The entry of the Red Army into Poland. East defense plan

On September 17, 1939, the Soviet invasion of Poland took place. The USSR was not alone in this aggression. Earlier, on September 1, by mutual agreement with the USSR, the troops of Nazi Germany invaded Poland and this date marked the beginning of the Second World War.

It would seem that the whole world condemned Hitler's aggression, England and France about " they revealed the war to Germany as a result of allied obligations, but they were in no hurry to enter the war, fearing its growth and hoping for a miracle. We will find out later that the Second World War had already begun, and then ... then the politicians still hoped for something.

So, Hitler attacked Poland and Poland, with the last of its strength, is fighting the troops of the Wehrmacht. England and France condemned the Nazi invasion and declared war on Germany, that is, they sided with Poland. Two weeks later, another country, the USSR, invades Poland, with the last of its strength, repelling the aggression of Nazi Germany, from the east.

War on two fronts!

That is, the USSR, at the very beginning of the world fire, decided to take the side of Germany. Then, after the victory over Poland, the allies (USSR and Germany) will celebrate a joint victory and hold a joint military parade in Brest, spilling trophy champagne from the captured wine cellars of Poland. There are newsreels. And on September 17, Soviet troops moved from their western borders deep into the territory of Poland towards the "fraternal" troops of the Wehrmacht to Warsaw, engulfed in fire. Warsaw will still continue to defend until the end of September, confronting two strong aggressors and will fall in an unequal struggle.

The date of September 17, 1939 was marked by the entry of the USSR into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany. Later, after the victory over Germany, history will be rewritten and real facts will be hushed up, and the entire population of the USSR will sincerely believe that the "Great Patriotic War" began on June 22, 1941, and then .... then the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition received a severe blow and the world balance of power was sharply shaken.

September 17, 2010 was the 71st anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland. How did this event go in Poland:

Some history and facts

Heinz Guderian (center) and Semyon Krivoshein (right) watching the passage of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army troops during the transfer of Brest-Litovsk on September 22, 1939 to the Soviet administration

September 1939
Meeting of Soviet and German troops in the Lublin region

They were the first

who met the Nazi war machine with an open face - the Polish military command.The first heroes of World War II:

Commander-in-Chief of the VP Marshal Edward Rydz-Smigly

Brigadier General Vaclav Stakhevich, Chief of the General Staff of the VP

Armor General VP Kazimierz Sosnkowski

Divisional General VP Kazimierz Fabricy

Divisional General VP Tadeusz Kutsheba

The entry of the Red Army forces into the territory of Poland

At 5 am on September 17, 1939, the troops of the Belarusian and Ukrainian fronts crossed the Polish-Soviet border along its entire length and attacked the checkpoints of the KOP. Thus, the USSR violated at least four international agreements:

• Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 on Soviet-Polish borders
• The Litvinov Protocol, or the Eastern Pact on the Renunciation of War
• Soviet-Polish non-aggression pact of January 25, 1932, extended in 1934 until the end of 1945
• The London Convention of 1933, containing the definition of aggression, and which the USSR signed on July 3, 1933

The governments of England and France handed in Moscow notes of protest against the undisguised aggression of the USSR against Poland, rejecting all of Molotov's justifying arguments. On September 18, the London Times described the event as "a stab in the back of Poland." At the same time, articles began to appear explaining the actions of the USSR as having an anti-German orientation (!!!)

The advancing units of the Red Army practically did not meet the resistance of the border units. To top it all, Marshal Edward Rydz-Smigly gave the so-called. "Directive of General Content", which was read out on the radio:

Quote: The Soviets have invaded. I order to carry out a withdrawal to Romania and Hungary by the shortest routes. Do not conduct hostilities with the Soviets, only in the event of an attempt on their part to disarm our units. The task for Warsaw and Modlin, which must defend themselves against the Germans, is unchanged. The units, to which the Soviets have approached, must negotiate with them in order to withdraw the garrisons to Romania, or Hungary ...

The directive of the commander in chief led to the disorientation of the majority of the Polish military personnel, and their mass capture. In connection with the Soviet aggression, the President of Poland, Ignacy Mościcki, while in the town of Kosiv, addressed the people. He accused the USSR of violating all legal and moral norms and called on the Poles to maintain firmness of spirit and courage in the fight against soulless barbarians. Mościcki also announced the transfer of the residence of the President of the Republic of Poland and all the highest authorities "to the territory of one of our allies." On the evening of September 17, the President and the Government of the Republic of Poland, headed by Prime Minister Felician Skladkovsky, crossed the Romanian border. And after midnight on September 17 / 18 - Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force Marshal Edward Rydz-Smigly. It was also possible to evacuate 30,000 troops to Romania and 40,000 to Hungary. Including a motorized brigade, a battalion of railway sappers and a police battalion "Golendzinow".

Despite the order of the commander-in-chief, many Polish units entered into battle with the advancing units of the Red Army. Particularly stubborn resistance was put up by part of the VP in the defense of Vilna, Grodno, Lvov (which defended itself from the Germans from September 12 to 22, and also from the Red Army from September 18) and near Sarny. On September 29-30, a battle took place near Shatsk between the 52nd Infantry Division and the retreating units of the Polish troops.

War on two fronts

The invasion of the USSR sharply worsened the already catastrophic situation of the Polish army. Under the new conditions, the main burden of resistance to the German troops fell on the Central Front of Tadeusz Piskor. On September 17-26, two battles near Tomaszow-Lubelski took place - the largest in the September campaign after the battle on Bzura. The task was to break through the German barrier in Rawa-Ruska, blocking the way to Lviv (3 infantry and 2 tank divisions of the 7th Army Corps of General Leonard Wecker). During the most difficult battles waged by the 23rd and 55th infantry divisions, as well as the Warsaw tank-motorized brigade of Colonel Stefan Rowiecki, it was not possible to break through the German defenses. Huge losses were also suffered by the 6th Infantry Division and the Krakow Cavalry Brigade. On September 20, 1939, General Tadeusz Piskor announced the surrender of the Central Front. More than 20 thousand Polish soldiers were captured (including Tadeusz Piskor himself).

Now the main forces of the Wehrmacht were concentrated against the Polish Northern Front.

On September 23, a new battle began near Tomaszow-Lubelski. The northern front was difficult situation. From the west, the 7th Army Corps of Leonard Vecker pressed on him, and from the east - the troops of the Red Army. Parts of the Southern Front of General Kazimierz Sosnkovsky at that time tried to break through to the encircled Lvov, inflicting a number of defeats on the German troops. However, on the outskirts of Lvov, they were stopped by the Wehrmacht and suffered heavy losses. After the news of the surrender of Lvov on September 22, the troops of the front received an order to split into small groups and make their way to Hungary. However, not all groups managed to reach the Hungarian border. General Kazimierz Sosnkowski himself was cut off from the main parts of the front in the Bzhukhovits area. In civilian clothes, he managed to pass through the territory occupied by Soviet troops. First to Lviv, and then, through the Carpathians, to Hungary. September 23 was one of the last equestrian battles during the Second World War. The 25th regiment of the Wielkopolska Lancers, Lieutenant Colonel Bogdan Stakhlevsky, attacked the German cavalry in Krasnobrud and captured the city.

On September 20, Soviet troops crushed the last pockets of resistance in Vilna. About 10,000 Polish soldiers were taken prisoner. In the morning, the tank units of the Belorussian Front (the 27th tank brigade of the 15th tank corps from the 11th army) launched an offensive on Grodno and crossed the Neman. Despite the fact that at least 50 tanks took part in the assault, they failed to take the city on the move. Some of the tanks were destroyed (the defenders of the city widely used Molotov cocktails), and the rest retreated behind the Neman. Grodno was defended by very small units of the local garrison. All the main forces a few days earlier became part of the 35th Infantry Division and were transferred to the defense of Lvov, besieged by the Germans. Volunteers (including scouts) joined the garrison units.

The troops of the Ukrainian Front began preparations for the assault on Lvov, scheduled for the morning of September 21. Meanwhile, power went out in the besieged city. By evening, the German troops received Hitler's order to move 10 km away from Lvov. Since, under the agreement, the city departed to the USSR. The Germans made one last attempt to change this situation. The command of the Wehrmacht again demanded that the Poles surrender the city no later than 10 hours on September 21: “If you surrender Lviv to us, you will remain in Europe, if you surrender to the Bolsheviks, you will become Asia forever”. On the night of September 21, the German units that besieged the city began to withdraw. After negotiations with Soviet command General Vladislav Langner decided to surrender Lvov. He was supported by most of the officers.

The end of September and the beginning of October marked the end of the independent Polish state. Until September 28, Warsaw defended, until September 29 - Modlin. On October 2, the defense of Hel was completed. The defenders of Kock were the last to lay down their arms on October 6, 1939.

This ended the armed resistance of the regular units of the Polish Army in Poland. To further fight against Germany and its allies, armed formations were created, made up of Polish citizens:

• Polish Armed Forces in the West
• Anders Army (2nd Polish Corps)
• Polish armed forces in the USSR (1943 - 1944)

The results of the war

As a result of the aggression of Germany and the USSR, the Polish state ceased to exist. September 28, 1939, immediately after the capitulation of Warsaw, in violation of the Hague Convention of October 18, 1907). Germany and the USSR determined the Soviet-German border on the territory of Poland occupied by them. The German plan was to create a puppet "Polish residual state" Reststaat within the borders of the Kingdom of Poland and Western Galicia. However, this plan was not accepted due to Stalin's disagreement. Who was not satisfied with the existence of any kind of Polish state entity.

The new border basically coincided with the "Curzon Line", recommended in 1919 by the Paris Peace Conference as eastern border Poland, as it delimited the areas of compact residence of Poles, on the one hand, Ukrainians and Belarusians, on the other.

The territories east of the Western Bug and San rivers were annexed to the Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR. This increased the territory of the USSR by 196 thousand km², and the population - by 13 million people.

Germany expanded the borders of East Prussia, moving them close to Warsaw, and included the area up to the city of Lodz, renamed Litzmannstadt, in the Wart region, which occupied the territories of the old Poznanshchina. On October 8, 1939, by Hitler's decree, Poznan, Pomeranian, Silesian, Lodz, part of the Kielce and Warsaw voivodeships, where about 9.5 million people lived, were proclaimed German lands and annexed to Germany.

The small remnant Polish state was declared the "Governorship of the Occupied Polish Regions" under the German authorities, which a year later became known as the "Governorship of the German Empire". Krakow became its capital. Any independent policy of Poland ceased.

On October 6, 1939, speaking in the Reichstag, Hitler publicly announced the termination of the 2nd Commonwealth and the division of its territory between Germany and the USSR. In this regard, he turned to France and England with a proposal for peace. On October 12, this proposal was rejected by Neville Chamberlain at a meeting of the House of Commons.

Side losses

Germany- During the campaign, the Germans, according to various sources, lost 10-17 thousand killed, 27-31 thousand wounded, 300-3500 people missing.

the USSR- Combat losses of the Red Army during the Polish campaign of 1939, according to the Russian historian Mikhail Meltyukhov, amounted to 1173 people killed, 2002 wounded and 302 missing. As a result of the hostilities, 17 tanks, 6 aircraft, 6 guns and mortars, and 36 vehicles were also lost.

According to Polish historians, the Red Army lost about 2,500 soldiers, 150 armored vehicles and 20 aircraft killed.

Poland- According to post-war studies by the Bureau of Military Losses, more than 66,000 Polish military personnel (including 2,000 officers and 5 generals) died in battles with the Wehrmacht. 133 thousand were wounded, and 420 thousand were captured by the Germans.

Polish losses in battles with the Red Army are not exactly known. Meltyukhov gives figures of 3,500 killed, 20,000 missing and 454,700 captured. According to the Polish Military Encyclopedia in Soviet captivity 250,000 troops were hit. Almost the entire officer corps (about 21,000 people) was subsequently shot by the NKVD.

Myths that arose after the Polish campaign

The war of 1939 over the years has acquired myths and legends. This was the result of Nazi and Soviet propaganda, falsification of history and the lack of free access of Polish and foreign historians to archival materials during the time of the PPR. Some works of literature and art also played a decisive role in the creation of enduring myths.

