As we mentioned at the previous briefing, there was a strange event held in Warsaw. It was supposed to commemorate the beginning of World War II, but turned out to be something weird with made-up new formats and new ideological overtones.
Given that there have been a large number of statements by Polish officials claiming that Poland suffered from the Soviet Union, we promised to provide detailed information about it (tit for tat). We will continue to provide even more answers if there are such allegations against our country and its history. Today I will tell you about the assistance provided by the USSR to Poland after World War II. I believe that the Polish audience should know this, because there were massive attempts to spread disinformation in the first days of this September.
We commented in detail on the commemorative events held by Poland to allegedly mark 80 years since the beginning of World War II. I am saying “allegedly” because they were timed to coincide with this date, but the ideological part, as Polish officials noted, mutated and turned out to be something unfathomable.
Eighty years ago, on September 17, units of the Red Army entered Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. Predictably, the Polish authorities used this date to begin another surge of Russophobia, repeat irresponsible pseudo-historical interpretations of those events, and rewrite history.
In this context, the instructions issued by Polish President Andrzej Duda for Polish ambassadors to tell the truth in their quest for historical justice sound like a cruel joke. I would like to remind everyone that historical truth is not protected by the propaganda of lop-sided anti-Russia views or the revision of historical facts modelled to suit modern realities, but through the use of original documents, the study of archival material and the reconstruction of events based on documented proof and witness accounts from that particular period. There is more than enough literature regarding this. Today I will try to lay bare and make good the damage which such statements made by Polish politicians have done to us. I would like to cite facts from historical literature about the huge financial, material and technical assistance the Soviet Union provided to Poland during and after WWII. The numerous materials on this topic, including unique documents from the Central Archives of the Russian Defence Ministry, are available on the website of the multimedia project Memory Versus Oblivion: What Poles Try to Forget (
http://helppoland.mil.ru/).
Regrettably, the modern Polish political establishment is suppressing these facts, preferring to present Poland as a victim of “totalitarian regimes” and claiming that Russia shares responsibility with Germany for the start of WWII. Poland continues to interpret the Soviet-German Treaty of Non-Aggression signed in 1939 (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) as a “pact of war.” They hypocritically disregard the fact that Poland was actively flirting with Hitler and was one of the first European countries to sign a Treaty of Non-Aggression with Germany in 1934, a treaty that actually stipulated allied relations with Nazis. Any request to revise this interpretation of facts provokes a sensitive reaction from the Polish officials. A neutral tweet by German Ambassador to Poland Rolf Nikel, in which he referred to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as an agreement on non-aggression, has caused the indignation of the Polish elite, which was crowned with a statement by former Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, currently a member of the European Parliament, to the effect that it was “a brutal agreement between Germany and Russia over the division of Poland and Central Europe” and “a crime on a global scale.”
It is strange to hear this from Poles, considering that Poland took part in the division of Czechoslovakia in 1938, when it took over the industrialised Teschen Silesia. Winston Churchill, who witnessed those developments, wrote that “Poland with hyena appetite joined in the pillage and destruction of the Czechoslovak state.” As a beneficiary of the Munich Pact, Warsaw was developing plans of further expansion that included Lithuania and Ukrainian regions. In January 1939, Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck told his German colleague, Joachim von Ribbentrop, that “Poland is laying claim to Soviet Ukraine and an outlet to the Black Sea.” Awhile before that, the Second Department of the Polish General Staff wrote in a report that the dismemberment of Russia lied at the core of Poland’s eastern policy, and that its main goal was to weaken and defeat Russia.
According to the official Polish historiography as we see it in the making before our eyes, after the war Poland, along with Central and Eastern Europe, descended into the “gloom of sufferings created by the Soviet occupation”, which lasted for decades. The final liberation presumably occurred in 1989 thanks to the activity of the Polish anti-Communist underground. Underlying this mayhem are historical inferiority complexes of the Polish political elite, who realise quite well that what is going on today amounts to rewriting history, and we will not tolerate it. As a result, Poland, which disowned our common victory and the feat of the Red Army, and betrayed its own veterans who fought shoulder to shoulder with Soviet soldiers in the trenches, can ultimately do nothing but hold commemorative events in a company that has never allowed for the participation of the nation that played the decisive role in protecting Poland from being wiped off the face of the Earth. The situation is paradoxical since the essence of historical events is totally distorted and an attempt is made to impose this narrative on the future generations as the only true version.
