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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
In the autumn of 1939, Poland was invaded and divided in half by the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany took over western Poland, while the U.S.S.R. took over the southeast. The Soviet invasion of eastern Poland on September 17, 1939, pursuant to provisions of the secret protocol of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, came as a complete surprise to Poland's thirteen million residents and to diplomats around the world. In the months that followed, the Soviets imposed a complex administrative system in the region, with the goal of “Sovietizing” conquered territories. The dismantling of local religious institutions and the creation of Soviet schooling for millions of Polish, Ukrainian, Jewish, and Belorussian children were all part of this program. Additionally, starting in February 1940, the Soviet authorities carried out four punitive waves of deportation of some 320,000 Polish citizens (men, women, and children) into the interior of the U.S.S.R.
1 The Soviet German Non-Aggression Treaty, negotiated in total secrecy, was signed in Moscow by von Ribbentrop, Joachim and Molotov, Vyacheslav, foreign ministers of the Third Reich and the U.S.S.R., respectively (hence its colloquial name). On September 28, 1939, the Soviet-German Boundary and Friendship Treaty was signed in Berlin, designating new frontiers between the two countries, cutting Poland virtually in half. On June 30, 1941, Soviet ambassador Ivan Maiski and the prime minister of the Polish government in exile signed the so-called Sikorski-Maiski agreement in London.Google Scholar
2 Hoover Institution Archives (HIA), Poland Ambasada Collection, U.S.S.R. (PAC), Box 36, Folder “Evacuation of Polish citizens to USSR”; see also Jolluck, Katherine, Exile and Identity: Polish Women in the Soviet Union During World War II (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002). The author estimates 320,000 persons were deported between February 1940 and June 1941. Earlier scholarship had put the number at over one million Polish deportees.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Exiled politicians in London, as well as many former prisoners from the U.S.S.R., felt the term “amnesty” failed to describe what they perceived as baseless arrests by the Soviets, who refused to declare null and void the incorporation of eastern prewar Poland (“Western Ukraine” and “Western Belorussia”) into the U.S.S.R.Google Scholar
4 Jolluck, , Exile and Identity.Google Scholar
5 Often at the expense of deported Jewish, and Ukrainian children who were Polish citizens.Google Scholar
6 See, for example, Grudzińska-Gross, Irena and Gross, Jan. T., War Through Children's Eyes: The Soviet Occupation of Poland and The Deportations, 1939–1941 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1981), xxv. See also Sword, Keith, Deportation and Exile: Poles in the Soviet Union, 1939–48 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), 83–85.Google Scholar
7 See Wasilewska, Irena, Suffer Little Children (London: Maxlowe Publishing Company, 1946); also Grudzińska-Gross, and Gross, , War Through Children's Eyes. Google Scholar
8 Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976), 303.Google Scholar
9 Hobsbawn, Eric, The Age of Empire, 1875–1914 (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 155.Google Scholar
10 Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Larry Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917–1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).Google Scholar
11 Holmes, , The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse, 4.Google Scholar
12 Fitzpatrick, , Education and Social Mobility.Google Scholar
13 Holmes, , The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse, Introduction, 3.Google Scholar
14 Dunstan, John, Soviet Schooling in the Second World War (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15 Gross, Jan T., Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation (New York: Random House, 2006), 14.Google Scholar
16 Gross, Jan T., Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 686–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 See Dunstan, , Soviet Schooling; Gross, Revolution from Abroad. Google Scholar
18 HIA, PAC, Box 54, Folder 8, “Dzialanosc Ambasady, RP Opiekuncza w Kujbyshewie,” 1 January 1943.Google Scholar
19 Sword, Keith, Deportation and Exile: Poles in the Soviet Union, 1939–48 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), 686–94.Google Scholar
20 Jolluck, , Exile and Identity; see also Gross, , Revolution from Abroad. Google Scholar
21 Jolluck, , Exile and Identity; see also Gross, , Revolution from Abroad. Using local populations of different ethnic backgrounds played on regional animosities that had developed over time.Google Scholar