"Polish cavalrymen in desperation rushed to the tanks with sabers"

Perhaps the most popular and tenacious of all myths. It arose immediately after the Battle of Kroyanty, in which the 18th regiment of the Pomeranian Lancers, Colonel Kazimierz Mastalezh, attacked the 2nd motorized battalion of the 76th motorized regiment of the 20th motorized division of the Wehrmacht. Despite the defeat, the regiment completed its task. The attack of the uhlans brought confusion to the general course of the German offensive, slowed down its pace and disorganized the troops. The Germans needed certain time to resume your progress. They never managed to get to the crossings that day. In addition, this attack had a certain psychological impact on the enemy, which Heinz Guderian recalled.

The very next day, Italian correspondents who were in the combat area, referring to the testimonies of German soldiers, wrote that “ Polish cavalrymen rushed with sabers to the tanks. Some "eyewitnesses" claimed that the lancers cut down tanks with sabers, believing that they were made of paper. In 1941, the Germans filmed the propaganda film Kampfgeschwader Lützow on this subject. Even Andrzej Wajda did not escape the propaganda stamp in his “Lotna” of 1958 (the picture was criticized by war veterans).

The Polish cavalry fought on horseback but used infantry tactics. It was armed with machine guns and 75 and 35 mm carbines, Bofors anti-tank guns, a small number of Bofors 40 mm anti-aircraft guns, as well as a small number of UR 1935 anti-tank rifles. Of course, the cavalrymen carried sabers and lances, but these weapons were used only in mounted battles. Throughout the September campaign, there was not a single attack by the Polish cavalry. German tanks. It should, however, be noted that there were moments when the cavalry rushed at a fast gallop in the direction of the tanks attacking it. With one single purpose - to pass them as quickly as possible.

"Polish aviation was destroyed on the ground in the first days of the war"

In fact, just before the start of the war, almost all aviation was relocated to small camouflaged airfields. The Germans managed to destroy only training and auxiliary aircraft on the ground. For two whole weeks, inferior to the Luftwaffe in numbers and quality of vehicles, Polish aviation inflicted significant losses on them. After the end of the fighting, many Polish pilots moved to France and England, where they joined the flight crew of the Allied Air Force and continued the war (having already shot down a lot of German aircraft during the Battle of England)

"Poland did not put up proper resistance to the enemy and quickly surrendered"

In fact, the Wehrmacht, surpassing the Polish Army in all major military indicators, received a strong and completely unplanned OKW rebuff. The German army lost about 1,000 tanks and armored vehicles (almost 30% of the total), 370 guns, and over 10,000 military vehicles (about 6,000 vehicles and 5,500 motorcycles). The Luftwaffe lost over 700 aircraft (about 32% of the entire composition participating in the campaign).

Losses in manpower amounted to 45,000 killed and wounded. According to Hitler's personal confession, the Wehrmacht infantry "... did not live up to the hopes placed on it."

A significant number of German weapons received such damage that they needed major repairs. And the intensity of the hostilities was such that ammunition and other ammunition was enough for only two weeks.

In terms of time, the Polish campaign turned out to be only a week shorter than the French one. Although the forces of the Anglo-French coalition significantly outnumbered the Polish Army both in numbers and weapons. Moreover, the unforeseen delay of the Wehrmacht in Poland allowed the Allies to more seriously prepare for the German attack.

Read also about the heroic, which the Poles were the first to take on.

Quote: Immediately after the invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939, "" ... the Red Army committed a series of violence, murders, robberies and other lawlessness, both in relation to the captured units and in relation to the civilian population" "[http://www .krotov.info/libr_min/m/mackiew.html Józef Mackiewicz. "Katyn", Ed. Zarya, Canada, 1988] In total, according to general estimates, about 2,500 military and police personnel were killed, as well as several hundred civilians. Andrzej Frischke. "Poland. The fate of the country and the people 1939 - 1989, Warsaw, published by Iskra, 2003, p. 25, ISBN 83-207-1711-6] At the same time, the commanders of the Red Army called on the people to "beat the officers and generals" (from the appeal of Commander Semyon Timoshenko) [http://www.krotov.info/libr_min/m/mackiew.html] military counterintelligence. These testimonies were carefully recorded and now represent a huge archive.

“When we were taken prisoner, we were ordered to put our hands up and so they drove us at a run of two kilometers. During the search, they stripped us naked, grabbing everything that was of any value ... after which they drove for 30 km, without rest and water. Who was weaker and did not keep up, he was hit with a butt, fell to the ground, and if he could not get up, they pinned him with a bayonet. I saw four such cases. I remember exactly that Captain Ksheminsky from Warsaw was shoved several times with a bayonet, and when he fell, another Soviet a soldier shot him twice in the head…" (from the testimony of a KOP soldier) [http://www.krotov.info/libr_min/m/mackiew.html Yuzef Matskevich. "Katyn", Ed. "Dawn", Canada, 1988] ]

The most serious war crimes of the Red Army took place in Rogatin, where prisoners of war along with the civilian population were brutally murdered (the so-called "Rogatin massacre") Vladislav Pobug-Malinovsky. "The Recent Political History of Poland. 1939 - 1945", ed. "Platan", Krakow, 2004, volume 3, p. 107, ISBN 83-89711-10-9] Katyn crime in documents. London, 1975, pp. 9-11]] Wojciech Roszkowski. "Modern history of Poland 1914 - 1945". Warsaw, "The World of the Book", 2003, pp. 344-354, 397-410 (vol. 1) ISBN 83-7311-991-4] Vladislav Pobug-Malinovsky. "The Recent Political History of Poland. 1939 - 1945", ed. "Platan", Krakow, 2004, volume 3, p. 107, ISBN 83-89711-10-9] "...Terror and murders took on enormous proportions in Grodno, where 130 schoolchildren and cadets were killed, wounded defencists fought on the spot 12-year-old Tadzik Yasinsky was tied to a tank and dragged along the pavement. After the occupation of Grodno, repressions began; those arrested were shot on Dog Mountain and in the Secret Grove. A wall of corpses lay on the square near Fara ... Yulian Sedletsky. "The fate of the Poles in the USSR in 1939 - 1986", London, 1988, pp. 32-34] Karol Liszewski. "Polish-Soviet War 1939", London, Polish Cultural Foundation, 1986, ISBN 0-85065-170-0 (The monograph contains a detailed description of the battles on the entire Polish-Soviet front and the testimony of witnesses about the war crimes of the USSR in September 1939)] Institute of the National Memory of Poland. Investigation into the fact of the massacre of civilians and military defenders of Grodno by the Red Army soldiers, NKVD officers and saboteurs 22.09.39]

“At the end of September 1939, a part of the Polish army entered into battle with a Soviet unit in the vicinity of Vilna. The Bolsheviks sent truce with a proposal to lay down their arms, guaranteeing freedom and return home in return. The commander of the Polish unit believed these assurances and ordered to lay down their arms. The entire detachment immediately surrounded, and the liquidation of officers began ... "(from the testimony of the Polish soldier J.L. dated April 24, 1943) [http://www.krotov.info/libr_min/m/mackiew.html Józef Mackiewicz. "Katyn", Ed. "Dawn", Canada, 1988] ]

“I myself witnessed the capture of Ternopil. I saw how Soviet soldiers hunted Polish officers. For example, one of the two soldiers passing by me, leaving his comrade, rushed in the opposite direction, and when asked where he was in a hurry, he answered: “I’ll be right back , I’ll just kill that bourgeois, "and pointed to a man in an officer’s overcoat without insignia ..." (from the testimony of a Polish soldier on the crimes of the Red Army in Ternopil) [http://www.krotov.info/libr_min/m/mackiew.html Jozef Matskevich. "Katyn", Ed. "Dawn", Canada, 1988] ]

"Soviet troops entered at about four o'clock in the afternoon and immediately began a brutal massacre and brutal abuse of the victims. They killed not only the police and the military, but also the so-called "bourgeois", including women and children. Those military who escaped death and whom only disarmed, it was ordered to lie down in a wet meadow outside the city. There were about 800 people. Machine guns were installed in such a way that they could shoot low above the ground. Those who raised their heads perished. They kept them like that all night. The next day they were driven to Stanislavov , and from there into the depths of Soviet Russia ... "(from the testimony on the "Rohatyn Massacre") [http://www.krotov.info/libr_min/m/mackiew.html Yuzef Matskevich. "Katyn", Ed. "Dawn", Canada, 1988] ]

"On September 22, during the battles for Grodno, at about 10 o'clock, the commander of the communications platoon, junior lieutenant Dubovik, received an order to escort 80-90 prisoners to the rear. Having moved 1.5-2 km from the city, Dubovik interrogated the prisoners in order to identify the officers and persons who took participation in the murder of the Bolsheviks.Promising to release the prisoners, he sought confessions and shot 29 people.The rest of the prisoners were returned to Grodno.This was known to the command of the 101st Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, but no action was taken against Dubovik. Moreover, the commander of the 3rd battalion, Senior Lieutenant Tolochko, gave a direct order to shoot the officers ... "Meltyukhov M.I. [http://militera.lib.ru/research/meltyukhov2/index.html Soviet-Polish Wars. Military-political confrontation 1918-1939] M., 2001.] end of quote

Often, Polish units surrendered, succumbing to the promises of freedom, which they were guaranteed by the commanders of the Red Army. In fact, these promises were never kept. As, for example, in Polissya, where some of the 120 officers were shot, and the rest were sent deep into the USSR [http://www.krotov.info/libr_min/m/mackiew.html Yuzef Matskevich. "Katyn", Ed. Zarya, Canada, 1988]] On September 22, 1939, the commander of the defense of Lvov, General Vladislav Langner, signed an act of surrender, providing for the unhindered passage of military and police units to the Romanian border immediately after they lay down their arms. This agreement was violated by the Soviet side. All Polish servicemen and policemen were arrested and taken to the USSR. Wojciech Roszkowski. "Modern history of Poland 1914 - 1945". Warsaw, "The World of the Book", 2003, pp. 344-354, 397-410 (vol. 1) ISBN 83-7311-991-4]

The command of the Red Army did the same with the defenders of Brest. Moreover, all the captured border guards of the 135th KOP regiment were shot on the spot by Wojciech Roszkowski. "Modern history of Poland 1914 - 1945". Warsaw, "The World of the Book", 2003, pp. 344-354, 397-410 (vol. 1) ISBN 83-7311-991-4]

One of the most serious war crimes of the Red Army was committed in the Great Bridges on the territory of the School of sub-officers of the state police. At that time, there were about 1,000 cadets in this largest and most modern police school in Poland. The commandant of the School, Inspector Vitold Dunin-Vonsovich, gathered the cadets and teachers on the parade ground and gave a report to the arriving NKVD officer. After that, the latter ordered to open fire from machine guns. Everyone died, including the commandant

Massacre of General Olshina-Vilchinsky

On September 11, 2002, the Institute of National Remembrance launched an investigation into the circumstances of the tragic death of General Jozef Olszyna-Wilczynski and Captain Mieczysław Strzemeski (Act S 6/02/Zk). During inquiries in Polish and Soviet archives, the following was established:

"On September 22, 1939, the former commander of the Grodno task force, General Jozef Olshina-Vilchinsky, his wife Alfreda, adjutant artillery captain Mechislav Strzemesky, the driver and his assistant ended up in the town of Sopotskin near Grodno. Here they were stopped by the crews of two tanks of the Red Army. The tankers ordered everyone to leave the car. The general's wife was taken to a nearby shed, where there were already more than a dozen other people. After which both Polish officers were shot on the spot. From the photocopies of Soviet archival materials in the Central Military Archive in Warsaw, it follows that on September 22, 1939, in near Sopotskin, a motorized detachment of the 2nd tank brigade of the 15th tank corps entered into battle with the Polish troops. The corps was part of the Dzerzhinsky cavalry-mechanized group of the Belorussian Front, commanded by commander Ivan Boldin ... "[http://www.pl.indymedia .org/pl/2005/07/15086.shtml

The investigation identified the persons directly responsible for this crime. This is the commander of a motorized detachment, Major Fedor Chuvakin and Commissar Polikarp Grigorenko. There are also testimonies of witnesses to the murder of Polish officers - the wife of General Alfreda Staniszewska, the driver of the car and his assistant, as well as local residents. On September 26, 2003, a request was submitted to the Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation for assistance in the investigation into the murder of General Olszyna-Wilchinsky and Captain Mieczysław Strzemeski (as a crime that does not have a statute of limitations in accordance with the Hague Convention of October 18, 1907). In the response of the Military Prosecutor's Office to the Polish side, it was stated that in this case it was not a war crime, but a common law crime, the statute of limitations of which had already expired. The arguments of the prosecutor's office were rejected as having the sole purpose of stopping the Polish investigation. However, the refusal of the Military Prosecutor's Office to cooperate made further investigation pointless. On May 18, 2004, it was terminated. [http://www.pl.indymedia.org/pl/2005/07/15086.shtml Act S6/02/Zk - investigation into the assassination of General Olszyna-Wilczynski and Captain Mieczysław Strzemeski, Institute of National Remembrance of Poland]]

Why did Lech Kaczynski die?... The Polish Law and Justice Party, led by President Lech Kaczynski, is preparing a response to Vladimir Putin. The first step against "Russian propaganda praising Stalin" should be a resolution equating the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 with fascist aggression.

