in presenting this topic it’s easy to drown in numbers reflecting the dynamics of distribution of “people’s Poland” to the constant urgent needs of millions of dollars in loans and millions of tonnes of valuable cargo. It is the distribution payments for loans and commodity loans owing to the persistent difficulties of the Polish comrades often found himself very far removed from the mechanisms of economic relations. Much was then written off retroactively, a portion is distributed freely convertible currency were recovered by the products of the Polish industry.
Continued this curious practice as much as Poland was in the “orbit of Soviet influence,” namely the 45 years since the liberation of the Polish territory by the red army in July 1944, and until the coming to power of politicians from non-Communist “Solidarity” in 1989. That’s only two substantive examples, scattered in time in the space of 41 years.
From February 25 to March 5, 1947 in Moscow more than a week was almost all the Polish leadership, headed by recently appointed Prime Minister, 35-year-old socialist Jozef Cyrankiewicz (1911 – 1989). The importance of the visit underlines the fact that Stalin took the Polish guest three times, on 25 and 26 February and 4 March. Home the delegation was leaving in a good mood: among other things, was signed the agreement “about granting Poland a loan in gold in the amount of 27 thousand 875 dollars. for the purchase of equipment for the recovery of industry and transportation”2. Then the U.S. currency was much panowanie, at current prices it is hundreds of millions of dollars. Funds were provided on time, the repayment of the loan was drowned in the maze of fraternal assistance.
February 22, 1988 assigned to the Soviet Embassy in Poland, the Colonel of KGB of the USSR, the graduate of historical faculty of Moscow state University Sergey Kormilets (1948-2010) writes in his journal information about the conversation with the Minister of internal Affairs of Poland. Diary of a Breadwinner, in 2020, partially published in Warsaw in Polish translation, is quite unique for the age of the source, revealing many behind-the-scenes details of Polish politics in the second half of the 1980s before the change of political regime. Unique and evidence about the intentions of interior Minister General Czeslaw of Kisaka (1925-2015), closest ally of the head of Poland Wojciech Jaruzelski. According to the Survivor, in conversation with his chief, major General Anatoly Kireev Kiszczak suddenly began to show concern for the Polish economy, saying that the economy is facing serious challenges and therefore they must be delivered from the USSR over the plan 1-2 million tons of oil. For this General is ready to arrive to Moscow and to explain in details the Soviet leadership the reasons for these difficulties3.
so, the PR algorithm��Ferenci not changed for over four decades. Government “people’s Poland” under the pretext of the current economic problems are regularly requested from all the Soviet leaders, whether it be Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev or Gorbachev and beyond existing official bilateral and multilateral (in the framework of the CMEA) agreements, extraordinary subsidies. And often, though not always, received them, and in short supply in socialist countries, not excluding the USSR, currency or comfortable for sale in Western markets form there and was going to send surplus Soviet oil Minister Kiszczak (it was the time when a light hand pnrm Gorbachev was declared the “lab adjustment”). The combination, frankly, is simple, she lucidly described by Sergey Dovlatov’s story “Chirkov and Berendeys”
“a retired Colonel Berendeevo said a distant cousin of Mitya Chirkov, a graduate of the agricultural College.
‘Uncle,’ he said, ‘ help! Provide material assistance as twelve rubles! Otherwise, I’m afraid, will go the wrong way!”.
a surplus to help “brotherly country” in the Polish and Soviet Newspapers did not write, their total before 1989 now remains hard to assess due to the fact that not all archival documents that shed light on the problem. The scale is issued and the delay on it are visible, for example, on the Soviet side carefully calculated statistics of the early Khrushchev’s time. In Moscow by the end of September 1956 found pnrm huge (2.3 billion rubles) balance of credit debt, which Poland was “given almost as much… how much all other European countries of people’s democracy, combined (6.9 billion rubles),”4. 18 November of the same year this balance has been successfully charged on the background of the Polish crisis and in support of the new leadership of Poland headed by Wladyslaw Gomulka. Against this background, was issued new loans: according to the agreement dated September 18, 1956 100 million rubles in gold and goods at the rate of 2% per annum, and during the November visit Gomulka added another 700 million rubles under the same modest 2%5.
