The Curzon Line-A Program For the Russian-Polish Dispute
KERENSKY, By ALEXANDER
The Inside Story of Stalin's Record in Poland The Curzon Line-A Program For the Russian-Polish Dispute By ALEXANDER KERENSKY * TT-*i , [Premier ef Russia's Provisional Democratic Government] t '...
...Why did the Kremlin for two whale years refuse to divulge the whereabouts of these mysteriously vanished Polish officers—who were, by the way...
...We must pay a tribute to the late General Sikorski...
...Once indeed, when he complained of the persecution of Polish citizens, a high...
...Hitler's Terror is based on race...
...On August 22nd of that year, Molotov and Ribbentrop signed the Soviet-German treaty, and on the night of September 1st Hitler's tanks crashed across the border of this great state...
...Great Russians...
...So the Germans quickly regained control, but they did it with the help of the Fascist hierarchs and above all many Fascist Blackshirts...
...While it remains unanswered, it is clear that the stair of the Katyn Forest cannot serve the Kxesnba...
...In November, 1939, 8.300 of these Polish officers weie distributed among three camps—Kosyelsk, east of Smolensk...
...Only a person who voluntarily shuts his eyes can fail to see in these three measures the preparation of a Stalin-controlled adminstrative and military state apparatus for Poland after Hitler is driven out...
...It included everybody who was suspected for any reason of opposition to the dictatorship of the Communist Party with Stalin as Fiihrer, or "Vozhd...
...This document conveys the startling information that the investigation, conducted in the presence ef journalists from neutral countries, revealed in the Katyn Forest ONLY ABOUT 3.800 CORPSES—only those of the officers who had been in the Kosyelsk camp near Smolensk...
...It seems to m* that Poland has at present only one task: tint struggle for her independence and free internal development There are plenty of Polish map of politics, wise aad feresightad Jane she late General Sikorski, who clearly understand this...
...iSmall children are killed with a kick...
...And this figure is borne out by the reports of the Lithuanian Social Democrats that as many as 200,000 of the "class enemy" were deported from Lithuania after the Kremlin's "liberation" of that small country • * * Russia Organizes the "Polrs* rVrfrlofs" IT is unpleasant to bring forward these facts • at a time when my country is so valiantly fighting Hitler in alliance with the united democracies...
...of course, a living deatTi, and is meant to be...
...From April'Rh to the beginning of July, 1940, the officers were again gitduaKy withdrawn frcm theso camps...
...The line he fell back to is approximately that established by the Peace Conference of Versailles when restoring Poland's independence...
...Cattle are wandering loose about the countryside, frightened away from the farms by the sounds of shooting, bombing, and fighting...
...as a legitimate cause far refusing to maintain normal relations with the government of Poland It is a pretext The real cause is the Kremlin's pest-was plan, not only to possess again the non- Polish territories east of the Carson line, hat te reduce all the rest of Poland to the condition of a poppet state, with a camouflaged totalitarian government controlled from Moscow These are the elements of the tension existing between Poland and the Kretntav If this tension date not filitpgsir before the expulsion of Hitler, a civil war ia Poland ¦ almost inevitable...
...The mortality is colossal...
...inquired personally of Stalin as to the fate of his officers, and received a categorical assurance that they had been amnestied, and the suggestion if they were not yet found, ft eras probably because they were somewhere In the far North where communications are suspended in winter...
...Why did Stalin spin the yarn about the northern winter...
...And dia not the appeal to the Red Cross give the Soviet government a perfect right to sever relations with an ally in the war against Hitler ? W»y DM Staff* Walt Two Tears On #*• Polish OflJcers' Dhtappeoroace...
...aPwte a*ad Cross as a grass insalt to the ft iitsisn government...
...In the opinion of the two dictators—Hitler and Stalin—Poland had ceased to exist "forever...
...It is called the "Curan Line" after a British Foreign minister, but its real basis is the 13th of the famous "Fourteen Point Program" of President Wilson: An independent Poland ta include territory indisputably Polish, with free and secure access to the sea...