Officially, the Polish conservatives from the Law and Justice Party (PiS) proposed to equate the invasion of Soviet troops in Poland in 1939 with fascist aggression. The most representative party in the Sejm, to which Polish President Lech Kaczynski also belongs, submitted a draft resolution on Thursday.

According to Polish conservatives, every day of glorifying Stalin in the spirit of Soviet propaganda is an insult to the Polish state, the victims of World War II in Poland and around the world. To prevent this, they call on the leadership of the Sejm "to call on the Polish government to take steps to counter the falsification of history."

“We insist on revealing the truth,” Rzeczpospolita quotes the statement of the official representative of the faction, Mariusz Blaszczak. “Fascism and communism are the two great totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, and their leaders are responsible for the outbreak of World War II and its aftermath. The Red Army brought death and ruin to Polish territory. Its plans included genocide, murder, rape, looting and other forms of persecution,” the proposed PiS resolution says.

Blashak is sure that the date of September 17, 1939, when the Soviet troops entered Poland, was not as well known until that time as September 1, 1939 - the day of the invasion of the Nazi troops: “Thanks to the efforts of Russian propaganda, falsifying history, it remains so to this day”.

When asked whether the adoption of this document would harm Polish-Russian relations, Blashak spoke in the spirit that there would be nothing to harm. In Russia, "slander campaigns" are being waged against Poland, in which government agencies, including the FSB, take part, and official Warsaw "should put an end to this."

However, the passage of the document through the Sejm is unlikely.

The deputy head of the PiS faction, Gregory Dolnyak, generally opposed the draft resolution being made public until his group managed to agree on the text of the statement with the rest of the factions. “We must first try to agree on any resolution of historical content among us, and then make it public,” Rzeczpospolita quotes him.

His fears are justified. The ruling coalition, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk's Civic Platform party, is frankly skeptical.

Deputy Speaker of Parliament Stefan Nesiolowski, representing the Civic Platform, called the resolution "stupid, untruthful and detrimental to Poland's interests." "It is not true that Soviet occupation was the same as the German one, it was softer. It also does not correspond to the truth that the Soviets carried out ethnic cleansing, the Germans did it,” he said in an interview with Gazeta Wyborcza.

In the socialist camp, they also categorically oppose the resolution. As Tadeusz Iwinski, deputy of the Left Forces and Democrats bloc, noted to the same publication, the LSD considers the draft resolution “anti-historical and provocative.” Poland and Russia have recently managed to bring their positions closer on the issue of the role of the USSR in the death of the Polish state in 1939. In an article in Gazeta Wyborcza, timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the start of the war, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact "morally unacceptable" and had "no prospects from the point of view of practical implementation", not forgetting to reproach the historians who write for the sake of "momentary political conjuncture". The idyllic picture was blurred when, at the memorial celebrations at Westerplatte near Gdansk, Prime Minister Putin compared trying to figure out the causes of World War II to "picking in a moldy bun." At the same time, Polish President Kaczynski announced that in 1939 “Bolshevik Russia” had stabbed his country in the back, and unequivocally accused the Red Army, which occupied the eastern Polish lands, of persecuting the Poles on ethnic grounds.

The Nuremberg military tribunal sentenced: Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Jodl, Seyss-Inquart, Bormann (in absentia) - to death by hanging.

Hess, Funk, Reder - to life imprisonment.

Schirach, Speer - to 20, Neurath - to 15, Doenitz - to 10 years in prison.

Fritsche, Papen, Schacht were acquitted. Handed over to the court, Ley hanged himself in prison shortly before the start of the trial, Krup (the industrialist) was declared terminally ill, and the case was dismissed.

After the Control Council for Germany rejected the petitions of the convicts for clemency, those sentenced to death on the night of October 16, 1946 were hanged in Nuremberg prison (2 hours before this, G. Goering committed suicide). The Tribunal also declared the SS, SD, Gestapo, the leadership of the National Socialist Party (NDSAP) to be criminal organizations, but did not recognize the SA as such, German government, General Staff and High Command of the Wehrmacht. But a member of the tribunal from the USSR, R. A. Rudenko, declared in a “dissenting opinion” that he disagreed with the acquittal of the three defendants, spoke in favor of the death penalty against R. Hess.

The International Military Tribunal recognized aggression as the gravest crime of an international character, punished statesmen guilty of preparing, unleashing and waging aggressive wars as criminals, justly punished the organizers and executors of criminal plans to exterminate millions of people and subdue entire nations. And its principles, contained in the Charter of the Tribunal and expressed in the verdict, were confirmed by the resolution of the UN General Assembly of December 11, 1946, as universally recognized norms of international law and entered the minds of most people.

So, don't say that someone is rewriting history. It is beyond the power of man to change past history, to change what has already happened.

But it is possible to change the brains of the population by implanting political and historical hallucinations in them.

As for the accusations of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, don't you think that the list of the accused is not complete? Many have evaded responsibility and continue to go unpunished to this day. But it's not even about them themselves - their crimes, which are presented as valor, are not condemned, thereby distorting historical logic and distorting memory, replacing it with propaganda lies.

"You can't trust anyone's word, comrades.... (Stormy applause)." (I.V. Stalin. From speeches.)

The Polish campaign of the Red Army in 1939 was overgrown with an incredible amount of interpretations and gossip. The invasion of Poland was announced both as the start of a world war jointly with Germany, and as a stab in the back of Poland. Meanwhile, if we consider the events of September 1939 without anger and predilection, in the actions Soviet state quite clear logic appears.

Relations between the Soviet state and Poland were not cloudless from the very beginning. During the Civil War, Poland, which gained independence, claimed not only its own territories, but at the same time Ukraine and Belarus. The fragile peace in the 1930s did not bring friendly relations. On the one hand, the USSR was preparing for a world revolution, on the other hand, Poland had huge ambitions in the international arena. Warsaw had far-reaching plans to expand its own territory, and besides, it feared both the USSR and Germany. Polish underground organizations fought against the German Freikorps in Silesia and Poznan, Pilsudski recaptured Vilna from Lithuania with armed force.

The coldness in relations between the USSR and Poland grew into open hostility after the Nazis came to power in Germany. Warsaw reacted surprisingly calmly to the changes in its neighbor, believing that Hitler did not pose a real threat. On the contrary, they planned to use the Reich to implement their own geopolitical projects.

The year 1938 was decisive for Europe's turn to a big war. The history of the Munich Agreement is well known and does not do honor to its participants. Hitler delivered an ultimatum to Czechoslovakia, demanding that the Sudetenland on the German-Polish border be handed over to Germany. The USSR was ready to defend Czechoslovakia even alone, but did not have a common border with Germany. A corridor was required along which Soviet troops could enter Czechoslovakia. However, Poland flatly refused to allow Soviet troops to pass through its territory.

During the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Nazis, Warsaw successfully made its own acquisition by annexing a small Teszyn region (805 sq. Km, 227 thousand inhabitants). Now, however, clouds were gathering over Poland itself.

Hitler created a state that was very dangerous for its neighbors, but it was precisely in his power that his weakness consisted. The fact is that the exceptionally rapid growth military machine Germany threatened to undermine its own economy. The Reich needed to continuously absorb other states and cover the costs of its military construction at someone else's expense, otherwise it would be in danger of complete collapse. The Third Reich, despite all its external monumentality, was a cyclopean financial pyramid needed to service its own army. Only war could save the Nazi regime.

We clear the battlefield

In the case of Poland, the Polish corridor, which separated Germany proper from East Prussia, became the reason for the claims. Communication with the exclave was maintained only by sea. In addition, the Germans wanted to reconsider in their favor the status of the city and the Baltic port of Danzig with its German population and the status of a "free city" under the patronage of the League of Nations.

Such a rapid collapse of the existing tandem, of course, did not please Warsaw. However, the Polish government counted on a successful diplomatic resolution of the conflict, and if it failed, then on a military victory. At the same time, Poland confidently torpedoed Britain's attempt to form a united front against the Nazis, including England itself, France, Poland and the USSR. The Polish Foreign Ministry stated that they refused to sign any document jointly with the USSR, and from the Kremlin, on the contrary, they announced that they would not enter into any alliances aimed at protecting Poland without its consent. During a conversation with People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Litvinov, the Polish ambassador announced that Poland would turn to the USSR for help "when needed."

However, the Soviet Union intended to secure its interests in Eastern Europe. In what is planned big war, Moscow had no doubts. However, the USSR in this conflict had a very vulnerable position. The key centers of the Soviet state were too close to the border. Leningrad was under attack from two sides at once: from Finland and Estonia, Minsk and Kyiv were dangerously close to the Polish borders. Of course, we were not talking about fears directly from Estonia or Poland. However, in the Soviet Union it was believed that a third force could successfully use them as a springboard for an attack on the USSR (and by 1939 it was quite obvious what kind of force it was). Stalin and his entourage were well aware that the country would have to fight Germany, and would like to get the most advantageous positions before the inevitable clash.

Of course, a much better choice would have been a joint action against Hitler with the Western powers. This option, however, was firmly blocked by Poland's resolute rejection of any contact. True, there was one more obvious option: an agreement with France and Britain, bypassing Poland. An Anglo-French delegation flew to the Soviet Union for negotiations...

... and it quickly became clear that the Allies had nothing to offer Moscow. Stalin and Molotov were primarily interested in the question of what kind of joint action plan could be proposed by the British and French, both regarding joint actions and regarding the Polish question. Stalin feared (and rightly so) that the USSR might be left alone before the Nazis. Therefore, the Soviet Union went on a controversial move - an agreement with Hitler. On August 23, a non-aggression pact was concluded between the USSR and Germany, which determined the spheres of interest in Europe.

As part of the famous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the USSR planned to win time and secure a foreground in Eastern Europe. Therefore, the Soviets spoke out an essential condition - the transition to the sphere of interests of the USSR of the eastern part of Poland, which is also western Ukraine and Belarus.

The dismemberment of Russia is at the heart of Polish policy in the East... The main goal is the weakening and defeat of Russia."

Meanwhile, the reality was radically different from the plans of the commander-in-chief of the Polish army, Marshal Rydz-Smigly. The Germans left only weak barriers against England and France, while they themselves attacked Poland with their main forces from several sides. The Wehrmacht was indeed the advanced army of its time, the Germans also outnumbered the Poles, so that for a short time the main forces of the Polish army were surrounded west of Warsaw. Already after the first week of the war, the Polish army began to retreat chaotically in all areas, part of the forces were surrounded. On September 5, the government left Warsaw towards the border. The main command left for Brest and lost contact with most of the troops. After the 10th, there was simply no centralized control of the Polish army. On September 16, the Germans reached Bialystok, Brest and Lvov.

At that moment, the Red Army entered Poland. The thesis about a stab in the back against fighting Poland does not stand up to the slightest criticism: there was no longer any "back". Actually, only the fact of advancing towards the Red Army stopped the German maneuvers. At the same time, the parties did not have any plans for joint actions, no joint operations were conducted. The Red Army soldiers occupied the territory, disarming the Polish units that came across. On the night of September 17, the Ambassador of Poland in Moscow was handed a note of approximately the same content. Leaving aside the rhetoric, it remains to recognize the fact: the only alternative to the invasion of the Red Army was the capture eastern territories Poland by Hitler. The Polish army did not offer organized resistance. Accordingly, the only party whose interests were actually infringed is the Third Reich. The modern public, worried about the perfidy of the Soviets, should not forget that in fact Poland could no longer act as a separate party, it did not have the strength to do so.

