Voluminous volume "Red Army men in Polish captivity in 1919-1922." prepared by the Federal Archival Agency of Russia, the Russian State Military Archives, the State Archives of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archives of Socio-Economic History and the Polish Directorate General of State Archives on the basis of a bilateral agreement dated December 4, 2000. This is the first joint work of Russian and Polish historians and archivists about the fate of the Red Army soldiers who were captured by the Polish during the war of 1919-1920. - 85 years ago. Public interest in such a long-standing problem, revived 15 years ago, is inextricably linked with the Katyn problem - so much so that the question of the Red Army soldiers who died or died in Polish captivity is often called “Anti-Katynya” or “Counter-Katynya”. Probably, many find it difficult to come to terms with the recognition of the responsibility of the USSR for Katyn, and therefore they want to find some counterexamples. Without exaggeration, we can say that the revival of interest was supported or even initiated by the leadership of the USSR. The investigation team of the USSR Chief Military Prosecutor's Office in its work on Katyn relied on the order of the President of the USSR M. S. Gorbachev of November 3, 1990 following the visit to the Soviet Union of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland - this order instructed the USSR Prosecutor's Office “to expedite the investigation of the case about the fate of Polish officers held in Kozelsky, Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky camps”. But the last point of the order was as follows: “The USSR Academy of Sciences, the USSR Prosecutor's Office, the USSR Ministry of Defense, the USSR State Security Committee, together with other departments and organizations, shall conduct research work to identify archival materials concerning events and facts from history until April 1, 1991 Soviet-Polish bilateral relations, which resulted in damage to the Soviet side. Use the obtained data, if necessary, in negotiations with the Polish side on the issue of “white spots””(emphasis added - A. P.).
Perhaps the only such event is the 20-month Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1920, captured Red Army soldiers in Polish camps and their further fate. Due to the lack of exhaustive data in the Soviet archives, Russian historians, publicists and politicians give a variety of information about the number of Red Army soldiers who died in Polish captivity: the figures published since the early 1990s in mass media range from 40 to 80 thousand people. For example, in the newspaper Izvestia (2004, December 10 and 22), the chairman of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council, Mikhail Margelov, followed by the governor of the Kemerovo region, Aman Tuleyev, talk about 80 thousand Red Army soldiers who died in Polish camps, citing data from Russian historians … On the other hand, the most famous Polish study of the problem1 speaks of 16-18 thousand people who died (perished) in the camps.
All the more important is the first joint attempt by historians of the two countries to find the truth on the basis of a detailed study of archives - primarily Polish ones, since the events took place mainly on Polish territory. The joint development of the topic is just beginning, there are still enough disagreements in the analysis of documents, as evidenced by the presence in the collection of two separate prefaces - Russian and Polish. However, I would immediately like to note the first agreement reached by researchers regarding the number of Red Army soldiers who died in Polish camps - those who died from epidemics, hunger and harsh conditions of detention. Prof. VG Matveev, the author of the foreword of the Russian side, notes: “If we proceed from the average,“usual”death rate of prisoners of war, which was determined by the sanitary service of the Ministry of Military Affairs of Poland in February 1920 at 7%, then the number of deaths in Polish captivity Red Army soldiers would have amounted to about 11 thousand. During epidemics, mortality increased to 30%, in some cases - up to 60%. But the epidemics lasted for a limited time, they were actively fought with, fearing the release of infectious diseases outside the camps and work teams. Most likely, 18-20 thousand Red Army soldiers died in captivity (12-15% of the total number of those taken prisoner). Prof. Z. Karpus and prof. V. Rezmer in the preface of the Polish side writes: “Based on the above documentary data, it can be argued that during the entire three-year period of stay in Poland (February 1919 - October 1921), no more than 16-17 thousand Russian prisoners of war died in Polish captivity, including including about 8 thousand in the Strzhalkov camp, up to 2 thousand in Tucholi and about 6-8 thousand in other camps. The assertion that more of them died - 60, 80 or 100 thousand, is not confirmed in the documentation stored in the Polish and Russian civil and military archives.”
