Poles in the Soviet Union

The Polish minority in the Soviet Union are Polish diaspora who used to reside near or within the borders of the Soviet Union before its dissolution. Some of them continued to live in the post-Soviet states, most notably in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, the areas historically associated with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan among others.

History of Poles in the Soviet Union

1917–1920

thumb|right|Painter [[Kazimir Malevich (Kazimierz Malewicz) was a prominent artist of Polish descent active in the Soviet Union. His attempt at settling in Warsaw in 1927 failed. Polish writer and philosopher Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz lived through the Russian Revolution while in St. Petersburg. What he saw, had a profound effect on his works, many of which display themes of the horrors of the Civil War he witnessed.

Among the many Polish victims of the revolution was the father of Polish eminent composer Witold Lutosławski, Marian Lutosławski and his brother Józef, murdered in Moscow in 1918 as alleged "counter-revolutionaries".

There were also some Poles (or those of partial Polish descent) associated with the communist movement. Famous revolutionaries include Konstantin Rokossovsky, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, Julian Marchlewski, Stanislaw Kosior, Karol Świerczewski and Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka secret police which would later turn into the NKVD. The Soviet Union also organized Polish units in the Red Army and a Polish Communist government-in-exile, however the former were persecuted and subject to mock trials following the end of the Second World War and the latter being appointed and installed by the Soviet regime as opposed to the legitimate government-in-exile based in London. Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee was created in 1920 but failed to control Poland.

1921–1938

Polish communities were inherited from Imperial Russia after the creation of the Soviet Union. After World War I, Poland reestablished itself as an independent country, and its borders with the USSR were finalized by the Peace of Riga in 1921 at the end of the Polish-Soviet War, which left significant territories populated by Poles near or within the confines of the Soviet Union. According to the 1926 Soviet census, there were a total of 782,334 Poles in the USSR. The largest concentration of Poles was in what was then Soviet Ukraine, where according to the Soviet census in 1926 476,435 Poles lived. Those estimates are considered to have been lowered by Soviet officials. Church and independent estimates show estimates of 650,000 to 700,000 Poles living in that area. Nevertheless, 119,855 Poles were evacuated to Iran with General Anders' army, which subsequently fought alongside the Allies in Iran and Italy; 36,150 were transferred to the Polish Army which fought with the Red Army on the Eastern Front and 11,516 are reported to have died in 1941–1943.

The following are cases of direct executions of Poles during the 1939–1941 occupation:

Katyn massacre about 22,000
executions of prisoners after the German invasion 1941.

After World War II most Poles from Kresy were expelled into Poland, but officially 1.3 million stayed in the USSR. Some of them were motivated by the traditional Polish belief that one day they would become again lawful owners of the land they lived on. Some of them were kept forcefully in. Some simply stayed, without force or ideological reasons.

Wanda Wasilewska was an exceptional case – she became a Soviet citizen and did not return after the war.

1947–1991

The Polish minority was one of the few whose numbers decreased over time, according to official statistics. There was also the repatriation of Poles (1955–1959).

After 1989, Poles who survived in Kazakhstan started to emigrate due to national tensions, mainly to Russia and, supported by an immigration society, to Poland. The number remaining is between 50,000 and 100,000.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the following post-Soviet countries have significant Polish minorities:

Lithuania, around 250,000 (7% of population), see also Polish minority in Lithuania,
Belarus, at least 420,000 (almost 4.5% of population), see also Polish minority in Belarus,
Ukraine, at least 150,000, see also Polish minority in Ukraine,
Russia, more than 100,000, see also Polish minority in Russia,
Kazakhstan – between 60,000 and 100,000, see also Poles in Kazakhstan.
Latvia, around 50,000, see also Poles in Latvia.
Azerbaijan – between 1,000 and 2,000, see also Poles in Azerbaijan.
Polish minorities are also found in Georgia, Moldova and Uzbekistan.

Demographics

The Polish population in the Soviet Union peaked in 1959, decreased by about 20% by 1970, and then decreased extremely slowly between 1970 and 1989.

List of prominent Soviets of Polish descent

Vikenty Veresaev (birth name Smidovich) – writer
Vatslav Vorovsky (Wacław Worowski) – revolutionary, one of the first Soviet diplomats and head of the state publishing house
Gleb Krzhizhanovsky – Chief of the Russian Electrification Commission, responsible for fulfillment of the GOELRO program
Felix Dzerzhinsky (Feliks Dzierżyński) – creator and the first chairman of the Soviet security service, Cheka, later GPU, OGPU (1917–1926)
Vyacheslav Menzhinsky (Wiaczesław Mienżyński or Mężyński) – chairman of the OGPU (1926–1934)
Mechislav Kozlovsky – communist diplomat and lawyer
Kazimir Malevich (Kazimierz Malewicz) – painter, pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the avant-garde, Suprematist movement
Yury Olesha – writer
Tomasz Dąbal – communist politician
Konstantin Rokossovsky (Konstanty Rokossowski) – Marshal of the Soviet Union, planner and director of Operation Bagration (liberation of Belarus, Ukraine and the eastern Poland)
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (Ciołkowski) – rocket scientist (with a father of Polish descent)
Stanislav Kosior (Stanisław Kosior) – General Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, deputy prime minister of the USSR, and a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), one of the principal so-called architects of the Ukrainian famine of 1932 to 1933
Karol Świerczewski – general, commander of the Polish Second Army during the fighting for western Poland and the Battle of Berlin
Stanislav Poplavsky (Stanisław Popławski) – general, commander of the Polish First Army during the breakthrough of the Pommernstellung (Pomerania Wall) fortification line, securing the Baltic Sea coast, crossing the Odra and Elbe rivers and the battle of Berlin
Sigizmund Levanevsky (Zygmunt Lewoniewski) – aircraft pilot, explorer of the Arctic
Andrey Vyshinsky (Andriej or Andrzej Wyszyński) – Prosecutor General of the USSR (1934–1939), the legal mastermind of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge
Arseny Tarkovsky (Tarkowski) – poet and translator (with a father of Polish descent)
Andrei Tarkovsky (Tarkowski) – film-maker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director (with a paternal grandfather of Polish descent)
Dmitri Shostakovich (Szostakowicz) – composer (with a paternal grandfather of Polish descent)
Rostislav Plyatt – actor (of mixed Polish-Ukrainian descent)
Mstislav Rostropovich – cellist and conductor (ethnic Russian, with some Polish descent)
Rolan Bykov – actor (Polish-Jewish descent)
Edvard Radzinsky – playwright, TV personality
Edita Piekha (Edyta Piecha) – singer, born in France, moved to USSR
Anatoly Sobchak – mayor of Saint Petersburg (mixed Russian-Ukrainian-Polish-Czech descent)
Sergey Yastrzhembsky (Jastrzębski) – Russian politician, President Vladimir Putin’s chief spokesperson on the Second Chechen War, head of the Kremlin’s Information Policy Department, co-ordinating Putin administration's external communications.
Konstantin Petrzhak – physicist

References

External links

History of Poles in Kazakhstan
Soviet repressions against Poles and citizens of Poland