It should be noted that the entry of the Red Army into Poland was accompanied by great disorder. The resistance of the Poles was episodic. However, confusion and a large number non-combat losses accompanied this march. During the assault on Grodno, 57 Red Army soldiers were killed. In total, the Red Army lost, according to various sources, from 737 to 1475 people dead and took 240 thousand prisoners.

The German government immediately stopped the advance of its troops. A few days later, the demarcation line was determined. At the same time, a crisis arose in the Lviv region. Soviet troops clashed with German ones, and on both sides there were wrecked equipment and human casualties.

On September 22, the 29th tank brigade of the Red Army entered Brest, occupied by the Germans. Those at this time without special success stormed the fortress, which had not yet become "the one". The piquancy of the moment was that the Germans transferred Brest and the fortress to the Red Army right along with the Polish garrison that had settled inside.

Interestingly, the USSR could have pushed even deeper into Poland, but Stalin and Molotov chose not to.

Ultimately, the Soviet Union acquired a territory of 196 thousand square meters. km. (half of the territory of Poland) with a population of up to 13 million people. On September 29, the Polish campaign of the Red Army actually ended.

Then the question arose about the fate of the prisoners. In total, counting both the military and civilians, the Red Army and the NKVD detained up to 400 thousand people. Some part (mainly officers and policemen) were subsequently executed. Most of those captured were either sent home or sent through third countries to the west, after which they formed the "Army of Anders" as part of the Western coalition. Soviet power was established on the territory of western Belarus and Ukraine.

The Western allies reacted to the events in Poland without any enthusiasm. However, no one cursed the USSR and branded it an aggressor. Winston Churchill, with his characteristic rationalism, said:

- Russia is pursuing a cold policy of self-interest. We would have preferred the Russian armies to stand in their present positions as friends and allies of Poland rather than as invaders. But in order to protect Russia from the Nazi threat, it was clearly necessary that the Russian armies stand on this line.

What did the Soviet Union really gain? The Reich was not the most honored negotiating partner, but the war would have started anyway - with or without a pact. As a result of the intervention in Poland, the USSR received an extensive background for a future war. In 1941, the Germans passed it quickly - but what would have happened if they had started 200-250 kilometers to the east? Then, probably, Moscow would have remained with the Germans in the rear.

There are things that should not be forgotten...
The joint fascist-Soviet attack on Poland escalated into World War II. And if the aggression of the Nazis received a due assessment at the Nuremberg trials, then Soviet crimes against the Poles were hushed up and remained unpunished. However, Soviet crimes came back to haunt the shame and bitterness of 1941.
And it is worth looking at the events of 1939 through the eyes of the Poles:

Original taken from vg_saveliev to the Polish campaign of the Red Army in 1939 through the eyes of the Poles.

We were not taught that way, of course. What is written below, we were not told.
I think that even today the Polish campaign is described as taking Belarusians and Ukrainians under the protection in the conditions of the collapse of the Polish state and the aggression of Nazi Germany.
But it was. Therefore, the Poles have a completely different view of what happened, starting from September 17, 1939.

It was four o'clock in the morning on September 17, 1939, when the Red Army began to implement Order No. 16634, which had been issued the day before by People's Commissar of Defense Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. The order was brief: "Begin the offensive at dawn on the 17th."
The Soviet troops, which consisted of six armies, formed two fronts - Belarusian and Ukrainian, and launched a massive attack on eastern Polish territories.
620 thousand soldiers, 4700 tanks and 3300 aircraft were thrown into the attack, that is, twice as many as the Wehrmacht had, which attacked Poland on the first of September.

Soviet soldiers drew attention to themselves with their appearance
One resident of the town of Disna, Vilna Voivodeship, described them as follows: “They were strange - short, bow-legged, ugly and terribly hungry. They had fancy hats on their heads and rag boots on their feet. There was another feature in the appearance and behavior of the soldiers that the locals noticed even more clearly: an animal hatred for everything that was associated with Poland. It was written on their faces and resounded in their conversations. It might seem that someone had been "stuffing" them with this hatred for a long time, and only now she was able to break free.

Soviet soldiers killed Polish prisoners, destroyed the civilian population, burned and robbed. Behind linear parts there were operational groups of the NKVD, whose task was to eliminate the "Polish enemy" in the rear of the Soviet front. They were entrusted with the task of taking control of the most important elements of the infrastructure of the Polish state in the territories occupied by the Red Army. They occupied the buildings of state institutions, banks, printing houses, newspaper editorial offices; confiscated securities, archives and cultural property; they arrested Poles on the basis of lists prepared in advance and current denunciations of their agents; they caught and copied employees of Polish services, parliamentarians, members of Polish parties and public organizations. Many were immediately killed, not even having a chance to get into Soviet prisons and camps, retaining at least a theoretical chance of survival.

Outlaw diplomats
The first victims of the Soviet attack were diplomats representing Poland on the territory of the Soviet Union. The Polish ambassador to Moscow, Vaclav Grzybowski, was urgently summoned to the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs at midnight from September 16 to 17, 1939, where Vyacheslav Molotov's deputy minister Vladimir Potemkin tried to hand him a Soviet note justifying the attack of the Red Army. Grzybowski refused to accept it, saying that the Soviet side had violated all international agreements. Potemkin replied that there was no longer a Polish state or Polish government, at the same time explaining to Grzybowski that Polish diplomats no longer had any official rank and would be treated as a group of Poles located in the Soviet Union, which local courts had the right to prosecute for illegal actions. Contrary to the provisions of the Geneva Convention, the Soviet leadership tried to prevent the evacuation of diplomats to Helsinki, and then arrest them. The requests of the Deputy Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, Ambassador of Italy Augusto Rosso to Vyacheslav Molotov, remained unanswered. As a result, the Ambassador of the Third Reich in Moscow, Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg, decided to save the Polish diplomats, who forced the Soviet leadership to give them permission to leave.

However, before that, other, much more dramatic stories with the participation of Polish diplomats managed to happen in the USSR.
On September 30, the Polish consul in Kyiv, Jerzy Matusinsky, was summoned to the local branch of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. At midnight, accompanied by two of his drivers, he left the building of the Polish consulate and went missing. When the Polish diplomats who remained in Moscow learned about the disappearance of Matusinsky, they again turned to Augusto Rosso, who went to Molotov, who said that, most likely, the consul with the drivers fled to some neighboring country. Schulenburg failed to achieve anything either. In the summer of 1941, when the USSR began to release the Poles from the camps, General Władysław Anders (Władysław Anders) began to form on Soviet territory Polish army, and in its ranks was the former driver of the consul, Andrzej Orszyński. According to his testimony given under oath to the Polish authorities, on that day all three were arrested by the NKVD and transported to the Lubyanka. Orshinsky was not shot only by a miracle. The Polish embassy in Moscow appealed to the Soviet authorities several more times about the missing consul Matusinsky, but the answer was the same: "We don't have him."

The repression also affected employees of other Polish diplomatic missions in the Soviet Union. The consulate in Leningrad was forbidden to transfer the building and the property in it to the next consul, and the NKVD forcibly expelled personnel from it. A rally of “protesting citizens” was organized near the consulate in Minsk, as a result of which demonstrators beat and robbed Polish diplomats. For the USSR, Poland, like international law, did not exist. What happened to representatives of the Polish state in September 1939 was a unique event in the history of world diplomacy.

Executed army
Already in the first days after the Red Army's invasion of Poland, war crimes began. First, they affected the Polish soldiers and officers. The orders of the Soviet troops abounded with appeals addressed to the Polish civilian population: they agitated to destroy the Polish military, portraying them as enemies. Ordinary soldiers call
whether to kill their officers. Such orders were given, for example, by the commander of the Ukrainian Front, Semyon Timoshenko. This war was fought against international law and all military conventions. Now even Polish historians cannot give an accurate assessment of the scale of the Soviet crimes of 1939. We learned about many cases of atrocities and brutal murders of the Polish military only after several decades thanks to the stories of witnesses of those events. So it was, for example, with the story of the commander of the Third Military Corps in Grodno, General Jozef Olshina-Vilchinsky.
On September 22, in the vicinity of the village of Sopotskin, his car was surrounded by Soviet soldiers with grenades and machine guns. The general and the people accompanying him were robbed, stripped, and shot almost immediately. The general's wife, who managed to survive, told many years later: “The husband was lying face down, his left leg was shot obliquely under the knee. Nearby lay the captain with his head cut open. The contents of his skull spilled onto the ground in a bloody mass. The view was terrible. I stepped closer, checked for a pulse, though I knew it was pointless. The body was still warm, but he was already dead. I started looking for some small thing, something for memory, but my husband’s pockets were empty, they even took away the Order of Military Valor and the icon with the image of the Mother of God, which I gave him on the first day of the war.

In the Polesye Voivodeship, the Soviet military shot an entire captured company of the battalion of the Sarny Border Protection Corps - 280 people. A brutal murder also took place in the Great Bridges of the Lviv province. Soviet soldiers drove the cadets of the local School of Police Officers to the square, listened to the report of the school commandant and shot all those present from machine guns placed around. No one survived. From one Polish detachment that fought in the vicinity of Vilnius and laid down their arms in exchange for a promise to let the soldiers go home, all the officers were withdrawn, who were immediately executed. The same thing happened in Grodno, taking which the Soviet troops killed about 300 Polish defenders of the city. On the night of September 26-27, Soviet detachments entered Nemiruvek in the Chelm region, where several dozen cadets spent the night. They were taken prisoner, tied with barbed wire and bombarded with grants. The policemen who defended Lviv were shot on the highway leading to Vinniki. Similar executions took place in Novogrudok, Ternopil, Volkovysk, Oshmyany, Svisloch, Molodechno, Khodorov, Zolochev, Stry. Separate and massacres of captured Polish soldiers were committed in hundreds of other cities eastern regions Poland. The Soviet military also mocked the wounded. So it was, for example, during the battle near Vytychno, when several dozen wounded prisoners were placed in the building of the People's House in Vlodava and locked up there without any help. Two days later, almost all died from their wounds, their bodies were burned at the stake.
Polish prisoners of war under the escort of the Red Army after the Polish campaign in September 1939

Sometimes the Soviet military used deception, treacherously promising Polish soldiers freedom, and sometimes even pretending to be Polish allies in the war with Hitler. This happened, for example, on September 22 in Vinniki near Lvov. General Vladislav Langer, who led the defense of the city, signed with the Soviet commanders a protocol for the transfer of the city to the Red Army, according to which Polish officers were promised an unhindered exit in the direction of Romania and Hungary. The agreement was violated almost immediately: the officers were arrested and taken to a camp in Starobilsk. In the Zalishchiki region on the border with Romania, the Russians decorated tanks with Soviet and Polish flags to pose as allies, and then surround the Polish detachments, disarm and arrest the soldiers. They often took off their uniforms and shoes from the prisoners and let them go on without clothes, shooting at them with undisguised joy. In general, as the Moscow press reported, in September 1939, about 250 thousand Polish soldiers and officers fell into the hands of the Soviet army. For the latter, real hell began later. The denouement took place in the Katyn forest and the basements of the NKVD in Tver and Kharkov.

