Hitler told Lipsky that in the event of a Polish-Czechoslovak military conflict, Germany would be on the side of Poland. The very next day, Poland sent a note to Czechoslovakia demanding that the "problem" of the Polish national minority living in Cieszyn Silesia be resolved.

In connection with the actions of Polyn, the Soviet government on September 23 announced that it would consider the crossing of the Czechoslovak border by Polish troops as an act of aggression that would force the USSR to denounce the Soviet-Polish non-aggression pact without warning.

After the conclusion of the Munich Agreement, the Polish government, threatening to use military force, presented Czechoslovakia with an ultimatum demand for the transfer of Cieszyn Silesia. The leaders of Czechoslovakia preferred the policy of rebuffing the aggressors, while relying on the USSR, the policy of satisfying the demands of Germany and Poland.

In the fall, Nazi Germany began to reveal its aggressive plans against Poland. On October 24, Hitler's Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, in a conversation with the Polish ambassador in Berlin, Lipsky, suggested that Poland agree to the annexation of the Free City of Danzig to Germany and the construction of an extraterritorial motorway and a multi-track railway through " Polish corridor" to East Prussia. In Poland itself, subversive elements became more active, especially from the Nazi circles of the local German population.

In September 1938, the Soviet Union issued a warning to the Polish government in connection with the preparations for the capture of Cieszyn Silesia. At the same time, the USSR and Poland agreed to negotiate a settlement of Soviet-Polish relations. This was recorded in a message published on November 29, 1938 in Warsaw and Moscow.

The beginning of 1939 was marked by an attempt to attract Poland ToNazi campaign against the USSR. On January 5, 1939, Hitler said that there was "a unity of interests between Germany and Poland in relation to the Soviet Union." On January 20, 1939, Beck promised Ribbentrop to consider the possibility of Poland joining the Anti-Comintern Pact if Germany supported Polish wishes take over Soviet Ukraine and get access to the Black Sea. It was in this connection that, speaking on March 11, 1939, in the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Beck considered it appropriate to emphasize Poland's interest in obtaining colonies.

Poland's growing danger from Germany was also indicated by the notification made by the German side on April 28 that, in connection with the conclusion of the Anglo-Polish agreement on guarantees, Germany considers the Polish-German declaration of non-aggression of 1934 to be invalid. The Soviet Union, seeking to strengthen opposition aggressive plans of Nazi Germany, approved the British proposal that England, France, the USSR and Poland announce a declaration indicating their interest in maintaining the independence of the states of Central and South-Eastern Europe, their readiness to mutually guarantee the integrity and inviolability of the territories of these countries. Learning about it. Beck then, on March 22, notified the British government of their unwillingness to enter into any anti-Hitler agreements in which the Soviet Union would participate.

In May 1939, the point of view of the Soviet government on the international situation was presented in Warsaw. - Molotov with the Polish Ambassador to the USSR V. Grzybowski. The ambassador stated that "Poland does not consider it possible to conclude a mutual assistance pact with the USSR in view of the practical impossibility of rendering assistance to the Soviet Union." But the Soviet Union did not expect help from Poland, but its consent to cooperation with the USSR in the event of an attack on it by Nazi Germany.

In mid-May, Poland sent a special military mission to Paris. On May 19, a protocol was signed there, according to which France undertook to immediately provide assistance to Poland in the event of an attack by Nazi Germany. Approximately the same kind of commitment was given by the British military mission. If they had been carried out, Nazi Germany would have faced the threat of catastrophe.

The position of the Polish ruling circles towards the USSR continued to be inconsistent and hostile. On May 25, 1939, the Soviet ambassador in Warsaw P.I. Sharonov confirmed to Beck his readiness to provide military assistance to Poland, but this offer was rejected. Warsaw's position turned out to be negative even when, in the course of the Anglo-French-Soviet negotiations, the question arose of letting Soviet troops through Polish territory in the event of German aggression. Further, Stalin and Molotov made a sharp change in course. On August 23, 1939, they signed the Soviet-German non-aggression pact. The secret appendix to the treaty recorded a decision on the actual liquidation of the independent Polish state and the division of its territory between the signatories of the treaty.

The Polish government, which did not lose hope for peace settlement, delayed the general mobilization until 31 August. On the night of August 30-31, Operation Himmler was carried out.

September 1939 German troops went on the offensive against Poland along the entire border from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathians. The people, whose six generations fought for independence, did not agree to surrender. On September 2, at the last meeting of the Sejm, all parliamentary factions, including Ukrainian and Jewish, expressed support for the government and confidence in the final victory. .

Hitler sent 58 divisions to Poland, including six armored and eight motorized, with a total strength of 1.8 million; they were armed with 11 thousand guns, 2.5 thousand tanks and "1 thousand aircraft. Poland could only oppose them with 37 infantry divisions and two motorized brigades, 11 cavalry brigades, a total of about 1 million people, who had 4.5 thousand guns, 700 tanks, mostly light, and 400 aircraft. Before the start of the war, Hitler announced that the goal should not be the achievement of any designated line, but the destruction of manpower.

The first battles with the Nazis showed the high moral and patriotic spirit of the army and people. However, using their numerical and technical superiority, the Nazis occupied the "Polish corridor" during the first six days, captured Pomerania, Silesia and moved far into the center of the country. The Polish government futilely called on its Western allies to fulfill their obligations and begin active operations against the Reich. 110 French and five British divisions, opposing 23 German divisions on the Western Front, were inactive. France and England waged a "strange war". Poland had to fight alone.

September, the Nazis approached Warsaw, and by September 15, the Nazis, having occupied the western and partially central parts of Wormwood, reached Brest, Lvov and Zamost.

At three o'clock in the morning on September 17, the Polish ambassador in Moscow "W. Grzybowski was summoned to the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, where he was handed a note from the Soviet government, which stated that the Polish government "collapsed and does not show signs of life," which means that the Polish state actually ceased to exist.The USSR, the note said, cannot be indifferent to the fact that "consanguineous Ukrainians and Belarusians. abandoned to the mercy of fate, will remain defenseless", and therefore the orders were given to the Red Army units to cross the border of Poland in order to "take under their protection the lives and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus." These provisions were repeated by Molotov in his speech on radio 17 September.

The actions of the Soviet Union, although motivated by the noble goal of protecting the oppressed national minority, were a violation of international law and agreements signed by the governments of the USSR and Poland: the Riga Treaty of 1921. and the non-aggression treaty of 1932, as well as the convention on the definition of an aggressor, which recognized as such a state whose armed forces, even without declaring war, invade the territory of another state. The Polish government and the high command were at a loss. On the same day, President Mościcki and the government crossed the Polish-Romanian border and were interned.

In contrast to the German command, the Soviet command did not seek to defeat the Polish army and destroy manpower, urged its soldiers not to obey their officers and go over to the side of the Red Army. But in a number of places there were clashes between the Soviet and Polish units. Caught in the second half of September under a double blow and without any help from the allies, Poland could not continue to resist. On September 28, a joint parade of Soviet and German troops took place in Brest.

The further fate of Poland was determined by the Soviet-German agreement of September 28, 1939 "On Friendship and Borders". During the negotiations on the conclusion of this treaty, Stalin expressed the opinion that the remainder of the Polish state should not be left independent and proposed that its territory be divided between the USSR and Germany. A secret protocol was attached to the treaty that defined the Soviet-German border, according to which, compared with the previously established demarcation line, the Lublin Voivodeship and part of the Warsaw Voivodeship went into the "sphere of influence of Germany" in return for her refusal from Lithuania, which she claimed under the secret protocol to the contract of 23 August.

By Hitler's decrees of October 8 and 12, 1939, the Polish lands were divided into two parts. Greater Poland, Western Pomerania, part of Upper Silesia and the Suwalki Voivodeship were included directly in the empire, the rest formed the so-called General Government for the occupied Polish provinces.

The general concept of the Nazi policy towards the Poles, developed in the so-called General Plan "Ost", consisted in their rapid and complete Germanization. Special commissions, guided by the principles of "racial selection", found out the origin of persons capable of becoming "full members of the German national community. Immediately after the occupation, the Nazi authorities began to confiscate public and private property of Poles and Jews, which passed into the hands of the German state and large concerns or private ownership Germans Poles were sent to the empire for forced labor or evicted to the General Government, and Germans from the Baltic states or the Reich settled in their place.

Frank's residence was not Warsaw, but Krakow (Wawelsky) G. Frank was the sovereign ruler of the Governorate until the end of its existence. The local government of German officials was subordinate to him, the Polish state apparatus was destroyed, but, unlike the "annexed lands", some local bodies were preserved Later, in the spring of 1941, Polish economic self-government bodies were established.

The Jews were placed in an exceptionally difficult position. They were required to wear a yellow six-pointed "Star of David" on their clothes, and shortly after the start of the occupation, they were imprisoned in the ghetto. The largest was the Warsaw ghetto, formed in October 1940 in the southeastern part of the Polish capital.

The governorship was viewed by the Nazi authorities as a source of cheap labor and raw materials for the Reich. Labor service was introduced for the Polish population aged 14 to 00

From the very first days of occupation, the German authorities began a policy of terror. Concentration camps began to operate in Auschwitz, Maidanek and others. The Nazis pursued a targeted policy of eliminating Polish culture and education. All higher and secondary educational institutions were closed, the activities of all cultural, scientific, public organizations. Polish names were replaced by German ones. The policy of the German occupiers, which aimed not only to destroy the Polish state, but also to turn the inhabitants into slaves without rights, their physical destruction led to the fact that the main contradiction was the contradiction between the occupiers, the ruling German nation and the entire oppressed non-German population. Unlike other states enslaved by the Nazis, Poland did not have the conditions for political collaborationism. Society as a whole, including the propertied classes, was hostile to the Nazis. Former class contradictions temporarily faded into the background, which potentially created the possibility of forming a broad anti-fascist, patriotic front against the invaders.

The composition of the government, formed on September 30, 1939 by General V. Sikorsky, reflected a compromise between the moderate leaders of the "sanitation" camp and the former opposition. Speaking on the radio, President I. Mościcki announced that he would act in close contact with the government. This meant the rejection of the exclusive prerogatives that the Constitution of 1935 granted to the head of state. On December 9, 1939, the National Council (Rada of Peoples) was formed by presidential decree - an advisory body, which included representatives of all political trends operating in exile. I. Paderevsky was elected chairman of the People's Rada, and S. Mikolajczyk was elected vice-chairman. The formation of the government of V. Sikorsky and the People's Rada meant that, despite the statements of Hitler and Molotov about the elimination of Polish statehood, Poland continued to exist, and its armed forces, together with the allies, would wage war against Nazi Germany in the name of restoring national independence. The Polish government was officially recognized by France, Great Britain, and later by the United States as representing the sovereign mores of the people.

The main provisions of foreign policy were formulated in a government declaration of December 18, 1939. The main goal was to liberate Polish lands from occupation and provide Poland in the future, along with a wide and direct access to the sea, guarantees of lasting security.

In general, in foreign and domestic policy, Sikorsky sought to emphasize its difference from the policy of "sanation", to show that his government would establish a bourgeois-democratic system. The prime minister considered his main task to be the creation in France of a hundred thousandth army of Polish emigrants and those patriots who managed to knock out the country occupied by the Nazis. By the spring of 1940, there were 82,000 soldiers and officers in the Polish armed units and subunits in France, including 38,000 refugees from Poland. They received their first baptism of fire during the Allied Norwegian campaign (April-June 1940) and in battles in France. Only about 25 thousand people managed to be evacuated to Great Britain, where, at the invitation of its government, the highest authorities of Poland also arrived.

The defeat of France put Sikorsky in a difficult position. Failed was his concept of the liberation of Poland with the help of France, whom he regarded as the main ally. There were no hopes for the formation of large Polish forces in England, since there, unlike France, there was no significant Polish emigration.

After the defeat of France, the main directions of the foreign policy of the Sikorsky government did not change: acting together with Great Britain, continue the war until the complete liberation of Poland. The 1st Polish Corps guarded the coast of Scotland, and Polish pilots took part in the "Battle for England". From mid-July to the end of 1940, they shot down 203 German aircraft out of 1733 lost by the Nazis during this time.

Considering, like Churchill, that a war between Germany and the USSR was inevitable, Sikorsky admitted, although not without hesitation, the possibility of an agreement with the Soviet Union, having in mind, first of all, the creation of a Polish army on its territory. At the same time, he supported the idea put forward by British diplomacy back in November 1939 of creating a federation of Eastern European states after the war. As a result of negotiations between V. Sikorsky and the President of Czechoslovakia, E. Benes, on November 11, 1940, a joint declaration was signed, the participants of which declared their desire to conclude a close political and economic union, which would become the basis of a new order and guarantee its strength. Sikorsky, like British politicians, viewed the future federation as a new "cordon sanitaire" designed to prevent the spread of communism in Europe.

While the Sikorsky government sought to defend the interests of Poland in the international arena, reminding the allies and the whole world of the existence of the Polish state, a resistance movement was gradually unfolding in the country enslaved by the Nazis. It began spontaneously in the very first days of the war, when groups of patriots, mostly young people, began to collect weapons and ammunition on the battlefields. But the partisan movement did not gain any noticeable scope - before the war, bases and stocks of weapons were not created for this, and cadres of leaders were not trained. The most common forms of resistance movement were sabotage, slow work, acts of sabotage. A specific form of Resistance, of all the occupied countries, which existed only in Poland, was the secret teaching of schoolchildren, which was carried out from the autumn of 1939 by an underground teachers' organization.

The first conspiratorial groups began to emerge as early as September 1939. In order to unite them, in November 1939 Sikorsky issued an order to form the Union of Armed Struggle (Zvenzek Valka Zbroynoy, ZVZ) headed by Colonel S. Rovetsky (pseudonym "Grot"), which subordinated to the chairman of the Committee on Country Affairs, General K. Sosnkovsky, who was in London. Sikorsky considered the ZVZ as an unconditionally subordinate "apolitical and non-party army" to him. The three pre-war political parties operating underground - the SP, the SL and the PPS - recognized the government of Sikorsky and the ZVZ, but, fearing the restoration of the "sapation" regime in Poland (command posts in the ZVZ were occupied by "sanitation" officers), began to create their own military organizations. The joint venture formed the Parodov organization of the troops (NOV). SL-"Roh" (as the SL in the underground became known) initially recognized the ZVZ as an "army in secrecy", but then, in July 1940, created its own armed forces - the Peasant Battalions (Khlopske Battalions, BH).