...But Poland also is valiantly fighting in that alliance, and there is no possibility of understanding or "adjudicating the dispute between these twp countries without making clear what the human facts are...
...From that date began a series of PolishRussian negotiations on the subject of these vanished officer's, which continued for two peart...
...Conflict AS the Soviet armies approach the Polish herder, the Allied powers face their first major political crisis...
...en say leadership...
...The Germans went to their hums, bat could a i fend them...
...Where are the remaining ttOt...
...For long ages, there was an independent Poland...
...It is not directed solely against Jews, as many think, but •gainst Poles also, whom he regards, like all Sl*»s, as an "inferior" race...
...They were, so to speak, Polish Poland...
...There is little doubt that in Stalin's mind the future Poland, if all goes well, will have an independence similar to that of Inner Mongolia —that of a poppet state, giving allegiance to Moscow and supported by the bayonets of the Red Army...
...For in this he is supported by history, by the Peace Conference «f J»1S, by the contemporary international situation, and by the unanimous opinion of the whole Russian people...
...and the request...
...Sikorski's prodigious enadpfoW broke down...
...Incredible as such figures seem, this same remark was made by anr important Bolshevik journalist to another Pole returning from these camps—a very responsible person—and the figure named was 18,000.000...
...The cordon of silence surrounding the camps was broken...
...This was known from.a few officers, who for some reason were sent instead to Griazovetz, north of Moscow...
...This considerably exceeds the estimate heretofore agreed on bythoughtful students $f Soviet affairs, which has remained in the vicirtity of 8 to 12 millions...
...in plain terms, a process of extermination—a little slower but no less cruel than Hitler's...
...Only the Blackshirts knew where they were—and to the Vomero they went and seized a hundred youths "So when those days of reckoning came, everyone of those Blackshirts or others like them met death at the hands of the citizens...
...1941, after the agreement between atattn and Sikorski...
...From the Kc-zyelek c:unp...
...Moscow has also created a separate Polish arpiy> the Kosciusko Division, officered by Communists and independent of the Polish High Command, and third, an independent division of Partisans (guerrilla fighters) within Poland...
...ft was this request that tne Kremlin seised on as a pretest to break off reatiaas with the Polish government...
...I have learned, since I began writing this article, that there was received ia London last July a copy ef the report of the German commission which investigated the affair of the Kstyn Forest Up to now...
...Whether a copy exists ia Washington, I do not know...
...In the provinces th<»s seised, -both dictators immediately set up 8 Reign of Terror...
...It will be remembered that, after the Peace of Versailles, Marshal Pilsudski invaded Russia (in 1920)) and tried to extend Poland's empire clear through the Urkaine to the Black Sea...
...Russia's Treatment of Polish Prisoners /""•ENERAL SIKORSKI's report was subse^* quently confirmed by a number of Poles released from these camps...
...It seems to be a general rule that the Com- . munist dictatorship reduces to the position of hard-labor convicts something between one-third and one-sixth of the population of any country in which it is installed...
...Tr*t White Terror and the Red HERE were other aspects of this two-sided raid on Poland, however, in which Stalin comes off no better than Hitler...
...To uninformed social opinion in the AngloSaxon countries, this explanation seemed very convincing, and very damaging to the government ef General Sikorski...
...And yet?»e United Nations cannot take sides between the two...
...All these prisoners, It stated, were sent into the depths of the country...
...The fact remains, however, that in defending Russia's right to the Curzon line, Stalin h/very strong...
...This makes it a rather painful experience for Poles to hear men like ex-Ambassador Davies and the British Minister of Information, Branden Bracken, uncticusly assert that "The Soviet Union has never broken a promise...
...It seems te me taat, if ate heads of the democracies will abandon their lijtrh poBsp te all that relates to Stalin, aad <?§ astutely aad boldly, calling things by teete ntjsf names--* aa he apes this goal is net uiiattehtella They should recognise, to begin with, that Russia has a just claim te the non-Polita provinces lying east of the Carton line...