These consistent documentary assessments, together with other materials presented in the collection, in my opinion, close the possibility of political speculation on the topic, the problem becomes purely historical - as, probably, it should be for the events of 85 years ago.
Of the 338 documents in the collection, 187 were taken from Polish archives, 129 from Russian, and 22 more documents were taken from previously published editions. In total, Polish and Russian researchers have studied in detail over two thousand documents, the vast majority of which have never been published. Some materials from the Russian archives were declassified specifically for this publication - for example, documents of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs and the NKO of the USSR on the state of military graves on the territory of Poland in 1936-1938.
The documents presented in the collection can be conditionally classified as follows:
- various instructions governing the operation of camps, military orders and directives, government notes, sanitary rules for camps, etc.;
- operational reports of Red Army units on losses (prisoners often fell into the category of missing) and Polish operational reports on prisoners of war;
- reports and letters on the state and inspection of the camps, including by foreign commissions;
- materials on assistance to prisoners of war through the Red Cross, etc.;
- various kinds of information about Russian anti-Bolshevik formations, which actively recruited prisoners of the Red Army into their ranks;
- documents on the exchange of prisoners;
- materials - including modern photographs - about the burials of prisoners of the Red Army on the territory of Poland.
The documents are arranged in chronological order, so it is easy to trace the evolution of the state of the camps and, in general, the attitude of the military and state authorities to the problems of prisoners of war. In addition, the collection is equipped with an extensive (125 pages) scientific and reference apparatus concerning the organizations and military units mentioned in the collection, as well as institutions and institutions for prisoners of war. There is a personal index and a list of publications by Polish and Russian authors about the Red Army in Polish captivity (87 positions).
The first military clash between the Polish and Red Army units took place in February 1919 on the Lithuanian-Belarusian territory, and on the same days the first Red Army prisoners appeared. In mid-May 1919, the Polish Ministry of Military Affairs issued detailed instructions for POW camps, which were subsequently revised and refined several times. The camps built by the Germans and Austrians during the First World War were supposed to be used as stationary camps. In particular, the largest camp in Strzhalkov was designed for 25 thousand people. All prisoners were supposed to take away weapons, tools (which could be used during the escape), plans and maps, compasses, newspapers and books of “suspicious political content”, money in excess of one hundred marks (one hundred rubles, two hundred crowns). The selected money was deposited at the camp cash desk, and it could gradually be used for purchases at the camp cafeteria. Ordinary prisoners were entitled to a small salary, and officers - five to six times higher monthly salary (50 marks), the prisoners could use this money at their own discretion. In the camps, craft workshops were set up for the repair of clothes and shoes, the head of the camp could authorize the organization of a reading room for prisoners, an amateur theater and a choir. Any gambling (cards, dominoes, etc.) was prohibited, and all attempts to smuggle alcohol into the camp were subject to strict punishment. Each prisoner could send once a week (free of charge) one letter and one postcard - in Polish, Russian or Ukrainian. On the basis of a “reasoned request”, the camp commander could allow civilians to meet with prisoners of war. As far as possible, prisoners should be “grouped into companies according to nationality”, avoiding “mixing prisoners from different armies (for example, the Bolsheviks with the Ukrainians)”. The camp director was obliged to "try to meet the religious needs of the prisoners."
The prisoners' daily food ration included 500 g of bread, 150 g of meat or fish (beef - four times a week, horse meat - twice a week, dried fish or herring - once a week), 700 g of potatoes, various spices and two portions of coffee. A prisoner was entitled to 100 g of soap per month. Healthy prisoners, if they so wished, were allowed to be used at work - first in the military department (in garrisons, etc.), and later in government institutions and private individuals, from prisoners it was possible to form work teams with the aim of “replacing civilian workers at work, requiring a large number of workers, such as railway construction, unloading products, etc.”. Working prisoners received a full soldier's ration and a supplement to the pay. The wounded and sick should be "treated on an equal basis with the soldiers of the Polish Army, and civilian hospitals should be paid for their upkeep as much as for their own soldiers."
