The Soviet Union was a rule of law. Arbitrary, ruthless, full of absurdities and tailored to the needs of one man. But still - the law. Everything had to be justified, even the murder of an entire nation. And it was precisely the search for justifications at the request of Stalin that the executioners from the NKVD were engaged in.
The "Polish operation", which started in August 1937 and lasted for the next 14 months, cost more than 111,000 zlotys. people. They died only because they were Poles. However, the Stalinist repressive apparatus could not admit it openly. A large-scale conspiracy was invented, behind which was to be the Polish Military Organization - bringing together tens of thousands of people.
Its ranks allegedly included both the highest party officials and simple workers. It was obvious to the NKVD officers that all worked for Polish intelligence . For many years he was commissioned by him to do a "mole job". The goal was to organize an uprising which was to break out simultaneously with the great invasion of the Soviet Union by the Polish Army.
There was one undeniable fact in this story. The POW in Russia did exist and played an important role in the period of the struggle for Polish independence. Only that it was dissolved ... 17 years before the "Polish operation".
Józef Unszlicht was one of the veterans of the Bolshevik Party who always stood at Lenin's side. However, this did not prevent him from being arrested, tortured and shot. Photo from his senior GPU position.
We can see how detached from reality the allegations were by reading the latest book by prof. Nikolai Ivanov Fri Forgotten genocide. Poles in the State of Stalin ”. Here are some particularly noteworthy examples.
Unszlicht. The man who gave Piłsudski over Vilnius
The first is the case of Józef Unszlicht, one of the veterans of the Bolshevik party. For years he held high positions in the Cheka and then in the GPU - OGPU, faithfully standing alongside Lenin in all his disputes with the opposition.
In Stalin's eyes, however, this did not work in his favor, on the contrary. He was arrested even before the official start of the "Polish action". He was accused of collaborating with the POW and Polish intelligence, lasting continuously since 1918.
In the book by prof. Ivanov, we also read that:
NKVD accused him of betraying the revolution during the civil war. It was he who treacherously surrendered Vilnius to Piłsudski's troops in 1919. He communicated the strategic plans of the Red Army to the Polish General Staff. He betrayed the attack on Warsaw in 1920.
He "conspired with Tukhachevsky to provide Polish intelligence with more important espionage information about the Red Army and to open the Soviet Western Front to Poles in the event of war."
As if that was not enough, Unszlicht began - according to the NKVD - close cooperation with Trotskyists, Zinovievists and Bukharinites in order to accomplish:joint, harmful, destructive work in the national economy and, in particular, in the armaments industry.
A group of senior OGPU officials. Józef Unszlicht is seated last on the right in the second row. Moscow, 1927. The photo and the caption come from the book by Nikolai Ivanov, “Forgotten genocide. Poles in the state of Stalin. »Polish Operation« 1937–1938 ″ (Znak Horyzont 2015).
Of course, Unszlicht firmly denied everything. He did not change his mind even after he was subjected - at Stalin's personal order - to brutal torture. As a result, it was not used in the demonstration trial, but was tried in a closed mode and immediately shot . Today, he could probably be considered one of the greatest Polish national heroes. Provided, of course, that at least one of the charges is true….
"Great hunger" caused by Polish intelligence
The situation was slightly different in the case of Stanisław Kosior, another prominent member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of Polish origin. This staunch Stalinist served as the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian company in 1928-1938.
He was largely responsible for the deaths of millions of people as a result of the "great famine." In January 1938, he was even appointed deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (deputy prime minister). Four months later, the NKVD knocked on his door. According to Nikolai Ivanov, it suddenly turned out that:
he, from the early 1920s, was also an agent of the 2nd Division of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces and an informal leader of the POW in Ukraine, that almost all his activities as the first secretary of the Ukrainian company were sponsored by Polish interview.