Of all the underground political groups, the closest to the ZVZ was a new organization that arose in October 1939 to replace the disbanded PPS - the Central leadership of the movement of the working masses of the city and countryside - Freedom, Equality and Independence (Volyyust, Rivnost, Nepodleglost), known as the PPS-VRP . It placed its armed detachments at the disposal of the ZVZ. On February 26, 1940, a Political Conciliation Committee (PCC) was established under the High Command of the ZVZ. The Sikorsky government, despite the resistance of the ZVZ command, achieved the subordination of political conspiracy to itself. In February 1940, the Delegation of the Government was formed, which was charged with the duty to implement the policy of the government in exile in the country and prevent the formation of a competitive authority. At the end of 1940, a representative of the Stronnitstvo Pratsa (SP) party associated with Sikorsky was co-opted into the ISK, and thus the ISK became an organ of four parties.

The resistance movement associated with the Sikorsky government had a very broad social base. It was attended by the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia, the Catholic clergy, workers, peasants, who stood on different ideological and political positions, but united by a common goal - the struggle for the restoration of an independent Polish state. The heterogeneity of the social and political composition of this movement caused the lack of internal unity in it, the confrontation of various parties and trends, which was also facilitated by the personal ambitions of politicians.

The restoration of Poland's independence by both the government in exile and its supporters in the country was thought of as the result of the defeat of Nazi Germany in the war with the Western powers and the associated retreat of its troops from the occupied Polish territory. The operational plan developed by the headquarters of the ZVZ provided for in this situation the possibility of a short-term, within 2-3 days, uprising by the forces of conspiratorial organizations, without the participation of the masses. In the event that, following the retreating Germans, Soviet troops entered Poland, it was planned to organize a front against the USSR on the "Vistula line", to repeat the "miracle on the Vistula" of 1921.

Left direction in the anti-fascist resistance movement during 1939-1941. had no organizational structure. The working masses at that time had confidence in the émigré government and the conspiratorial organizations associated with it. Under the conditions of secrecy, it was difficult for the left, radical elements in the SL to oppose the authoritative leaders of the party, especially since the SL was represented both in the exile government and in the ISK. The left socialists, fearing a split in the socialist movement, for a long time did not consider it possible for themselves to break with the PPS-VRN. At the turn of 1939 - 1940, but to the extent that the leaders of the WRN strengthened interaction with the "sanitation" elements, in Warsaw a group of leftist socialists began to unite around P. Barlitsky, S. Dubois and other well-known supporters of the united popular front in the past. They established contacts with a group of radical Ludovites, and in the spring of 1940, a leftist group (“barricades”) formed around the editorial office of the magazine “Barricade of Volnostsi”, but soon its leaders were arrested by the Gestapo. Later, a split occurred in the ranks of the "barricaders" - one part was looking for ways to unite the entire socialist movement, the other began to draw closer to the communists, and then created its own body, Shtandar Volnostsi. The group of "barricaders", continuing their efforts to unite the socialist movement, put forward a number of program provisions. It expressed the conviction that the world war, which bears an imperialist character, will end in a socialist revolution. Its main force will be the revolutionary movement in the West and in Germany; as a result, the United States of socialist Europe will emerge, which will include Poland. At the same time, the “barrikaders” took a negative position in relation to the USSR, where, as they believed, after the NEP, the counter-revolution won, and the Soviet state is a peculiar form of state capitalism domination. Many of the united front socialists did not share the positions of the "barricaders" and broke off ties with them, some of them began to gradually draw closer to the communists.

The position of the communists in the first stage of the war was very difficult. Those who managed to get to the Soviet Union were not trusted there, and many communists, along with thousands of residents of territories annexed to the USSR, were deported to Siberia and other remote areas or ended up in prison. Those who remained in the country continued their secret activities, but were bound by the directive of the Comintern to dissolve the CPT. The agreement of August 23, 1939 caused confusion among the communists, and it was especially difficult for them to accept the agreement on "border and friendship" between the USSR and Germany. The hostility of the population towards the Soviet Union as a participant in the division of Poland forced the communists to observe secrecy not only in front of the Nazis, but also in front of other resistance groups.

Unlike the "barricades", the Polish communists considered the USSR a stronghold of the socialist revolution and were convinced that war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was inevitable and that it would lead to the liberation of Wormwood from the fascist yoke and the formation of a people's government. Based on the Comintern's guidelines known to them about the Second World War as imperialist on both sides, they negatively assessed both the actions of Nazi Germany and the actions of England and France and their ally, the Polish government in exile. Nevertheless, gradually the communists joined the resistance movement.

Young socialists and communists united around the Spartak group, which had resumed its activities, under the patronage of the PPS. In February 1940, the Union of Peasants and Workers was created in Warsaw, establishing contact with the radical Ludovites, and in March, the Revolutionary Workers' and Peasants' Councils (RRKS) group arose, publishing the magazine Molot i Seri. She began preparations for an armed struggle against the invaders, forming Red Militia detachments, the number of which by May 1941 reached 1,000 people. In the spring of 1941, the Society of Friends of the USSR arose, with which the RRKS group began negotiations on unification, but the arrests of many of its members and the defeat of the Nazis

The Red Militia prevented this.

The Communists acutely felt the need to recreate the party, they tried to establish contact with the Comintern through the Soviet resettlement mission that had been operating since the spring of 1940, but they did not receive a response from the Comintern. Under these conditions, they began to develop their concept of the liberation of Poland. The Krakow group, which also included socialists and radical Ludovites, at the beginning of 1940 adopted a declaration in which, in accordance with the instructions of the Comintern given at the beginning of the Second World War, they spoke in favor of a socialist revolution, the formation of a union of free people's republics in Europe, the transformation of Poland into a socialist republic encompassing all "unquestionably ethnographic Polish lands". The course towards a socialist revolution in the conditions of the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany was proclaimed at the beginning of 1941 by the RRKS. The ideas of the socialist revolution and orientation towards the Soviet Union, which the communists defended, could not get support from the Polish people, the majority of them still considered the Soviet Union, like Nazi Germany, as their enemy.

But gradually a different concept began to take shape. The Workers' and Peasants' Action group, in documents published in March 1941, continuing to assert that the governments of Britain and the United States were pursuing their own imperialist goals, expressed the opinion that it was necessary to support them against Hitler's Germany, since the defeat of Hitler would free him from the yoke of fascism working class and peasantry and will create opportunities for the realization of their revolutionary aspirations.

Thus, by the summer of 1941, the communist groups operating in Poland had not yet succeeded in working out a program of struggle for national and social liberation around which broad sections of the Polish people could unite.

The attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union led to changes in Polish-Soviet relations. In a speech on the radio on June 23, 1941, V. Sikorsky, expressing the hope that "Russia will invalidate the 1939 pact with Germany", stated that from now on "in international politics the Polish-Russian problem disappears. "In practice, this meant the rejection of the state of war with the USSR and the readiness for negotiations, which began with the mediation of British diplomacy on July 5. From the Soviet side, Ambassador I.I. Maisky participated in them, from the Polish side - the Prime Minister V. Sikorsky and Minister of Foreign Affairs A. Zalessky.The most difficult was the question of borders.Maisky, saying that the Soviet Union would in no case agree to the restoration of the former border, suggested leaving this question open.Sikorsky was inclined to confine himself to a statement, that the USSR considers the agreements with Germany concerning Poland invalid, but President V. Rachkevich and Minister Zaleski, supported by General K. Sosnkovsky, put forward a demand for the restoration of Poland's pre-war borders. The British government put pressure on Polish politicians, emphasizing that "borders are not a priority Despite the opposition of the president and three ministers of his government, on July 30, 1941, Sikorsky, in the presence of W. Churchill and A. Eden, signed the Polish-Soviet agreement.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Soviet Union and Poland assumed obligations to provide assistance and support to each other in the war against Nazi Germany. A Polish army was created on the territory of the USSR, operationally subordinate to the Soviet command, which meant its use on the Soviet-German front. The question of the border remained open. The agreement stated: "The government of the USSR recognizes the Soviet-German treaties of 1939 regarding territorial changes in Poland as invalid. The Polish government declares that Poland is not bound by any agreement with any third party directed against the Soviet Union." On August 14, it was signed a military agreement on the formation of the Polish army on the territory of the USSR, the equipment of which was partly taken over by the Soviet government, and partly was to be carried out on the basis of lend-lease.

The Soviet-Polish agreements of July 30 and August 14, 1941 created the prerequisites for a radical change in relations between the two states. Sikorsky showed himself to be a realistically thinking politician, capable of reaching an agreement with the state, to which he so recently declared hostility, for the sake of the main goal - the restoration of Poland's independence. In turn, the Soviet Union, denouncing the thesis about Poland as an "ugly offspring of the Treaty of Versailles", proclaimed by V.M. Molotov in October 1939, recognized Poland as a sovereign state.

The signing of an agreement with the Soviet Union and the resignation of three ministers who objected to it, including A. Zalessky, strengthened Sikorsky's position. Representatives of the left circles of emigration, S. Mikolajczyk (SL) and H. Liberman (PPS), were included in the government.

The Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 12, 1941 on the amnesty of Polish citizens who were in Soviet prisons and camps, made it possible for hundreds of thousands of Poles deported by the NKVD in 1939-1941. from Western Ukraine and Western Belarus to the eastern and northern regions of the USSR, to choose another place of residence. Many of them began to join the Polish army, which began to form at the end of August both from volunteers and from conscripts who had Polish citizenship until September 1939. By the end of October, the strength of the Polish army reached 41.5 thousand people. Its mood and attitude towards the Soviet Union were determined by the fact that the overwhelming majority of the personnel, like the army commander, General V. Anders, went through Stalin's camps and exiles and, quite recently, were considered by the Soviet authorities as "class hostile elements."

Churchill, interested in using the Polish army to protect British interests in the Middle East, recommended that Sikorsky seek the consent of the Soviet Union for its transfer to Iran. The US government was also interested in this. Sikorsky, fearing that in the event of the defeat of the Soviet Union, the story of the Polish troops in France would repeat itself, was inclined, although not without hesitation, to follow the advice of the Western allies.

December 1941, during the first ever visit of the head of the Polish government to the USSR, Sikorsky was received by Stalin. Stalin declared that he was in favor of recreating Poland as a strong, independent state allied with the USSR, whose borders in the west should include East Prussia and "lean on the Oder River." He made it clear that there was a possibility of an agreement on the borders of Poland in the east. However, Sikorsky, who shared the conviction of members of his government and emigration leaders that the question of Poland's borders would be resolved after the end of the war with the help of the West, refused to discuss it at all, stating that the borders of 1921 could not be questioned.

The main thing for Sikorsky in the negotiations was the question of the Polish army. He presented Stalin with a list of 3,845 officers who had been interned in September 1939, insisting that they be included in Anders' army. Stalin stated that they probably fled to Manchuria (later, in March 1942, at a meeting with Anders, Stalin claimed that the fate of the Polish officers was unknown to the Soviet authorities, and suggested that they fled from the camps and fell into the hands of the Germans ).

Stalin regarded the position of Sikorsky, who insisted on the withdrawal of the Polish army to Iran, where it would be armed and equipped by Great Britain, as the unwillingness of the Poles to fight together with the Soviet Union, bluntly stating that Anglo-American intrigue was hiding behind this proposal. Sikorsky, realizing that the withdrawal of the army from the USSR would deprive it of the opportunity to be further replenished from the huge manpower reserves remaining in the Soviet Union, contrary to the promise made to Churchill, withdrew the demolition proposal. As a result, an agreement was reached at the negotiations on increasing the size of the Polish army to 96 thousand people and its participation in the battles on the Soviet-Gorman front.

December 1941, the Declaration of Friendship and Mutual Assistance was signed, in which the governments of the Soviet Union and Poland expressed their readiness, together with other allies, "to wage war until complete victory over German-Hitler imperialism", to provide each other during the war "full military assistance", and in peacetime to build our relations on the principles of good neighborly cooperation, friendship and honest fulfillment of the obligations assumed.

In March 1942, when the Soviet government decided to reduce the number of food rations for the Polish army due to US failure to fulfill its obligations to supply wheat to the USSR, Anders, with the consent of Stalin, evacuated part of his units to Iran. By April 1, 1942, 31,488 soldiers and officers and 12,455 members of their families left the Krasnovodsk base. Later, with the support of Churchill, Anders, contrary to the position of Sikorsky, obtained the consent of the Soviet government to evacuate the rest of the Polish army from the USSR. In total, by September 1, 1942, about 114 thousand people left the Soviet Union.

The deterioration of relations with the USSR weakened the international position of the government in exile. At the March 1942 negotiations, Sikorsky's attempts to win support from Churchill and Roosevelt for the Polish position on the issue of borders with the Soviet Union did not produce noticeable results. The only thing that Sikorsky could be satisfied with was that the Anglo-Soviet treaty of alliance signed in London on May 26, 1942, did not include the provision discussed during the negotiations on the recognition by Great Britain of changes in the borders of the USSR in 1939-1940.

The transition in Soviet-Polish relations from cooperation to confrontation was skillfully used by the Nazis. On April 13, 1943, it was announced on the Reich radio that mass graves of Polish officers, victims of the NKVD, had been discovered in the Katyn forest near Smolensk. On April 16, TASS announced that these officers were killed by the Nazis in the summer of 1941 during the occupation of the Smolensk region.

April Ministers of Defense M. Kukel and Information S. Kot, in agreement with Prime Minister Sikorsky, published a statement in which, in fact, agreeing with the version of Hitler's radio, they considered it necessary to conduct an investigation with the participation of the International Red Cross (ICC). The next day, representatives of the Red Cross of Nazi Germany and Poland applied almost simultaneously with a corresponding request to the IWC. Such actions caused a sharp reaction from the USSR. Stalin, in a message to Churchill dated April 19, accused the Sikorsky government of "conspiracy" with Hitler, crossing out the allied relations of this government with the USSR. On April 25, it was announced that the Soviet government was breaking off relations with the Polish government in exile. An international commission of representatives of 12 countries under the control of the Reich, followed by a group of the Polish Red Cross, which examined the remains of 4143 Polish officers (but according to other sources - 4151), came to the conclusion that they were shot in the spring of 1940. After 25 September 1943, Soviet troops liberated Smolensk, the Soviet commission led by Academician N.N. Burdenko conducted an investigation, as a result of which it was announced that Polish officers became in July 1941 a victim of the German occupiers. At the Nuremberg trials, the "Katyn case" was considered, but was not included in the indictment. Over the following years, the Soviet Union adhered to official version and only as a result of a study of various documents, the Soviet-Polish commission for the study of "blank spots" in the history of relations between the two countries recognized the responsibility of the NKVD for the tragedy in Katyn. After the break with the USSR, Sikorsky could only rely on the actions of Great Britain and the United States, for which Polish interests were of secondary importance in their international politics, although they were interested in the fact that the émigré government, after the expulsion of the Nazi invaders, returned to Poland and gained power.