...When Premier Pietro Badoglio's Government announced fts armistice at 6 p. m. on September 8th," reporter -Matthews continued, sketching the background of events, "the people rose joyously AH that night and all the following day they had Germans on the ran...
...Stalin's Terror was based on "class" instead of race...
...By exterminating or deporting all these people, conditions were created in which the territories "liberated" by Moscow would inevitably establish a liberty conforming to Moscow's understanding of the term...
...During the entire two years occupied by these negotiations, neither the Soviet govern - ment nor its embassador in London ever' gave, cither verbally or by letter, a single definite ttvdication as to where these vanished officers were...
...There are no dots, no mattresses, no pillows—nothing to sleep on but the floor or the bare "narri" or bunks of flat board...
...they wcie sent in the direction of Smolensk...
...They ought to say: "We apt with Poland absolutely in her demand for ittamml independence and freedom front internal conspiracy, but we do not want and will not support territorial pretenses at the cost of Russia, no matter what its government system may be...
...According to a recent report of the Polish Minister of Home Affairs, Hitler's victims now total 3,200,000— 1.800,000 of them Jews...
...Poland was again divided—this time between Berlin and Moscow...
...A Stroma aad Democratic Poland LIAVING thus clearly manifested iar hsftixiWy ** friendly attitude to Russia, the United States would have an exceptional matai zoree ia the struggle to restore a strong sant trmly' democratic Poland...
...The prisoners are Wakened up before dawn in the morning, given some hot water and a chunk of bread, about % of a pound, and then marched out to their work...
...In the^l790's the living body of Poland was chopped into three parts, and , _* __________—______ r|rv« naaarv nana VV |NU Wj C»IIU , divided among Prussia...
...We have invited several Polish liberals to reply and we invite reader comment When They Caught a Blackshirt...
...But when the Italians caught a Blackshirt...
...being in Moscow in December, 1941...
...We must examine that Story also in its unvarnished details, if We are ever to make the peace between these two countries that is essential to the peace of Europe...
...Where are these men...
...In committing it, however, he violated several treaties and solemn compacts between the two countries...
...Why...
...But the "class enemy," although described as "bourgeois" or "Kulak," really included every free-thinking person, no matter to what class he belonged...
...Obviously, only reactionaries and uncus ins of the Soviet Union could so'eagerly -have fallen for the "provocation of Goebbels " Was net Sikorski very probably a tool in the hands of the Nazis...
...if in return Poland, England and the United States would recognize the sole boundary between the two nations which can ever be made permanent the Curzon line...
...It is this territory that Stalin seized back in 1939, and there is no use denying that in its territorial aspect Stalin's »in against Poland is small compared to Hitler's...
...White Russians and Ukrainians ("Little Russians...
...All Russtenl^MnTPo the1 ideals of freedom and to the traatttonhf"of Russia's libertarian movement vratatt atattt edth all their power in the restoration of »**R a PjttapdAnd it is difficult to see how Stalin himself cculd offer any consistent objection ttt^ig f*l>r on May 3rd of this year he wrote' in*"his own hand to Ralph Parker, the Moscow correspondent of the Sew York Times: (1) that he desired to see "a stseag and independent Poland after the defeat of Hitler's Germany...
...The pretext for this rupture Was the gruesome story of the murder of "10,060" Polish officers in the Katyn forest, near Smolensk...
...or the other hand, should Poland herself, by insisting on the Riga boundary, create in the Baet the conditions for s new catastrophe after the .overthrow ef Hitler...
...But it is known that, besides those killed on the spot, the Kremlin rounded up and deported in freight cars to hard labor camps in Siberia and North Russia more than a quarter )f the population of the provinces he seized...
...He knew for almoet two years aboui the unexplained disappearance of there officers, and remained silent fee the sake of cooperation with the Kremlin in the cause of the United Nations' victory...
...On April 15—.Sikorski having that same day had lunch with Winston Churchill—the Polish government addressed a request to the International Red Cross at Geneva to conduct aa immediate investigation of the facte asserted by the German radio...