In reality, such detailed and humane rules for keeping prisoners of war were not followed, the conditions in the camps were very difficult, dozens of documents from the collection testify to this without any embellishment. The situation was aggravated by the epidemics that raged in Poland during that period of war and devastation. The documents mention typhus, dysentery, Spanish flu, typhoid fever, cholera, smallpox, scabies, diphtheria, scarlet fever, meningitis, malaria, venereal diseases, tuberculosis. In the first half of 1919, 122 thousand cases of typhus were registered in Poland, including about 10 thousand with a fatal outcome; from July 1919 to July 1920, about 40 thousand cases of the disease were recorded in the Polish army. POW camps did not escape infection with infectious diseases, and were often their centers and potential breeding grounds. At the disposal of the Polish Ministry of Military Affairs at the end of August 1919, it was noted that “the repeated sending of prisoners deep into the country without observing the most basic sanitary requirements led to the infection of almost all prisoner camps with infectious diseases”.
I will cite a few quotes from a report on the visits in October 1919 to the camps in Brest-Litovsk by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the presence of a doctor from the French military mission. The number of prisoners of war placed in four camps in the Brest Fortress was 3861 people at that time:
“From the guardhouse, as well as from the former stables, in which the prisoners of war are housed, a sickening smell emanates. The prisoners huddle chilly around a makeshift stove, where a few logs are burning - the only way to heat it. At night, hiding from the first cold weather, they are packed in tight rows in groups of 300 people in poorly lit and poorly ventilated barracks, on boards, without mattresses and blankets. The prisoners are mostly dressed in rags …
Complaints. They are the same and boil down to the following: we are starving, are we freezing, when will we be released? However, it should be noted as an exception that confirms the rule: the Bolsheviks assured one of us that they would prefer their present fate to the fate of soldiers in the war.
Conclusions. This summer due to overcrowding of premises that are not suitable for living; joint close living of healthy prisoners of war and infectious patients, many of whom died immediately; malnutrition, as evidenced by numerous cases of malnutrition; edema, hunger for three months in Brest - the camp in Brest-Litovsk was a real necropolis.
The transformations were planned and implemented starting in September - the evacuation of some of the prisoners to other camps with better organization, the release of some of the prisoners, the improvement of equipment, the diet (still insufficient) and the treatment of prisoners … It should be emphasized the successful and effective intervention of various foreign missions in particularly France and especially the United States. The latter supplied linen and clothes for all prisoners of war …
Two severe epidemics devastated this camp in August and September - dysentery and typhus. The consequences were aggravated by the close cohabitation of sick and healthy people, lack of medical care, food and clothing. The medical staff paid their tribute to the infection - out of 2 doctors who contracted dysentery, 1 died; out of 4 medical students, 1 died. 10 nurses who fell ill with typhus recovered, and out of 30 sick orderlies, 1 died. To save the medical staff, former patients are recruited into the state, using their acquired immunity. The death record was set in early August, when 180 people died of dysentery in one day.
Mortality from September 7 to October 7: dysentery - 675 (1242 cases), typhus - 125 (614 cases), relapsing fever - 40 (1117 cases), exhaustion - 284 (1192 cases), total - 1124 (4165 cases, tons e. mortality - 27% of the number of cases). These figures, in fact, confirm the reliability of the list of the dead, compiled by a group of prisoners, according to which in the period from July 27 to September 4, i.e. in 34 days, 770 Ukrainian prisoners of war and internees died in the Brest camp.
It should be recalled that the number of prisoners imprisoned in the fortress gradually reached, if there is no mistake, 10,000 in August, and on October 10 it was 3861. This decline is explained, in addition to high mortality rates, the release and evacuation of prisoners to various camps.”