So, maybe not worth so worthwhile to Finance the ever problematic the power of “people’s Poland”? After all, if we look at the geopolitics and non-emergency covert subsidies the worst thing for the Soviet leaders care Warsaw “wrong way” in the Western camp ruled out completely. The post-war borders of Poland, approved by the “Big three” at Yalta and Potsdam, as we know, was not recognized by West Germany until 1970, But after that “revanchists in Bonn” calm down desire, or to the non-socialist Poland has retained its Western frontier, it took the political will of iron Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in conjunction with the unification of Germany in 1990 G.
But the Soviet strategy for Eastern Europe the postwar period was completely different. In modern Poland, a very popular theory that the NDP was allegedly “Soviet colony”. In Moscow initially considered “new Poland” not as a powerless dependent territory, and as an important partner, which is required and independent action in the economy. A launching pad for Soviet-Polish cooperation, and then for cooperation in the framework of the CMEA was very favorable. Pre-war Poland regained statehood in 1918, has experienced chronic difficulties in the economy, and such that from 20 merzlotnykh years, only six have relatively normal conditions for the development of the national economy.
Already, on 22 July 1944 the commander of the home Army Tadeusz Bur-Komorowski, learning about the entry of the red army on the territory of Poland, made a typical forecast. If on July 14, the General believed that Poland is destined to become “the 17th Soviet Republic”, now the idea was that “the actions of the Soviet side will be comprehensive and extremely flexible, they can manifest in the form of occupation and terror, and in the form of visible official soft refraining from desire to interfere in internal Polish Affairs”6. Last option is and was embodied in the actual course of the Kremlin, but it is fraught with real danger. After all, when “a soft refrain” Moscow for the failures in the economy had to answer themselves the leaders of the Warsaw.
They, as shown by the whole history of Poland, economic problems could not cope chronic, and periodically forced to turn to the Soviet capital. And when by the summer of 1956 such failures reached a critical mass, the authorities met with the first but not the last in Poland the crisis of socialism, which began in Poznan protest of the working class, to which the new system was designed. That same property was the Polish crises of socialism in 1970, 1976 and finally 1980-1981, when there was a “Solidarity” led by Lech Walesa, to neutralize which General Jaruzelski had to enter the country under martial law.
cause of all the crises was massive dissatisfaction with the “policy of the party” and especially the authorities ‘ intention to raise prices on food. But after the war, millions of ordinary poles did not believe in abstract ideals of Marxism, and a concrete improvement of their lives under the new government. In 1951, the future Nobel prize winner for literature Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), explaining publicly why he decided to stay abroad, clearly talked about the post-war successes: “…I was glad that the semi-feudal structure of Poland broken that the worker-peasant youth fills the universities that carried out the agrarian reformand, while Poland transformed from an agrarian country into an industrial-agrarian”7.
Given its fruits and the Polish policy of the Kremlin, was observed and previously unseen phenomenon: the cooperation between Poland and the Soviet Union positively ingrained in the minds of millions of poles, replacing the old image of the “enemy of the Muscovite.” In the field of culture is a positive mutual influence is often felt at the level of tradition. No one forced Daniel Olbrychski to be friends with Vladimir Vysotsky, no one forced the most popular Polish artists such as Gustav lutkevich or Edmund after Fetting, to sing the songs of Bulat Okudzhava, in the Polish translation, and the massive audience listened to the Bulat Shalvovich sincerely. Things more extensive, as, for example, significant savings on military expenditures of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union with its nuclear umbrella, was seen as something for granted.
the Historical reputation of Warsaw as a geopolitical challenges to Moscow was quickly forgotten, and against this background, the tacit promotion of “temporary difficulties” of the Polish economy did not seem sacrificed in vain. This logic in the Kremlin and was guided from 1944 to 1989, providing real support. Often and just: “Grant aid provided to Poland in 1944-1946, was about 250 million rubles in domestic prices in the Soviet Union. In particular, it raised 60 thousand tons of grain for the population of Warsaw, restored 3327 km of main track and 5655 km of station tracks of railroads, 63 railway stations, 8 depots, restored the Warsaw power plant”8.