...He Died "Jhe rile fire we thought was sniping, on the first day when ye came in—it was the people—firing on the Blackshirts," reported Herbert L. Matthews to the New York Times on his entry of Naples...
...Red Stur, the official organ bf the Russian army, stated that in the autumn of 1939 the Soviet Un;on had taken 181,000 Polish prisoners—9.369 of them active and reserve officerg...
...Wanda Wassilewska...
...Hence, during conflicts between other nations, they turn up constantly in opposite camps...
...We mast have a practical plan, and be prepared to apply it...
...Taking all the factors of the existing tens I ml into consideration...
...The prisoners work in whatever they happened to have on when they were seized, and that no matter how severe the cold...
...This tmfqe, however, the sharp conflict between them is taking place within a single Coalition of Powers...
...Kerensky's proposals for the settlement of the Russis-Polish frontiers dispute are, we think, quite provocative...
...The Germoa Rodio Lisfs the Foils* D»od |N the* midst of this tension, in early April, 1*43...
...1940...
...These two powers must act simultaneously and unitedly...
...At first Stalin made a similarly ruthless grab, hacking off a slice extending right up to the river bank opposite Warsaw...
...During that same August, the Polish representative, General Boh ush Shishko, and the Polish c*ipkmat Dr...
...seeing to it by means of these organizations ' that "democracy" in Warsaw takes the same form that it has in Moscow...
...StarobyeLk, near Kharkov, and Ostashknov...
...Pound's skies were cbuded with Goering's bombers...
...the concentrated essence of what Stalin regards as the "enemy classes...
...he died...
...Bat their hands %re bound by Polish public opinion, sapstialte ermp tptolan, which cannot think dandy about what * has suffered so recently at the hands of the Russian dictator, ant which insists on the inviolabitity of the Pilsudtkj frontier of 1820 Here England and the United States ought to come to the bete of the Polish statesmen...
...Sfo//« Rides to the Conon Line THE parts Hitler grabbed were inhabited in overwhelming majority by Poles...
...It is...
...Incidentally...
...They work for 12 hours without getting anything else to put in their stomachs but hot water...
...The?i they are marched back again, and receive is the evening some kasha . (porridge) and another chunk of bread...
...The minister's report, based on information supplied by the'Statistical Section of the Polish underground Resistance Movement, reads in part as follows: "The Germans began acting with the Bilgoraj district, in which there is not a single Pcle lei't...
...Thus, early in the autumn of 1941, General Sikorski knew a boat the disappeart\nce of almost all the Polish ofkera who had been taken prisoner when the Red Army marched into Poland...
...However, the closer we approach the war's end, the broader become the differences between the two...
...Nobody can foretell the date, but it is necessary te gel ready...
...Stalin will not annex Polish Poland as Hitler did...
...Throughout their long history, Russia and Poland have rarely been friends...
...It is...
...On returning to Ixmdon, Shishko informed General Sikorski that the 7,900 officers who had been in the abovementioned three camps had net appeared at headquarters after the amnesty granted to them by the ..Sdviet government, and since then had nowhere been found...
...Retinger happened to he'in Moscow on a special mission...
...Sikorski's government was accused ef collusion with Goebbels...
...sod ft) time Polish-Soviet relations after the war should hp based on "the fundament of solid good neighborly relations and mutual respect or should the Polish people so desire, upon the fundament at an alliance providing for mutual tssistance against the Germans, as the chief encash* ef the Soviet Union and Poland " Had this letter not been published at the very time when Moscow suddenly broke relations with the Polish Government-in-Exile, it could form the basis of a lasting peace between the tare countries : I believe those relations might be restored, and Stalin might he induced to dissolve hit special Polish organization* or fuse them with those of the Polish Government-inExile...
...Children up to 13 years, wemen and all over 50, are deported to the Majdanek death camp in the Lublin district, where they are slaughtered in masses in death chambers, as were the Jews before them...