Later, due to inappropriate conditions of detention, the camp in the Brest Fortress was closed. But in other camps the situation was no better. Here is an excerpt about the camp in Bialystok from the memo of the head of the sanitary department of the Ministry of Military Affairs of Poland (December 1919):
“I visited the prisoner camp in Bialystok and now, under the first impression, I dared to turn to the general as the chief physician of the Polish troops with a description of the terrible picture that appears before everyone arriving at the camp … Again, the same criminal neglect of their duties by all the bodies operating in the camp brought shame on our name, on the Polish army, just as it happened in Brest-Litovsk. In the camp, at every step, there is dirt, untidiness that cannot be described, neglect and human need, calling out to heaven for retribution. In front of the doors of the barracks heaps of human excrement, the sick are so weak that they cannot reach the latrines … The barracks themselves are overcrowded, among the "healthy" there are a lot of sick people. In my opinion, there are simply no healthy people among the 1400 prisoners. Covered only with rags, they huddle together, warming themselves mutually. Stink from dysentery patients and gangrene, legs swollen from hunger. In the barrack, which was just about to be freed, lay among other patients, two especially seriously ill in their own feces, oozing through the upper trousers, they no longer had the strength to get up, to lie on a dry place on the bunk …
This is how prisoners of war died in Siberia, Montenegro and Albania! Two barracks are equipped for hospitals; one can see diligence, one can see a desire to correct the evil - unfortunately, they took it up with a delay, and there are no funds and people to do the work today that could have been easily dealt with a month ago …
Lack of fuel and dietary nutrition makes any treatment impossible. The American Red Cross gave some food, rice, when this is over, there will be nothing to feed the sick. Two English nurses are locked in one barrack and are treating dysentery patients. One can only marvel at their inhuman self-sacrifice …
The reasons for this state of affairs are the general plight of the country and the state after a bloody and exhausting war and the resulting shortage of food, clothing, footwear; overcrowding in camps; sending the healthy together with the sick from the front directly to the camp, without quarantine, without disinfestation; finally - and let those who are guilty of this repent - it is clumsiness and indifference, neglect and failure to fulfill their direct duties, which is a characteristic feature of our time. Therefore, all efforts and efforts will remain ineffective, any harsh and hard work, full of self-sacrifice and burning, work, the Calvary of which is celebrated by the numerous graves not yet overgrown with grass of doctors who, in the fight against the epidemic of typhus in prisoner camps, gave their lives in the line of duty …
The victory over the typhus epidemic and the reorganization of the camps in Strzhalkovo, Brest-Litovsk, Wadowice and Domba - but the real results at the moment are minimal, because hunger and frost collect victims saved from death and infection”.
To solve the problems, it was proposed to convene a meeting and appoint an emergency commission from representatives of the Ministry of Military Affairs and the High Command, which would carry out everything necessary, "regardless of labor and costs."
The report of the Sanitary Department to the Minister of War on the plight of prisoners of war in the camps and the need to take urgent measures to improve it (December 1919) also cited numerous examples from reports describing the state of the camps, and noted that the deprivation and torture of prisoners left “an indelible stain on the honor of the Polish people and army”. For example, in the camp in Strzhalkov “the fight against the epidemic, in addition to such reasons as the non-functioning of the bathhouse and the lack of disinfectants, was hampered by two factors, which were partially eliminated by the camp commandant: a) the constant taking away of prisoners' linen and replacing it by security companies; b) punishment of the prisoners of the entire department by not being released from the barracks for three or more days.”
The decisive steps taken by the Ministry of Military Affairs and the High Command of the Polish Army, combined with inspections and tight controls, led to a significant improvement in the supply of food and clothing for prisoners, to a decrease in abuse by the camp administration. Many reports of inspections of camps and workers' teams in the summer and fall of 1920 indicate that the prisoners were well fed, although in some camps the prisoners were still starving. As V. G. Matveev points out in the foreword of the Russian side, “for Poland, which revived its statehood in November 1918, the problem of its international image as a civilized democratic state was very important, and this, to a certain extent, depended on the attitude towards prisoners”. There is "numerous reliable evidence not only of the plight of the prisoners, but also of the measures taken by the Polish military authorities, including at the highest level, to improve it." In the order of the high command of April 9, 1920, it was indicated that it is necessary “to be aware of the degree of responsibility of the military authorities before their own public opinion, as well as before the international forum, which immediately picks up any fact that could belittle the dignity of our young state … Evil must be resolutely eradicated … The army, first of all, must guard the honor of the state, observing military-legal instructions, as well as tactfully and culturally treating unarmed prisoners. " An important role was played by the assistance of allied military missions (for example, the United States supplied a large amount of linen and clothing), as well as the Red Cross and other public organizations - especially the American Christian Youth Association (YMCA). Quoting again from the Russian foreword, “these efforts intensified especially after the end of hostilities in connection with the possibility of a prisoner of war exchange. In September 1920, in Berlin, an agreement was signed between the Polish and Russian Red Cross organizations to provide assistance to prisoners of war of the other side who were on their territory. This work was led by prominent human rights activists: in Poland - Stefania Sempolovskaya, and in Soviet Russia - Ekaterina Peshkova. " The relevant documents are also given in the collection.
