On December 4, we must pay tribute to the memory of the Red Army soldiers who were tortured, humiliated, executed, and also deliberately killed by hunger and disease in Polish captivity in 1921-1922. With such a noteworthy and public support initiative, Live Journal blogger Maxim Akimov came up with this initiative.
The official date of commemoration of the soldiers brutally killed by Poland in 1921-1922 has not yet been established, he notes. And so so far the only date that can be considered significant in this story is December 4, 2000. On that day, a bilateral agreement was concluded between Russia and Poland, according to which the Russian State Military Archives and the Polish General Directorate of State Archives were to jointly try to find the truth on this issue based on a detailed study of the archives.
This attempt was only partially crowned with success, "since the Polish side is trying in every possible way to avoid disclosing reliable information and to evade responsibility for this crime," Akimov says.
But Russian liberals, including those from the notorious "Memorial", on the contrary, praise this "productive cooperation." Their typical representative, Aleksey Pamyatnykh, expressed satisfaction five years ago that Russian and Polish historians and archivists, after several years of work, were able to prepare a joint study entitled "Red Army Men in Polish Captivity in 1919-1922."
However, even from the text of his article "Prisoners of the Red Army in Polish Camps" it follows that, as a result, the Poles there spoke about their vision of the issue, which was completely different from the position of the Russian side. This is "evidenced by the presence in the collection of two separate prefaces - Russian and Polish."
Pamyatnykh cites a quote from the Russian professor G. Matveyev, representing the Russian side: “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 Red Army soldiers who died in Polish captivity would be 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 (12-15% of the total number of those taken prisoner) died in captivity."
Prof. Z. Karpus and prof. V. Rezmer, in the preface of the Polish side, write: “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 - does not find confirmation 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," Pamyatnykh concludes with satisfaction. And thus it makes its feasible contribution to the attempt at manipulation by the Polish side.
If only because it takes Professor Matveyev's quote out of context. Because Matveev says: “if we proceed from the average statistical,“usual”level,” and there is every reason to believe that it was much higher than the average “usual” level. In addition, Matveev points to the "uncertainty of fate", at least 50 thousand Soviet prisoners of war - in addition to those who fell into the "average level". At the same time, he claims that "the complexity of the problem lies in the fact that the currently available Polish documents do not contain any systematic information about the number of Red Army soldiers who were taken prisoner in Poland." Matveyev also points out the cases of Polish soldiers shooting Red Army prisoners on the spot, without sending them to prisoner of war camps.
Not everything is unambiguous with the quote from the Polish side, more precisely, with the data given in it, allegedly "coinciding" with the Russian ones. Russian researcher T. Simonova writes that the figures given by Z. Karpus cannot be taken seriously at all. The Polish professor, it turns out, determined the number of Red Army prisoners who perished in the Tucholi concentration camp on the basis of cemetery lists and death certificates drawn up by the camp priest, while the priest could not perform the funeral service for communists (and, moreover, non-believers - Tatars, Bashkirs, Jews, etc.). etc.). In addition, the graves of the dead, according to the recollections of eyewitnesses, were communal, and buried there without any account.
In the report on the activities of the joint delegation of the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR dealing with prisoners, it was reported that “prisoners of war in Poland were viewed not as disarmed enemy soldiers, but as disenfranchised slaves. POWs lived in old wooden barracks built by the Germans. Food was given out unfit for consumption and below any living wage. When a prisoner of war was captured, all the uniforms fit to be taken off from the prisoner of war, and the prisoner of war very often remained in only one underwear, in which he lived behind the camp wire.
The Polish authorities did not actually consider Russian prisoners to be people. For example, in the camp in Strzhalkov, for three years they could not resolve the issue of sending prisoners of war of natural needs at night. There were no toilets in the barracks, and the camp administration, on pain of execution, forbade them to leave the premises after 6 pm. Therefore, the prisoners "were forced to send their natural needs to the bowlers, from which they then have to eat." Those who went outside out of need risked their lives. So it happened once: "on the night of December 19, 1921, when the prisoners went to the lavatory, it is not known by whose order rifle fire was opened on the barracks."