...The answer was now given to the world st Urge by the Seeitt Information Bureau: "The iGernian-fascist reports on this subject leave no doubt as to the fate of the former Polish prisoners of war who in 1941 were engaged in construction work in areas west of the Smolensk region, and fell into the hands of the German-fascist hangmen in the summer of 1941 after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from the Smolensk area...
...This- is the foreground of the situation discussed here by Alexander Kerensky, premier of Russia's democratic Provisional government...
...Yet the only democratic resistance to the Nazis has been from these Polish underground groups which have worked in cooperation with the Polish governmental-exile...
...At least it is beyond doubt that there are* more enslaved workers tailing without pay in the Soviet Union than there are, or ever have been, unemployed workers in any capita list country...
...n:ar Tver...
...In eastern and central Europe no plan can be applied wit horn the participation of the Soviet Union, nor without the participation of Poland...
...The Germans sought to round up the young men of Naples, but none responded...
...Those Blackshirts became marked men...
...He was driven back by Marshal Tukhachevsky, but rallied, defeated Tukhachevsky, and finally succeeded in carving out of Russia about 50,000 square miles of territory beyond the line established at Versailles...
...With his extraordinary authority m the army, he compelled all the rest to keep silent...
...fHE remaining 7,900 officers, who had boast in * thott three camp*, never turned up anywhere, and have never been seen from that time till now...
...And, indeed, whet power on earth can psi-niawenrtp deprive Russia of this territory which wan accorded to her by the Peace Conference of Versatile*'at her moment of extreme weakness and in her absence...
...This 18th point was in complete accord with the manifesto of the Russian Provisional Government (March 30, 1917), which proclaimed, first among the Allies, the independence of Pcland...
...Such a situation, in the decisive crisis of the war, is simply intolerable...
...But more immediately than the borders' problem is the situation facing the Polish democratic underground, created by the has organized a Union of Polish Patriots...
...This has become known because, after Hitler attacked Russia, Stalin accepted the offer of General Sikorski, the premier of Poland, to recruit Polish troops to fight beside the Red Army...
...The German authorities had been led to the grave, it was stated, by the local pes seals After the first announcement, the German radio began communicating from day to day details and lists of names coinciding with dices in the possession of the Polish army...
...And on August 14...
...Bolshevik official answered him by remarking that the Poles get no worse treatment than the Russians, of whom there are soras twenty millions in the same plight...
...The tension thus produced can be imagined...
...GeneraT*flikorski learned, although for obvious reas6ns he could ao\ report it, that many million^ of Russians are living, or rather dying, in the'same conditions...
...This was the last straw...
...Austria, and Russia...
...The time is past for proclaiming abstract principles...
...And when a wake was held over her shattered and annihilated body, Molotov and Ribbentrop drank a toast to Soviet-German friendship, "sealed in blood," -as Molotov declared—and mainly] the blood, we must add, ef Poland...
...The first blitzkrieg began...
...In the other seven districts extermination is in full swing...
...They asked instantly and inevitably: "Why did not Stalin tell Sikorski in December, 1941, that the misting officers had been sent into the Smolensk region and had fallen into the hands of the Nazis...
...General Sikorski...
...Socialist and Peasant Parties...
...They cannot break with the Kremlin, for now as in 1918 a victory without Russia would be unreal They cannot abandon Poland, for she was the first to put up a heroic resistance against Hitler and was mangled in the unequal struggle...
...T*0 those who knew the gruesome story from * its beginning, however, the announcement of the Moscow radio suggested a very different reaction...
...He will merely supervise her "liberation...
...In all, from the- three camps, about 400 officers wore sen't to this town of Griazovetz...
...After some reflection, he decided to let Hitler have the whole of Polish Poland, withdrawing his own claims to the line of the Bug River...
...They were willing to take the Germans alive, as one told me, became after all they were doing only what they had been ordered to do...
...It included all defenders of democracy, whether capitalist or Socialist...
...all of these 400 officers turned up near Samara at the headquarters of the saw Polish Army in process of formation...
...It 1 is only -known that the march of the Red Army into Poland was accompanied by daily executions...
...And Naples also showed what an effective and alert Allied political policy could have accomplished, had we been prepared...
