Seventy years ago, on April 28, 1947, at about four o’clock in the morning, the famous Operation Vistula began. This is the name given to the purposeful and planned actions of the Polish authorities to resettle the non-Polish Slavic population (Galicians, Lemkos) from the south-eastern regions of Poland (Lemkivshchyna, Kholmshchyna, Nadsyanie and Podlasie) to the north and west of the country. Today Kyiv strives in every possible way to demonstrate its friendliness towards Warsaw, and they prefer not to talk about the events of those not so distant years. But, nevertheless, they were - and the goal of Operation Vistula was precisely the fight against Ukrainian (Galician) nationalism, with the activities of the structures of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists on the territory of Poland. The resettlement of peoples was considered in this regard as a means to protect the southeastern regions of Poland from the emergence of a social base for the UPA and OUN (b).
Poland had an example of organizing the resettlement of peoples in the person of its senior partner and patron - Soviet Union. It was the Soviet resettlement experience that was used in the process of implementing Operation Vistula. The “population exchange” agreement was signed during the war, in 1944. Of course, they began to implement it in full after the war - in 1946. The Ukrainian SSR, Belorussian SSR and Lithuanian SSR agreed to accommodate Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Lithuanians resettled from Poland on their territories. In turn, ethnic Poles, as well as ethnic Jews, moved to Poland from the Soviet republics. The latter, however, did not stay in Poland, but were almost immediately transported to Palestine.
Ministerial post public safety Poland in 1944-1954 occupied by Major General Stanislav Radkevich (1903-1987), who came from a poor peasant family, joined the Bolsheviks at the age of 15 and entered service in the Red Army. Then there were years of study in the Soviet Union, illegal work in the structures of the Polish Communist Party, arrests and prisons by the Polish authorities, service in the labor battalion of Hitler’s army and desertion from it to the Soviet side. In 1943-1944. Radkevich served in the Polish Army. It was he who initiated the creation of a separate special assault battalion of Poles, which later became the core of the formation of the Polish system state security. The war had not yet ended, and the Polish Ministry of Public Security was already a powerful intelligence service with 12 thousand personnel. Radkevich played main role in its creation and subsequent improvement. He was also destined to become one of the initiators and immediate leaders of Operation Vistula.
Historically, southeastern Poland was inhabited by a large number of Lemkos, Rusyns, Ukrainians. Despite the “population exchange” policy, many Polish Ukrainians, Rusyns and Lemkos refused to go to the Ukrainian SSR. Meanwhile, this represented great danger for the socio-political stability of the Polish state, since formations of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army continued to operate in areas populated by Rusyns, Lemkos and Ukrainians. In Poland, the UPA and OUN (b) appeared in the summer of 1944. UPA detachments engaged in attacks on Polish military personnel and law enforcement officers, simply terrorized the Polish rural population, killing civilians and destroying their property. The activity of the UPA on Polish territory was such that the central government of the country did not actually control certain areas in the southeast.
The majority of rural residents - Rusyns and Lemkos, by the way, had a very cool attitude towards the activities of the UPA. Unlike Galicia and Volyn, where the UPA met with the support of the local population, Polish Rusyns and Lemkos, like the residents of Transcarpathia, were very negatively disposed towards Bandera, since they remembered the cooperation of Ukrainian nationalists with the Nazis. The local population also had quite utilitarian reasons for showing dissatisfaction with the activities of the UPA - fears negative consequences actions of nationalists for the entire Ruthenian and Ukrainian population of Poland. As it turned out later, these fears were not in vain. 
Moscow demanded decisive action against the UPA from the Polish leadership. In this situation, a secret instruction from the Internal Security Corps was issued in March 1947, which drew attention to very interesting detail. On February 22, 1947, an amnesty was declared for participants in the Polish anti-communist underground, but Ukrainian nationalists did not belong to the Polish underground, so the security forces had grounds to launch a large-scale operation to destroy UPA formations in the Rzeszow and Lublin voivodeships of Poland. It was prescribed that the operation would involve cooperation between three states interested in eliminating the Ukrainian nationalist underground - the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia. On Polish lands, the main burden fell on the Polish Ministry of Public Security. It was planned to involve 4.3 thousand military personnel to participate in the operation. The personnel of the security units were reinforced with 19 mortar platoons and 10 armored platoons, and were armed with armored vehicles and mortars. Polish security forces were to operate primarily in wooded area.