I would like to note that even from the quotes cited, in my opinion, it is obvious that the often encountered in the media comparison of questions concerning the fate of captured Red Army soldiers (“Counter-Katyn”) with the problem of Katyn proper, is obvious. Unlike Katyn, there is no documentary basis to accuse the Polish government and the military command of that time of pursuing a deliberate policy of exterminating Russian prisoners of war.
In Russian publications in the media about the fate of the captured Red Army soldiers, the largest (up to 25 thousand prisoners) camp in Strzhalkov and the camp in Tucholi are often mentioned. At least a dozen materials from the collection deal in detail with the plight of the prisoners in these camps and the real measures to remedy the situation. The camp in Tucholi is called a “death camp” in mass publications, indicating that about 22 thousand Red Army soldiers were killed there. However, the documents do not confirm this. As Z. Karpus summarizes, “Bolshevik prisoners of war were kept in this camp only from the end of August 1920 to mid-October 1921. The authors do not think about whether it is possible that so many prisoners died during such a short period of stay in Tuchola. The situation there was difficult, the prisoners were placed in dugouts, many of which were destroyed and required repair. The repair, however, was not completed until several thousand Red Army soldiers were sent there in the late autumn of 1920 (the maximum in March 1921 was more than 11 thousand Russian prisoners of war in Tucholi). The appearance of such a large number of prisoners caused an outbreak of an epidemic of infectious diseases (typhoid, cholera, dysentery, flu) there. For this reason, many prisoners of war died, most of all in January 1921 - more than 560 people. In the months that followed, the situation in the camp improved radically.” In his report on the activities of the RUD (the Russian-Ukrainian delegation to the Russian-Ukrainian-Polish mixed commission on repatriation, created to fulfill the resolutions of the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 on repatriation and exchange of prisoners), its chairman E. Ya. Aboltin refers to the official certificate of morbidity and mortality in Tucholi from February to 15 May 1921.- according to the camp infirmary. During this time, about 6500 epidemic diseases were recorded in the camp (typhus, relapsing and typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, tuberculosis, etc.), and 2561 patients died. In the same report (its text completes the main part of the collection) it is noted that "according to inaccurate information collected from the prisoners of war themselves, in the Strzhalkov [Strzhalkovo] camp alone, about 9,000 of our prisoners of war died." This is roughly consistent with the Polish data. For example, according to the information provided in the collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' sanitary department, in the period from November 16 to November 22, 1920, 50-90 people per day died of infectious diseases in Strzhalkovo. In addition to epidemics and poor supplies, which was typical for all camps, the camp in Strzhalkov was distinguished by abuse and cruel treatment of prisoners by the camp administration. As a result, his commandant, Lieutenant Malinovsky, was arrested and put on trial.