The prisoners were systematically beaten, they were subjected to mock bullying and punishment. In some camps, prisoners were forced instead of horses to carry their own feces, carts and harrows in logging, arable land and road works. According to the RSFSR Plenipotentiary Representative in Poland, “the disciplinary punishments applied to prisoners of war are distinguished by barbaric cruelty … in the camps, cane and fist massacre of prisoners of war flourishes … The arrested are driven out into the street every day and instead of walking, exhausted people are forced to run under command, ordering them to fall into the mud and again get up. If the prisoners refuse to lie down in the mud, or if one of them, having fulfilled the order, cannot get up, exhausted by the difficult conditions of their detention, then they are beaten with rifle butts."
In fairness, it is worth pointing out that in the same way the Poles dealt with not only our prisoners, but also with the Poles - the communists, of whom several thousand also died in the same camps. A very curious piece of evidence is worth citing in this connection.
In a letter from the head of the II Division (intelligence and counterintelligence) of the General Staff of the Polish Army I. Matuszewski to General K. Sosnkovsky on February 1, 1922, dedicated to the problem of the escape of communists from the camps, states: “These escapes are caused by the conditions in which the communists and internees are found: lack of fuel, linen and clothing, poor food, and a long wait to leave for Russia. The camp in Tucholi became especially famous, which the internees call the “death camp” (about 22,000 Red Army prisoners died in this camp)”. From this reservation, one can judge the scale of deaths in Polish camps - no matter what Polish professors like Karpus and their Russian singers from Memorial may say now.
In the light of the above evidence, you begin to perceive in a different way the traditional statements of Poles and their Russian liberal friends: “What cynicism must one have to put on the same level the death of prisoners of war from epidemics in a country exhausted and torn apart by a continuous war and a cold-blooded, deliberate and deliberate the murder of tens of thousands of innocent people in peacetime (this is about the Katyn massacre. - Note by KM. RU) ?! And not even prisoners of war, but in general it is not clear who - the war, after all, was not formally declared."
Answering in the same style, one can point out that “what kind of cynicism one must possess in order to put on the same level the painful death from hunger, cold and disease of tens of thousands of ordinary people, who are to blame only for the fact that they are Russians, and deserved punishment for a handful of outright enemies and criminals ?!
But, unlike the Polish authors, it is not proper for us to throw out naked slogans. And we will try to confirm the above with a reason.
Let's start with the notorious "victims of the NKVD". Actually, even if you unconditionally believe the version of Goebbels, then in its classic version it was not about "tens of thousands" of Poles, but about 4000 people. Of course, it is far from certain that it was the NKVD officers who shot them in Katyn in 1940, and not the Germans themselves in 1941-1942. Nevertheless, for the sake of justice, let us cite the testimony of Lazar Kaganovich, who certainly could not have come to terms with either Goebbels or the Poles.
So, according to him, "in the spring of 1940, the leadership of the USSR made a forced," very difficult and difficult decision "but" absolutely necessary in that difficult political situation "to shoot 3196 criminals from among the citizens of former Poland. According to Kaganovich's testimony, it was mainly Polish war criminals who were involved in the mass extermination in 1920–21 that were sentenced to death. captured Soviet Red Army soldiers, and employees of the Polish punitive organs, "smeared" with crimes against the USSR and the Polish labor movement in the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to them, criminals from among the Polish prisoners of war who had committed grave ordinary crimes on the territory of the USSR after their internment in September-October 1939 were also shot - gang rapes, robberies, murders, etc."
In contrast to the above categories, the victims of the Polish camps Tucholi, Strzhalkovo and others deserve much more sympathy.