Red terror
Terror and killings of the civilian population took on a special scale in Grodno, where at least 300 people were killed, including scouts who took part in the defense of the city. Twelve-year-old Tadzik Yasinsky was tied to a tank by Soviet soldiers and then dragged along the pavement. Arrested civilians shot at Dog Mountain. Witnesses of these events recall that piles of corpses lay in the center of the city. Among those arrested were, in particular, the director of the gymnasium Vaclav Myslicki, the head of the women's gymnasium Janina Nedzwiecka and the deputy of the Seimas Constanta Terlikovsky.
They all soon died in Soviet prisons. The wounded had to hide from Soviet soldiers, because if they were found, they would be immediately shot.
The Red Army soldiers especially actively poured out their hatred on the Polish intellectuals, landowners, officials and schoolchildren. In the village of Bolshiye Eismonty in the Bialystok region, Kazimierz Bisping, a member of the Union of Landowners and Senator, was tortured, who later died in one of the Soviet camps. Arrest and torture also awaited the engineer Oskar Meishtovich, the owner of the Rogoznitsa estate near Grodno, who was subsequently killed in a Minsk prison.
Soviet soldiers treated foresters and military settlers with particular cruelty. The command of the Ukrainian Front issued a 24-hour permission to the local Ukrainian population to "crack down on the Poles." The most brutal murder took place in the Grodno region, where not far from Skidel and Zhydomlya there were three garrisons inhabited by Pilsudski's former legionnaires. Several dozen people were brutally killed: their ears, tongues, noses were cut off, and their stomachs were torn open. Some were doused with oil and burned.
Terror and repression also fell upon the clergy. Priests were beaten, taken to camps, and often killed. In Antonovka, Sarny district, a priest was arrested right during the service; in Ternopil, Dominican monks were expelled from the monastery buildings, which were burned before their eyes. In the village of Zelva, Volkovysk district, a Catholic and Orthodox priest was arrested, and then they were brutally dealt with in the nearby forest.
From the first days of the entry of Soviet troops, the prisons of the cities and towns of Eastern Poland began to fill rapidly. The NKVD, which treated the captives with bestial cruelty, began to create their own makeshift prisons. Within just a few weeks, the number of prisoners had increased by at least six to seven times.

Crime against the Poles
In the era of the Polish People's Republic, they tried to convince the Poles that on September 17, 1939, there was a "peaceful" entry of Soviet troops to protect the Belarusian and Ukrainian population living on the eastern borders of the Polish Republic. Meanwhile, it was a brutal attack that violated the provisions of the 1921 Riga Treaty and the 1932 Polish-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.
The Red Army, which entered Poland, did not reckon with international law. It was not only about the capture of the eastern Polish regions as part of the implementation of the provisions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed on August 23, 1939. Having invaded Poland, the USSR began to put into practice a plan that had been born in the 1920s to exterminate the Poles. First, the liquidation was supposed to affect the "leading elements", which should be deprived of influence on the masses as soon as possible and neutralized. The masses, in turn, were planned to be resettled deep into the Soviet Union and turned into slaves of the empire. It was a real revenge for the fact that Poland in 1920 held back the onset of communism. Soviet aggression was an invasion of barbarians who killed prisoners and civilians, terrorized the civilian population, destroyed and desecrated everything that they associated with Poland. Whole free world, for whom the Soviet Union had always been a convenient ally in helping to defeat Hitler, did not want to know anything about this barbarity. And that is why Soviet crimes in Poland have not yet received condemnation and punishment!
Barbarian Invasion (Leszek Pietrzak, "Uwazam Rze", Poland)

It's kind of weird to read that, isn't it? Breaks the pattern. Makes you suspect that the Poles are blinded by their hatred of the Russians.
Because this is not at all like the liberation campaign of the Red Army, which we have always been told about.
Well, that's if you don't count the Poles as occupiers.
It is clear that punishing the occupiers is the right thing to do. And war is war. She is always cruel.

Maybe that's the whole point?
The Poles believe that this is their land. And the Russians - what are they.

In 1981, Europe's attention was focused on Poland. By the beginning of the year, almost a third of the millions of members of the Polish Workers' Party had joined the ranks of the independent Solidarity trade union. Its number reached 10.5 million people. The union has become powerful political force, the official delegation of Solidarity was even received in the Vatican by the Pope of Rome. However, the authorities were frightened by the demands put forward by the union for a national referendum on the establishment of non-communist rule in the country.

The trade union "Solidarity" was formed in 1980 as a logical continuation of the human rights organization "Committee of Public Self-Defense - Committee for the Protection of Workers" (KOS-KOR).

At the time of the creation of KOS-KOR, Poland was experiencing a severe economic crisis - its debts to capitalist countries reached $20 billion. In an effort to pay off its debts, the country began to save on salaries and consumer goods, which, of course, caused discontent among the population - up to the organization of strikes.

The leader of one such strike, which took place in 1980 in Gdansk, Lech Walesa became the head of Solidarity. The movement demanded free elections, control of the economy by workers' organizations, and the transfer of enterprises into the hands of workers' self-government. The Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), which controlled Poland in those years, delayed reforms. The authorities tried to paralyze the work of the trade union, meanwhile the country was shaken by strikes one after another.

Photo report: 35 years of events in Poland

Is_photorep_included10423193: 1

Solidarity planned a general strike demanding free elections. It was obvious that if they took place, then Solidarity would win, and the PUWP would remain out of work. In this case, the Warsaw Pact states would have the right to send troops to Poland in order to prevent the loss of the country. This could lead to war. In the meantime, the Soviet Union promised to help Poland if the PZPR could deal with the labor movement on its own.

On the night of December 13, 1981, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Polish People's Republic, Secretary of the Central Committee of the PZPR, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, introduced martial law in Poland and outlawed Solidarity.

In the very first days, more than 3,000 activists were detained, including Walesa. All of them were sent to internment centers. In total, almost 10 thousand people were interned during martial law.

The streets of Poland were flooded with tanks, armored personnel carriers, soldiers armed with machine guns. Telephone communications were cut off across the country and airports were closed. More than 2,000 military commissars were appointed in cities and large enterprises. On the morning of December 13, the head of state addressed the perplexed citizens on TV and announced the introduction of martial law and the transfer of power to the Military Council of National Salvation.

Taken by surprise, Solidarity was unable to repulse the organized actions of the state.

Until December 23 strong structure suppressed resistance in the main strongholds of Solidarity - at the Gdansk shipyard, the Krakow metallurgical plant, the Lublin automobile plant and other enterprises. The most fierce resistance was provided by the miners. There were also casualties: for example, nine strikers died at the Vuek mine, three more during the dispersal of a hundred-thousand-strong demonstration in Gdansk. One of the students Polytechnic University Wroclaw was beaten to death while trying to resist during the seizure of university premises by the security forces. In total, more than a hundred oppositionists died during the years of martial law.

Strikes and demonstrations had no centralized leadership. By the end of December, the state managed to suppress them. Relying on half a million adherents, the military regime defeated the ten million strong trade union association. The incident demoralized many supporters of Solidarity.

Throughout 1982, members of Solidarity, which had gone underground, repeatedly demonstrated.

Now they were actively resisting the military, throwing stones at them. There were more young people among the activists, and the slogans acquired a harsher anti-communist character. However, risky demonstrations did not bring results, and by autumn the activity had noticeably dropped. Supporters of Solidarity fought the regime with lateness to work, agitation through graffiti (“Winter is yours, spring is ours!”, for example), and boycotts of state events.

Seeing that opposition activity began to decline, Jaruzelski gradually softened the military regime. On July 22, 1983, martial law was lifted.

Martial law could not solve the problems of the country. The trade union operated underground and maintained influence in Polish society, speaking under the slogans of combating the totalitarian communist system and the need for fundamental socio-economic and democratic reforms.

The first free parliamentary elections in Poland were held in 1989, and Solidarity won. In January 1990, the PZPR finally gave in and decided to dissolve the party, and in December, Solidarity leader Lech Walesa was elected president of Poland.

“If I had been told [in my youth] that I would become a leader who would succeed in defeating communism, I would never have believed it,” he admitted in an interview. - That's why I'm the most happy man in the galaxy."

The actions of General Jaruzelski received a very ambiguous assessment. So, for example, according to the former Minister of Defense of the USSR and Marshal of the Soviet Union Dmitry Yazov, the introduction of martial law saved Poland from the introduction of Soviet troops. The Poles themselves were not too grateful for such a rescue - in 1991-2008 Jaruzelski and other members of the State Council were repeatedly tried to bring to court, and in 2011 the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland recognized the decree on the introduction of martial law as contrary to the constitution of the Republic of Poland and the constitution of the PPR. The Institute of National Remembrance named Jaruzelski and his accomplices leaders of an "organized armed criminal group."

There is a version according to which the general allegedly himself asked Moscow to send troops to Poland, blackmailing it with the fact that in case of refusal, his country would withdraw from the Warsaw Pact.

As Peter Cheryomushkin, historian and journalist, author of the book Jaruzelsky: Test by Russia, dedicated to the 35th anniversary of the introduction of the military regime, explained to Gazeta.Ru, this version appeared thanks to the American historian Mark Kramer, who in 1997 received access to the colonel's notes. Anoshkin, adjutant of Marshal Viktor Kulikov, who during the years of martial law in Poland commanded the Joint Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact member states.

Anoshkin stenographed Jaruzelski's negotiations with Kulikov, and in these transcripts Kramer found records indicating Jaruzelski's desire to see in Poland soviet tanks. Jaruzelski himself denied until the end of his life that such a proposal had come from him. He denied the veracity of the document and argued bitterly about it with Kramer. The notebook contained entries about how Jaruzelski shared with Kulikov that he was not confident in his abilities and that in some regions of Poland he had no troops at all. However, the general himself considered such conversations as a sounding board in relation to Soviet plans.

“By December 13, everything was ready, as he said, “buttoned to the last button,” for the introduction of martial law,” says Cheryomushkin. - And he believed that it was better to do it with Polish hands than to involve Soviet troops. They themselves were also not very eager to go to Poland. Jaruzelski delayed the imposition of martial law as best he could until the very last moment, when there was nowhere to delay any further.

In his memoirs, he wrote that he had very doubts, to the point that his hand sometimes lay on a gun and he thought about suicide.

But in later times, he spoke in such a way that, they say, if they put a bag on my head and took me to Moscow, as they did with Dubcek (Alexander Dubcek is a Czech politician, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the initiator of liberalization in Czechoslovakia - "Gazeta.Ru"), then the Polish people would treat me better than they do now.

Jaruzelski's reputation was greatly affected by the fact that Solidarity members ruled the country until 2015. Thus, Lech Kaczynski, who died in 2010, headed one of the commissions of the trade union, and Bronislaw Komarovsky, who replaced him, worked in the trade union Center for Social Research.

“Now that the ultra-right and the Right Justice party are in power, one should not expect any indulgence regarding Jaruzelski’s reputation,” the expert shares. - There are various calls to posthumously deprive him of military ranks.

Jaruzelski always acted with an eye on the Soviet Union, on Russia, on Soviet marshals and generals.

All the time he took into account their point of view, acted in such a way that his steps did not in any way violate the interests of the Soviet Union. He believed that the interests of the Soviet Union and Poland could coincide. Contemporary Politicians they do not think so, they hold the exact opposite opinion. They believe that Poland was oppressed by the Soviet Union."

New Poland 9/2014Alexey S. Stepanov

From a letter dated May 20, 2004, Tatyana Olegovna Maksimova, executive secretary of the editorial office and editor of the daily history department of the Russian historical journal Rodina, coordinator of the special issue dedicated to the 100th anniversary of world aviation, regarding the possibility of publishing an article on the "blank spot" - the role of aviation in the Soviet -Polish war in the autumn of 1939: “The article by A. Stepanov in this version is our scientific editor rejected. The main reason is the sources. They are exclusively Polish ... ".

Exactly five years later, in April 2009, at the defense of the author’s doctoral dissertation at St. a concept that should not be used in a dissertation, because war was not declared on Poland, and, accordingly, there was only the entry of Soviet troops into the eastern regions of Poland. In response to the remark that a number of domestic historians have already recognized the fact of waging war with Poland, the author was told that they are following unscientific tendencies, and as for Polish historians, they are anti-Russian and their arguments should be taken critically. To find a way out of this situation, the opponents emphasized that the author does not have a special military education, so his terminological error can be understood and recognized as insignificant compared to the positive results achieved in the work as a whole...

These episodes from personal experience the author are only a very small part of the picture of the attitude of modern domestic historical science to the Soviet-Polish war of 1939 that has developed to date. This topic has never been and is not popular with Russian historians, and their attitude to this war is largely based either on the denial such as a phenomenon, or on ignoring it.