There are significant disagreements between historians regarding the total number of captured Red Army soldiers (and estimates of the number of those who died or died in captivity are related to this). There are no complete data, since the records were not always kept systematically, and also because some of the archives were lost or perished over the past decades, especially during World War II. Z. Karpus, in his Polish foreword and in his other publications, speaks of 110 thousand Russian prisoners of war at the time of the end of hostilities in mid-October 1920. At the same time, about 25 thousand soon after the capture succumbed to the active agitation and joined the anti-Bolshevik formations that fought on the Polish side: the formations of Stanislav Bulak-Bulakhovich, the 3rd Russian army of Boris Peremykin, the Cossack formations of Alexander Salnikov and Vadim Yakovlev and the army of Simon Petliura. Some of these troops were subordinate to the Russian Political Committee, which was headed by Boris Savinkov. Z. Karpus notes that most of those who entered were not guided by ideological considerations, but simply wanted to leave the prisoner of war camps as soon as possible - and many, once at the front, went over to the side of the Red Army. V. G. Matveev in the Russian foreword criticizes the calculations of Z. Karpus and estimates the total number of Red Army soldiers captured during the 20 months of the war at about 157 thousand. I note that the largest number of Red Army soldiers were captured during the lost battle for Warsaw in August 1920: 45-50 thousand people according to Polish and Russian data.
According to the agreement on repatriation between the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR, on the one hand, and Poland, on the other, signed on February 24, 1921, 75,699 Red Army soldiers returned to Russia in March-November 1921 - according to the detailed information from the mobilization department of the Red Army Headquarters given in the collection. According to Z. Karpus, this number amounted to 66,762 people, including 965 prisoners sent home at the beginning of 1922 - at first they were left in Poland as a guarantee that the Russian side would return the Polish prisoners. The Russian foreword discusses the issue of those 62-64 thousand people who did not die in captivity (the qualitative agreement between Russian and Polish estimates of the number of Red Army soldiers who died in camps was already noted above - 18-20 and 16-17 thousand people), but neither returned by repatriation. Of these, as V. G. Matveev notes, the fate of about 53 thousand prisoners can be considered more or less known: some fell into anti-Bolshevik formations that fought on the Polish side, some were liberated during the counter-offensive of the Red Army in the summer of 1920, some - from Western Belarus and Western Ukraine - was released or fled home, a number of prisoners were released for propaganda purposes (quoting the order of the High Command of April 16, 1920: "… these prisoners must be well fed and provided with proclamations for their comrades"), about a thousand people did not want to return to their homeland, about a thousand citizens of Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Finland and some other countries mobilized into the Red Army returned to their countries. Of the remaining 9-11 thousand prisoners with an unclear fate, some may still fall into the categories listed above, and some could be “mobilized for the needs of the Western Front by peasants with carts who ended up in the Warsaw cauldron in August 1920”.
When discussing the issue of the Red Army soldiers who died or died in captivity, one cannot ignore the issue of executions of prisoners without trial and investigation. Such facts took place at the front during the period of hostilities, and in some cases in the camps. However, nothing can be said about their scale, since there are practically no documents about this, mainly there are individual eyewitness accounts. I was able to find some mention of the executions of prisoners only in eight documents of the collection (for accuracy, I will list the numbers of these documents - 44, 51, 125, 210, 268, 298, 299, 314). So, in the operational summary of the command of the 5th Army of the Polish Army dated August 24, 1920, it is noted: “As retaliation for 92 privates and 7 officers who were brutally killed by the 3rd Soviet cavalry corps, today they were shot at the place of execution [correctly translate: executions] of our soldiers of 200 captured Cossacks from the Soviet 3rd Cavalry Corps”. Another document refers to the mockery of a detachment of Latvians mobilized into the Red Army, who voluntarily surrendered, and two prisoners were "shot for no reason." I will note that from the Soviet side, in all likelihood, there were cases of brutal extrajudicial killings of prisoners of war - evidence of this is, for example, Isaac Babel's "Konarmeiskiy diary".
Several additional materials from the collection (including modern photographs) relate to the burials of captured Red Army soldiers in Poland. Basically, these are documents of 1936-1938 received from the Polish Foreign Ministry, as well as reports from Soviet diplomats about the condition of the graves and about measures to put them in order - in those cases when it was necessary. As of 1997, there were 13 burial places in Poland for servicemen and prisoners of war of the Red Army during the Soviet-Polish war, in which 12,035 people were buried. As noted by Z. Karpus and V. Rezmer, “the dead in the camps were buried in separate cemeteries located nearby. Throughout the interwar period, they were under the tutelage of the Polish military and civilian authorities. The cemeteries were fenced off, put in order, and modest monuments and crosses were erected on them. Some of them have survived to this day, and if necessary, the exhumation of Russian prisoners of war buried there can be carried out."
