Russia at war 1941-1945

recognise the new Polish Government. In his speech at the Kremlin that night, Stalin spoke of the harm Poland and Russia had done each other in the past, and admitted that Russia's guilt had been greater than Poland's; he even suggested that a new generation of Poles would have to grow up before all the bitterness disappeared. Germany, he said, would continue to be a threat to both Poland and Russia, and their alliance was essential, but it was not enough in itself, and both countries, therefore, needed the alliance of the United States, Britain and France.

[ Ibid., p. 157.]

(e) Close-Up: Civil War Undertones in Poland

This was for foreign consumption. Stalin and all other Russians knew that an acute

struggle was going on in Poland between "East" and "West". When I spent ten days in Poland soon after the formation of the new government, I found there something not

unlike a civil war atmosphere. The arrival in Poland of an unusually large group of

Western correspondents gave rise to some sharp anti-Russian demonstrations for their benefit. One of them was particularly grim: at Cracow, to show us that the "underground"

was active, two unfortunate Russian soldiers were shot outside the hotel where we were staying. Any meetings we had with the "intelligentsia"—whether with writers in Cracow, or with members of the Radio Committee at Katowice—were invariably marked by

violent denunciations of the Russians and of their "stooges"— "NKVD" Bierut, Osobka-Morawski, or Gomulka.

Faute de mieux, Mikolajczyk became a symbol of Polish patriotism of the right kind: soon after his arrival in Poland, many thousands staged a tremendous demonstration in his honour at Cracow, which had become like the capital of the old-time and pro-Western Poland, and the stronghold of the Peasant Party, the PSL, and also of all that was most clerical and "reactionary" in the country. The city, with its famous baroque churches, and Pilsudski's tomb—an "anti-Russian" shrine which thousands visited every day —had suffered less damage than most Polish cities. But although the Russians had saved

Cracow from destruction, the hostility to them was greater here than anywhere else. The Russian soldiers in Cracow, for their part, were particularly nervous, boorish and defiant, and among those who had come from Germany with all its lawlessness, discipline was far from good, and the Poles wallowed in stories of Russian robbery and rape.

The atmosphere in Warsaw was distinctly better. The city was, of course, a tragic sight.

Practically all governmental and other activity was centred in Praga, on the other side of the river, and the Vistula could be crossed only by a temporary wooden bridge. In

Warsaw proper, among the few "live" places were the Hotel Polonia and a few blocks of houses behind it; here the Germans had lived till the end, while the rest of Warsaw was burning. Around, for miles, was the desert of burned-out houses and mountains of rubble.

There were cigarette vendors outside the Polonia selling mostly UNRRA cigarettes, and the "fourteen flower stalls" of Warsaw were considered a pathetic small beginning of the restoration of life. A few pre-fabricated houses and a few buses and tramcars had been presented to Warsaw by the Soviet Union, and there was much talk that Russia was going to "rebuild half of Warsaw"; but, whether true or not, all this was still in the future.

Meantime, most of the workers of Warsaw were busy clearing rubble and patching up

houses that could still be made more or less habitable. What was striking in Warsaw, though, was the faith that the city would be rebuilt; the "Lublin" Poles had announced that this would be done, and this was psychologically, a great point in their favour. This reconstruction of Warsaw and the Oder-Neisse Line were the two points on which all

Poles were agreed.

One day when I was in Warsaw, about 20,000 workers, and some peasant delegations,

held a great demonstration in the Krakowskie Przedmescie—all of it in ruins, and from the balcony of the burned-out Opera-house overlooking the street, the members of the government, complete with Mikolajczyk, were there to greet them. There was a great deal of cheering from the demonstrators—but it was not necessarily meant for Mikolajczyk

only. Many of these workers, carrying red banners, were PPR and PPS, Communists and

Socialists.

[The pro-Russian Poles, as I noticed particularly at Katowice, the centre of the Silesian black country, were doing their utmost to build up, among the miners, a large trade-union organisation with a strong communist slant, which was expected to be one of the main pillars of the new régime.]

"Amazing, amazing," Mikolajczyk was saying, "such vitality among our people, living, as they do, among the ruins, and hungry, very, very hungry..." A girl, in national costume, representing the PSL, the Peasant Party, presented him with a bunch of flowers.