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    Published : 2022-12-30
    No. 17 (2022)

    In the bac k of the fronts of the Red Army. Soviet crimes, repressi ons and looting in Poland in 1945 (on the example of selected cities)

    Mirosław Golon

    https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7443-2063

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.56583/frp.2247

    Abstract

    The activities of the Soviet authorities in Poland in 1945 were the subject of very intensive communist propaganda for several decades after the war. The aim was to show mainly the aspect of ‚liberation’ by the Red Army, and this is still the case today, after almost 80 years in the Russian Federation. An element of this propaganda was the great action of building communist buildings, called monuments of gratitude, most of which have already been dismantled in Poland. Meanwhile, the reality of 1945 was dramatically different from any liberation. One occupation was replaced by another. From a political perspective, the most important was the destruction directly by the Soviet authorities of a significant part of the structures of the Polish Underground State, including its most important part, i.e. the Home Army. It was the leadership and cadres of the Polish independence conspiracy that were hit by mass repressions with murders and prisons, often in the depths of the Soviet Union. In addition to these politically conditioned repressions, a huge part of the Polish civilian population fell victim to various harassment, robbery, rape, and often crimes of a criminal nature, which were committed on an unprecedented scale in the history of wars by soldiers of the multi-million Red Army moving through Polish lands. The Soviet military, police and administrative authorities also played a huge role
    in increasing the already unbelievably large scale of Poland’s economic losses. The exploitation of Polish lands was associated not only with the massive, plundering use of the resources of the occupied lands to strengthen the potential of the fighting army, to equip it, feed it, etc. Most of the plunder was directed to the east, to strengthen Stalin’s state. This resulted in a very significant deepening of the already significant impoverishment of Polish lands during World War II, as well as a reduction in the economic potential of the new, post-German lands that Poland occupied in 1945. On selected examples of several centers, e.g. Włocławek, Toruń and Grudziądz, detailed comments on the exploitation of Polish economic resources by the Soviet authorities in 1945 were also presented.

    Keywords:

    Home Army, Polish Underground State, Red Army, NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs), Ministry of Public Security, Northern Group of Forces AC, monuments of „gratitude, deportations, gulags, crimes, requisitions, communist repressions, economic exploitation, Joseph Stalin, Iwan Sierow, August Fieldorf, Leopold Okulicki, Kazimierz Pużak, Stanisław Jankowski, Toruń, Grudziądz



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    Golon, M. (2022). In the bac k of the fronts of the Red Army. Soviet crimes, repressi ons and looting in Poland in 1945 (on the example of selected cities). Fides, Ratio Et Patria. Studia Toruńskie, (17), 43–74. https://doi.org/10.56583/frp.2247

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    Wydawnictwo Akademii Zamojskiej
    ul. Pereca 2, 22-400 Zamość
    tel.: +48 84/638 34 44;
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    fax: +48 84/ 638 35 00
    University
    Akademia Zamojska
    ul. Pereca 2, 22-400 Zamość
    tel. 84 638 34 44
    fax 84 638 35 00
    e-mail: rektorat@akademiazamojska.edu.pl
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