It is impossible not to note a problem related to the theme of the collection, indicated at the end of the Polish preface and concerning the fate of Polish prisoners: “… during the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1920. the martial law on the fronts changed frequently. In the first period of the war, the Poles occupied Vilna, reached the Berezina, and then captured Kiev. In the summer of 1920, the Red Army reached the Vistula and threatened Warsaw. The consequence of the victories won by both sides of the conflict was the capture of many soldiers of both the Polish Army and the Red Army. After the end of the conflict with Soviet Russia, the Polish military authorities balanced their own losses. It follows from it that more than 44 thousand soldiers of the Polish army were taken prisoner by the Soviet Union. As a result of the exchange of prisoners of war, only about 26.5 thousand people returned to Poland, so there is an urgent need to clarify the fate of those who did not return home.”
The collection contains many tables and various numerical data. When publishing such summaries, typos are inevitable, the total number of which, however, turned out to be very small. As an example, I would like to note a certificate of prisoners returning from Poland as of November 1, 1921: the total number of prisoners who arrived at that time was 73 623, and not 82 623 people, as it was erroneously indicated.
In conclusion, it remains to quote the statement of the chairmen of the Russian and Polish editions of the collection - the head of the Federal Archival Agency of Russia Vladimir Kozlov and the director of the General Directorate of the State Archives of Poland Daria Nalench: century, contributes to the further humanization of relations between our countries”.
Red Army soldiers in Polish captivity in 1919-1922. Sat. documents and materials. Moscow - St. Petersburg, "Summer Garden", 2004.912 p. 1000 copies
Post scriptum
Many years ago, in their program statement, the founders of Memorial stated the seemingly obvious: that the past cannot be the property of any political camp. Proceeding from this, Polish and Russian researchers have been engaged in unraveling difficult questions of our common history for several years now, relying not on a transient political situation, but on documents.
Thus, a book was created, which is reviewed by Alexey Pamyatnykh.
Unfortunately, politicians do not want to read the works of historians, as this could cloud their black-and-white view of history. As if in confirmation of this shortly after the publication of the book, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Nikolai Spassky said in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta on October 5:
“We told the truth about the crimes of Stalinism and about innocent victims, including foreign citizens. Some other countries, in particular, Germany and Italy, have done this as well. But not all. For example, Japan and Poland, for example, find it difficult to reconcile with their own past.
It's one thing to admit and tell the truth. Another thing is to constantly apologize for your own past. In that case, let's all apologize to each other for everything. Then let Poland apologize for the intervention of 1605-1613 and for the deaths of tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers who died in the Polish concentration camps in 1920-1921. Let England apologize for the occupation of the Russian North during the Civil War, and the USA and Japan for the occupation of the Far East."
Someone who, but a representative of such a serious authority should know the facts and scientific works devoted to them. He can argue with them if he has documents showing that things were different. But to write about "Polish concentration camps" instead of POW camps is outrageous negligence.
It is difficult to agree with Nikolai Spassky when he claims that the truth about the crimes of Stalinism was spoken, since in recent years the process of its disclosure has clearly stopped, as evidenced by at least the dead end in which the Katyn investigation entered.
Let's put aside demagogy and not make empty statements on the ashes of the twentieth century. And also - we will talk to each other.
On September 7, at the XV International Economic Forum in Krynica-Zdroj, the traditional awards "Person of the Year" and "Organization of the Year" were awarded to leading politicians, businessmen, public figures and cultural figures, as well as public organizations of Central and Eastern Europe. The Public Organization of the Year was recognized by the Memorial Society, which was marked as "an organization whose activities promote mutual understanding in Central and Eastern Europe." Lech Walesa, the leader of the Solidarity movement and the first popularly elected President of Poland, was awarded the Man of the Year award.