Sikorsky failed to achieve the implementation of the plan to create a confederation in the center of Europe. Negotiations with the government of Czechoslovakia on this issue, which had been ongoing since 1940, in January 1942 led to the signing of an agreement between the two states on the principles of confederation with the possible participation of other states, but as Polish-Soviet relations worsened, the prospect of a future confederation became more and more elusive .

Sikorsky's policy was sharply criticized both by the progressive circles of the Polish emigration and in the British and American press, since it ran counter to the general trend of strengthening anti-fascist coalition. On the other hand, he was constantly under pressure from anti-Soviet Polish circles, who demanded that he pursue a "firm course" towards the USSR. In search of a way out of the difficult situation in which his government found itself, Sikorsky intended to make a second trip to Moscow, hoping in personal negotiations with the Soviet government to restore broken relations. In order to strengthen his position in the army and get the support of its command, in June 1943 the prime minister went to the Middle East, where he conducted an inspection of the Polish armed forces. On the way back to London, Sikorsky's plane crashed while taking off from the airfield in Gibraltar on July 4, 1943. The death of General Sikorsky - an energetic politician, an ardent patriot who, despite certain failures of his political course, managed to gain authority and respect not only in the ideologically and politically close layers of Polish society, but also among those who did not share his concepts, was an irreparable loss. . Among the Polish emigrants in England there was no other politician as authoritative as Sikorsky was.

The attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union was assessed by the leadership of the underground associated with the emigre government from the position of the theory of "two enemies". The "Information Bulletin" published by the Delegation expressed satisfaction that "the hands of one of our enemies are crushing the other" and demanded that the Poles in the occupied territory take a neutral position towards both opponents. The émigré government and the leadership of the underground believed that any active action against the Nazis was premature. The theory of "two enemies" also determined the tactical line - "to stand with weapons at your feet" in anticipation of the moment when both enemies weaken each other so much that a real possibility of implementing plans for the liberation of Poland will appear.

In the autumn of 1941, the Vakhlazh (Fan) organization was created with the aim of carrying out acts of sabotage in the rear of the German troops in the territories located east of the pre-war border of Poland. On February 14, 1942, in order to unite all armed underground formations, Sikorsky issued an order to rename ZVZ to the Home Army (AK). Back in September 1941, Rovetsky developed "Operational Plan No. 154", which provided not only an uprising in the General Government at the moment when the Anglo-American troops reached the Rhine, but also opposition to the Red Army when it entered the territory of pre-war Poland. However, in an instruction to Rovetsky dated March 8, 1942, Sikorsky, referring to agreements with the USSR, wrote that he had abandoned the plan to resist the Red Army.

In the Polish underground, with the outbreak of war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, some regrouping of forces took place. Even before the signing of the Soviet-Polish agreements, a group of "barrikaders" declared that all Poles should actively support the Red Army. On September 1, 1941, at a congress of a number of leftist groups, convened on the initiative of the "barrikaders", an organization of Polish Socialists (PS) was created at the head with A. Prukhnik. Anti-fascist groups, under the leadership or ideological influence of the communists, became more active. In late August - early September 1941, but on the initiative of a group of Warsaw communists, the Liberate Union was created, which put forward the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bunifying all patriotic forces into a national front and switching to partisan actions.

In the Soviet Union, a group of Polish communists, which included M. Novotko, P. Finder, at a meeting with the General Secretary of the ECCI G. Dimitrov, reached an agreement on the formation of an Initiative Group for the Restoration of the Marxist-Leninist Party in Poland. On the advice of G. Dimitrov, it was decided to call it the "Polish Workers' Party" (Polish Robotnic Party, PPR), which took into account the real situation and emphasized the national, Polish character of the new party.

At the end of December 1941 The initiative group was transferred to Poland, and at its meeting on January 5, 1942 with representatives of the Union for the Liberation Struggle and other organizations, it was decided that all the formations represented at the meeting cease their activities, and their members join the PPR. In the first PPR manifesto "To the workers, peasants, intelligentsia, to all Polish patriots!", published on January 10, 1942, the idea was put forward of creating a national front with the participation of all Poles, with the exception of "traitors and capitulators", to solve the main task - the restoration independent, democratic Polish state. The PPR expressed its readiness for the closest cooperation with other parties fighting for national liberation.

Unlike most parties in the "London camp," the PPR unequivocally spoke out in favor of participating in the struggle against fascism together with the Soviet people and declared that, having occupied the San and Bug line in the fall of 1939, the Soviet Union "created a barrier against the aggression of Nazi Germany." By condemning the tactics of passive resistance as " English way conduct of hostilities", the PPR called for an armed struggle against the occupiers.

The formation of the PPR marked the beginning of the formation of the second center of resistance in Poland, which took over the organization of the armed struggle against the invaders not in the distant future, but immediately.

Not only the right-wing parties of the "London camp", but also the Ludovites and the Polish socialists reacted negatively to the calls of the PPR for the development of an armed struggle, considering them premature. Nevertheless, the PPR managed to create the Guards of the People (GL) on the basis of the armed detachments of the communist underground, the first chief of staff of which was M. Spychalsky.

In 1941-1943. the policy of the Nazi authorities in the Polish lands was aimed at using them for military purposes. Having suspended the dismantling of enterprises and the removal of equipment, which was carried out in 1939-1941, the Nazis transferred the remaining factories and plants to military production, systematically reducing the production of consumer goods. The number of handicraft and small trading enterprises sharply decreased, many Polish firms were confiscated in favor of the Reich, others passed under the forced control of the occupation authorities. In connection with the growth of military production in the General Government in 1942-1943. unemployment has virtually disappeared. This was facilitated by the mass export of labor force for forced labor in Germany, where by the end of December 1942, about 940 thousand Poles worked. From the Polish lands annexed to the Reich, 193 thousand people were sent to work in Germany by the end of 1942 and 365 thousand were resettled in the General Government. Mass raids were often carried out on the streets of Polish cities, and people captured at that time were shot on the spot or sent to concentration camps and to work in Germany. In the Polish countryside, compared with 1939-1941. the confiscation of landed property of landowners and peasants increased sharply. The intensification of the economic exploitation of Polish lands was accompanied by an intensification of terror. In the gas chambers of Auschwitz, which turned into the largest death camp in Poland, Majdanek, Treblinka and others, hundreds of thousands of Poles, Jews, Soviet prisoners of war and citizens of other countries occupied by the Nazis were exterminated.

The resistance movement continued in various forms. The secret teaching of school youth has gained wide scope. Classes with students were conducted by professors from Warsaw, Jagiellonian and other universities. The number of underground publications grew. The Polish population provided assistance to fugitives from concentration camps and prisoner of war camps, and hid Jews. A significant contribution to the fight against the invaders was made by the Catholic clergy, most of which occupied patriotic positions.

The tactics of passive resistance caused frustration among the youth, who preferred to take action rather than wait in a safe place for the signal to fight. In June 1942S. Rovetsky wrote in a dispatch to London that the actions of the GL awaken the population "from the passive waiting that lasted for several years" and that "sympathy for the Bolsheviks is shown by landless, land-poor peasants, farm workers, as well as radical elements of urban workers and intelligentsia." In October 1942, the High Command of the AK created a special Command of sabotage, which included various pre-existing subdivisions engaged in sabotage activities, as well as the Gray Ranks scout organization. Tasks were set to carry out sabotage, acts of sabotage on railways, retaliatory actions against the actions of the invaders, for which several thousand people were allocated.

At the turn of 1942-1943. An important focus of the struggle against the Nazis was the Zamość region (Lublin Voivodeship), where at that time the invaders carried out a mass eviction of the Polish population. The fighting in the Zamość region continued until the middle of 1943. The Nazis here failed to fully implement their plans.

April 1943, but on the orders of Himmler, the German authorities began to liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. The Jewish militant organization established ties with the main command of the GL and AK, prepared for defense. The GL and AK detachments helped to evacuate many people from the ghetto through underground channels and delivered a series of blows to the Nazis who attacked it. Despite the courage of its defenders, the uprising in the ghetto in July 1943 was crushed after several weeks of hard fighting. Throughout 1943, the Nazis carried out actions to "solve the Jewish question", as a result of which more than 3.2 million Polish citizens of Jewish nationality were destroyed.

In late 1942 - early 1943, PPR activists created a revolutionary youth organization, which later received the name "Union of Young Struggle". X. Shapiro-Savitskaya became its first leader. Many members of the Union came to it from AK, attracted by the opportunity to take an active part in the hostilities. PPR, continuing the course towards the creation of a national front, on January 15, 1943, addressed with " open letter. to the Delegation of the government of General Sikorsky", in which, calling for a break with passive expectation with "a weapon at the foot", she expressed readiness for cooperation. Sikorsky, in a dispatch to the Delegation, demanded "unconditionally reject those who seek the Sovietization of Poland." The negotiations did not produce any results. The anti-Soviet sentiments of all the parties in the "London camp" and their attitude towards the PPR as "Moscow's agents" did not change.

The failure of attempts to unite all the forces of the resistance movement became apparent when the Nazis intensified terror throughout Poland. The process of liquidation of Jewish ghettos, mass executions of prisoners of Pawiak and other prisons, eviction of peasants from the territory of Lublin, Kielce and other provinces continued. And at the same time, the actions of the partisan detachments of the GL, the Soviet partisans, were expanding. The cotton battalions also joined the fight. Under these conditions, the AK command changed tactics - instead of the slogan "wait with weapons at your feet" in early April 1943, the slogan of "limited struggle" was put forward, which should be carried out by special detachments depending on the behavior of the invaders: shares". As before, all actions of the AK were subordinated to the main goal - the preparation of a general uprising at the appropriate moment and by order of the High Command.

By the spring of 1943, the PPR had become a single party operating throughout the country. On March 1, 1943, the PPR published a declaration "What are we fighting for?", which formulated a program of political and socio-economic transformations in Poland after its liberation: the creation of temporary democratic bodies "from commune and city councils to the government, inclusive", the transfer to the state of enterprises seized by the occupiers and the establishment of working class control over them, the return of their property to the small owners of the city and village, the division of landlord estates between peasants, an alliance with the USSR, etc. .

This program did not receive a positive response in the "London camp", which countered it with their point of view on the transformations in Poland after the liberation. On August 15, 1943, all four parties included in the National Political Representation announced a declaration of cooperation before the elections to the Sejm, where declared their support for the foreign policy activities of the government in exile. Social program was quite radical - it provided for the transfer into the hands of the state or self-government of industrial enterprises that were under German control or owned by Germany, as well as ownerless enterprises, which accounted for approximately 90% of their total number, and agrarian reform at the expense of lands owned by the Germans.

Fundamental changes in the international situation in 1943 after the defeat of the Nazis at Stalingrad and Kursk and further strengthening The anti-Hitler coalition did not lead to a revision by the "London camp" of its attitude towards the USSR and the PPR. The far-right armed group of the SI operating outside the framework of the AK - the National Armed Forces (People's Forces Zbroyne, PSZ), proclaiming the USSR and the Communists "enemy No. I" - began a fratricidal war: on August 9, 1943, a detachment of the NZZ destroyed near the village of Boruw (Lublin Voivodeship ) group GL - 26 guardsmen and four local peasants.

The PPR, convinced that the position of the "London camp" made it impossible to create a broad national front, changed course. In November 1943, the second declaration "What are we fighting for?" was published, written by the secretary of the Central Committee of the PPR, V. Gomulka. It formulated more radical demands than in the March declaration: the creation of a democratic state within which "the working class and the working masses will strive for the transition to the socialist system", the nationalization of large-scale industry, banks and transport, the introduction of workers' control in production, planning economy, expropriation without redemption of landowners' lands and their division between peasants and agricultural workers, etc. By denying the émigré government the right to power, the PPR thus declared that it was beginning a struggle for a people's system based on an alliance between the working class and the peasantry. This was the new strategic concept of the PPR - the concept of a democratic national front. To implement this program, the Central Committee of the PPR began to create a second political center in the country that opposes the "London camp" - the Craiova Rada of the People's War (KRN). In mid-December 1943, the Manifesto of democratic socio-political and military organizations was published, which recognized the goals and objectives of the KRN.

On New Year's Eve 1944, at a conspiratorial meeting in Warsaw, a decision was made to form the People's Craiova Rada, which proclaimed the main task of the armed struggle against the Nazi occupiers until the complete liberation of the country. Elected Chairman of the CRN TO.Take (PPR). The KRN adopted a decree on the formation of the Human Army (AL) as the main armed force of the Polish people. WITHWith the formation of the KRN in Poland, a political center opposing the "London camp" arose, which, upon the liberation of Poland by the Red Army, relying on its support, would seize power and create a government called upon to implement a program of revolutionary transformations.

While in the country under the conditions of Nazi occupation, preparations were underway for the struggle for power after liberation, in the Soviet Union, on the initiative of communist emigrants, an organization ideologically close to the PPR arose - the Union of Polish Patriots (SPP), headed by the writer V. Wasilewska. The Ideological and Political Declaration adopted by the Congress of the SPP in June 1943 proclaimed the task of the Union to be the struggle for a democratic Poland based on the principle of democracy. In May 1943, the Soviet government agreed to the request of the SPP to form an infantry division of the USSR, which, unlike the Anders army, would take part in the war together with the Red Army. At the head of the 1st division, which was named after T. Kosciuszko, was appointed Colonel 3. Berling. 12-13 October 1943, the 1st division named after. T. Kosciuszko was baptized by fire near the town of Lenino in Belarus.

With the approach of the Red Army to the borders of Poland, the international position of the government in exile became more and more difficult. Histhe expectation that with the help of Britain and the United States it would be possible to restore relations with the USSR did not materialize. The conditions proposed by the Soviet Union - to exclude from its membership those ministers whom Stalin considered "the most reactionary" and to agree to the border with the USSR but the "Curzon Line" - were rejected. The Polish government also rejected the British-proposed formula for compensation for the loss of the eastern provinces by joining Poland with East Prussia, Gdansk and Opole Silesia. In November 1943, the Tehran Conference of the Big Three, despite this position of the Polish government, accepted Churchill's proposal that "the center of the Polish state and people should be located between the so-called Curzon line and the line of the Oder River", as well as the transfer of part of East Prussia to Poland and Opole Silesia.