First, most of the so-called. "Red Army men" were ordinary peasants, mobilized en masse for rear work and servicing the convoys. This was one of the elements of Comrade Trotsky's "brilliant" activities in military development: in the middle rifle division there were up to 40 thousand so-called. "Eaters" and about 6000-8000 "bayonets". Some excuse for Lev Davydovich can only be the fact that the number of "eaters" among both the Whites and the Poles also usually exceeded the number of "bayonets" and "sabers" by several times.
So, after the August (1920) breakthrough on Vepsha, most of the "bayonets" and "sabers" made their way either to East Prussia, where they were interned, or to Belarus, to their troops. In this case, I can testify, relying on the recollections of my own grandfather, Alexander Khrustalev, then - the commander of the horse-machine gun platoon of the 242nd Volzhsky regiment of the Red Banner 27th Omsk named after. Italian proletariat division. For these battles to break through from the Warsaw suburb of Yablonnaya to Brest, he was awarded his first Order of the Red Banner.
In the first place, the Poles took prisoner tens of thousands of troopers and logisticians. However, the valiant gentry did not disdain the capture of purely civilians. So, on August 21, 1920, the command of the Northern Front of the Polish Army issued an order for the arrest and trial of civilians who collaborated with the Soviet authorities. All garrison chiefs were instructed to identify "all residents who, during the Bolshevik invasion, acted to the detriment of the Polish army and state, maintaining active communication with the enemy, deployed agitation in his favor, creating Bolshevik committees, etc." Individuals were also arrested in respect of whom there were “solid suspicions”, but there was not enough evidence.
Those whom the Poles could consider the conscious enemies of their state - commanders, commissars, communists (and, to a heap, Jews) - they usually killed immediately, which they did not hide much. But the other "gray cattle", which never posed any threat to the Commonwealth, was doomed to a long and painful extinction.
Actually, therefore, there is still no clarity with the total number of "red" prisoners of Polish captivity. Although back in 1921, the People's Commissar G. V. Chicherin sent the Charge d'Affaires of Poland to the RSFSR T. Filipovich a note of protest against the humiliating content of Russian prisoners, in which he estimated their number at 130 thousand - of which 60 thousand died. Incidentally, this is a convincing answer to the traditional attack of modern Polish (and Russian liberal) propaganda. They say, “if the Russian side is so concerned about the fate of its citizens who perished in a foreign land, then who prevented us from finding out their fate immediately after the signing of the Riga Peace Treaty in 1921? Is it because Russia deeply spit on some "Red Army men" of whom history has not left a trace? But as an anti-Katyn "argument" they are just right."
As you can see, this is not true, and the Soviet government raised this issue back in 1921. Another thing is that the Polish authorities, headed by Pilsudski and his heirs, sincerely spat on such notes. And in the post-war years, when Poland became a “fraternal socialist country,” Soviet leaders became uncomfortable to bother their Warsaw comrades on such a long-standing issue. Those, in turn, did not stutter about any Katyn. However, as soon as the "elder brother" was slack, the communist leaders of the People's Republic of Poland in 1987–89 began to demand that Gorbachev answer for Katyn. Gorbachev, in his manner, naturally, could not help but “bend over” and was the first to make “confessions”.
But even Gorbachev was smart enough to issue an order on November 3, 1990, which instructed, in particular, “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, to hold until April 1, 1991 years of research work to identify archival materials concerning events and facts from the history of Soviet-Polish bilateral relations, as a result of which damage was caused to the Soviet Side. " Use the obtained data, if necessary, in negotiations with the Polish side on the issue of "white spots".
As State Duma deputy Viktor Ilyukhin said, such work was really carried out under the leadership of Valentin Falin, and the relevant materials were kept in the building of the CPSU Central Committee on Staraya Square. However, after the August events of 1991, all of them allegedly "disappeared", and further work in this direction was stopped.“We believe that it must be renewed, because the fate of the captured Red Army soldiers is a part of the history of our Fatherland,” Viktor Ilyukhin quite reasonably believes. KM. RU also considers it necessary to carry out such work.
