Russia at war 1941-1945

beyond the Niémen into East Prussia, and along the Narew and upper and middle Vistula into central Poland. By the end of August, when most of the operations between Yelgava in Latvia, and Jozefow, a hundred miles south of Warsaw, came to a standstill by order of the Soviet Supreme Command, the front ran about half-way across Lithuania, then a short distance from the eastern border of East Prussia, and then, roughly, along the Narew and Vistula into central Poland.

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By this time Poland had become the scene of the most dramatic military and political events. On July 23, the left flank of Rokos-sovsky's 1st Belorussian Front, including the 1st Polish Army, had already liberated the ancient Polish city of Lublin. On July 31, the blunted spearhead of the right flank of the same 1st Belorussian Front reached "the outskirts of Praga" across the Vistula opposite Warsaw; on August 1, the Warsaw Uprising of the Armija Krajowa under General Bor-Komarowski began.

Chapter VIII WHAT HAPPENED AT WARSAW?

It was shortly before the beginning of the Warsaw tragedy that events of far-reaching political importance took place in the Russian-liberated parts of Poland.

As we have seen, Lublin was liberated by the Russians on July 23, and two days later the Soviet Foreign Office published a statement on the attitude of the Soviet Union to

Poland; simultaneously a Manifesto was published, dated July 22 and signed at Chelm (a frontier town inside Poland), announcing the formation of the Polish National Liberation Committee, before long to be known as the "Lublin Committee".

The Russian statement said that the Red Army, together with the Polish Army fighting on the Soviet Front, had begun the liberation of Polish territory. The Soviet troops, it continued, had only one object: to smash the enemy and to help the Polish people reestablish an independent, strong, and democratic Poland. Since Poland was a sovereign state, the Soviet Government had decided not to establish any administration of its own on Polish soil, but had decided to make an agreement with the Polish Committee of

National Liberation concerning the relations between the Soviet High Command and the Polish administration. The statement added that the Soviet Government did not wish to acquire any part of Polish territory or to bring about any changes in the social order of Poland, and that the presence of the Red Army in Poland was simply necessitated by

military requirements.

The Rada Narodowa (the "underground parliament"), in a document dated "Warsaw (sic), July 21", issued a decree, which was published in Chelm on the following day, in the first issue of the "official" paper, Rzeczpospolita, ordering the formation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation.

The principal members of the Committee were:

President and Chief of the Foreign Affairs Department: E. B. Osöbka-Morawski.

Deputy-President and Head of the Department for Agriculture and Agrarian

Reform: Andrzei Witos.

Deputy President: Wanda Wassilewska.

Head of National Defence Department: Col.-Gen. M. Rola-Zymierski.

His Deputy: Lt.-Gen. Berling.

There were fifteen other appointments, among them that of S. Radkiewicz, the notorious head of security, and five whose names were not disclosed, since they were still in

German-occupied territory.

The Committee's "Manifesto" stated that it had been nominated by the Krajowa Rada Narodowa, "a body comprising representatives of the Peasant Party and other democratic elements inside Poland", and "recognised by Poles abroad—in the first place by the Union of Polish Patriots in the USSR and by the Polish Army formed in the Soviet

Union." It denounced the London emigre government as a "usurper" government that had adopted the "fascist" constitution of 1935. The National Committee, on the other hand, recognised the "democratic" constitution of 1921 until the Constituent Assembly met and decided otherwise.

The Manifesto emphasised the new era of Slav unity; it said that the frontiers between Poland and the Soviet Union would be settled on an "ethnical" basis and by mutual agreement, and that, in the west, Poland would regain her old territories in Silesia, along the Oder, and in Pomerania. East Prussia would also be included in Poland. The 400

years of fruitless enmity between the Slav peoples were now at an end, and the Polish and Soviet flags would wave in the wind side by side as the victorious troops marched into Berlin...