The Polish Underground versus the NKVD

Motyka, Grzegorz (2014). Na Białych Polaków obława. Wojska NKWD w walce z polskim podziemiem 1944-1953. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 516 p.

Review prepared by historian Jan Szumski.

Grzegorz Motyka is one of the best-known scholars of Polish-Ukrainian relations and of the problems of the Polish independence underground during the Second World War and the postwar period, not only in Poland but also beyond its borders, especially in Ukraine. One of G. Motyka’s studies was translated into Russian and published in Moscow in 2014 by the association “Russian Political Encyclopedia” (ROSSPEN) (Motyka, 2014). Mr Motyka’s earlier studies focused on the issues of Polish-Ukrainian relations (Motyka, 1999) and the activities of the Ukrainian underground (Motyka, 2006).

The historian’s most recent publications and his professional activity as a member of the Council of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut pamięci narodowej) indicate a broadening of his research interests to the territories of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Belarus in the wider context of the issues of the independence movement and the anti-Soviet underground. For this reason, the scholar’s newest work, whose public presentation was not accidentally held on 17 September 2014, may and should be of interest to Belarusian readers.

It should be noted that the issues of the Home Army and post-Home Army underground in the north-eastern territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth annexed by the USSR in autumn 1939 (Western Belarus), and especially assessments of the activities of Polish military formations, lie in diametrically opposed planes. In Soviet times, the activity of the Polish anti-communist underground was considered within the framework of the “struggle against Polish banditry,” according to the following conventional scheme: the reactionary Home Army underground actively collaborated with the German occupation authorities, and after 1944 engaged in terror and plunder on Belarusian territory.

In today’s Russia, the topic of the Home Army and post-Home Army underground is a litmus test of Polish-Russian relations and an indicator of the degree of tension in them, as is clearly demonstrated by the politically motivated publications of declassified documents through Rosarkhiv, published in February 2015 (How the Polish armed underground “helped” the Red Army defeat Nazi Germany…, 2015). Incidentally, very similar methodological and value-based assessments can be found in the latest Belarusian official publication of documents on the history of Belarusian-Polish relations (Poland-Belarus…, 2012).

In Poland, in turn, questions of the anti-communist movement and the independence underground in the postwar period stand at the forefront not so much of the scholarly community’s concerns as of national identity, where the history of the struggle against communist authorities and the martyrdom of the “cursed soldiers” are meant to become one of the durable elements of historical memory cementing Polish society. Without doubt, this simplified and conventional account does not convey the essence of the problem, but for a reasonably informed reader the depth of the issue should be clear, as should the fact that its politicization has reached its zenith.

Therefore, in our review of the book, we will pay attention above all to the professional side of the publication, assessing the author’s research work, his archival efforts, his use of new sources, the introduction of new data into scholarly circulation, as well as the verification and updating of information that has long been known. The chronological framework chosen by the author begins in 1944 and ends in 1953, when the liquidation of the last formations of the Polish underground was largely completed, although according to some data isolated actions continued until 1956.

The book consists of 18 chapters, including an introduction and conclusion, which are thoroughly documented and logically connected with the content of each preceding section, creating a structure free of randomness. Taking into account the current state of research on the problem and its historiography, the author sought to provide an expanded analysis using a broad range of primary sources. First and foremost, he used the holdings of central Moscow archives (the Russian State Archive of Military History and the State Archive of the Russian Federation), which are of fundamental importance from the point of view of the study.

It is regrettable that the author passed over the archival collections of another Russian federal archive, the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. It is precisely there that documents of the apparatus of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) (after 1952, the CPSU) and its structural subdivisions, as well as the fonds of Soviet state and party figures, are preserved. Reports (copies) on the execution of orders from Red Army fronts, from SMERSH, the NKVD/NKGB/MGB/MVD, and memoranda from central and local party committees informing the centre about the situation on the ground were sent there.

In addition, G. Motyka actively uses the holdings of the archive of the Institute of National Remembrance, both its central and regional branches. As for Belarusian and Ukrainian archival sources, the impression arises that the author is much better oriented in Ukrainian topics than in Belarusian ones. Ukrainian archival sources, above all at the central level (Kyiv) and local level (Lviv), are represented much more extensively in the study. The Belarusian fonds (NARB) processed and used in the work look more modest.

The central axis of the study is the problem of the struggle of Polish armed formations against NKVD troops on the territory of Poland within its borders before the beginning of the Second World War. It is worth emphasizing here that G. Motyka consistently tries to convince the reader that the Polish anti-communist movement had very different faces, and that no equation can be made between the post-Home Army and “national” (narodowa) partisan movements. Although the author’s sympathies are clearly on the side of the Polish underground, the scholar, without hiding behind verbiage or linguistic acrobatics, writes directly about the shameful acts of the National Military Union (Narodowe Zjednoczenie Wojskowe) and violence against national minorities, above all Jews (p. 265).

Nor does he ignore the notorious figure of Captain Romuald Rajs “Bury,” who became known for the pacification of villages with Belarusian Orthodox inhabitants in the Białystok region, which from mid-1944 was part of Poland (p. 285). The author tries not to express his own attitude to the problem and, in assessing the events, relies on the materials of the investigation by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, where the killing of 79 people was defined as a crime that “bore the features of genocide” (nosi znamiona ludobójstwa).

The author devotes considerable attention to the activity of the underground in the western regions of the Ukrainian and Belarusian SSRs, as well as the Lithuanian SSR, which became part of the USSR. For the Belarusian reader, the final chapter, “The 7th NKVD-MGB Division in Action: Western Belarus, 1945-1953,” is undoubtedly of greatest interest. Incidentally, in the introduction to the book the author wrote: “I present some cleansing operations and clashes with Polish partisans in greater detail than others. This concerns first and foremost the postwar armed resistance in Western Belarus, which until now has been treated very superficially. I want readers to be able to assess for themselves the character of the actions carried out by NKVD formations” (pp. 10-11). Therefore, with the Belarusian reader in mind, we will dwell somewhat longer on the analysis of this part of the book.