January 1944, after the Red Army crossed the pre-war border of Poland, the Soviet government expressed its readiness to negotiate the resumption of Soviet-Polish relations, provided that the Polish government accepted the "Curzon Line" as the eastern border of Poland. At the same time, it was publicly announced for the first time that the western borders of Poland should be expanded by joining to it the original Polish lands occupied in the past by Germany. Despite vigorous pressure from Churchill, the Polish government rejected this proposal.

The "London camp" hoped that it would be able to force the Soviet Union to recognize the de facto jurisdiction of the émigré government and the Delegation by the actions of the AK when the Red Army entered Poland. The Tempest plan, developed by the AK High Command in November 1943 on the basis of instructions from London, provided for active AK operations against retreating German rear units. At the same time, in relation to the Soviet command, the commanders of the AK units, together with representatives of the underground civil administration, would play the "role of the owner" of the liberated territory.

"London Underground" in early 1944. in opposition to the KRN, it created the Council of National Unity\REN\. On March 15, its declaration "What the Polish people are fighting for" was published, in which, emphasizing the need for a complete victory over Nazi Germany, the authors advocated the revival of Poland as a parliamentary republic with a strong government and borders in the east, based on the Riga Treaty of 1921, and in the west, including the whole of East Prussia, Gdansk, "the Pomeranian wedge between the Baltic and the mouth of the Odra, Opole Silesia" in the Polish state.

On the eve of the liberation of Poland from occupation, two opposing political centers operated in the country, each of which was preparing to take power into its own hands. Around the KRN, under the leadership of the PPR, which was the main political force in this camp, numerically small organizations and groupings representing the left trends in the socialist workers' and peasants' movement united. The KRN relied on a rather impressive armed force - the 1st Polish Army, in whose ranks by June 1944 there were 78 thousand soldiers and officers. Orientation towards the Soviet Union, whose troops were steadily marching west, provided the KRN with powerful external support in the struggle for power.

The second center was represented by the Delegation and the command of the AK, closely connected with the London government in exile. Participation in this camp by the SL-"Rokh" and the PPS-VRN enabled the bourgeoisie, which occupied leading positions in it, to keep under its influence significant masses of the working class and peasantry. However, as it was repeatedly recognized in the documents of the AC in the spring of 1944, the mood of the Polish society was characterized by a constant shift to the left. "These sentiments were intensified due to the fact that after the adoption of the declaration "For what the Polish people are fighting" the Delegation did not take any concrete steps, which would indicate the intention of the leadership of the "London camp" to carry out agrarian reform and the nationalization of industry upon liberation, the Emigrant government also did not make any statements about its plans for social reforms.

The international positions of the "London camp" on the eve of liberation were weaker than those of the KRN. Foreign policy allies - Great Britain and the USA - did not support the government in exile in its main dispute with the USSR - on the issue of the eastern border. There was hope that the weakly armed units of the Home Army, using the fear of the majority of the population of the "Soviet occupation of Poland", which the propaganda of the "London camp" constantly talked about, would be able to try to put the Soviet Union before the fact of the emergence of political structures when the Red Army entered the country, subordinate to the émigré government, which enjoys the support of the allied Western powers of the USSR.

June 1944, the Red Army, carrying out the operation "Bagration", launched a broad offensive and entered the Bug-Narev line. The AK command tried to implement the "Storm" plan, but when Vilnius was taken by the joint actions of the AK and Soviet troops on July 13, the command's attempts to act as the "master" of the liberated territory and its refusal to transfer its units to the 1st Polish Army led to that they were disarmed and interned. The political demonstration of AK during the liberation of Lvov ended with the same result.

Meanwhile, on July 21, negotiations ended in Moscow on the formation of a provisional authority in Poland, which, at Stalin's insistence, received the name of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PCPO). The PKNO Manifesto proclaimed that the government in exile and the Delegation in the country were a self-appointed, illegal power. The KRN, acting on the basis of the Constitution of 1921, was declared the "only legal source" of power. The main task of the new government was the liberation of the country from the Nazi invaders. The PKNO Manifesto proclaimed a "strong alliance with our immediate neighbors - the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia", the desire for friendship and alliance with Great Britain, the USA and France as the basis of foreign policy.

The social program of the Manifesto was less radical than the PPR declaration "What are we fighting for?". But at the insistence of the CBKP, it did not include the demand for the nationalization of large-scale industry, transport and banks, they were supposed, like all German property, to be transferred under temporary public administration. To speed up the restoration of the country and satisfy the "eternal desire of the peasants for the land," the Manifesto announced an agrarian reform through the confiscation of the property of Germans and traitors, as well as landlord estates larger than 50 hectares. Such a program was designed to win over to the side of the PKNO not only the working class, but also the masses of the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie.

With the formation of the PKNO, the Soviet government abandoned its earlier demands for the reorganization of the emigrant government and immediately began formalizing relations with the NKNO as the only legitimate authority in Poland. On July 26, 1944, a Soviet-Polish border agreement was signed in Moscow based on the Curzon" with some deviations from it in favor of Poland: Bolostok and part of Belovezhskaya Nuscha departed to it. The USSR declared support for Poland's demand to establish a western border along the Odra and Nysa Luzhitskaya rivers with the inclusion of the city of Szczecin. On August 1, 1944, the Soviet government officially recognized PKNO as the de facto government of Polynia.

When the Red Army liberated the eastern part of Poland, the administration of the "London camp" operating in secret conditions tried to get out of hiding and take power. On July 25, a representative of the Delegation in Lublin announced that he was starting to exercise power in the city on behalf of the The next day, the Rada Narodova began to function there. Although the Burya plan did not foresee the possibility of an uprising in Warsaw, the crossing of the Bug by the Red Army on July 21 accelerated the adoption of a preliminary decision by the high command of the AK in Warsaw. After the formation of the PKNW became known in London, Jankowski was authorized by the government in exile to give the signal for an uprising at the moment he saw fit. The AK was given the task of capturing the capital at least 12 hours before the entry of Soviet troops, so that the underground authorities could act on behalf of the emigre government in the role of plenipotentiary representatives of the Polish people. The victorious uprising was supposed to force the Soviet Union to recognize the London government.

Having given the leadership of the "London underground" the choice of the date of the uprising, S. Mikolajczyk went on July 26 to negotiate in Moscow. During his stay in Moscow, Mikolajczyk had meetings with the chairman of the KRN B. Bierut, the chairman of the PKNO. The Prime Minister of the government in exile rejected the proposal to head a single government of 14 members of the PCWN and four ministers from exile. No agreement was reached on the question of a constitution for Poland. Mikołajczyk insisted on maintaining the 1935 Constitution, while the PCWB considered it necessary to replace it with a more democratic 1921 Constitution. would strengthen the positions of the government in exile within the country and in negotiations with the USSR.

August was given the order to start the uprising in Warsaw.

The decision to revolt was made without the consent of the Soviet command and the command of the Polish Army, as well as the command of the AL and other conspiratorial military groups located in Warsaw. The AK leadership was aware that the British government promised only insignificant assistance to the uprising, responding in the negative to a request to send a brigade of paratroopers from England. Polish Supreme Commander General Sosnkowski, who had been in Italy since July 11 at the location of the Polish troops, did not give sanction for the uprising. When making a decision, the commander of the AK Bur-Komorowski, delegate Jankowski and Prime Minister Mikolajczyk were guided primarily by political considerations - to put the Soviet Union and its Western allies before the fact of the transfer of power in Warsaw to a body opposing the PKNO and the Soviet Union, for which on July 26 the government in exile appointed three Ministers of the Regional Council of Ministers headed by Deputy Prime Minister Yankovsky.

The plans of the Soviet command did not include the immediate capture of Warsaw, but the main blow to the Nazis was inflicted south of the capital, where on August 1 a bridgehead was created in the Magnuszew area. The threat to Warsaw from the south forced the German command to transfer tank and other units here, which allowed the rebels to continue the fight. There was no direct assistance to the uprising from the Soviet Union. Stalin continued to evaluate it only as a political demonstration and, in response to Churchill's call for help to the rebels, in his message he stated: "The Soviet command came to the conclusion that it should dissociate itself from the Warsaw adventure." Until mid-September, Stalin did not even give his consent to the use of Soviet military airfields by allied pilots who dropped weapons and ammunition on the rebels.

In early September, the uprising was in crisis. The Nazis brutally dealt with the rebels and the civilian population. The enthusiasm of the first weeks gradually, as hopes for a quick release faded, was replaced by pessimistic moods, and in some cases capitulation. This was facilitated by the exorbitant hardships that the Varsovians endured - hunger, lack of water, illnesses. On September 8-10, with the help of the Polish Red Cross, 20-25 thousand patients, women, children and the elderly were evacuated. In this situation, the Regional Council of Ministers and the High Command of the Home Army continued to reject the possibility of interaction with the Soviet command and the command of the Polish Army. On September 9, Bur-Komorowski decided to start negotiations on surrender with the Nazi general. These negotiations dragged on due to the fact that units of the 1st Belorussian Front went on the offensive with the forces of the 47th and 70th armies, in which the division named after T. Kosciuszko. On September 14, Prague was liberated.

On the night of September 13-14, Soviet aviation began to drop weapons, ammunition and food to the rebel units, and on September 18, 110 American "flying fortresses" appeared over Warsaw, but most of the cargo they dropped fell into the hands of the Nazis. The 1st Polish Army, trying to to provide direct assistance to the rebels, but on the orders of General Berling, on the night of September 15-16, she began crossing the Vistula. On September 19, an attempt was made to cross the 8th Infantry Regiment north of Cherpyakuv, but the Nazis, who used tanks, managed to defeat the Polish units, which suffered heavy losses.

By order of the commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, Marshal K. Rokossovsky, the operation was terminated.

During these battles, the main forces of the rebels, located in the center of Warsaw and on Zholibozh, remained passive, making no attempt to alleviate the situation of Cherpyakuv. The offer of the command of the Polish Army to assist in the evacuation of the rebels from Zoliborz to Prague was rejected. On October 2, the rebels signed an act of surrender.

The Warsaw Uprising, which lasted 63 days, was also a heroic page in the history of the liberation struggle of the Polish people. The fight against the Nazis on the barricades of Warsaw united all Polish patriots, regardless of their political views and belonging to various armed formations. The actions of the insurgents and the civilian population fettered the large forces of the Nazi troops and thus provided assistance to the Red Army. The German 9th Army, busy suppressing the uprising, lost about 26 thousand people killed, wounded and missing.

The political calculations of the government in exile and the leadership of the AK, who decided to revolt, failed - the "London camp" lost the fight against the PKNO and the Soviet Union. The authority of the government in exile in the eyes of the population was shaken.

The PKNO, which chose Lublin as its residence, relied only on the revolutionary-minded minority of the Polish people, and most of it, primarily the peasantry and intelligentsia, treated the government that arrived from the east and was not recognized by the Western allies with distrust and apprehension. This was facilitated by the anti-communist and anti-Soviet sentiments deeply rooted in the minds of the Poles, the prevailing image of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state. But the presence of 2.5 million Soviet soldiers and military commandant's offices on the territory of "Lublin Poland" made it possible to suppress the attempts of the underground administration of the "London camp" to seize power in the localities. The NKVD disarmed the AK detachments.

Another pillar of the PKNO was the Polish Army, whose strength by the end of 1944 was increased to 290 thousand people. Soviet General V. Korchits was appointed commander of the 1st Polish Army instead of Z. Berlng, who was sent to study at the Academy of the General Staff of the USSR. The Soviet Union sent an additional 12,000 officers to the Polish Army. Gradually, the process of creating security and police agencies, as well as the central and local apparatus, was going on.

In August 1944, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the PPR was formed, headed by V. Gomulka. All other posts in it were occupied by members of the CBPK who arrived from the USSR. The revived PPS cooperated with the PPR, the basis of which was a part of the RPPS, which interacted with the communists during the occupation.

September 1944 in Lublin, at the initiative of the "Will of the People" group, a congress of left-wing Radical People of the People met, which critically assessed the activities of S. Mikolajcznok and spoke in favor of supporting the PKNO. At the same time, many Ludovites expressed dissatisfaction with the leading role of the PPR and demanded that the composition of the PKNO reflect the role of the peasantry as the most numerous part of the Polish population with the right to govern the country. fourth political party the Democratic Party (Stronnitstvo demokratychne, SD) became the national front. At a meeting of a group of democratic leaders in Lublin on August 22, 1944, it was decided to resume the activities of the SD as a representative of a part of the intelligentsia, which, "not yet a supporter of socialism, is clearly aware that Poland can open a window to Europe only through broad reforms" . The SD also included small entrepreneurs, artisans, and merchants. There was a process of revival of the trade union movement associated with the PPR and the PPS, and youth organizations that were under the ideological influence of political parties.

After the liberation of the eastern part of Poland, contrary to the provisions of the PKPO Manifesto on the restoration of the rights of Polish owners, the process of practical nationalization of enterprises began. The factory committees, which played a big role in keeping the enterprise from being plundered by the Nazis or evacuated, took control of them and tried to prevent the former owners from being in control. By decision of the PKNO, enterprises that belonged to the Polish state, German capital or the Reich before the war, as well as collaborators, were subject to nationalization, while the rest either remained with the Polish owners, or - in their absence - passed under temporary state control. The credit and financial system practically ended up in the hands of the state, which made it impossible for the remaining small part of private banks to freely dispose of their capital. hectares of total area or 50 hectares of arable land were confiscated and transferred to the state fund to be divided among the peasants, and the maximum size of the newly created farm was set at 5 hectares. The peasants received allotments for a small fee, free from debts and any obligations. Part of the land was intended for the organization state farms. In reality, due to the lack of land, new allotments did not exceed 2-3 hectares. The middle peasants, who made up the bulk of the participants in the human movement, could not count on an increase in their allotments. The landless peasants, who did not receive the coveted 5 hectares, were also dissatisfied. The majority of the peasantry turned out to be aloof from the implementation of the reform and continued to take a wait-and-see attitude.

By the end of 1944, many industrial enterprises were launched, classes were resumed in schools, the University of Lublin was prepared for the opening, and newspapers began to be published.

The new government also had to overcome the resistance of underground structures. General. P. Okulitsky, who left Warsaw together with the civilian population, on October 4, 1944, headed the AK and set about creating a conspiratorial organization on its basis, the purpose of which was to fight no longer against the Nazis

occupiers, but against the administration of the PKNW and its policies. In response to this, on October 30, 1944, the PKNO issued a decree on the protection of the state, which provided for severe punishments for opponents of the new system, up to and including the death penalty.