Then, in March 1947, the Polish government again turned to the Soviet Union, or more precisely, to the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR, with a request to resettle the Ukrainian population from the southeastern regions of Poland to the Ukrainian SSR. We were talking about approximately twenty thousand Ukrainians, Rusyns and Lemkos who could be resettled in the Ukrainian SSR. However, the Soviet leadership refused such a proposal from Poland, explaining that the Ukrainian SSR does not yet have the infrastructure capabilities to accept such significant amount migrants. After this refusal, the Polish leadership matured its own plan for adjusting the political situation in the south-eastern voivodeships. It was decided to produce internal exchange population, relocating Ukrainians, Lemkos and Rusyns from the south-eastern regions of the country to the north-western regions unfamiliar to them. The implementation of the plan made it possible to put an end to serious resistance to the UPA with lightning speed.
Carrying out the task of relocating tens of thousands of people required a much greater concentration of forces than the leaders of the Polish security agencies initially expected. On April 17, 1947, the operational group "Vistula" was created, which included the 3rd, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th infantry divisions of the Polish Army, the 1st division of the Internal Security Corps - in total 6 divisions, 3 separate regiments - automobile and 5th engineer regiment, as well as a civil police regiment. It was also planned to involve aviation in the form of a squadron. In total, about 18-20 thousand military personnel of the Polish Army and state security agencies were supposed to be involved in the operation.
Brigadier General Stefan Mossor, who at that time held the post of Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army, was entrusted with direct leadership of the operation. General Mossor (1896-1957), unlike Radkevich, was not a revolutionary, but a career military man. He began his service in the army of the Polish Republic and by the time the Second World War began, he commanded a cavalry regiment with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Later he joined the Army of the People, and then began to make a career in the People's Republic of Poland. The operation headquarters included the Deputy Minister of Public Security, Colonel Grzegorz Korczynski, and the commander of the Internal Security Corps, Colonel Juliusz Hübner. Colonel Alexander Evchenko, a career officer of the Red Army, who had served in the Polish Army since 1944, was placed at the head of the intelligence department of the operational group.
Operation Vistula began with the border troops of the USSR and the army of Czechoslovakia blocking the borders of both states with Poland in order to exclude the possibility of UPA units and refugees from entering Poland. To combat the UPA rebels who were penetrating into Czechoslovakia, the Czechoslovak task force Teplice was created under the leadership of Colonel Jan Herman. It included 4 pursuit battalions - “Lion”, “Tiger”, “Lynx” and “Eagle”, separate companies “Peter” and “Falcon”, 9 infantry companies, 2 signal companies, combined battalions of three infantry regiments, mortar and anti-tank company, 3 artillery batteries, women's combined company, motorized and training battalions. After this, a group of troops numbering 2.7 thousand military personnel was headed by Colonel Vit Ondrashek. Under the command of Major Miroslav Duda, a new regiment of 4 battalions and an aviation squadron was created as part of the border troops. All these units were involved in battles with rebels infiltrating Czechoslovak territory. 
A week before the start of Operation Vistula, on April 19, 1947, Polish troops began clearing the territory of UPA kurens (battalions) operating in the area of operation. As a result of the actions of the Polish troops, the Baida and Rena kurens lost up to 80% of their fighters. Their remnants were driven out to Czechoslovakia and the USSR, where the destruction of the kurens was completed by Czechoslovak and Soviet troops. At four o'clock in the morning on April 28, the resettlement operation itself began. 24 to 48 hours were allotted for preparations. Operation Vistula had significant differences from similar operations to resettle large groups of the population in the Soviet Union. On the one hand, the Polish leadership approached the problem more liberally, allowing them to take cattle and agricultural equipment with them. On the other hand, taking into account the Soviet experience, a decision was made to disperse the settlers in their new places of residence in order to avoid the possibility of their consolidation. For this purpose, it was forbidden to settle more than several families in one locality.
Between April 28 and July 29, 1947, 137,833 people were resettled. The settlers were received mainly by the Olsztyn Voivodeship (58,367 people) and the Szczecin Voivodeship (46,118 people). In third place was the Wroclaw Voivodeship - it received 20,938 migrants. A total of 7,345 people were resettled in the Poznań Voivodeship, and 3,929 people in the Gdańsk Voivodeship.