In our opinion, this chapter leaves the impression of a superficial analysis. This observation applies especially to the brief part of the introduction in which the author presents his view of the Sovietization of the western regions of the BSSR, beginning with a somewhat ironic remark directed at Belarusian communists, who from autumn 1945 tried to return the “ancient Belarusian lands” (placed in quotation marks), that is, the Białystok region. It seems that the problem of the history of this region is a deeper and more complex phenomenon that cannot be described in one or two sentences (p. 380).

The author bases his reflections on collectivization in Western Belarus on materials from several archival files of fond 4 of the NARB and on the work of the Polish scholar from Wrocław, Małgorzata Ruchniewicz (Ruchniewicz, 2010). Here and elsewhere, in our opinion, there is a lack of comparative material from works by Belarusian authors, such as the use of factual material from Viktor Belozorovich’s monograph (Belozorovich, 2004). Describing in detail the biographies of the heads of the Grodno NKVD, among them Colonel Vasily Politika, with indication of party membership card numbers and so on, and reflecting on the reasons for his transfer to Gomel at the end of 1947 (p. 391), the author bypasses the republican context of the affair: the large-scale inspection and purge of the Grodno party organization, as a result of which many heads rolled.

In describing, in detail and step by step, the course of armed clashes, the activity of the Polish underground and its liquidation in the western regions of the BSSR, which in essence constituted the main subject of the work, the author somewhat lost the Belarusian context. Incidentally, the ethnic composition of the Polish military formations operating on the territory of Western Belarus in the postwar period was not exclusively Polish. As documents of that era with which the author of these lines has worked show, the participation of the Belarusian population in and support for the Polish movement were very significant in a number of districts.

We emphasize that our critical remarks concerning the final chapter, devoted to the topic of Western Belarus, do not affect the overall positive assessment of the work and, above all, of the author’s research zeal and archival efforts. In the previous parts of the work, the author sought to provide an expanded analysis of the Polish struggle for independence through the example of major operations (the so-called Operation “Tempest” or “Ostra Brama”), the resettlement of the Polish population within the framework of repatriation, and against the background of the dynamic development of the international situation; he also recalled “blank spots” (the Augustów roundup), which for political reasons still await “better times” and their researcher. The broad range of problems addressed by the Polish historian may become an inspiration for numerous future studies.

Of course, not all plots came to the centre of the researcher’s attention. In our opinion, the author is most competent in the issues of Polish-Ukrainian relations and in the topic of the Ukrainian independence movement during the world war and the postwar period. But the broad spectrum of problems he presents allows the reader to assess them more accurately in a wide perspective.

Finally, I would like to draw attention to several aspects connected with the presentation and scholarly editing of the work. In our opinion, Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian titles and names rendered in Latin transcription were not always transcribed successfully. In Poland, the use of the original Cyrillic script in references and indexes is increasingly welcomed, especially when a study makes extensive use of Cyrillic literature and sources. This also applies to quotations or remarks in the original language that were recorded in Latin transcription with insufficient knowledge of the original language. Let us add that each part of the work has separate references, placed not at the bottom of the page but at the end, which somewhat complicates reading the work. These observations concern editorial presentation rather than authorial shortcomings.

Overall, G. Motyka’s book can be regarded as a successful authorial attempt to summarize the state of research on the problems of the Polish anti-communist movement and the struggle against NKVD troops both on the territory of the western republics of the USSR and in Poland proper within the borders defined at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. The author introduced into scholarly use and employed rich documentary material, first and foremost from Russian federal archives. On the pages of the book one can find many distanced and balanced conclusions that testify not only to mastery of the factual material but also to an understanding of the depth of the problem, especially in the context of Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-Russian relations.

Literature mentioned in the review

1. Белозорович, Виктор (2004) Западнобелорусская деревня в 1939-1953 годах. Гродно: Гродненский университет им. Янки Купалы.
2. Как польское вооруженное подполье “помогало” Красной Армии разгромить нацистскую Германию. 1944–1945 гг. URL (Accessed 08.07.2015) http://archives.ru/library/poland-1944-1945/foreword.shtml
3. Мотыка, Гжегож (2014). От волынской резни до операции «Висла». Польско-украинский конфликт: 1943–1947. Москва: РЭССПЭН.
4. Польша-Беларусь (1921-1953): сб. документов и материалов (2012) Сост. А. Н. Вабищевич. Минск: Беларус. Навука.
5. Шумскі, Ян (2012). Саветызацыя Заходняй Беларусі (1944—1953 г. Беласток-Вільня: Беларускае гістарычнае таварыства –Інстытут беларусістыкі.
6. Motyka, Grzegorz (1999). Tak było w Bieszczadach. Walki polsko-ukraińskie 1943–1948. Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza Volumen.
7. Motyka, Grzegorz (2006). Ukraińska partyzantka 1942-1960. Działalność Organizacji Ukraińskich Nacjonalistów (OUN) i Ukraińskiej Powstańczej Armii (UPA). Warszawa: Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN-Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM.
8. Ruchniewicz, Małgorzata (2010). Wieś zachodniobiałoruska 1944-1953. Wybrane aspekty. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo uniwersytetu wrocławskiego.
9. Szumski, Jan (2010). Sowietyzacja Zachodniej Białorusi: 1944-1953: propoganda i edukacja w slużbie ideologii. Kraków: Arcana.