In the international arena, the Mikołajczyk government tried by maneuver to obtain the consent of the Soviet Union to be recognized as the legitimate power in Poland. At the Soviet-British talks in Moscow on October 9-19, 1944, Mikolajczyk expressed his readiness to include three communists in his cabinet, rejecting the proposal of the PKNO to give emigre leaders 20-25% of the seats in a single government. Convinced that the support of the Western powers could not be counted on the issue of the border with the Soviet Union, Mikolajczyak, upon returning to London, offered to accept the "Curzon Line", but the cabinet rejected his position, and on November 24, 1944, he was forced to resign. The new cabinet, which did not include the Ludovites, was headed by T. Artsishevsky, a representative of the right wing of the PPS. The government sent instructions to General Okulitsky to intensify the fight against the PKNO.

PPR, assessing the situation in the country, proposed to the KRN to transform the PKPO into a Provisional Government. Osubka-Moravsky became the head of the Provisional Government, formed by the decree of the KRN on December 31, 1944, and V. Gomulka became the first vice-premier. Berut began to be called the president of the PKK. On January 4, 1945, the Soviet Union announced the recognition of the Provisional Government and the establishment of diplomatic relations with it.

On January 1945, units of the 1st Ukrainian Front went on the offensive, in which the 2nd Polish Army under the command of Soviet General S. Poplavsky also took part. Warsaw was liberated on January 17, and Krakow and Lodz on January 19. On this day, units of the 1st Ukrainian Front crossed the pre-war Polish-German border east of Wroclaw and, having liberated all of Silesia, crossed the Odra at the end of January. The 1st Polish Army took part as part of the 1st Belorussian Front in breaking through a powerful fortification line covering access to the Baltic coast, - Pomeranian (Pomeranian) shaft.

The troops of the 2nd Belorussian Front, which launched the East Pomeranian operation on February 10, 1945, captured the Gdansk-Gdynia fortified area. On March 30, Polish tankers hoisted a white and red Polish flag in Gdansk. In southern Poland, units of the 1st Ukrainian Front reached the line of Nysa Luzhitskaya. Thus, by the spring of 1945, not only the entire territory of Poland within its pre-war borders had been liberated, but those lands in the west, the return of which was announced in the PKNO Manifesto, were actually under its control.

Far from the borders of Poland, Polish troops fought, the basis of which was Anders's army that left the USSR. They took part in battles with German and Italian troops in Africa, then in Italy, where they covered themselves with glory in the battles near Monte Cassino in May 1944, in France and Holland. Their total number reached 200 thousand people. If we compare the entire composition of the troops deployed by the countries of the anti-fascist coalition, then according to their Poland was outnumbered only by the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain.

As the Polish lands were liberated, the international positions of the Provisional Government of Poland gradually strengthened. Back in December 1944, the head of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, General de Gaulle, during negotiations with Stalin, agreed to recognize the PKNO without breaking off relations with the Polish government in exile and to establish new borders of Poland in the east and west. On January 30, 1945, official recognition followed Polish Provisional Government from the emigrant government of Czechoslovakia.

At the Yalta Conference of the Heads of Government of the Three Great Powers (February 4-11, 1945), the "Polish question" occupied one of the central places. Churchill declared that Britain could not recognize the Provisional Government as it represented only a third of the Polish population, and proposed the creation of a new government that would replace both London and Lublin and would act as a provisional government until a permanent government was created by free elections. Roosevelt proposed the formation of a "presidential council" of Polish leaders, which would then form a five-party government. Western leaders hoped in this way to ensure leading positions in Poland behind the "London camp", although in a conversation with Mikolajczyk (January 11, 1945) A. Eden said that "obviously, in the near future we will be forced to recognize the provisional Lublin government and in view of this to refuse recognition of the Polish government in London".

Stalin assured his partners that the Provisional Government was popular among the Poles, because its leaders did not flee Poland, but fought underground, and the liberation of the country by the Red Army was accepted by the Polish population as a great national holiday, and as a result, attitudes towards Russia changed. He declared that the Provisional Government was ready to expand its composition by including emigration leaders who had not compromised themselves, but objected to giving the post of prime minister to Mikolajczyk.

In the end, the participants in the Yalta Conference adopted a compromise solution proposed by the United States and provided for the reorganization of the Provisional Government "on a broader democratic basis, including democratic leaders from Poland itself and Poles from abroad." To reach an agreement on the creation of a new government, called the Polish Government of National Unity, a "commission of three" was formed (Molotov, the US and British ambassadors in Moscow). The new government was entrusted with the duty to hold general elections as soon as possible, and the conference participants declared their readiness to recognize it.

The issue of Poland's eastern border did not cause much discussion - it was recognized that it should go along the "Curzon Line" with deviations from it by 5-8 km in favor of Poland. As for the western frontier, there was heated debate at the conference. Stalin proposed to install it along the Odra-Nysa Luzhitskaya (Western) line with the inclusion of Szczecin. Churchill, referring to the negative attitude of the British public opinion to the possibility of eviction from this territory of 6 million Germans and the difficulty of their development by the Poles, insisted on its limitation by the Odra-Nysa Vostochnaya line. Roosevelt considered the transfer of the border to Western Nysa "unjustifiable". After the issue of creating a Provisional Government of National Unity was decided, the conference participants accepted Roosevelt's compromise proposal: "Poland should receive a significant increase in territory in the north and west" and "on the issue of the size of these increments, the opinion of the new Polish government will be asked in due time national unity".

Questions for the intermediate test on the history of Poland In the know " recent history Western Slavs"

1.Formation of political camps in Polish society during World War I.

2.Domestic economic and political situation in the Polish lands at the beginning of the 20th century.

.Conditions and specific circumstances of the revival of an independent Polish state.

.The Polish Question at the Paris Peace Conference.

.Polish-Soviet relations in 1918 - 1920.

7.The Polish-Soviet War of 1920 and the establishment of the eastern borders of the Polish state.

.Problems in Upper Silesia and the establishment western borders Polish state.

9.The international position of the Polish state in the early 20s.

.Territory, population and economy of Poland in the first half of the 20s.

11.The first laws of the Polish Republic. (1918 - 1926).

12.Socio-political struggle in Poland in the 1st half of the 20s.

.The essence of the coup d'état in May 1926.

14.The main features of the "sanation" regime.

15.International position and foreign policy of the Polish state in the second half of the 20s.

.World economic crisis of the turn of the 20-30s and its features in Poland.

.Domestic political situation in Poland in the first half of the 1930s.

.Adoption of the Constitution of 1935 and its main features. (compared to the 1921 constitution)

.The foreign policy of Poland in the first half of the 30s.

.Internal political instability of Poland in last years sanitation mode.

.Foreign policy of Poland in 1935 - 1939

.The policy of the Polish state towards national minorities in the 20-30s.

.The struggle of national minorities for the preservation of their national identity.

.Documentary materials on the foreign policy and international position of Poland in the interwar period.

.Documentary materials about the revolutionary movement in bourgeois Poland in the 20-30s.

.Diplomatic actions on the Polish question in the summer and autumn of 1939.

27.Attack and occupation of Polish territories by Nazi Germany.

.Campaign of the Red Army on September 17 on the territory of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine.

29.Soviet-German relations 1939-1941.

30.Occupation regime in Poland.

.Formation of the government of Poland in exile.

32.The activities of the London government in exile.

33.Beginning of the resistance movement in Poland.

.Creation of AK and its activities.

.Formation of the radical left current in the Polish resistance movement.

.Assistance of the Soviet Union in the activation of the Polish resistance movement.

.Relations between the USSR and the Polish government in exile in London.

.Creation of the PPR and its activities during the years of occupation.

.Creation and activity of the Guard of Ludova.

.Polish military formations on the fronts of World War II.

.Participation of Poles in the European resistance movement.

.Creation of the Craiova Rada of the People and its activities.

.Rise of the resistance movement on the territory of Poland in 1943

.Polish Committee of National Liberation and its activities.

45.Warsaw uprising.

46.Liberation of Polish territory from Nazi invaders.

.The Polish question at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences.

Similar works to - The history of the restoration of the independence of the Polish state

POLAND

1. The revival of the state independence of Poland. Jozef Pilsudski.

After three partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795), it became part of Austria, Prussia and Russia. At the beginning of the twentieth century. its territory was part of respectively: Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia.

Leading Polish politicians associated the renewal of national independence with a pan-European war in which all three or at least one of these states would be defeated.

There was no single orientation among Polish politicians:

One of the leaders of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) Jozef Pilsudski took the side of the German-Austrian bloc;

Founder of the National Democratic Party (ND, or "endezia") Roman Dmovsky focused on Russia.

On November 5, 1916, Germany allowed the Act of Formation of the Polish State to be proclaimed and the Provisional State Council, a Polish deliberative body under Austrian rule, to be organized.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Russia (the Provisional Government) recognized the right of the Poles to their own state.

As a result, Piłsudski went over to the side of Dmowski and started a war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. He ended up in a Magdeburg prison.

On the night of November 6-7, 1918, when the Austrian troops left the eastern lands, in Lublin the PPS and other left-wing parties proclaimed the creation of the Provisional People's Government of the Polish Republic.

Piłsudski received from the head of the welcome ( ^ Ignacy Dashinsky ) power with emergency powers. He ruled with the help of socialist parties, but tried to be a national leader.

The parties were at odds.

Pilsudski's popularity grew. Prior to the convocation of the Constituent Seimas, Piłsudski, as the interim Head of State, concentrated all power in his hands.

At the end of January 1919, the Sejm was elected, which adopted a "small constitution":

All legislative power belongs to the Sejm;

The head of state and the government were accountable to the Sejm (Pilsudski received representative powers);

The President of the Republic was elected for 7 years and appointed the government.

The rights of the non-Polish population of the state were not taken into account.

During the formation of the Polish state, it was not possible to bypass the confrontation between the Poles and Ukrainians in Galicia.

The Ukrainian government moved to Ternopil, and in early January 1919 - to Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk).

In November-December 1918, 10 out of 59 counties (counties) of the ZUNR were controlled by Poland. By mid-June 1919, this control had extended to almost all of Eastern Galicia.

^ 2. "Polish question" at the Paris Peace Conference.

On Paris conference(January 18, 1919 -) both opponents and sympathizers of the formation of a strong Poland in the center of Europe gathered.

The Poles were most actively supported by France (J. Clemenceau).

England wanted to preserve the balance of power in Europe and was opposed to the creation of a strong Poland, moreover, an allied France.

In January 1919, R. Dmowski presented a draft of the Polish borders, which was based on the borders of the Commonwealth in 1772.

According to the project, it was planned to create a unitary Poland, which would mechanically include Western Ukraine and Western Belarus.

The discussion revolved around the question of the line of the Polish-German border.

As a result, Gdansk (Danzig) was proclaimed a Free City under the mandate of the League of Nations within the borders of the Polish customs borders. The Poles did not succeed here.

The conference separated from Germany in favor of Poland the region of Poznan and part of West Prussia, which opened the Poles access to the Baltic Sea.

The conference called for the ethnic Polish borders along the river to become the eastern borders of Poland. Bug.

The question of belonging to Eastern Galicia was not resolved.

On December 8, 1919, the Council of Ambassadors of the Entente adopted a declaration "On the temporary eastern border of Poland", but its line was determined only in 1920 at a conference in Spa and named after British Foreign Minister J. Curzon "Curzon Line".

^ 3. Polish-Bolshevik war of 1920-1921

On April 21, 1920, Pilsudski, wishing to create a federation with Ukraine, concluded an alliance against the Bolsheviks with S. Petliura: Petliura gave almost all of Right-Bank Ukraine to Poland.

On April 25, 1920, the Poles and Ukrainians launched an offensive against Ukraine. They defeated the Bolsheviks and on May 6 entered Kyiv.

The Bolsheviks hoped for the support of the Polish workers and peasants.

But the patriotic Polish people acted according to the slogan: "First Poland, and then we'll see what kind."

A "miracle on the Vistula" happened near Warsaw: on August 16, 1920, the Polish army abruptly launched a counteroffensive and drove the Bolsheviks back beyond Minsk.

Poland recognized the Ukrainian SSR and received Eastern Galicia.

^ 4. Mode of "sanation" (recovery).

At the end of the war, the confrontation between Pilsudski and the Sejm escalated.

According to the constitution adopted in March 1921, the powers of the future president were significantly limited: he did not have the right to supreme command even during the war.

Piłsudski did not put forward his candidacy in the presidential elections.

In December 1922, the National Assembly elected the country's first president Gabriel Nerutovich who was killed a week later.

Seimas elects new president Stanislav Voitsekhovsky .

Economic decline, unemployment, hostility of political parties.

Labor movement.

Until 1925, in 8 years, 13 governments changed in the country. They couldn't resolve the issues.

In 1926 Piłsudski defeated the government forces with the help of troops.

Society supported the coup.

The president and government resign.

The period has begun sanitation ».

Piłsudski, renouncing the presidency, became the sovereign ruler of the country. He did not pay attention to the Diet, blocking its work with tricks.

Economics of sanitation:

The economic situation was quite favorable in connection with the strikes of British miners: the export of Polish coal and other goods to Europe and even to Britain increased.

To strengthen the economy in Poland, economic regions were created;

Foreign capital was attracted (German and American);

Unemployment and inflation fell.

But at the peak of the crisis (1932) again a significant economic decline.

After the death of Piłsudski in 1935, Polish policy was determined by three figures from the “sanation” era: President I. Mos b Cicki, Minister of Foreign Affairs Jozef Back and Inspector General of the Armed Forces Reeds-Smigli.

Svyatoslav Knyazev

100 years ago, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, by its decree, canceled the international treaties of the Russian Empire with Prussia and Austria. In particular, the agreements concerning the sections of the Commonwealth were annulled. Thus, the Soviet government renounced any claims to the territory of Poland and recognized its independence. However, the Polish authorities tried to restore the once-existing empire by capturing the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus. Why the Bolsheviks "released" Poland and what consequences this decision led to - in the RT material.

• The Polish city of Lodz during the occupation by German troops during the First World War
• Gettyimages.ru

Relations between Russia and Poland have always been difficult. Already in the 10th century, border conflicts took place between the Old Russian and Old Polish states, and in the 11th century, Polish kings Boleslav I and Boleslav II the Bold made campaigns against Kyiv. After the establishment of the Mongol-Tatar yoke, the Poles in the XIV-XVI centuries first took possession of Galicia, and then - through the union with Lithuania - and the rest of the territory of the former southwestern Russian principalities.