And now some facts regarding assistance. The USSR began the liberation of Poland from Nazi troops in the summer of 1944. After the formation of the Polish People’s Army (Wojsko Polskie), the USSR provided it with substantial support, including weapons, ammunition and food. During the war, the USSR supplied Poland with 700,000 rifles and assault rifles, 3,500 guns, 1,000 tanks, 1,200 aircraft and over 1,800 motor vehicles.
After liberating Poland at the cost of the lives of its 600,000 service personnel, the USSR launched a massive programme on restoring its economy whereby food, medicines, raw materials, fuel, equipment and many other things were delivered to Poland. The aid started arriving in Poland three years before the launch of the Marshall Plan, which Westerners try to present as the only instrument of post-war restoration of the countries devastated by the Nazis.
On October 20, 1944, the first agreement was signed between the USSR and Poland on deliveries and terms of payment. In late 1944, the USSR offered Poland an interest-free loan of 10 million roubles. Deliveries of Soviet raw materials and technical equipment helped speed up re-commissioning of the Polish industrial enterprises in the liberated areas where Red Army’s special units helped restore transport and communications.
In January 1945, an agreement was signed on a 50-million-rouble loan to Poland and an additional $10 million for foreign trade. In late February 1945, 45,000 tonnes of coal, 3,000 tonnes of kerosene, 280,000 tonnes of motor oil, 6,000 tonnes of salt and 60 tonnes of tea were delivered to Poland. The 1st and 2nd Byelorussian Fronts and the 1st Ukrainian Front gave from their reserves 8,000 tonnes of meat and 1,000 tonnes of vegetable oil. Poland was also given 20,000 tonnes of textile raw materials and 100,000 hides (on condition that half of the ready-made products will be sold to the USSR).
In January 1945, Soviet republics sent to the residents of Warsaw liberated by the Red Army and Wojsko Polskie 60,000 tonnes of grain, whereas Ukraine in addition sent 1,500 centners of sunflower oil, 1,000 centners of sugar and 50 centners of dried fruit. From March to November 1945, foodstuffs worth 1.5 billion roubles were sent to Poland for its population and the sowing campaign, and also 150,000 heads of cattle as well as seeds for sowing. This was done by the nation that was also badly in need because it had been devastated by the war.
In February 1945, the USSR government responded to the request from the Polish government and rendered material and technical assistance covering 50 percent of expenses for the restoration of Warsaw’s main districts. There is a reason why Polish builders who witnessed those events used to say that half of the capital city had been restored with the help of Soviet architects and built from Soviet cement and bricks.
All that was done in the difficult months when the Soviet troops were preparing for the decisive strike against Nazi Germany – the Berlin operation.
In July 1945, the USSR and Poland signed a trade treaty and an agreement on mutual deliveries of goods (agreements on trade and payments were signed annually until 1948), under which the USSR undertook to supply Poland with 250,000 tonnes of iron ore, 30,000 tonnes of manganese ore, 25,000 tonnes of cotton, 3,000 tonnes of tobacco, 2,400 tonnes of flax and 40,000 of apatite, cellulose and paper.
In 1947, thousands of tonnes of grain and food were sent to Poland, which prevented a famine as a result of a severe drought.
In 1948, an agreement was signed on the deliveries of Soviet industrial equipment totalling almost $500 million (it was ultimately done free of charge).
In 1948 – 1950, the USSR gave Poland a 2.2-billion-rouble loan.
I cannot continue any longer because the list is endless. You can see more figures and data in the briefing text.
I would like to say that Poland obtained financial, material and technical aid totalling about $1 billion from the Soviet share of the German reparation payments of $10 billion (mainly as industrial and agricultural equipment and other property). When the United States, Great Britain and France ceased reparation deliveries to the USSR from the Western occupation areas of Germany, Poland continued to receive reparation shipments from the eastern occupation area and subsequently from the GDR.
These steps led to fast and efficient development of the country. The first three-year plan of the restoration of the Polish economy was fulfilled ahead of schedule. By 1949, Poland’s industrial output grew 2.5-fold, and the economic returns from selling industrial goods rose by 200 percent compared to the pre-war period. By 1950, the Soviet-Polish trade exceeded $1 billion. In that same year, the country launched a six-year plan of its industrialisation, which resulted in a 2.5-fold increase in industrial output, while the number of agrarian cooperatives grew 14.3-fold compared to the start of the six-year plan.
By the mid-1950s, the USSR moved from delivering unilateral assistance to Poland to expanding an equal and mutually beneficial cooperation with it
These are the facts. Why, who and on what grounds has the audacity to misrepresent them?
The source of information