For many vital for the Polish economy of the Soviet supplies, starting with oil and gas prices for Poland decades were favorable, very helping to develop the economy. The Soviet Union fulfilled its obligations even under conditions of force majeure, as for example happened with the supply of 200 thousand tons of grain a year in Soviet-Polish agreements of February 8, 1946 August 29, 19479. And this despite the then terrible famine in the Soviet countryside.
no matter How hard in present-day Poland to erase the memory of the Soviet aid, one character was rock-steady and is still the tallest building in Warsaw. It was built in the years 1952-1955 as a gift from the Soviet people to the Polish nation on the idea of Stalin and under the project of architect Lev Rudnev’s Palace of science and culture. “Eighth Stalin skyscraper”, the famous, at least what there for the first time in Eastern Europe were in good health and still “the rolling stones”, was a clear and understandable way of cooperation between Moscow and Warsaw.
But the expectations from the Polish version of socialism is constantly inflated in Poland itself and from high tribunes, and bottom. The policy of the authorities of Poland, despite the Soviet infusion, regular and extraordinary, if and led to “eco��ohmic miracle”, it is almost always with a negative sign. Warsaw voluntarism caused the Soviet leaders are not the most positive emotions. When in may-July 1957, the Polish and Soviet leaders were busy behind the scenes bargaining on economic issues, Warsaw is not only provided detailed justification for its claims10, the heat of the debate even reached the account of the losses of the parties in the years of the recent war: “Khrushchev: How the Soviet graves on Polish soil and in what proportion the shed blood. Gomulka: the Blood count. We also have a lot shed”11. 5 Jan 1971 Brezhnev rightly complained that replaced Gomulka, Edward Gierek: “We are the party, not merchants. Honestly, lately we have the impression that Gomulka squabbled with us for every penny as the shopkeeper… As the older brother, we didn’t want to hurt the younger, so endured”12.
it is Worth emphasizing that the generosity and patience of the Kremlin leaders was not wasted, Soviet assistance to Poland for many decades had a meaningful internal logic (as opposed to, say, injections in a “progressive” regimes in other continents). But even a very extensive economic privileges and benefits are unable to protect the Polish version of socialism from the quite natural of the crash at the end of the 1980s.
In Poland, Soviet deeds have been completely forgotten already in 1989 and since then not remembered at the official level never. Arrived in November of that year on a visit to Moscow, the first non-Communist Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki (1927 – 2013) in their speeches, not a word is said about either the economic contribution of the USSR to the development of his country, nor of the CMEA, but emphasized the “limitations of our sovereignty that we experienced in the postwar years”. However, a prominent figure of the “Solidarity” then said the right words: “Genuine friendship can only be built on the basis of truth and an honest reflection of history. In history there are many beautiful pages, but there are dark pages. Among the first joint fight against Nazism during the Second world war. A few hundred thousand marching on Berlin, the Soviet soldiers fallen on Polish soil. We will never forget this, nor forget the suffering imposed on your people”13.
Thirty years later, Soviet soldiers in the speeches of the current Polish leaders turned to “the occupier”, monuments that need to be destroyed, and all the 45 years of postwar history of Poland – lots of “occupation” in which the NDP was allegedly “disenfranchised colony.” Except that the real mechanisms for mutual economic assistance such primitive propaganda convincingly deny.
1. Cm. for example: the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. 1954-1964. Vol. 1. Draft records of meetings. Transcripts. M., 2003.
2. Walnuts A. M. essays on the history of economic relations between the USSR and pnrm (1944-1957 years). M., 2017. P. 39.
3. Kormilec S. A. Dziennik niedokon czony 1985-1988. Warszawa, 2020. S. 151.
4. The Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU. 1954-1964. Vol. 2. Regulations. 1954-1958. M., 2006. P. 425.
5. Orekhov A. M. Decree. CIT. p. 127, 144.
6. Soviet and Polish political and military underground. April 1943 – December 1945 In 3 t. T. 1: April 1943 – August 1944, Part 2: April 1944 – August 1944, G. M., 2019. S. 378, 480.
7. CIT. in: Russia and Poland: overcoming historical stereotypes. 1918-1991. the Handbook for history teachers. M., 2019. P. 246.
8. The Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU. 1954-1964. Vol. 2. P. 425.
9. Orekhov A. M. Decree. CIT. Pp. 34-35, 41.
10. The Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU. 1954-1964. Vol. 2. P. 667-672.
11. CIT. by: Nuts A. M. Decree. CIT. p. 186.
12. CIT. by: Poland in the twentieth century. Essays on the political history. M., 2012. P. 700.
13. True. 1989. 25 Nov. P. 4.