From the second half of the 16th century, Poland, having united with Lithuania to form the Commonwealth, entered into direct military confrontation with the Russian state. Taking advantage of the Troubles, the Polish magnates at the beginning of the 17th century took part in the adventure of False Dmitry. In 1610, having played on the contradictions among the Russian nobility, the Poles occupied Moscow and entered the Kremlin, from where they were expelled by the people's militia in 1612.

The Poles were able to achieve some situational advantages during the Smolensk War of 1632-1634, but it did not bring them strategic success. After that, military luck finally turned away from the Poles. Due to severe religious, socio-economic and political oppression in the 17th century, a number of uprisings against Polish rule were raised by the population of the Dnieper region (the territory of modern Ukraine).

The heyday of Poland under the heel of Russia

The national liberation war that began in 1648 under the leadership of Bogdan Khmelnitsky was successful and allowed the Poles to be driven far to the west.

In 1654, the Zaporizhian Army transferred all the lands under its control to Russia. The new war that began after that secured the entire left bank of the Dnieper and Kyiv under the rule of Moscow. The totality of external and internal problems began to sharply weaken Poland.

• Berestets battle
• Wikimedia Commons

In 1772-1795, against the backdrop of attempts by the Polish gentry to unleash new conflicts with Moscow, three sections of the Commonwealth took place, the results of which, with minor adjustments, were recorded at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 (in historical literature it is sometimes called the fourth section). As a result of these processes, Russia lost most of the former lands of the southwestern principalities Old Russian state(except Galicia and adjacent Carpathian regions) and Eastern Poland together with Warsaw. The remaining territories of the Commonwealth were divided between Prussia and Austria.

If the lands of Southwestern Rus' (modern Western Ukraine and Belarus) were attached directly to the Russian Empire, then in Poland Alexander I formed a separate kingdom of Poland, connected with Russia only by a personal union and enjoying the widest rights and privileges.

It received its own authorities (government and parliament), constitution, army and monetary system. Russia created transport infrastructure in Poland and built industrial enterprises, opened educational and financial institutions. The population of Poland began to grow rapidly. However, despite all this, the Polish gentry dreamed of restoring the Commonwealth and raised one unsuccessful uprising after another. Due to the turbulent situation, the autonomous rights of Poland were gradually limited.

Polish Republic

During the First World War, one of the most important theaters of military operations unfolded on the territory of Poland and its adjacent lands. About 2 million Poles were mobilized into the warring armies.

“In Russia, the issue of expanding Polish autonomy and creating a federal association of Slavic peoples under the Russian scepter was lively discussed. An appeal to the Poles, which dealt with granting them self-government, was made in 1914 by the Russian commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich, ”the doctor said in an interview with RT historical sciences Vasily Tsvetkov, professor at Moscow State Pedagogical University.

• German cavalry enters Warsaw on August 5, 1915
• Bundesarchiv

In 1915, the lands of the Kingdom of Poland were completely occupied by Germany. The Germans established a regime of military dictatorship in Poland, exported material values ​​and qualified specialists from it. In November 1916, Austria-Hungary and Germany agreed to create a puppet kingdom of Poland in the territories occupied by their troops. After the February Revolution in Russia, the Provisional Government issued an appeal to the Poles, which promised them independence, subject to the conclusion of a military alliance and the drawing of political borders along ethnic lines. In the summer of 1917, the Polish National Committee began to operate in Switzerland and France.

On August 29, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR issued a decree on the rejection of the agreements concluded by the Russian Empire with Austria and Prussia, including those relating to the partitions of Poland, as contrary to the "principle of self-determination of nations and the revolutionary legal consciousness of the Russian people." On October 6, 1918, an independent state was proclaimed by the Regency Council of Poland.

Historians have different views on the reasons for issuing the decree of the Council of People's Commissars, as well as on what role he played in the formation of Polish statehood.

“Firstly, the principle of self-determination of nations was initially enshrined in the program of the Bolsheviks - and Poland was no exception. Secondly, de facto German troops had been in the territory of Poland by this time for a long time. The Soviet government, in fact, signed that Poland was no longer theirs, ”said Vadim Volobuev, a senior researcher at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in a conversation with RT.

According to the expert, the leading role in the formation of Polish statehood was played not by the decree, but by other factors. “Much more than the decree of the Council of People's Commissars, the situation was influenced by the events of the First World War, the presence of strong separatist aspirations among the Poles, and then the Treaty of Versailles,” he stressed.

In turn, Vasily Tsvetkov believes that the decree of the Council of People's Commissars played a significant role in history. “The Bolsheviks thus demonstrated the lack of continuity in relation to the tsarist authorities, they emphasized their democracy. This gesture of goodwill on their part still benefited Poland. He showed the Poles and the international community that Russia has no claims against Poland. True, for Warsaw, this became a kind of carte blanche to start promoting the ideas of restoring the Commonwealth, which would include Ukraine and Belarus. The Bolsheviks clearly did not count on such a development of events, ”the expert said.

Curzon Line

In November 1918, the Regency Council of Poland appointed Jozef Piłsudski as chief of state. He quickly consolidated his power and included in the national army combat detachments of the Poles from the so-called Committee for the Protection of the Eastern Outskirts, which operated on the territory of Lithuania and Belarus. Pilsudski did not even hide that he pursued the goal of restoring the Commonwealth from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

• Pilsudski and Rydz-Smigly
• Wikimedia Commons

On December 19, 1918, he ordered the Polish army to take Vilna. On January 6, 1919, the first clash between the Polish troops and the soldiers of the Red Army took place. Representatives of the Soviets tried to start negotiations with Warsaw regarding the establishment of the state border, but Piłsudski evaded them. Instead, he gave orders for the occupation of new territories in Ukraine and Belarus.

On December 8, 1919, the Supreme Council of the Entente issued recommendations on the optimal Polish border, which were enshrined in a note by the British Foreign Secretary, Lord George Nathaniel Curzon.

The Curzon line was drawn on the basis of which population prevailed in a particular territory. Poland was asked to take the lands on which the Poles lived predominantly, and to renounce claims to the territories with Ukrainian and Belarusian populations. Piłsudski initially ignored this idea. However, in 1920, a large-scale Soviet counteroffensive began - and official Warsaw, fearing the loss of statehood, accepted the proposals of the Entente.

“If Poland itself had not launched aggression and had not moved to Minsk, Moscow would have clearly not unleashed a war. The Bolsheviks wanted to see Soviet Poland, but the maximum they were going to do was to exert a beneficial influence, helping local communists to gain a foothold in Poland itself. The idea to bring an alternative Soviet government to Warsaw was born already in the course of hostilities,” Tsvetkov said.

However, as soon as military luck near Warsaw again smiled at the Poles, they again forgot about their obligations and forced the Bolsheviks to sign the Riga Peace Treaty, drawing the border much east of the promised one: Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were ceded to Poland.

• Prisoners of war on the march to the Rembertów camp
• Wikimedia Commons

During and after the end of the war, tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war died in Polish camps (according to various estimates, from 20 to 90 thousand people). In Poland, the cause of their death is called infectious diseases, but many historians tend to believe that some of the prisoners were shot, and the rest died because of the unbearable conditions created in the camps.

Relations between Poland and the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s were cool. The rapprochement of Poland with Nazi Germany, which began in 1933, as well as its participation in the division of Czechoslovakia following the results, also affected them not in the best way. Munich agreement 1938 along with the Third Reich. However, less than a year later, Adolf Hitler began to blackmail his Polish partners, putting forward unacceptable demands, such as the renunciation of sovereignty over part of his territory.

On September 1, 1939, German troops attacked Poland, which proved unable to resist the Wehrmacht. When the war had already been practically lost by official Warsaw and Poland had de facto lost its statehood, the Soviet Union sent its troops into the territory of Western Ukraine and Belarus.

British officials, mindful of their mediation in 1920, refused to condemn Moscow's actions. Winston Churchill, who at that time was the first Lord of the Admiralty, supported the Soviet Union in his speech on the radio on October 1, 1939. And although his statement did not cool the ardor of the German command, it confirmed the allied positions of Great Britain and the USSR before the start of World War II.

“The fact that the Russian armies had to stand on this line was absolutely necessary for the security of Russia against the Nazi threat. Be that as it may, this line exists, and the Eastern Front has been created, which Nazi Germany will not dare to attack. When Mr. Ribbentrop was summoned to Moscow last week, he had to learn and accept the fact that the implementation of Nazi plans in relation to the Baltic countries and Ukraine must be finally stopped, ”said Churchill.

During the World War, Germany and Austria-Hungary occupied the Kingdom (Tsardom) of Poland, which had been part of the Russian Empire since 1815. Before the arrival of the Austro-German troops, about 2 million inhabitants of the Kingdom of Poland, partly under pressure from the tsarist administration, partly on their own initiative, evacuated deep into Russia. Many of these Polish refugees took part in the struggle of the workers and peasants of multinational Russia for the victory and establishment of Soviet power. The organizations of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKP and L), as well as the Polish Socialist Leftist Party (PPS-leftist) played an important role in rallying the Polish revolutionary forces on the territory of Russia. The outstanding figures of these parties - F. Dzerzhinsky, Yu. Markhlevsky, Yu. Unshlikht, Yu. Leshchinsky (Lensky), F. Kohn and others selflessly served the cause of the proletarian revolution.

Right after October revolution The main board of the SDKP and L, which was in an illegal position in Warsaw, appealed to the Polish workers. It said: “Workers, workers! Unheard-of, amazing news comes to us from Russia! The working class has won in Petersburg! The bourgeois government has been swept away, the dictatorship of the proletariat has become a fact! Polish workers, we have a bloody struggle ahead of us, perhaps even a long one. But we know one thing: a clear and great goal shines for us ... Down with the war! Down with capitalism! Long live the social revolution!”

The working people of all parts of Poland - like former Kingdom The Polish and Polish lands, which were under the rule of Austria-Hungary and Germany, were deeply sympathetic to the activities of the Soviet government, especially to its struggle for a democratic peace. During the peace talks that took place in Brest-Litovsk, the question of Poland took one of the central places. The Soviet delegation sought to give the Polish people the right to freely decide the question of their fate. Representatives of the Polish revolutionary social democracy, attracted by the delegation of Soviet Russia to participate in the conference, announced a declaration, which, on behalf of the working people of the Kingdom of Poland, Galicia, Poznan, Silesia, demanded the abolition of national oppression, the removal of partitions between the three parts of Poland and the provision of the Polish people with the opportunity to freely arrange life of their country.

The position of the working masses of Poland was extremely difficult. Famine reigned in the country. As a result of various requisitions, requisition of horses and working cattle, a significant part of the small and middle peasantry was ruined. Industrial production has been steadily declining. Coal mining in the Dombrowski basin was 40% of the pre-war level. 800 thousand workers were deported to forced labor in Germany.

By mid-January 1918, when general strikes broke out in Austria-Hungary and Germany, the strike wave also swept through the Polish lands. Large demonstrations and strikes, the participants of which demanded bread, an end to the war and the creation of an independent Polish state, took place in Krakow, Przemysl, Nowy Sącz, Auschwitz, Warsaw, the Dąbrowskie basin, and Kielce. In Warsaw, during the strike, a Council of Deputies of Communal Workers was formed, which testified to the strength of the influence of the great ideas of October; Polish workers came to the idea of ​​the need to create new class organizations, which, both in name and in the essence of their tasks, would be something more than ordinary strike committees. After the invaders concluded an agreement with the counter-revolutionary Ukrainian Central Rada (February 9, 1918) and handed over the Chelm region to it, mass political demonstrations against the German and Austro-Hungarian imperialists took place in Lodz, Sosnowiec, Radom, Czestochowa, Lublin and other cities of Poland. The indignation was so great that even the Regency Council, a puppet body created by the invaders in the Kingdom of Poland, considered it necessary to condemn the actions of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

In the spring of 1918, tens of thousands of refugees began to return to Poland from Russia. They brought with them news of the struggle of the workers and peasants for socialism, of the participation of Polish workers and soldiers in the Russian revolution. Among the Polish working people, the idea of ​​creating Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies was gaining more and more recognition. However, the revolutionary parties - SDKP and L and the PPS-leftist - enjoyed at that time much less influence among the working people than the compromising, nationalist parties - the Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Silesia and the Polish Socialist Party - "revolutionary faction" (PPS-faction). The reason for this was, in particular, that the working class of Poland during the war years was replenished at the expense of the petty-bourgeois elements of the city and the ruined peasants, and a significant part of the cadre proletariat ended up in Russia or Germany.

Both conciliatory parties spoke in favor of convening a Constituent Sejm, designed to resolve issues of the state structure of Poland, as well as to engage in agrarian and other reforms, establish an 8-hour working day, and nationalize certain industries. At the same time, these parties put forward a plan for a “union” between the future Polish state and Lithuania, of which they considered Belarus an integral part. The plan for such a "union" reflected the great-power aspirations of the Polish ruling classes and had nothing in common with the genuine interests of the Polish, Lithuanian, and Belarusian peoples.

The Compromisers forced cooperation with the bourgeoisie on the working people, arguing that the social demands of the workers and peasants would be automatically satisfied after the formation of an independent Polish state. At the same time, the anti-capitalist nature of some slogans, speeches in favor of peace, and promises of major reforms helped to increase the popularity of these parties.

The revolutionary parties SDKP and L and the PPS-Left, whose positions were becoming closer and closer, had not yet worked out correct tactics and were unable to lead the revolutionary upsurge of the working people. Considering that in the very near future a pan-European socialist revolution would take place and that its victory would solve all the social and national problems of Poland, they underestimated the slogans of national liberation and democratic reforms that were close and understandable to the masses.

The active struggle of the Polish people for their national independence unfolded in the autumn of 1918 under the direct influence of the ideas of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Leninist national policy of the Soviet government.

From the first days of its existence, the Soviet government consistently upheld the right of nations to self-determination. Concretizing the provisions of the Decree on Peace and the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, continuing the line proclaimed during the Brest negotiations, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR adopted on August 29, 1918 a decree on the rejection of a number of treaties by the government of the former Russian Empire, in Article 3 of which it was said: " All treaties and acts concluded by the government of the former Russian Empire with the governments of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire concerning the partitions of Poland, in view of their contradiction with the principle of self-determination of nations and the revolutionary legal consciousness of the Russian people, which recognized the Polish people's inalienable right to independence and unity, are canceled hereby. irrevocably."

Confirmed by the signature of V. I. Lenin, this decree of the Soviet government created a solid legal and political foundation for the independence of Poland.

