crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
The structures of the Polish Underground State developed in the occupied country and remained in
contact with the government in exile. The civil and armed units of the Underground State were organised
in all regions, districts and communes of the country in order to be able to restore the country’s public
administration immediately after the end of the occupation. Clandestine structures of education, the
judiciary and civil services were built. The underground army (known as the Home Army) numbered
over 350,000 soldiers and became part of the armed forces of the anti-German coalition. It was trained
for attacks on the Nazi German occupying forces and in actively seeking to liberate Poland.
After the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, the entire territory of Poland fell under Nazi
German occupation. Stalin was forced to restore diplomatic relations with Poland. Moscow renewed its
obligation to respect the sovereignty of Poland.
The situation changed after Soviet victories on the Eastern Front. The Red Army began to approach
the territory of pre-war Poland. The USSR wanted to decide freely about the future of Polish society,
so it once again broke diplomatic relations with Poland, while at the same time preparing itself for the
establishment of its own communist administration in the country.
When returning within the pre-war borders of the Republic of Poland, Stalin knew that for the
building of communism in Poland it would be necessary not only to get rid of the German administration,
but also to destroy the legitimate administration of the Polish Underground State. He was determined to
suppress Polish aspirations for independence at any cost.
In 1944, most of the territory which was under Soviet occupation in the years 1939–41, was
again incorporated into the Soviet Union. Stalin appointed the so-called Polish Committee of National
Liberation (PKWN) created by the communist regime in Moscow to take power in the territory of
Poland which gradually fell under Soviet rule. Within a few months, the Committee protected by the
Red Army, declared itself the government of Poland. The military and civil structures of the Polish
Underground State, regardless of their substantial military and intelligence support to the Red Army
in its struggle with the Germans, were ruthlessly eliminated by forces under the Soviet security and
counter-intelligence command.
At the conference of the “Big Three” in Yalta in 1945, Stalin achieved international recognition of his
occupation of the Eastern territories of Poland, i.e. almost the entire area occupied by the Soviets in 1939 on the
basis of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. The USSR also succeeded in making the Western superpowers
withdraw their diplomatic support of Poland’s government in exile, in exchange for the free election
promised to be organised within Poland’s new borders. However, the retreat of the Red Army from
Poland was not ensured. As a result of its continuing presence and reign of terror, free elections never
took place in Poland under Communist rule. In 1947, the election was held in an atmosphere of terror
and repression. The election results were rigged in the course of an operation supervised by a special
group of Soviet Ministry of Interior apparatchiks who were sent to Poland from Moscow under the
command of Colonel Aron Palkin. In the years that followed, opposition was ruthlessly destroyed and
the public’s aspirations paralysed by successive waves of terror.
The tragedy of Poland’s situation after 1944 was that Soviet repression was imposed on a country
which had not been an ally of Nazi Germany. To suppress Polish aspirations for independence, hundreds
of thousands of people who fought against the Nazis during World War Two were repressed, even
though they could not have been accused of supporting the Nazis with any reasonable justification.
Mass murders and acts of terror took place across the whole of post-war Soviet-occupied Poland.
On top of that, deportations to labour camps in the USSR continued and many soldiers of the Resistance
and civilians were arrested. That period is still known in Russia as “the liberation of Poland by the Red
Army”, in which nearly 100,000 people were sent to Soviet labour camps or gulags as they are also
known.
In many cases, acts of communist terror even surpassed the bestiality and cruelty of those committed
by the Nazis. The symbol of that time is the “Augustów round-up”, in which during a few days in July 1944
over 2,000 people from a small area were arrested, including women and children. Of them, more
than 600 never returned to their homes. In this way any resistance against the communist authorities
was suppressed, even though the authorities did not enjoy public support.
Like the Nazi system, the communist system of terror needed a network of labour camps within the
country. Former Nazi German camps were used and new camps were also built. The fact that German
Konzentrazionslager Auschwitz did not cease to operate even after its liberation by the Red Army is
symbolic. It remained in use for many months as a camp in which new inmates were kept in inhuman
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