In parallel with the resettlement of peasants from the Lemko region and other areas of southeastern Poland, fighting against the UPA rebels. By July 1947, Polish security forces had killed 623 UPA fighters, 796 people were captured and 56 surrendered voluntarily, another 1,582 people were arrested on suspicion of involvement in supporting militants. The losses of the Polish Army amounted to 59 people killed and 59 people wounded, the Internal Security Corps lost 52 people killed and 14 people wounded. In addition, 152 civilians became victims of the fighting. The Special Tribunal imposed 112 death sentences. To hold those arrested, a special Central Labor Camp was created in Jaworzno. During the two years of its existence, 3,870 people passed through the camp.
Actions against UPA units that retreated from Polish territory continued in neighboring Czechoslovakia. Here, in the summer and autumn of 1947, Operation Action B took place, the purpose of which was to prevent the UPA units from breaking through Czechoslovak territory into the American occupation zone in Austria. Czechoslovak troops captured more than 100 UPA fighters. They were handed over to the Polish authorities. However, several groups of Ukrainian nationalists, totaling approximately 200-300 people, still managed to break through Czechoslovak territory into Austria.
On July 31, 1947, the Polish Minister of Defense, Marshal Michal Rol-Zimierski, announced the dissolution of Task Force Vistula, which had completed its main task. Further management of the actions to destroy the remnants of the rebels was entrusted to the commands of the Lublin and Rzeszow military districts. Directly for actions against the small remnants of the rebels, the Tatra task force was formed - already smaller in number.
Operation Vistula led to the virtual destruction of the structures of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Poland. Ultimately, in the fall of 1947, Roman Shukhevych was forced to announce the official dissolution of the UPA and OUN (b) organizations in Poland. It turns out that the Polish leadership managed to solve the problem of suppressing armed nationalist formations on the territory of the republic within a few months, which can be called a truly brilliant success for the security forces.
Subsequently, Operation Vistula received mixed coverage in the world media and historiography. For obvious reasons, radical Ukrainian nationalists view it as a component of the genocide of the Ukrainian population on the territory of Poland, their expulsion from their ancestral lands. More moderate nationalists make claims not so much to the Poles as to the Polish leadership of those years, who acted, as they say, on a tip from the Soviet Union. As for Polish sources, they are equally biased. Most of them view Operation Vistula in the context of the implementation of pro-Soviet policies in Poland and, thus, try to shift responsibility for those events from the Polish leadership. Other, more independent Polish sources claim that Operation Vistula was carried out as part of the fight against the Ukrainian terrorist underground of the UPA, which included people who took part in the crimes of the Nazis during the Second World War.
Due to the outbreak of last days In the Ukrainian-Polish conflict over the demolition of UPA monuments, we should recall the history of Operation Vistula, thanks to which Warsaw eliminated the Bandera underground with decisive measures.
On April 28, 1947, a large-scale military-police operation began in Poland to combat the UPA and undermine its social base.
The fallen scumbags who raised their heads and multiplied during the Nazi occupation were a purulent ulcer not only for the western regions of the USSR, but also for its neighbors in Poland and Czechoslovakia, requiring immediate surgical intervention.
Within two years after the liberation of Ukraine from the Nazis, Western Ukraine and the adjacent regions of Belarus, the bodies of SMERSH, NKVD, NKGB and troops protecting the rear of the front carried out operational measures to eliminate the offensive-OUN gangs. As a result, already in 1946, the scraps of the UPA hid in caches and moved from a “large-scale insurgent war” to underground terrorist activities.
On September 9, 1944, in liberated Lublin, the Polish People's Liberation Committee (PKNO) signed a Soviet side an agreement on the repatriation of the “Russian” population from Polish territory to the USSR, and Poles from Soviet territory. In total, from 1944 to 1946, about half a million people were evicted from Poland. Rusyns, Galicians, Lemkos were sent to the USSR, the Jewish population - to British Palestine.
No matter how hard the Poles tried, by 1946 there were still about 150 thousand Ukrainians living in Poland, who flatly refused to move to live in the Ukrainian SSR. Polish state security considered approximately 18 - 20 thousand of them to be associated with the UPA, assessing them as “infected with banditry,” and therefore the Poles were not averse to deporting them to the USSR.
In principle, this assessment is not far from the truth, since eastern Poland was indeed a feeding and mobilization base for the OUN-UPA. The USSR authorities, don’t be fools, refused to accept and house those “infected with banditry,” so a solution was brewing in Poland - to evict these people to the liberated lands and assimilate them as much as possible in order to reduce any support for the UPA to zero.