In order not to be unfounded, I will give a specific example. So, in the dissertation research of V.V. Gagin, dedicated to the history of the participation of the Soviet Air Force in local wars and armed conflicts of 1936–1940, according to the applicant himself, the first task was “to consider the features and evolution of the Soviet foreign policy in relation to the opposing sides of conflicts and wars in Spain and China, and the aggressive actions of neighboring states - Japan and Finland (sic!), As well as determining the extent of influence and results of the participation of the Soviet Air Force in battles on the alignment of forces in the regions. So, the author does not even mention the very fact of the existence of the Polish campaign. The absence of such in the general list of wars and conflicts of 1936-1940. with the participation of the USSR, the author does not substantiate anything, simply ignoring it.

It should be noted that the description of the fighting of the Red Army in September - October 1939, in particular, is contained in a number of documents from the RGVA funds: "Collections of documents of the Ukrainian Front" and "Collections of documents of the Belorussian Front". Working with guidebooks on the inventories of the RGVA funds and knowing about the existence of the "Spanish fund" (F. 35082) and the fund with materials about the battles at Khalkhin Gol (F. 35083), it would be difficult for the applicant not to notice them purely physically, because they are next on the list.

Probably, someone can afford to consider Finland an aggressor in the 21st century, and also not know the scale of the Soviet-Polish clash or evaluate the results of the latter as very modest and not take them into account at all, but frankly ignoring the very fact of the existence of research and the conclusions of their immediate predecessors (not to mention the point of view of Polish historians on this issue, published in Russian), as well as documents from the archive, with the funds of which the applicant worked - the situation is very indicative. It is all the more surprising that V.V. Gagin not only undertook to defend, but also successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis in 2007! Of course, it is possible that the matter here is beyond the scope of the topic we are discussing, but then we are forced to state not just the weakness (more precisely, the absence) of the analysis of the Soviet-Polish clash in the autumn of 1939, but the methodological imperfection of modern domestic historical science.

You can trace the evolution of Russian scientific thought regarding the events of the autumn of 1939 over the past forty years using the example of the two passages below. In order for the reader to feel the difference between the Soviet point of view on these events, expressed on the pages of the third volume of the History of the Second World War, and the modern point of view of the 2010-2011 model, we give them without any comments.

"Quick and decisive actions of the Soviet Army frustrated the Nazis' calculation to capture Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. As acknowledges former general Wehrmacht N. Forman, the measures taken by the Soviet government prevented the implementation of the planned plan for the withdrawal of German troops directly to the borders of the USSR. It is known that in early September the Nazi leadership discussed the formation of a puppet Ukrainian state - "an independent Polish and Galician Ukraine." But this plan also failed. At the resolute demand of the Soviet government, the Nazi Wehrmacht was forced to clear the previously occupied territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. The day on which this decision was made, Halder called "the day of shame of the German political leadership."

“Official and unofficial condemnations in Poland of this decision of the Soviet government, including in the resolution of the Seimas on September 23, 2009 “in connection with the 70th anniversary of the USSR attack on Poland”, are tendentious and are out of the context of the current military situation: the advancing German armies were approaching the borders THE USSR. The German command violated the agreed line of the Wehrmacht's limit advance to the east and withdrew its troops beyond this line (demarcation line) only at the categorical demand of the Soviet government. According to Wehrmacht General N. Forman, Moscow's demarche prevented the implementation of the planned plan for the withdrawal of German troops directly to the borders of the USSR. Chief of the General Staff ground forces In Germany, General F. Halder called the day of September 20, 1939, when the decision was made in Berlin to withdraw German troops to the agreed line, “the day of shame of the German political leadership” .

What can be said about the history of the Soviet-Polish war, if in domestic historical science there are works that are openly anti-Polish in nature, the appearance of which would be unthinkable even in Soviet period when, by the way, the policy of interwar ("bourgeois-landowner") Poland was by no means encouraged. So, in mid-2008, the Military History Journal published an article “Fictions and falsifications in assessments of the role of the USSR on the eve and with the start of World War II” by S. N. Kovalev, a member of the editorial board of this publication. In it, the author actually laid the blame for the outbreak of World War II on Poland! The article, in part, said: “Everyone who has studied the history of the Second World War without prejudice knows that it began because of Poland's refusal to satisfy German claims. However, it is less known what exactly A. Hitler sought from Warsaw. Meanwhile, Germany's demands were very moderate: to include the free city of Danzig in the "Third Reich", to allow the construction of extraterritorial highways and railways that would link East Prussia with the main part of Germany. The first two demands can hardly be called unreasonable.” Further, the author noted that "the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of Danzig, which was torn away from Germany according to the Versailles Peace Treaty, were Germans who sincerely wished to reunite with their historical homeland." “The demand for roads was also quite natural, especially since they did not encroach on the lands of the “Polish corridor” dividing the two parts of Germany,” summed up S.N. Kovalev. However, Poland refused to satisfy Germany's demands, so on April 28, 1939, the German side annulled the declaration of friendship and non-aggression, the author of the article pointed out.

Somewhat later, a diplomatic scandal broke out: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland demanded an explanation from the Russian ambassador in connection with the publication of an article by S.N. Kovalev on the official website of the Russian Ministry of Defense. On June 4, 2009, the news site Novosti NEWSru.com reported: “The scandalous text entitled “Fictions and falsifications in assessments of the role of the USSR on the eve and with the start of World War II” disappeared from the “History against lies and falsifications” section of the website of the Russian Ministry of Defense . Recall that an article signed by the head of the research department of military history of the North-West region of the Russian Federation of the Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defense, Candidate of Historical Sciences Colonel Sergey Kovalev shocked the public. Colonel Kovalev concluded that it was not Germany but Poland that was to blame for the outbreak of World War II: the stubborn Poles refused to fulfill Hitler’s “reasonable” demands and give part of their territory to the Nazis, for which they were conquered.” On June 4, 2009, the head of the Press Service and Information Department of the RF Ministry of Defense, Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky, was forced to come up with explanations: the analytical materials posted on the website of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in the section "Military Encyclopedia" are not the official position of the Russian military department and they "should not be be considered as the official point of view of the Ministry of Defense". The next day, June 5, 2009, the Chief of the Russian General Staff, General of the Army Nikolai Makarov himself, told journalists in Moscow that the article by the military historian Kovalev on the causes of the outbreak of World War II, published the other day on the website of the Russian Ministry of Defense, is not an official position ministries.

The actions of the Soviet troops in Poland in the autumn of 1939 should be defined. In Soviet times, they were usually referred to as the "Liberation Campaign of the Red Army in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus." In a statistical study of the losses of the armed forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts, it is already simply referred to "The campaign in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus in 1939." . The eloquent title “Liberation Campaign or Aggression? Actions of the Red Army units in September 1939 and modern Polish historiography” was an article by V.Yu. Ivanov, who defended the established formulation . According to M.I. Semiryagy there was "the entry of Soviet troops into Poland". N.S. Lebedeva, on the contrary, wrote "about the conduct of real military operations against a neighboring state." V.A. Nevezhin also confirmed the latter point of view when he cited the following important argument in its favor: “The “liberation campaign” in the directive documents of the Red Army was called a “revolutionary, just war.” S.Z. Sluch pointed out the following among the most notable innovations voiced in Russian historiography back in 1985–1991: “The invasion of the Red Army on September 17 into the territory of Poland, which was fighting against the Wehrmacht, Stalinist regime de facto dragged the Soviet Union into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany. At the same time, he quite rightly emphasized that “most of the innovations, unfortunately, until today, for various reasons, have remained basically a kind of “declaration of intent”, a historiographical fact, nothing more” .

The author of this article fully agrees with the assessment of the Soviet-Polish military confrontation in the autumn of 1939 as a war. In addition, this formulation is firmly established and is actively used in Polish historiography concerning this period.

It is important enough to determine the chronological framework of the war. The beginning of hostilities - September 17, 1939 - almost no one doubted. They arose only when it was about the end of hostilities. So, in the military-historical reference book “Countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe in World War II” published in 1972, in particular, the following was said: “On September 17, 1939, the Red Army crossed the pre-war Soviet-Polish border and took under its protection of life and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. By September 26, Soviet soldiers completely liberated Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and the Vilnius region with ancient capital Lithuanian people - Vilnius, captured by bourgeois-landlord Poland in 1920. . Two years later, in the official "History of the Second World War 1939-1945." it was said somewhat differently: "By September 25, the Soviet Army, with the broad support of the population, completed its liberation mission." This chronology was established for two decades, being, for example, reproduced in the post-Soviet statistical study “Secret stamp lifted”: . Western Bug and San". Of course, there were slight deviations from this date (for example, in the memoirs of Marshal of the Soviet Union M.V. Zakharov it was indicated that the “liberation campaign” lasted 12 days, i.e. until September 28 inclusive), but due to the almost complete disregard themes as a whole did not have significant significance.

Only in 2000 M.I. Meltyukhov suggested that the war lasted from September 17 to October 12, 1939, i.e. almost four weeks. Thus, only by the end of the 20th century in Russian historiography did the vague wording “Liberation Campaign” gradually begin to change into the very specific “Soviet-Polish war in the autumn of 1939.” and in just a few years, her real chronological framework has expanded from the originally announced nine days to twenty-six. It is noteworthy that part important documents about this war in the Russian archives were discovered only at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries. Interestingly, V.R. Kotelnikov, the first Russian author who published an article about the USSR air war against Poland and worked through a number of available documents from the RGVA funds, noted in 1999: “I must say right away that I did not find any materials on planning operations against Poland. Most likely, they are still classified” (from a letter from V. R. Kotelnikov dated December 7, 1999 to the author). Documents of the first inventory of fund 35084 “Collection of Documents of the Ukrainian Front” were declassified on March 2, 2001. “Minutes No. 1/1OP - 6/6OP of the meetings of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for March 23 - September 5, 1939” stored in the RGASPI, relating to the immediate eve and the beginning of the Second World War, were declassified only in December 2003.

At present, the author has revealed a different gradation of the chronology of the fighting of the Red Army. So, in letters dated October 20, 1939, Nos. 321498 and 321499, signed by Loktionov, Agaltsov, Arzhenukhin, it was said that the Military Council of the Red Army, in order to study combat experience and summarize the existing Air Force, proposes to submit by November 15, 1939 Detailed reports to the Commander of the Air Force of the Ukrainian Front Commander Astakhov “on the combat operations of the Air Force of the Front for the period from 17.9. until 10/15/39. and the Commander of the Air Force of the Belorussian Front, Divisional Commander Gusev "on the combat operations of the Air Force of the Front for the period from 17.09 to 16.10.39", respectively. So, according to the documents of the RGVA, reflecting the opinions of the command of the Soviet Air Force, the total duration of the combat operations of Soviet aviation in Poland (and hence the Red Army as a whole) is determined by a period of exactly one calendar month- for the Air Force of the Belorussian Front and one day less - for the Ukrainian Air Force. These data, probably, can be considered final for today.

It should be noted that such a voluminous work devoted to this issue as the monograph by M. I. Meltyukhov did not exist in Russian historiography at the time of its publication. Let us briefly analyze its second, supplemented edition, which appeared three years later. Let's start with a review of the sources used in the monograph and reflecting in it the achievements of both domestic and foreign previous researchers on this topic.

First, the author's treatment of sources raises questions. For example, in part three "September 1939" in the section "The Polish Campaign of the Red Army: September 17-21" of 30 pages, references to sources were present only on nine of them. There were whole blocks of 4-6 pages, not provided with any footnotes. But this concerned the description of the course of the war, which could be considered the most valuable part of the monograph, because. it was here that the author most often used archival material.