Moreover, it was on the orders of "Two" that Kosior led to artificial hunger in Ukraine . Therefore - paradoxically - he was the first person to answer for the "holodomor".
After his arrest, he long denied the absurd allegations and refused to cooperate with the investigators in any way. The torture and hours of interrogation were for nothing. In this situation, the NKVD resorted to an extremely hideous method - even for them. His 16-year-old daughter was brought to the next interrogation and she was raped in front of her father .
It was too much. Kosior confessed to everything and completely lost interest in his fate. He was shot at the end of February 1939. His daughter was dead by that time. She committed suicide by throwing herself in front of a train.
Stanisław Kosior was a staunch Stalinist. This secured him the position of the first secretary of the Ukrainian company. However, when Stalin decided to deal with the Poles, he also ended up in the torture chamber of the NKVD. Pictured (second from left) with Stalin in the rostrum of the Palace of Congresses in Moscow. 1935.
Dąbal is preparing the Polish invasion of the USSR
The fight against "Polish spies" became more and more widespread. It also did not bypass the Polish scientific community in the USSR. One of the first arrested was Tomasz Dąbal. This former MP from the Second Polish Republic, in the 1920s, went to the Soviet Union and obtained a PhD in economics there.
In the years 1934-1935 he even held the position of vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus. At the same time - as Nikolai Ivanov writes in his book - a man of extremely vivid fantasy, the author of many utopian ideas in the communist spirit .
Among them were two that were to become the nail for his coffin. The first is "Minsk - the port of 5 seas". Dąbal proposed to connect Minsk with the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea through deep-water canals . The second is the drying of a large part of the Polesie marshes and thus enlarging the area suitable for farming.
Stalinist repressions also affected the Polish scientific community. One of the earliest arrested was Tomasz Dąbal (sitting in the center), who in 1934-1935 even held the position of vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus.
After he was taken to the torture chamber of the NKVD, investigators accused him of trying, through the first project , to facilitate the entry of Polish warships into Soviet territory . The second was to facilitate the offensive actions of the Polish army in the future Polish-Soviet war .
Under the influence of the beatings, Dąbal confessed to everything and went into full cooperation with his torturers. It was for nothing. He was shot in August 1937.
Even Stalin didn't believe it, but it didn't matter
Of course, the fingerprint accusations did not only apply to high-ranking members of the Communist Party. A similar tactic was used against tens of thousands of ordinary USSR citizens of Polish origin.
For example, in Volhynia, the NKVD came to the conclusion that the district center of the illegal POW in Zhytomyr was preparing to provoke a general uprising against the Soviet authorities. The Poles planned, inter alia, blow up bridges, derail military trains, poison food, etc. What's more:
The Volyn NKVD also revealed an allegedly existing secret alliance between the POW and the "Ukrainian nationalist center" whose members would join Polish troops in the event of a war. These joint Polish-Ukrainian forces were to use huge secret weapon stores.
In Dnipro, the NKVD even went a step further. The alleged members of the POW, i.e. Poles working in metallurgical plants, were assigned a tangible act of diversion! It was to consist in the destruction of the local power plant. In fact, there has been an accidental breakdown in the utility company. But it didn't matter.
From kola in the Leningrad artillery plant no. 7 Polish spies produced artillery systems which, after being delivered to the Red Army, broke down after a few shots . The diversion was that small pieces of lead were poured into the barrel .
Yezhov's reports (on the left) contained such implausible accusations against Poles that even Stalin (on the right), paranoid, had to mitigate the head of the NKVD.
Even Stalin could not believe such nonsense who wrote on the report: Tow. Yezhov. What are these cannons?
The idiocy of these allegations was, however, a secondary issue. It was just a matter of keeping the killing machine from stopping. Tens of thousands of Poles died, dozens more were sent to labor camps ...
Source:
- Nikolai Ivanov, Forgotten genocide. Poles in the state of Stalin. "Polish operation" 1937–1938 , Horizon 2015 sign.