The trigger for the forced debanderization was the assassination by the Upashas of Colonel General Karol Swierczewski, Deputy Minister of Defense of People's Poland. Sverchevsky is a man, without exaggeration, a legendary general three armies- Spanish, Soviet and Polish. During the war in Spain, under the name “General Walter,” he commanded the 14th International Brigade, and then the 35th Interdivision, and participated in the defense of Madrid from the Francoists. During the Great Patriotic War, Sverchevsky was one of the organizers of the Polish Army on the territory of the USSR. Commanded the 2nd Army of the Polish Army. At the banquet in honor of the Victory Parade, Stalin raised a toast in honor of Sverchevsky: “To the best Russian general in Polish army!»
Sverchevsky was killed in an ambush by upash Stebelsky, nicknamed “Hren” - one of the most cruel and frostbitten fanatics of the UPA, who began his “career”, like many upashes, among the Germans in punitive action. According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the First Slovak Republic, “I especially remember one of the most notorious thugs, nicknamed “Hren,” named Stepan Stebelsky. Born near Sambir... During the attack, people from his group appeared in Polish or Soviet uniforms. This vandal boasted that he finished off the wounded like dogs, ripped open the stomachs of half-dead people and hung their entrails on tree branches, tore off their genitals, cut out their hearts alive and burned them.”
We bring to the attention of readers that the UPA “major” Khren-Stebelsky was ultimately Uzbagolized. At the beginning of September 1948, operating with his hundred “Makovka” on the territory of Soviet Ukraine, Stebelsky, among other OUN members, received an order to secretly make his way into the American occupation zone in Germany. The personality of “Hren”, based on the sum of his “feats”, was under the close attention of the intelligence services of the USSR, Poland and Czechoslovakia. On September 9, 1949, “Hren” and his accomplices were destroyed during special operations by operatives of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to other sources, “Hren”, together with UPA “lieutenant” Shchigelsky, were captured by the Czechs and handed over to Poland, where they were convicted and beautifully hung in a noose.
By the way, the burial place of “Hren” interests Banderlogs no less than the swamp over which Shukhevych’s ashes were scattered.
The OUN press exploded with enthusiastic squeals: why, the UPA “heroes” mortally wounded the Soviet Army General Vatutin, and now they have killed the no less famous Sverchevsky. Paramoga is just around the corner!
The very next day after the murder of Sverchevsky, the Polish authorities responded with an order to urgently resettle Ukrainian and mixed families to the liberated lands in East Prussia. It is prohibited to create places of compact residence and settle closer than 100 km from the border. The actions were coordinated with the Soviet and Czechoslovak sides.
On April 28, 1947, the resettlement of the potentially unreliable population of Eastern Poland began. Five divisions of the Polish Army, parts of the Internal Security Corps, automobile and engineer regiments, police, GB, as well as volunteers: a total of 20 thousand people.
The operation was carried out in three stages and ended in September 1947. The Ukrainian population was not evicted cleanly. The families of front-line soldiers, anti-fascists, party activists and other persons whose loyalty was not in doubt remained to live in their original places, but the villages close to the forest were evicted en masse. During the operation, the army responded for the murder of General Sverchevsky a thousand times: almost 1.5 thousand UPA militants were destroyed, about 2.5 thousand were arrested.
For their part, they also took part in Operation Vistula law enforcement agencies and army units of Czechoslovakia. Several thousand UPA “militants” were hiding in the forests bordering Poland, hiding from the Soviet or Polish authorities. The Czechs handed over the captured and surrendered fallen soldiers to the Polish side. They, in turn, placed the “lads” in a specially created filtration camp, where the contingent was sorted by the severity of their guilt and distributed - to some, Caesarean, and to whom, metalwork.
There is information that during Operation Vistula, Polish peasants who fled the Volyn massacre settled scores with their Ukrainian neighbors, not disdaining to act in the style of UPA thugs, slaughtering entire families in an hour.
Be that as it may, as a result of Operation Vistula, the Bandera underground in Poland was completely destroyed and was unable to recover.
By the way, according to some sources, the television scoundrel Matseychuk, who associates with Bandera’s supporters, is not a Pole at all, but a descendant of evicted Ukrainians associated with the UPA during Operation Vistula.
Years have passed. The USSR collapsed. In “independent” Ukraine, Bandera’s underdogs and the ideological heirs of the executioners from the OUN-UPA raised their heads. In the former people's Poland, new Pilsudians came to power with the ambition of restoring the “Rzeczpospolita from one day to the next.” In 2007, the degenerate Yushchenko and the idiot Kaczynski, who later killed himself on an aspen on an airplane and took dozens of lives to his grave, bravely and impartially condemned Operation Vistula, recognizing it as a product of “communist totalitarianism.” It would seem that the anti-adviser is a friend, comrade and brother to the Russophobe. But!