Secondly, noteworthy is the very insignificant use in this monograph of works, including classical ones, by Polish authors devoted to the subject of the Soviet-Polish war of 1939. Although the second Polish-Soviet war, which, in turn, symbolizes the date September 17, 1939 in Poland, a large number of scientific publications, including emigrants, were devoted to M.I. Meltyukhov did not even mention fundamental research Polish-Soviet war of 1939, written by R. Shawlovsky. The monograph “The Campaign of 1939” by Professor of the Institute of History of the University of Warsaw P. Vechorkevich also remained bypassed by his attention. , an expert on the history of the Red Army, the author of about 20 historical works, who, among other things, actively worked in the Russian archives. We are not talking about the special works of Polish historians, who analyzed in detail the actions of aviation, armored forces, the fleet, etc., at all. It is not surprising that even a brief historiographical review of the works of Polish authors on this topic is missing in the work. In this regard, one can note a situation that is paradoxical at first glance - not domestic, but Polish specialists were the first to translate into native language and published a number of papers from Russian archives concerning the fighting of the Red Army during the autumn of 1939. Therefore, the level of development of many aspects of the Soviet-Polish war of 1939 in Polish historiography, thanks to the documents introduced into scientific circulation, is higher than in the domestic one. In connection with the minimum number of domestic studies on this topic, collections of documents and publications of works by Polish authors, both of a general nature that dealt with the Soviet-Polish war of 1939 as a whole, and narrower research topics, including those related to the use of various branches of the military. Let us note that domestic authors actively referred to information coming from Polish researchers and mentioned their respective works. Thus, the Russian reader could learn from domestic publications about the existence of the monograph "Red Blitzkrieg", and the data of one of its authors, Janusz Magnuski, about the losses of Soviet tank forces in Poland in 1939 were used by the well-known researcher on the history of the development and use of armored vehicles I. P. Shmelev in an article on the armored forces of Poland, the publication of which, as well as the above-mentioned article by V.R. Kotelnikov, was dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the start of World War II. However, unlike their Russian colleagues M.I. Meltyukhov ignored almost all the latest Polish publications.

Thirdly, many works by Russian authors devoted to various aspects of the combat operations of the Soviet troops in Poland also remained ignored. For example, there was no mention of the first domestic publication directly devoted to combat use The Red Army Air Force against Poland in the autumn of 1939, prepared by the aviation history researcher V. R. Kotelnikov, the publication of which was timed to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. This situation looked even more strange in the light of the fact that many of the Russian authors were well known to Polish researchers. But M.I. Meltyukhov, probably, these and other publications were either not known at all, or he simply did not consider it necessary to write about the achievements of his Polish and Russian colleagues. In any case, he did not mention any of the above names.

Let's move on to the analysis of the content of the work and the main conceptual provisions of the author. His desire to depict Soviet actions as a "peacekeeping operation" is noteworthy, and this is how he presents them in the final chapter of the book: "Therefore, the actions of the Red Army in Poland can be considered, in accordance with modern terminology, as a peacekeeping operation." An important proof that Soviet operations against Poland did not have aggressive nature, for M.I. Meltyukhov was the fact that the influential political circles of the Western powers came to terms with the results of these operations, recognizing them, in fact, as actions directed against Germany.

As for the "soft" position of the Western allies in relation to the USSR in connection with the war against Poland, it should be noted that, as is known, the allies did not launch active operations against Germany, and real help Poland was not provided. Therefore, M.I. Meltyukhov, recognizing that the allies "did not lift a finger to help her", in this case came into conflict with his own position expressed earlier on the factual justification of the actions of the USSR by the allies. We must not forget that Churchill's well-known statement on October 1, 1939 about the creation Eastern Front, which both Soviet and Russian historians quoted with obvious pleasure in order to morally justify and give some semblance of legitimacy to the actions of the USSR on September 17, 1939, can and should, first of all, be considered as an excuse for England's own inaction in relation to Germany in given period. In this connection it would be all the more naive to expect from England and France any active retaliatory actions against the USSR. We note, by the way, that when in 1943 the Germans launched a propaganda campaign about burials in Katyn, F. Roosevelt and W. Churchill also took a restrained position. Relations with Stalin were much more important to them than disagreements with the Polish government in exile. As a result, the Allies declared the results of the investigation of the Red Cross on Katyn unconvincing, and at the end of the same 1943, Roosevelt frankly declared: "I don't care about a few shouts because of Poland."

Paying attention to the description of many local and minor episodes, M.I. For some reason, Meltyukhov did not consider the impact of the actions of the Red Army on the continuation of the struggle of the Polish armed forces against Germany and its allies in the context of the subsequent events of World War II. He only actively defends the following thesis: “Now that the events of September 1939 have been sufficiently well studied, it should be unequivocally stated that Germany in Poland did not receive any assistance from the USSR, and it was not needed.” Leaving the thesis of “exploredness” on the conscience of the author, we only note that the Second World War and fight Polish people by no means ended in the autumn of 1939. Even during the years of socialism, the question of the role of the Polish units that fought Germany after the autumn of 1939 was considered by Polish historians. For example, back in April 1965, at a scientific conference in Moscow (one of the organizers of which was the Ministry of Defense and GlavPUr) in honor of the 20th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, military historian Professor General B. Bednazh made a corresponding report, where, in particular, , said: "When the last shots in Europe ceased, the Polish soldier could proudly declare that he did not lay down his arms in September 1939, but fought throughout the war" .

In the light of the fact that M. I. Meltyukhov considered in his monograph the relationship between the events of 1920 and 1939, his ignoring the influence of the Polish campaign of the Red Army in 1939 on the subsequent struggle of the armed forces of Poland in 1939-1945. causes confusion. The Red Army did not just occupy the territory of Eastern Poland, conducting episodic battles here and there. One of its main tasks was to cut off Polish troops from the borders of neighboring states and capture personnel. So, in connection with the foregoing, “Combat Order No. 001 of the Headquarters of the Air Force of the Belorussian Front” dated September 16, 1939 is of interest. It, in particular, reported: “The immediate task of the front is to destroy and capture the Polish armed forces operating east of the Lithuanian border and GRODNO-KOBRIN". Noteworthy is the order of September 19, 1939, given by S.K. Timoshenko to the Commander of the KOVO Border Troops, Divisional Commander V.V. Osokin, which directly stated that in no case should Polish soldiers and officers be allowed to leave Poland for Romania. K. E. Voroshilov demanded an explanation from the command of the KOVO why the section of the border near the city of Kolomyia was not covered, through which the Polish units leave for Romania. On September 22, 1939, the Lvov garrison surrendered the city to the Soviet troops, with guarantees of the possibility of retreat to Romania and Hungary. However, most of the defending officers of the city ended up in the Starobelsk camp, where almost all of them were shot in April-May 1940.

According to M.I. Meltyukhov, in the conquered territories during this period there could not be an anti-Polish policy. On the contrary, the head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army L.Z. Mehlis was primarily concerned with protecting the Polish population from hostile manifestations, primarily from the Ukrainians - “now the Ukrainians have become more active and are terrorizing Polish peasants in a number of places.” By this, the author explains the whole meaning of the deportation: “That is, to a certain extent, it was a form of mitigation by the Soviet leadership of the sharpness of national hatred in the new territories. Of course, the measure is barbaric, but would it be better to allow a national “showdown” among the local population? Not to mention the fact that eviction is not execution.” "Humanity" of the new government M.I. Meltyukhov interprets it in his own way: firstly, by deporting Poles to Siberia or Kazakhstan, she saved them from Ukrainian “showdowns”; and secondly, she simply deported them (and she could have shot them)...

Let's move on to summary relatively recently published works, partially touching on this topic. Among them, in particular, one can note the publications of V. Beshanov and A. Smirnov, as well as a collective study prepared by specialists from the IRI RAS and dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. The first work, which is actually a compilation of previously published publications by domestic authors (primarily M.I. Meltyukhov, and without reference to the sources and literature used), includes the chapter "Liberation Campaign". The second is a study of the combat effectiveness of the Red Army on the example of an analysis of a number of "liberation campaigns", including the actions of the Red Army in Poland. In the third, the fifth chapter is devoted to the Polish events “Documentary chronicle of the military campaign in Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. September - October 1939", which provides a significant amount of factual material in the form of information blocks, placed in chronological order. It deserves special attention.

The author of this chapter is T.S. Bushuev, in the very first paragraph raises the question: “Was the campaign in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus liberating or not?” . The answer, however, does not. On the other hand, he draws a very remarkable conclusion that requires a separate commentary: “The published documents in the chapter testify that as a result of the front-line operation in the autumn of 1939, which entered the national historiography as a liberation campaign in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, a line of common contact of the Red Army will appear on the map. Armies with German troops".

Let us therefore pay attention to the circumstance that the use of the very concept of "war" is carefully avoided. It is also indicated that the "liberation campaign" was allegedly just a front-line operation, although, in reality, it was carried out by the forces of not one, but two fronts - the Belarusian and Ukrainian, as the authors themselves inform readers below! As for the discovery of the secret about the emergence of the line of "general contact between the Red Army and the German troops", here the author clearly overdid it with the depth of the conclusions and frankly "breaks into open door».

Here is another excerpt: "Thus, about a million Soviet soldiers, tank units, aviation were concentrated on the border with Poland." The revelations of the author are again amazing. The fact that tanks and aircraft took part in the "liberation campaign" was openly written even by the Soviet press in 1939. For some reason, this publication modestly keeps silent about how many and what kind of tanks and aircraft the Red Army put up. As for the data on a million soldiers, the corresponding link No. 24 also does not provide information about this, because it is a commentary, and not a reference to archival materials!

The introductory part of the chapter includes references to various publications, from the Soviet era to the present day. One of the bearers of the latest historical thought T.S. Bushueva was chosen by A. Martirosyan. Due to his fame for his works on 200 myths about Stalin, he is probably considered by the authors of the analyzed publication to be also a recognized and uncontested expert on the events of the autumn of 1939. More than half of the four pages used for the introduction are devoted to citing him. However, for some reason, the authors did not pay attention to the fact that A. Martirosyan's material is devoted not to the Soviet-Polish clash, but to the period of work German intelligence against the USSR from the autumn of 1939 to 1941 from the territory of occupied Poland. Why they got into the documentary chronicle of the campaign of the Red Army, for the author of these lines, the question still remains ...

In this chapter, the massive use of various material that is not supported by references to sources is striking. So, on c. 155. A special report of the Special Department of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR dated September 16, 1939 is given. Three paragraphs of the text with excerpts from this message are not supported by any footnotes. Also related to this document of the NKVD, the table "Belarusian Special Military District", displaying data on the progress of mobilization in the latter as of September 14, 1939, is for some reason accompanied by a footnote No. 17 to the publication of O.F. Souvenirova, where we are really talking about various compounds of the same district, but only as of May 1, 1939!

Reviewing the events of September 15, 1939, the authors abundantly quote combat order No. 01 of the headquarters of the Belorussian Front on five pages in a row, but do not provide references to the corresponding archival document. Operational reports of the General Staff of the Red Army for September 19–25 and 27–28, 1939 are also given without references. There is no link to the message L.Z. Mehlis in the NPO and in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of September 24, 1939, cited on three pages of the book. Link to an entry from the diary of Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs V.P. Potemkin No. 5496 dated October 4, 1939 is also missing.

An interesting example is the citation of foreign documents. The author cites an excerpt from F. Halder's diary, a quote from A. Hitler's speech dated August 22, 1939 at a meeting in Obersalzberg, concerning the goal of the campaign against Poland: “Hitler outlined the goal: “the destruction of Poland” ... It's about not about reaching a certain milestone or a new frontier, but about destroying the enemy. There are cases when documents of foreign origin, translated into Russian and published in the Soviet era, really suffered from incompleteness and distortion due to censorship. As is known, Halder also published in the USSR. Perhaps we are dealing with just such a case, and the authors sought to provide us with more accurate information? We quote the corresponding fragment of the Soviet edition of the diaries:

"II. The Fuhrer's requirements for military leadership:

2. Purpose: The destruction of Poland, the elimination of its manpower. This is not about reaching some line or a new border, but about destroying the enemy, which should be steadily striven for by any means.

Is there a difference? In this case, the Soviet version of the translation does not differ in the least from the creation of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the worse, moreover, it even seems to be somewhat more detailed and accurate. The author again chose to break through the open door. Whether this was done to give his work an additional “scientific character”, or whether the author simply did not know about the Russian translation that had existed for four decades, remained incomprehensible.

It is also noteworthy that in this section, out of 154 references to Polish works, only three are given (all of them are devoted to “camp” topics, and not to actual military operations), although, as mentioned above, specialists from this country introduced into scientific circulation great amount still unknown in Russia documentary material about the military events of the autumn of 1939, including from the funds of the RGVA. Due to the unwillingness (or ignorance?) of the author of the chapter, unlike A. Martirosyan, who has been mentioned more than once, the few Russian historians who have been studying this problem for many years are practically not mentioned.