...These organizations reduplicate the existing organs of the Polish State: the Government-in-Exile, the Polish High Command appointed by that government, and the "Resistance Movement" so admirably organized by the Polish people themselves and so heroic in its underground warfare against Hitler...
...In recruiting among the Polish prisoners of war scattered throughout Russia and Siberia, General Sikorski found, according to his official report twice issued to the world press, from 14 to 2 million Polish civilians,—men, women and children—confined in Russian concentrations camps...
...No clothing is provided...
...The Germans were surrendering their anas to Italians, driving cars with white flags and walking sometimes with their hands in the ail...
...Ob September 17...
...Seventeen days later, the troops of Stalin inarched in from the East...
...this report ia not accessible to the pontic...
...O-.hy after this had happened did the Kremlin see fit to answer the question which the Poles had been aafratp at rate for ftw» peart: "What has heoente' of our captured officers...
...The'entire population is being rem:ved from the areas involved...
...The facts, indeed, became common knowledge after Stalin's agreement with Sikorski, for a certain amount of travel back and forth to the camps was involved in carrying it out...
...If si] this was not plain enough before, it became absolutely certain when, on the arst pretext* that arose, the Kremlin abruptly broke off relations with the "bourgeois" Polish government of General Sikorski...
...In 1939 she was again a great European power, almost equal to European France in population and exceeding France in territory...
...The districts present an appalling spectacle, for the towns and villages are completely empty...
...But Stalin is prudent as well as ruthless...
...A considerable percentage of them is shot on the spot...
...Some action had to be taken, and Sikorski's government chose the mildest action possible...
...These are the only Polish groups recognized by the Russians...
...Moscow Marching with the Soviet armies is a Polish "Kosciusko" division...
...For Naples has provided s grim foretaste of what diehard...
...The German announcement was denounced as "Nasi propaganda...
...After the war of 1914-18, Poland's independence was restored...
...From the 15th to the 17th centuries it was perhaps the most powerful and advanced state of Central Europe, Then began a decline...
...the German government announced to the world by radio that the bodies of the officers taken prisoner by the Red Army in September 1939, had been found in a common grave near Smolensk...
...Fascials have to expect from their enraged fellow-citizens...
...Even the life lived by the condemned can now be described on the basis of the concurrent testimony of several who saw or experienoed it...
...The Inside Story of Stalin's Record in Poland The Curzon Line-A Program For the Russian-Polish Dispute By ALEXANDER KERENSKY * TT-*i , [Premier ef Russia's Provisional Democratic Government] t ' ff THE fall ofHitler approaches...
...Now, according to a report in the Sunday Herald-Tribune, the Russians have refused to recognize the Polish underground and threaten to arrest any "quasi-military groups" active on Polish soil...
...For Soviet Russia has shown every indication that she will not recognize her old borders bat will claim the land seized during the Hitler-Stalin pact...
...But the people of Nap.es wen...
...And in that ease the United Nations, while winning the war, weald lose tne peace ia Pit possible to prevent this civil war in Poland...
...This is one of the questions which Roosevek aad Churchill will have to ask Stalin if they ever succeed in entering his presence...
...I see ae other way oat hat civil war hi Poland and a suicidal fight In Lmtau the victors ef the ascend World War...
...Both these peoples have shown unbelievable mettle, courage, and selfsacrifice amid superhuman agonies...
...Whatever the merit of Russia's claim to the provinces Stalin seized, the Terror he set up in them was remorseless In these Circumstances, it is easy to imagine the uneasiness <f the Poles when they ieam that Moscow has created a veritable government-inembryo for all of Poland—the committee headed by the famous Communist agitator...
...There are no statistics of the numbers of Polish property owners, labor leaders, well-off farmers, and champions of democracy whom the Communist Terror exterminated on the spot...
...Males from 14 years to 50 are deported to an unknodn destination in sealed trucks...
...and the Polish aathassader was invited to quit Russian territory at once...
...Both must have their rights...
Vol. 26 • October 1943 • No. 42
