Russia at war 1941-1945

administration is Polish, and no other language is recognised. There are practically no non-Polish schools or other cultural establishments. The Polish Constitution does not give non-Poles the right to be taught in their own language. Instead, the Polish Government has been pursuing a policy of forced Polonisation...

The more heroic episodes of the Polish soldiers' resistance to superior German forces—

whether at Hel or Westerplatte or in Warsaw—were not mentioned at all; instead, on

September 14, Pravda reported that "after a tour of inspection of the Front, Hitler had arrived at Lodz at 3 p.m." Reports of German air attacks on railway trains and of "the flight of the Polish Government" were intended to convey the impression that by the middle of September Poland was in a complete state of chaos.

The full significance of the article on the Ukrainians and Belorussians soon became

apparent. On September 17 Molotov made a broadcast in which he declared that two

weeks of war had demonstrated the "internal incapacity" of the Polish State. All industrial centres had been lost; nor could Warsaw be considered any more the capital of the Polish State. No one knew where the Polish Government was. The situation in Poland therefore called for the greatest vigilance on the part of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Government had informed the Polish Ambassador, Mr Grzybowski, that the Red Army had been

ordered to take under its protection the populations of Western Belorussia and the

Western Ukraine.

Grzybowski had, indeed, been informed that day that although it had been neutral "up till now", the Soviet Government could no longer be neutral in the face of reigning chaos in Poland or the fact that "our blood-brothers, the Ukrainians and Belorussians, are being abandoned to their fate..."

And then came the guerre fraîche et joyeuse. In a few days the Red Army occupied vast stretches of country which had constituted the eastern half of Poland. The war

communiqué of September 17 announced that the Red Army had crossed the Polish

frontier all the way from Latvia to Rumania; that, in the north, Molodechno and

Baranovichi had been occupied, and, in the south, Rovno and Dubno. Seven Polish

fighters had been brought down, three Polish bombers had been forced to land, and their crews had been taken prisoner. By September 20 the Red Army had occupied Kovel,

Lwow, Vilno and Grodno. Three Polish divisions had been disarmed, and 68,000 officers and men taken prisoner.

On September 19 a joint Soviet-German communiqué was published saying that the task

of the Soviet and German troops was to "restore peace and order which had been

disturbed by the disintegration [raspad] of the Polish State, and to help the population of Poland to reorganise the conditions of its political existence".

If, during the German invasion of Poland, the Soviet press was extremely reticent in its accounts of what was happening, and carefully refrained from any "straight" reporting, it now embarked on an orgy of rapturous articles and descriptive reports on the enthusiasm with which the Red Army was being welcomed by the people of the Western Ukraine and

Western Belorussia—

Happy Days in the Liberated Villages (report from the Rovno area).

Jubilant Crowds Heartily Welcome N. S. Khrushchev.

Population to Red Army: "You have Saved our Lives!"

Such were some of the headlines. On September 20 Pravda reported "great animation in Lwow" and the great enthusiasm with which the people there had gone to see the film

"Lenin in 1918".

Another report from the Rovno area read: "An old peasant, named Murash, went up to our soldiers. 'I am seventy,' he said, 'and I know that there is in Moscow a man who is the father of all the oppressed, a man who thinks of us and cares for us. And I know that his name is Joseph Stalin.'"

All the same, the Soviet hierarchy must have known that there was at least some slight uneasiness in the country over what was in effect a partition of Poland in the company of Hitler. Hence, for instance, the publication in Pravda on September 18 of a poem by Nikolai Aseyev called "Hold Your Heads Up"—

The landlords' (panski) flag has been trampled underfoot,

But you, Polish people, have not been humiliated...

You toilers of Poland, do not believe the tale

That we have stepped forward