Conclusion - the cognitive value of the part of the publication that interests us is sharply reduced due to the almost complete absence of even a brief mention of the new works of leading domestic and Polish historians, the presence of factual errors and the absence critical analysis posted material, which is often given carelessly. Dozens (!) pages contain facts without links to relevant sources. It seems that the author's task, first of all, was to present a certain amount of information within the framework of an established conservative concept of events, which, in order to comply with the formal correspondence of time, was supplemented by a certain number of references to modern publications. The validity of such an approach to the creation of this chapter raises serious doubts.

Preparing this article, the author made a disappointing conclusion for himself - the approaches to the study of the history of the Soviet-Polish war of 1939 (and not only it, but at least the entire Second World War as a whole) existing in modern domestic historical science remain very conservative, and the methods , which they use, are still far from the standards of academic science.

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Stepanov Alexey Sergeevich(b. September 9, 1967) Graduated from Kuibyshevsky State University in 1989 with a degree in history. Doctor of Historical Sciences (2009), author of more than 50 scientific publications, including two monographs. Researcher of the Russian Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Science; leading researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Center for the Study of Contemporary Russian History and Political Science.

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Notes:

See, for example: Stepanov A.S. Modern Russian historiography on the scale and results of the Red Army's military operations in Poland in the autumn of 1939 // Problems of the history of the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945. Materials of interuniversity scientific conference. Issue. 3. Samara, 1996, pp. 46-48; Stepanov A.S. Air Force of the Red Army in the war against Poland in the autumn of 1939 // History of Aviation. 2000. No. 6. S. 11-14; 2001. No. 1. S. 24-27; Stepanov A.S. On the results of the use of Soviet aviation in the war with Poland in 1939 // Readings in military history. Digest of articles. [Proceedings of the international scientific conference, April 19–21, 2007]. St. Petersburg, 2007, pp. 60–63; Stepanov A.S. The Polish Campaign of 1939 - the first experience of using the Red Army Air Force in World War II // Bulletin of St. Petersburg University. Series 2. History. 2008. Issue. 3. September. pp. 50–55.

Stiepanow A. Lotnictwo Armii Czerwonej w wojnie sowiecko-polskiej jesieni a 1939 roku // Przegląd Si l Powietrznych. miesi e cznik wydawany przez Dow o dztwo Si l Powietrznych. No. 9 Wrzesie n . 2006. LXXVIII. S. 79-98; Stiepanow A. WWS RKKA w wojnie sowiecko-polskiej jesienią 1939 r. // Lotnictwo. Magazyn milosnik o w lotnictwa wojskowego, cywilnego i kosmonautyki. No. 9 Wrzesie n . 2008. S. 86-94, 96.

Journal founders: Government of the Russian Federation, Administration of the President of the Russian Federation.

It is noteworthy that in this special issue, which initially experienced a shortage of materials (from some authors, the editors accepted two articles at once, see, for example: Rodina. 2004. No. 8. S. 13-22; 31-34; 51-54 ), a significant part of the articles were cited without any references to sources and literature at all. By the way, there was a safe place in it for articles on foreign aviation, which, naturally, could be based only on foreign materials.

See: Gagin V.V. The history of the participation of the Soviet Air Force in local wars and armed conflicts of 1936-1940. Abstract dis. … cand. ist. Sciences. Voronezh, 2006, p. 7.

Russian State Military Archive (RGVA). F. 35084.

RGVA. F. 35086.

See, for example, an excerpt from E. Durachinsky's article "Poland in Moscow's Politics in 1939-1941: Facts, Hypotheses, Questions", published in the collection "War and Politics, 1939-1941" (Ed. A.O. Chubaryan Moscow: Nauka, 1999, pp. 50-51, 62): “The military operations that began on September 17 are called a liberation campaign in the Soviet Union. Many Polish researchers have no doubt that it was a war, although neither side declared it (Hitler launched aggression against Poland also without issuing an act of declaring war required by international law). The situation when the USSR violated the border between the two states, when the Soviet and Polish troops fought each other, when the soldiers died and were taken prisoner, when the Red Army occupied cities and territories, from the point of view of international law was, undoubtedly, a war" ( E. Durachinsky further cites a reference to Eberhardt P. Polska granica wshodnia 1939-1945, Warszawa, 1993, p. 17, author's note).

The origins and consequences of such a phenomenon were very convincingly described by S. Z. Sluch: “Then, in 1989, a trend emerged in Russian historiography, which later, unfortunately, became a common practice: to ignore the publications of colleagues in the workshop and the documents, facts, and conclusions cited in them. The reasons for this phenomenon could be different, but the result is the same - a decrease in the level of research ”(See: USSR, Eastern Europe and the Second World War, 1939-1941: discussions, comments, reflections / Ed. and comp. S. Z. Sluch ; Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. M.: Nauka, 2007. P. 77).

Gagin V. V. The history of the participation of the Soviet Air Force in local wars and armed conflicts of 1936-1940: Dis. ... cand. ist. Sciences: 07.00.02. Voronezh, 2007. Supervisor - Doctor of History. P.V. Zagorovsky; official opponents - Doctor of History S.I. Filonenko, Ph.D. E.I. Gabelko.

History of the Second World War 1939-1945.: V 12 t. M., 1974. T. 3. The beginning of the war. Preparation of aggression against the USSR. S. 357.

History of the Great War of 1941-1945: In 2 vol. and in a number of other recent official publications. See for example: The Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945: V 12 vol. M., 2011. Vol. 1. Main events of the war. P. 17. (with the exception of the word "Seim", given here with a lowercase letter); Great Victory: multi-volume ongoing edition / ed. ed. S.E. Naryshkina, acad. A.V. Torkunov; Moscow State Institute of International Relations (University) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia. 2nd ed., stereotypical. - T. 2: Get up, the country is huge. M.: MGIMO-Universitet, 2013. P. 50.

Kovalev S.N. Fictions and falsifications in assessments of the role of the USSR on the eve and with the beginning of World War II // Military History Journal. 2008. No. 7. S. 8, 15.

The Ministry of Defense "cleaned up" its website, which made Poland the culprit of World War II http://www.newsru.com/russia/04jun2009/polska.html

The head of the General Staff also "disowned" the article accusing Poland of starting World War II http://www.newsru.com/russia/05jun2009/makarov.html

Classified removed: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts: Statistical study/ Under the total. ed. G.F. Krivosheev. M., 1993. S. 85.

Ivanov V.Yu. Liberation campaign or aggression? Actions of the Red Army units in September 1939 and modern Polish historiography // Military History Journal. 1994. No. 9 (November-December). pp. 82-86.

Wieczorkiewicz P. Kampania 1939 roku. Warzawa, 2001.

The author does not rule out the possibility that referring to Polish publications and Polish historians (if we exclude the banal unwillingness to study them) was unfashionable and even “unpatriotic” - let us recall, by the way, the lines quoted above from the letter to the editors of Rodina magazine: “The main reason is the sources . They are exclusively Polish…”, dated the same 2004…

See, for example, publications where, in particular, documents from the RGVA funds were used: Agresja sowiecka na Polsk e w s wietle document o w 17 wrze s nia 1939. T. 2. (Front Ukrai n ski). Warzawa, 1996; Agresja sowiecka na Polsk e w s wietle document o w 17 wrze s nia 1939. Volume 3. (Front Bia l oruski). Warzawa, 1995; Grzelak C. Dziennik Dziala n Bojowych Frontu Bia l oruskiego we wrze s niu 1939 roku. Warsaw, 1998.

Of these, from the author's point of view, the monograph "Red Blitzkrieg" on the use of Soviet armored forces in Poland in 1939 and the article "Polish-Soviet Air War in September 1939" deserve special attention. on the results of the actions of the Red Army Air Force, the content of which formed the basis of a monograph published later by the same author. See: Magnuski J., Kolomiec M. Czerwony blitzkrieg. Wrzesie n 1939: Sowieckie wojska pancerne w Polsce. Warszawa, 1994; Wawrzy n ski M. Wojna lotnicza polsko-sowiecka, wrzesie n 1939 // Militaria i Fakty. 2003. No. 4. S. 26-28, 30-31; No. 5-6. S. 27-28, 30-32; Wawrzy n ski M. Czerwone gwiazdy - sojusznik czarnych krzyży nad Polska. Lotnictwo sowieckie over Kresami wrzesie n -pa z dziernik 1939. Wydawnictwo Pegaz, Wydawnictwo Ulica Lipowa. Warsaw, 2008.

See: Baryatinsky M., Kolomiets M. Light tank BT-7 // Armor collection. Appendix to the magazine Modeler-constructor. 1996. No. 5 (8). S. 32; Shmelev I.P. Armored troops of Poland 1918-1939. // Equipment and weapons yesterday, today, tomorrow. 1999. No. 9. S. 19.

Kotelnikov V.R. Aviation in the Soviet-Polish conflict of September 1939 (according to the documents of the Soviet archives) // Aviation and cosmonautics yesterday, today, tomorrow. 1999. No. 9 (Issue 50). pp. 5-10.

This applies, in particular, to the above-mentioned article by V.R. Kotelnikov (see, for example, Wawrzy n ski M. Op. cit. // Militaria i Fakty. 2003. No. 5-6. S. 32). Some of the domestic authors published in Poland, such as M. Kolomiets, who was a co-author of the monograph "Red Blitzkrieg" mentioned above.

Meltyukhov M.I. Soviet-Polish wars. S. 602.

There. pp. 534-535, 593, 601-602.

There. S. 598.

However, this circumstance does not in the least prevent the latter from also willingly emphasizing the growth of anti-Sovietism of the Western powers after September 17, 1939, for example: “The non-aggression pact with Germany and the joint actions of the USSR in Poland (Note: So in the text of A. S.) provoked a fierce anti-Soviet campaign in the countries of Western Europe and the USA ”(See The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. In 12 vols. M., 2012. V. 2. The origin and beginning of the war. P. 387).

For more on this, see: Berthon S., Potts J. Warlords. The Heart of Conflict 1939-1945. London, 2005. P. 182-196, 225.

In this case, T. S. Bushueva is not alone. It is noteworthy that it is this quote in exactly the same form that is given in the article by S. Z. Sluch, published in the special issue of the Russian Academy of Sciences "Russian History", dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II: See: Sluch. S.Z. The blows have not yet followed ... The policy of Germany and the USSR regarding Poland (October 1938 - August 1939) // Russian history. 2009. No. 5 (September-October). pp. 81, 85. In fairness, it should be noted that above S. Z. Sluch indicates “the political and military goals of the National Socialist and Soviet leadership in relation to Poland actually coincided” (see p. 81).

See, for example, the publications of Tokarev V.A.: Soviet "kinozalp" in Poland, 1939-1941. / Bulletin of the MaSU. Issue. 1. 2000; "Disappearance" of Major S.I. Gritsevets: propaganda precedent of 1939 // Great victory: heroism and feat of peoples. Proceedings of the international scientific conference (Minsk, April 28-29, 2005). T.1. Minsk, 2006, pp. 186-191; “Buried near the village of Pavshino…”: presentation of losses and memorial practice Soviet side in the Polish campaign of 1939 // Experience of world wars in the history of Russia: Sat. Art. / [redkol. I. V. Narsky and others]. Chelyabinsk, 2007. S. 208-229. We note, by the way, that in the last mentioned work, V. A. Tokarev, after analyzing the fate of 1,405 people who died during the “Liberation campaign in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus” in the autumn of 1939, found out that only 259 of them were in official documents indicated the exact place of burial (i.e. in 18.4% of cases) and only in 30% of cases the exact date of death was indicated. That is, according to available Soviet documents, more than 80% of those who died in Poland in 1939 died no one knows where, and 70% - no one knows when! The author noted that “sometimes the dead were assigned to non-existent military units and were often deprived of the right to have the last residence permit in time and space” (For more details, see: Tokarev V.A. “Buried near the village of Pavshino ...”: presentation of losses and memorial practice of the Soviet side in Polish campaign of 1939, pp. 220, 226). Thus, even in relation to their own commanders and fighters, who carried out the will of the Soviet state and died for it, the state authorities of the USSR treated it as an expendable material.