22 Gross, , Revolution from Abroad, 145–63.Google Scholar
23 Ibid., 125–42.Google Scholar
24 Grudzińska-Gross, and Gross, , War Through Children's Eyes, 118.Google Scholar
25 Ibid., 127.Google Scholar
26 Ibid., 115.Google Scholar
27 Wasilewska, , Suffer Little Children, 68–71.Google Scholar
28 Gross, , Revolution from Abroad, 126.Google Scholar
29 Ibid.Google Scholar
30 HIA, PAC, Box 54, Folder 1, map created possibly in 1943. Testimonies in the HIA, MID, boxes 116–123 also demonstrate that Polish citizens were spread throughout the USSR territories like seeds.Google Scholar
31 HIA, PAC, Box 24, Folder 4 “Children, Culture and Education”; HIA, PAC, Box 24, Folder 5, “Deportation and Life in the USSR.”Google Scholar
32 HIA, PAC, Box 24, Folder 5. Report written by Irena Wasilewska on October 27, 1943, detailing 76,145 children alive, 21,688 children evacuated to Iran, India, and Africa, and 19,566 children deceased. HLA, PAC, Box 41, Folder 4 has a document that states that on April 25, 1943, there were 76,457 children in the fifty-nine oblasts over six major regions. Six thousand seventy-five of them were full orphans, document: “Wykaz Stanu Liczbnego i Rozmieszczenia Dzieci i Sierot Obywateli Polskich.” HIA, PAC, Box 51, Folder 8 states the number a bit lower at 51,000 in a report from February 1943.Google Scholar
33 Wasilewska, , Suffer Little Children, 64.Google Scholar
34 Ibid., 64–67. Similar testimony can be found in HIA, MID, Boxes 116–23.Google Scholar
35 Ibid., 68–69.Google Scholar
36 Citizens dispersed to kolkhozes were largely dependent on the assistance of the Polish government for food (HIA, PAC, Box 54, Folder “Various”) and other basic needs.Google Scholar
37 HIA, PAC, Box 54, Folder 8, Document, “Matters concerning the Polish Population.”Google Scholar
38 HIA, PAC, Box 41, Folder 7, “Uchodzcy w Sowietach,” 2.Google Scholar
39 HIA, PAC, Box 41, Folder 7, “Wykaz Zakladow Opieki,” February 15, 1943; HIA, PAC, Box 49, Folder 5, possible date June 1943; The total number of institutions were said to have been compiled from budget proposals, dispatches, and other official reports; HIA, PAC, Box 54, Folder 8, “Matters concerning the Polish population in the USSR.” No date, perhaps March 1943; Wasilewska, Suffer Little Children, 71–78.Google Scholar
40 HIA, PAC, Box 41, Folder 8; HIA, PAC, Box 41, Folder 3, “Correspondence 1941–1942.”Google Scholar
41 HIA, PAC, Box 41, Folder 3, “Correspondence 1941–1942“; HIA, PAC, Box 41, Folder 8.Google Scholar
42 See Wasilewska, , Suffer Little Children.Google Scholar
43 HIA, PAC, Box 54, Folder 8 “Miscellaneous” (no date is visible); HIA, PAC, Box 54, Folder 6 “Various,” 16 April 1943.Google Scholar
44 HIA, PAC, Box 54, Folder 8 “Miscellaneous,” Document “Instructions for the delegates and men of confidence,” 17, “Cultural Care” (Opieka Kulturalna), Section #12 (no date, possibly April 1943).Google Scholar
45 HIA, PAC, Box 54, Folder 8, Document “Instructions for the delegates and mezow zaufania” (no date, possibly April 1943).Google Scholar
46 Sword, , Deportation and Exile, 64.Google Scholar
47 HIA, PAC, Box 24, Folder 4 “Children, culture and education,” material in folder was possibly compiled in September 1943.Google Scholar
48 HIA, PAC, Box 54, Folder 8, “Miscellaneous.”Google Scholar
49 HIA, PAC, Box 24, Folder 4 “Children, culture and education”; HIA, PAC, Box 24, Folder 5, “Children, deportation and life in the USSR.”Google Scholar
50 HIA, PAC, Box 24, Folder 4 “Children, culture and education,” Polak Maly, 12.Google Scholar
51 Ibid., 17.Google Scholar
52 Wasilweska, , Suffer Link Children, 89.Google Scholar
53 Sword, Deportation and Exile. Google Scholar
54 Grudzinska-Gross, and Gross, , War Through Children's Eyes.Google Scholar
55 Wasilweska, , Suffer Little Children.Google Scholar
56 A site where 4,500 Polish POWs were executed by the Soviet secret police during World War II.Google Scholar
57 The Polish version of the document is found in HIA, PAC, Box 41, Folder 9, 16 February 1943.Google Scholar
58 HIA, PAC, Box 54, Folder 8, “Miscellaneous.”Google Scholar
59 So-called after its commander, General Wladyslaw Anders.Google Scholar
60 Sword, Deportation and Exile, 65–85.Google Scholar
61 HIA, DPD, Box 1, Folder “Arrival.”Google Scholar
62 HIA, DPD, Box 1, Folder “Press.”Google Scholar
63 Rzerycha, Stanislaw, HIA, PSZ, Box 127, Folder 20.Google Scholar
64 HIA, PMSZ, Box 0127, Folder 9.Google Scholar
65 HIA, DPD, Box 1, Folder “Correspondence.”Google Scholar
66 Kolo Junackiej Szkoly Kadetow, ed., Junacka Szkola Kadetow (London, 1972).Google Scholar
67 Ibid.Google Scholar
68 HIA, PMSZ, Box 0127, Folder 9.Google Scholar
69 Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen: the Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976).Google Scholar