In September-October 1918, in some parts of the country, power was already slipping from the hands of the Austro-Hungarian and German occupiers. On October 1, the strike of the miners of the Dąbrowa Basin began. The revolutions in Austria-Hungary and Germany had a great influence on the development of the national liberation movement in Poland. In mid-October, when the collapse of Austria-Hungary began, the occupation regimes in Poland were already on the verge of collapse. In the southwestern regions, various Polish organizations began to disarm the Austro-Hungarian troops.

Polish landlords and capitalists began to make efforts to prevent the establishment of people's power. The Regency Council, with the help of the occupiers, launched a feverish activity aimed at creating its own apparatus of power. On the other hand, the Polish National Committee established in Paris in August 1917, which represented the interests of those Polish bourgeois-landlord circles that were oriented towards the victory of the Entente, developed a wide activity. The predominant influence in it was enjoyed by the main party of the Polish bourgeoisie - the "national democrats" (endeks) and their leader R. Dmowski. The governments of France, England, Italy, the United States recognized the Polish National Committee as an "official Polish organization".

Demonstrating complete disregard for the national interests of the Polish people, the victorious powers ordered Germany, in accordance with the terms of the Armistice of Compiègne, to withdraw troops to the line of the eastern border that existed at the beginning of the war, and the withdrawal was to follow when the victors demanded it. However, as a result of the national liberation struggle of the Polish people, after the Austro-Hungarian and German occupation power collapsed in a large territory of Poland. The overwhelming majority of Polish lands freed themselves from the foreign yoke.

So the October Revolution, having put an end to the Russian landlords and capitalists, undermining the power of other oppressors of Poland - the German and Austro-Hungarian invaders, by the power of its revolutionary influence, increased the revolutionary energy of the Polish people and confirmed the vitality of V. I. Lenin's provisions that the Polish question could be permitted only in connection with and on the basis of the proletarian revolution in Russia, and that “the freedom of Poland is impossible without the freedom of Russia” ( V. I. Lenin, Several remarks on P. Maslov's "Answer", Soch., vol. 15, p. 241.).

Struggle between revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces

From the beginning of November 1918, Soviets of Workers' Deputies began to emerge in Poland, and in some places, Soviets of Peasants' and Farmers' Deputies. The Lublin Soviet of Workers' Deputies was the first to begin its activities (November 5), followed by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies in Dąbrowo, and on November 11 the Soviet was formed in Warsaw. Within a short time Soviets were formed in Radom, Lodz, Częstochowa and other centers. In total, up to 120 Soviets arose in the country. In addition, various other bodies operated in a number of localities, which, although they were not called Soviets, actually represented the interests of the working class and the working peasantry. So, in Tarnobrzhegsky, Pinchuvsky and some other povets (districts), district committees and local "republics" were formed. Tomasz Dombal, later a prominent figure in the Communist Party, played a major role in organizing the peasant movement in the Tarnobrzeg powiat. Great work on the organization of the Warsaw Soviet was carried out by the participants of the October Revolution in Russia - members of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania - Franciszek Grzhelytsak and Stanislav Budzinsky, member of the PPS-leftist Stefan Krulikovsky and others. Lodz - Vladislav Gibner, in Tsekhanov - Marceli Novotko; Bolesław Bierut took an active part in the work of the Council in Lublin. The Soviets of Workers' Deputies demanded the establishment of an 8-hour working day, higher wages, assistance to the unemployed, etc.

As in the entire Polish labor movement, the Compromisers prevailed in the Soviets, with the exception of the Dąbrowski Basin Soviets. They strove to limit the activities of the Soviets to only certain economic issues and regarded them as an appendage to the bodies of bourgeois power that were emerging. The revolutionary minority in the Soviets was unable to isolate and expose the conciliatory elements.

On December 16, 1918, at a congress in Warsaw, the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKP and L) and the Polish Socialist Party-Left (PPS-Left) united into a single communist party, which adopted the name of the Communist Workers' Party of Poland (since 1925 .- Communist Party of Poland). Its leadership was headed by Adolf Varshavsky (Barsky), Maria Kossuthskaya (Vera Kostsheva), Maximilian Gorwitz (Waletsky) and other prominent figures of the former two revolutionary parties.

Organizationally, the Communist Party of Poland was not strong then. In addition, many of its members shared the erroneous Luxembourgian views on national and peasant questions. Nevertheless, the formation of the Communist Party was an outstanding achievement for the Polish proletariat. The young party waged a bold struggle in the name of the interests of the workers and peasants. The manifesto of the first party congress said: "Let the solid force of the working class, marching hand in hand with socialist Russia and the revolutionary proletariat of all countries, rise against the bourgeois classes united in the international imperialist counter-revolution." The congress expressed feelings of "brotherhood and solidarity between the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the government of the Republic of Soviets, the pioneers of the world socialist revolution."

Meanwhile, on November 7, 1918, a "people's government" was formed in Lublin, headed by the leader of the Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Silesia, I. Daszynski. The "people's government" included the right-wing socialists E. Morachevsky, T. Artsishevsky, the leaders of one of the peasant (so-called people's) organizations - the Vyzvolene party - Art. Tugutt, Yu. Poniatowski and others. The Lublin government proclaimed Poland people's republic, declared civil liberties, an 8-hour working day, and also promised to submit a proposal for the consideration of the future Sejm on the alienation of large and medium-sized landed property and its transfer into the hands of the people, on the nationalization of a number of industries, etc. This program attracted the Lublin the government of the sympathy of many workers and peasants, who naively believed that it really wants and can fulfill their aspirations.

The Lublin government turned out to be short-lived: the German invaders brought Pilsudski to Warsaw, and on November 14 the Regency Council transferred full power to him.

An ardent nationalist, Jozef Piłsudski was closely associated with the right-wing socialists. In petty-bourgeois circles, he was known as an enemy of tsarism, but in fact he was a chauvinist who identified the Russian people with tsarism and tried to kindle enmity between Polish and Russian working people, to prevent the expansion of the Polish-Russian revolutionary alliance. From the beginning of the war, Pilsudski commanded volunteer detachments - the Polish legions, who fought on the side of Austria-Hungary and Germany. Convinced that his patrons would be defeated, he came into conflict with them. The German authorities arrested Pilsudski in 1917 and kept him in Germany until the very end of the war. His supporters tried to use this fact to present Piłsudski as an irreconcilable enemy of both tsarism and Kaiser Germany, an enemy of all the oppressors of Poland. In November 1918, the German invaders, taking into account the gullible attitude towards Pilsudski of quite a wide circle of people who did not realize the real role of this reactionary politician, the enemy of the revolution and socialism, decided to use Pilsudski's authority to fight against the Polish revolutionary movement. Part of the Polish landowners and capitalists also pinned well-founded hopes on Piłsudski.

With the support of the leaders of the conciliatory and human parties, as well as foreign imperialists, Piłsudski was proclaimed "head of state". The Lublin "people's government", as well as another "government" formed in Krakow - the Liquidation Commission - recognized Pilsudski's authority. On November 18, on behalf of Piłsudski, an all-Polish government headed by Moraczewski was formed, which called itself "workers' and peasants'." It sanctioned the introduction of some secondary social measures (insurance in case of illness, etc.) and declared the convocation of the Constituent Diet to be its main task.

Right-wing socialists and Ludovians did their best to restrain the revolutionary activity of the broad masses of the people, spreading the illusion that Poland under Piłsudski's leadership would become a country of freedom and justice. This policy encouraged the supporters of open counter-revolution, who launched a fierce struggle against the revolutionary elements. Communist Party organizations and individual communists were persecuted; the disarmament of the Red Guard, created in the Dombrowski basin, was carried out, a number of Soviets were crushed, and revolutionary uprisings in Zamosc and other places were suppressed. The "workers' and peasants'" government supported the policy of seizing Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian lands, which various counter-revolutionary organizations began to implement. At the same time, it did nothing to help the uprising that broke out at the end of December in the Poznan region, which remained under German rule; nevertheless, the uprising won, and Poznanytsyna was reunited with the rest of Poland.

The Warsaw government hid from the people the proposals of the Soviet government to establish normal relations. On January 2, 1919, members of the Soviet mission of the Red Cross, headed by an outstanding figure in the Polish and Russian revolutionary movement B. Vesolovsky, were killed by Polish gendarmes.

Thus, right-wing socialists, striking at the revolutionary movement, themselves cleared the way for the bourgeois parties that were striving for power. The largest of them, the Endek party, already at the beginning of January 1919, attempted a coup d'état. This attempt ended in failure, but after that, under pressure from Britain, France and the United States, Morachevski's "workers' and peasants'" government resigned. The leaders of the Polish Socialist Party, which soon united the Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Silesia and the PPS-“fraction”, went into opposition, yielding state power to the bloc of endeks and Pilsudski’s supporters. On January 19, 1919, a new government was formed headed by I. Paderewski, an active figure in the Polish National Committee, who was closely associated with the American ruling circles. Pilsudski remained at the post of head of state.

A week later, on January 26, under a state of siege, elections to the Constituent Diet were held. The first place in the Sejm in terms of the number of mandates was taken by the Endeks, and the kulak Piast party came second.

The Constituent Diet began its work on February 10, 1919. After its opening, a number of major strikes took place. The revolutionary elements in the surviving Soviets attempted to hold a Congress of Soviets, but this was prevented by right-wing socialists. In the summer of 1919 the last Soviets were dispersed.

The peasant movement, which had intensified in the spring of 1919, soon began to decline as a result of the adoption by the Constituent Seimas on July 10, 1919 of a law on the limitation of large land holdings. This law passed in the Sejm by a majority of just one vote. The law established the maximum land holdings - different for different parts of the country, but did not provide for either methods for alienating surplus land, or the procedure for its distribution among the peasants.

The coming to power of the bourgeois government, the creation of an anti-people army, the defeat of the revolutionary forces of the working class led to the strengthening of the rule of the landlords and capitalists in the young Polish state. This became possible due to the wide dissemination of nationalist views, the weakness of the proletariat, the absence of a strong union of workers and peasants, and, to a large extent, as a result of the anti-revolutionary, reformist, splitting activities of the leaders of the conciliatory parties and the people's movement, as well as the extensive assistance to the Polish exploiting classes from foreign imperialists. .

Poland and the Paris Peace Conference

The "Polish Question" figured prominently at the Paris Peace Conference. Its leaders sought to support the Polish landlords and capitalists in their struggle against the revolutionary movement and to create conditions for turning Poland into a springboard for anti-Soviet intervention. Relying on this support, bourgeois-landlord Poland seized Kovel and Brest in February 1919, Baranovichi, Lida and Vilnius in April, Minsk and all of Belarus in August. Polish troops arrived from France (the so-called Haller's army) captured Western Ukraine in July.

At the same time, the ruling circles of Poland did not provide any assistance to the liberation uprisings in Silesia and agreed to leave to Germany most of the western Polish lands, previously captured by Prussia. The largest Polish port of Gdansk (Danzig) was not returned to Poland. She received only a narrow, 70-kilometer semi-desert section of the sea coast with the so-called corridor, on both sides of which German possessions were preserved. In some Polish lands, a plebiscite was to be held on the question of their statehood. The plebiscite carried out in 1920 under the terror of the German nationalists in the districts of Allenstein (the southern part of East Prussia) and Marienwerder (its southwestern part) led to unfavorable results for Poland: these districts were left to Germany.

In general, the Polish-German border, established by the victorious powers contrary to the national interests of the Polish people, gave economic, political and strategic benefits to Germany. Despite this, on June 28, 1919, the representatives of Poland, Paderewski and Dmowski, signed the Treaty of Versailles. By betraying the national interests of the country, the ruling classes of Poland expected to compensate themselves with new seizures of Soviet lands, the enslavement of the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian peoples.

By the autumn of 1919, the strength of the Polish army reached 600 thousand people. A mixed Anglo-French military mission, numbering almost 3 thousand people, led the combat training of the Polish troops. From Western countries weapons and uniforms arrived; the cost of US supplies alone reached $1.7 billion. The maintenance of a huge army was a heavy burden on the undermined economy of the country.

In 1919-1920. Poland experienced an acute economic crisis. By the spring of 1920, the monthly production of pig iron was only 10.2% compared to the level of 1913, steel - 11.6%, iron - 10.2%. External debt steadily increased, the value of the Polish mark fell, and unemployment increased. Dissatisfaction with the policy of terror, speculation, and robbery of the working masses grew in the country. There was no unity among the various groups of the ruling classes on questions of domestic and foreign policy. One of the main groupings, led by Pilsudski, sought to pursue an extremely adventurous course. By seizing new Soviet territories and strengthening the oppression of the already occupied Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian lands, she hoped to strengthen the power of the landowners and capitalists, and alleviate the internal contradictions that were tearing Poland apart. This grouping covered up its aggressive policy with promises to grant autonomy to the conquered peoples, to turn Poland into a federal state after it took possession of Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine. Another political group, in which the Endeks played the largest role, rejected proposals for the transformation of Poland on a federal basis and, although they approved of further seizures in the East, still considered the adventuristic plans of the Pilsudchiks to expand Polish borders to the Black Sea dangerous.

The Soviet government, which did everything possible to ensure the freedom and independence of Poland, from the first days of the restoration of the Polish state tried to establish normal, good neighborly relations with it. However, the Polish government refused to accept the Soviet diplomatic representative and left unanswered the repeated proposals of the Soviet government to establish peaceful relations.

After the failure of the anti-Soviet intervention of the Entente in 1919 and the defeat of Kolchak and Denikin by the Red Army, the Western imperialists decided to make a new attempt to crush the Soviet power - this time by the forces of bourgeois-landlord Poland and the counter-revolutionary General Wrangel. Going towards these plans, the Polish rulers expected to expand the borders of Poland "from sea to sea" - from the Baltic to the Black. This adventure was fraught with great danger for Poland itself, especially since the country's internal political and economic situation was steadily deteriorating.

On April 25, 1920, Polish troops resumed hostilities against the Soviet state; On May 6, they managed to capture Kiev. But soon the Red Army, having pulled up its reserves, launched a counteroffensive and on June 5 broke through the Polish front line. Despite the stubborn opposition of the Polish troops, the Red Army advanced rapidly.

In connection with the defeat of the Polish army, the situation in Poland escalated, a government crisis arose. On June 23, a government came to power headed by one of the figures close to the endeks - V. Grabsky. It hastily turned to the leaders of the main imperialist powers, who had gathered for a conference in the Belgian city of Spa, with a request for help. On behalf of the conference, the British Foreign Minister Curzon sent a note to the Soviet government, in which he demanded to stop the offensive of the Red Army on the line accepted as the temporary eastern border of Poland by the Supreme Council of the Entente. In general, this line (from the summer of 1920 it was called the "Curzon Line") corresponded to the ethnographic border of Poland and could serve as the basis for establishing the Soviet-Polish state border. But in putting forward their ultimatum demand, the imperialists did not strive for peace, but only to give respite to bourgeois-landlord Poland and buy time to prepare for new aggression. This, for example, was evidenced by the increase in military supplies to pan Poland observed just in these days.

On July 24, Grabsky's cabinet gave way to the government of the "national coalition" headed by the leaders of the Piast kulak party W. Witos and the Polish Socialist Party I. Daszynski. In order to attract the sympathy of the peasantry, the new government passed through the Sejm "executive rules" to the law of 1919 on limiting the size of land holdings. At the same time, fierce nationalist propaganda unfolded in the country. The ruling classes tried to convince the people that the offensive of the Red Army allegedly threatened the existence of the Polish state, and thereby mask the aggressive and anti-national character of their policy.

In reality, the Red Army, entering the lands of the fraternal Polish people, brought help and liberation to the working people of Poland. “Remember firmly, comrades, that we are fighting against the Polish bloodsuckers, and not against the Polish working people,” one of the orders to the Red Army troops operating on the Polish front stated. “Remember that by destroying these bloodsuckers, we are saving ourselves from oppression and we bring freedom to all the working people of Poland.”

On July 29, units of the Red Army liberated from the White Poles a large industrial center - the city of Bialystok, on July 30 the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Poland (Polrevkom) was formed here, the first government of workers and working peasants in the history of Poland. The Polrevkom included Yu. Markhlevsky (chairman), F. Dzerzhinsky, F. Kohn, E. Prukhnyak, Yu. Unshlikht. The Polrevkom adopted a Manifesto to the Polish working people, containing a program for the construction of socialist Poland.

On the Polish lands liberated by the Red Army from landowner-bourgeois domination, Revolutionary Committees arose. Under the leadership of the Polrevkom, they launched energetic work to establish a normal life, restore industry and transport, reorganize school affairs, etc. The Polrevkom began to create the Polish Red Army.

The multilateral activity of the Polrevkom was not without mistakes, the largest of which was the decision, contrary to Dzerzhinsky’s position, to transfer most of the landowner estates to committees of agricultural workers for the organization of large state farms, instead of dividing the landowners’ lands between farm laborers and small-land peasants. The power of the Polrevkom extended over a small territory. His activity was short-lived: it stopped already in mid-August, after the Red Army failed on the outskirts of Warsaw and began to retreat along the entire front.

Having achieved some success at the front with the support of the Western imperialist powers, the Polish government, however, no longer had the strength to continue the anti-Soviet war and was forced to enter into peace negotiations with the Soviet government. These negotiations, which took place first in Minsk and then in Riga, ended with the signing of the Riga Peace Treaty on March 18, 1921, which fixed the new eastern border of the Polish state.

The ruling circles of Poland had to come to terms with the collapse of their plans to seize the entire Right-Bank Ukraine and abandon the encroachment on a number of territories that they owned before the attack on the Soviet state in April 1920. But Western Ukraine and Western Belarus still remained under the rule of Polish landlords and capitalists. In addition, by attacking Lithuania, Poland seized part of its lands along with the capital Vilnius.

Constitution of 1921 Plebiscite in Upper Silesia

Bourgeois-landlord Poland took shape as a multinational state, which gave rise to deep internal contradictions and was fraught with serious complications in the future. Of the entire territory of the country, 388 thousand square meters. km, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian lands accounted for about 180 thousand square meters. km, and out of a total population of 27 million people, almost a third were Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Jews, etc.

The national question, which had become one of the main contradictions tearing apart the Polish state, was closely connected with the agrarian question. According to the 1921 census, there were 3,261,000 farms in the country (excluding Upper Silesia and Vilensk region), of which 34% of farms had up to 2 hectares of land each and 30.7% - from 2 to 5 hectares; these poor households, which accounted for 64.7% of all households, owned a total of only 14.8% of the privately owned land area. Medium-sized farms ranging in size from 5 to 10 hectares each accounted for 22.5% of all farms and owned 17% of privately owned land. The share of landlord and kulak farms, the total number of which barely reached 13% of all farms, accounted for more than two-thirds of privately owned land. At the same time, an insignificant handful - 18 thousand largest landowners, or 0.6% of land owners, owned 44.8% of the privately owned land area. The Catholic Church and the state also had large land holdings.

The landlords and kulaks mercilessly exploited the working peasantry, especially agricultural workers, whose number exceeded 17% of the total number of people employed in agriculture. Feudal vestiges were strong in large-scale landownership - easements, in-kind forms of payment for the labor of agricultural workers, bonded labor for loans and rent of land; they prevailed in the Western Ukrainian and Western Belarusian lands, where the largest latifundia were located, as well as in the south of the country.

The labor issue was also extremely acute. There were about a million industrial workers in Poland. The most numerous detachment of the proletariat were textile workers - about 200 thousand people, then workers in the mining, metalworking, and food industries followed in terms of numbers; more than 100,000 workers were employed in each of these industries. Almost half of the cadre proletariat suffered from chronic unemployment.

The standard of living of the Polish proletariat was lower than in most of the capitalist countries of Europe. In Łódź, Warsaw, and the Dąbrowski Basin, workers were in dire need of housing. There were no basic sanitary conditions. The social gains of the working class, which it achieved during the period of the revolutionary upsurge of 1918-1919, were gradually narrowed down and liquidated.

One of the main tasks of the ruling classes in Poland was the stabilization of state power. Therefore, the ruling circles attached great importance to the work of the Constituent Seim, which was called upon to approve the constitution of the new state. Given that the country was in a state of deep economic and political crisis, and the power of the landowners and capitalists was shaken as a result of their adventurist policies, most of the Sejm factions were inclined to give some democratic features to the drafted constitution.

On March 17, 1921, after a sharp political struggle, the Sejm adopted a constitution that established a republican system in Poland. The constitution proclaimed that the supreme power belongs to the people and should be exercised through the Sejm and the Senate, elected on the basis of universal, equal, direct, secret and proportional suffrage. The functions of executive power were assigned to the President of the Republic and the Cabinet of Ministers. The Polish language was recognized as the state language, and Roman Catholic was the dominant religion. It was planned to conclude a concordat with the Vatican (the signing of the concordat took place in February 1925) and compulsory religious education in schools and the army. In addition to the civil “rights” and “freedoms” common in bourgeois-democratic constitutions, the constitution contained articles on social insurance, labor protection, protection of motherhood and infancy, and the allocation of land to peasants. But the various rights and freedoms proclaimed by the constitution were virtually not guaranteed.

Almost simultaneously with the adoption of the constitution in March 1921, a plebiscite took place in Upper Silesia, provided for by the Treaty of Versailles. It was held under strong pressure from the German authorities and the Catholic clergy, acting on the instructions of the Vatican in favor of Germany. The negative attitude of the population towards the adventurist, militaristic policy of the ruling circles of Poland also affected the results of the plebiscite. As a result, about 60% of the participants in the plebiscite voted in favor of leaving Upper Silesia as part of Germany. However, the population of a number of regions strongly demanded reunification with Poland. When representatives of the Entente prevented the implementation of the will of the population of these regions, in May 1921 a new national liberation uprising began in Upper Silesia. Not receiving support from the Polish government, it failed. Nevertheless, the powers of the Entente had to agree in October 1921 to the transfer of about a third of the territory of Upper Silesia to Poland.

Communist Party of Poland in 1921-1922

Despite the atmosphere of terror and police persecution, the Communist Party of Poland grew and strengthened. In February 1921, the party conference reviewed the attitude of the party towards bourgeois parliamentarism and decided to participate in the elections of the new Sejm. The conference approved "21 conditions" for admission to the Communist International. The conference pointed out that only the establishment of workers' and peasants' power and a close alliance with the Soviet Republic could lead the country out of the economic crisis and consolidate its independence. The next party conference, held in April 1922, took place with the participation of representatives of the Communist Party of Eastern Galicia (in 1923 it was renamed the Communist Party of Western Ukraine). The Conference devoted great attention the question of putting forward partial demands in the struggle for the interests of the working class and the united workers' front. She also examined the theses on the agrarian question, in which the party sought to approach the problem of an alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry in a new way, from Leninist positions.

The influence of the communists in the country increased. Their ranks were joined by active figures of the workers' and peasants' movement who left other parties - the socialist deputy St. Lancutsky, a prominent peasant deputy T. Dombal and others.

The Communists played an increasingly significant role in leading the class struggle of the proletariat. They were skirmishers and the most persistent participants in many strikes. In total, according to official data, in 1921 there were 720 strikes with the participation of 473 thousand workers, in 1922 - 800 strikes with the participation of 607 thousand workers. The strikes were militant in nature and in most cases ended in partial satisfaction of the demands of the strikers.

In 1922, the national liberation movement intensified in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. Often there were attacks by peasants on landlord estates, on police posts.

Legislative election 1922

Having launched an offensive against the living standards of the working people, using enslaving foreign loans, the bourgeoisie took measures to overcome the economic ruin that had intensified during the anti-Soviet war. In 1922, some improvement in the economic situation began. This economic recovery did not have a solid foundation: it was accompanied by inflation, a significant penetration of foreign capital into the Polish economy, and a continuous increase in external debt. The normalization of the economic situation was hindered by the militaristic policy of the government; despite the constant budget deficit, in 1923 direct military needs alone absorbed 42% of government spending.

In the autumn of 1922, in connection with the approach of parliamentary elections, the struggle between the various bourgeois parties intensified. The Endeks, the Christian Democrats, and a Christian National group formed a bloc called the Christian Union of National Unity, ironically nicknamed "Hyena" (hyena). This bloc came out with a chauvinist demand for the "Polonization" (Polishization) of industry and trade, directed, however, not against foreign capital, but only against the German, Jewish, Ukrainian capitalists living and operating in Poland, conducted great-power nationalist propaganda.

The so-called people's parties - the kulak Piast, which expressed the interests of the prosperous middle peasantry Vyzvolene and some others - claimed representation from the peasantry. They put forward the demand for agrarian reform, but were far from the interests of the working peasants.

The Polish Socialist Party, whose leaders largely contributed to the establishment of the power of the landlords and capitalists, in words stood for the development of democracy and for the satisfaction of some of the wishes of the workers, but in deeds supported the basic demands of the bourgeoisie.

Before the elections, another political grouping, very heterogeneous in composition, was formed, which united part of the organizations of national minorities - a bloc of national minorities. Along with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois figures, it also included radical elements who collaborated with the communists.

The Communist Party, which was underground, created a legal organization to participate in the elections - the Union of the Proletariat of Town and Country. The election program of the Union provided for the establishment of genuine political freedom in the country, the transfer of landlord, church and monastery lands to the peasantry, the introduction of workers' control in industry, the equality of national minorities, etc.

Elections to the Sejm were held on November 5, 1922, and to the Senate on November 12. The overwhelming majority of seats were divided between bourgeois groups, but not one of them gained absolute predominance in parliament. Candidates nominated by the Union of the Proletariat of Town and Country were persecuted. Nevertheless, two communists were elected to the diet - Stanislav Lancutsky and Stefan Krulikovsky (later, some other deputies spoke along with the communists, only 25-26 people).

On December 9, a joint meeting of the Sejm and the Senate met to elect the president. With the election of the president, Piłsudski's activities as "head of state" ceased. In the fifth round of voting, the number of votes required by the constitution was received by the representative of the Vyzvo-lene party, G. Narutowicz. The deputies of the PPS, "Vyzvolene", the bloc of national minorities, partly "Piast" and other parties voted for him in order to prevent the election of the endekov candidate - the extreme reactionary Count M. Zamoysky. The Endeks did not reconcile themselves to defeat. On December 16, 1922, an endek terrorist killed Naruto-wich. This crime caused an outburst of indignation among the broad masses of the people. But the government that came to power on the day of the president's assassination, headed by General V. Sikorsky, introduced martial law and prevented protests against the Endeks. On December 20, S. Wojciechowski, a representative of the Piast, was elected president. Although the Endek candidate was again defeated, the new president was in favor of rapprochement with them. In May 1923, the Hiena bloc, led by the Endeks, and the Piast reached an agreement on cooperation. This led to the formation of a new government in which far-right elements began to play a leading role.

Growing revolutionary crisis. II Congress of the Communist Party

The creation of the Hiena-Piast government coincided with Poland's entry into a period of acute crisis. It developed under the direct influence of the economic and political crisis that gripped Germany in 1923, and manifested itself, on the one hand, in a sharp reduction in the effective demand of the population, on the other, in increased tax oppression and lower wages. The inflation carried out by the bourgeois-landlord governments from the moment the Polish state was formed became catastrophic.

A dollar at the end of 1919 was worth 119 Polish marks, in June 1923 it was already 100,000, and in October - 1,675,000 Polish marks. Social and national contradictions deepened, the class and national liberation struggle intensified. In June, there were 152 strikes involving 190,000 workers; major strikes continued in the following months, escalating into clashes with police and troops. The national liberation movement began to intensify in the eastern "outskirts".

In such a tense situation, in August-September 1923, the Second Congress of the Communist Workers' Party of Poland took place. The congress stated that Poland was rapidly approaching a catastrophe and that the reasons for this were not only the economic crisis, but also the cooperation of the ruling circles with the imperialists, in particular with the worst enemies of the Polish people - the German revanchists. Putting forward the patriotic task of defending the independence of the country, the congress warned: “The bourgeois governments of Poland represent a mortal danger to her independence. Only the victory of the revolution can give the Polish people genuine state independence. The revolutionary proletariat of Poland must enter the arena historical events not only as a representative of the interests of his class, but also as a defender of the entire nation.

The congress discussed the national and peasant questions, recognized the right of the oppressed nationalities to self-determination up to and including secession, and called for the division of the landed estates and church land among the working peasants. The congress emphasized that the general line of development of the Polish labor movement is aimed at creating a united workers' front and a workers' and peasants' union, and called on all parties in Poland, in whose ranks there are workers and poor peasants, primarily the Polish Socialist Party and the Vyzvolene party, join the common front of struggle for the immediate goals of the masses. At the congress, the Charter of the Party was adopted, which was sustained in the spirit of Marxist-Leninist organizational principles. The congress sent a greeting to the leader of the world proletariat, V. I. Lenin.

The Central Committee of the party elected by the congress included A. Barsky, V. Kostsheva, F. Grzhelytsak, F. Fiedler, E. Prukhniak, O. Dlussky and others.