Ten years have passed, and in Poland they no longer consider Operation Vistula criminal and unnecessary, and throughout the country they are beginning to openly uproot any memorial signs erected in honor of the UPA and raze the graves of “warriors” to the ground, something that the noble lordship had previously had no hand in doing. rose. Why? It’s all due to the same stubbornness and excessive ambition of the post-Maidan “elites”. I found a scythe on a stone. Nobody wanted to give in. Modern Pilsudians would easily forgive modern Banderaites for bullying and murder Soviet citizens executioners of Shukhevych, but the glorification of the “exploits” of the UPA, including the Volyn massacre, is a matter of principle for the Polish national consciousness.
At the same time, the Kiev junta, which relies heavily on the Right Sector and ultras battalions, is not ready to forgive the Poles for historical grievances and abandon the glorification of the UPA. Things have already reached the point of shelling the consulate with grenade launchers, pogroms and beatings. At the same time, both regimes strive to build mono-ethnic states, placing radical nationalism as the cornerstone.
Was Operation Vistula really criminal? No, I wasn't. It was a forced measure, force majeure, in the fight against the dire consequences of short-sighted pre-war policy and Hitler's occupation. The resettlement of part of the population disloyal to the state at that time was a completely traditional practice for many states. Let the authorities take things to their own devices, the OUN-UPA could have waged its gangster-terrorist war for a long time, receiving support from the population of Eastern Poland, who were deeply offended by the Poles during the “sanation” regime.
Moreover, the Banderlogs should generally slam the bread slicers and observe a regime of silence, since the Soviets and people’s Poland simply evicted people collaborating (often forcedly) with the OUN-UPA, while Bandera’s people put people to a painful death for collaborating with the authorities, so that others would be discouraged . It's quite obvious who the real villain is here.
Operation Vistula, Operation Vistula is
Operation Vistula(Polish: Akcja "Wisła") - a military-administrative action in 1947 to evict the non-Polish (Ukrainians, Lemkos, etc.) population from the southeastern regions of Poland to the northern and western territories that were previously part of Germany. It began at 4 o'clock in the morning on April 28, 1947 by the operational group of troops "Wistula", created on April 17, 1947 and reorganized on July 28, 1947 in the territories of Rzeszow, and then in a number of areas of the Lublin and Krakow voivodeships of the Polish People's Republic, aimed at eliminating the UPA and organizational OUN(b) network on the territory of the People's Republic of Poland. At the same time, the forced resettlement of Ukrainians and mixed families living in southeastern Poland to the western and northwestern voivodeships of the People's Republic of Poland was carried out, which, according to information from the security authorities of the People's Republic of Poland, constituted the economic, mobilization and social base for the OUN(b) and the UPA. Until July 29, 1947, 137,833 people were resettled to five western and northwestern voivodeships - of which 46,118 people were resettled in Szczecin; in Olsztynskoe - 58,367 people.
At the end of Operation Vistula, both the UPA and the organizational network of the OUN(b) virtually ceased to exist in Poland.
On August 3, 1990, the Polish Parliament condemned this forced relocation Ukrainian population.
- 1 Background
- 1.1 "Population exchange" 1944-1946
- 1.2 UPA and OUN(b)
- 2 Operation "R"
- 3 Proposal for additional resettlement in the USSR
- 4 Task Force "Vistula"
- 5 Liquidation of the UPA and OUN(b)
- 6 Population relocation
- 7 Further developments
- 8 Political assessments
- 9 Historiography
- 10 See also
- 11 Notes
- 12 Literature
Background
"Population Exchange" 1944-1946
Main article: Eviction of Ukrainians from Poland to the Ukrainian SSRThe governments of the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian SSR in September 1944 entered into agreements with the Polish Committee of National Liberation (Polish: Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego), according to which an “exchange of population” took place - ethnic Poles were sent to Poland, and Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Lithuanians - to THE USSR. The first trains with Poles from the Ukrainian SSR and Ukrainians from Poland departed already in November 1944. On July 6, 1945, the Soviet-Polish agreement “On the exchange of population” was concluded. It formally granted the right of free voluntary withdrawal from Soviet citizenship to persons of Polish and Jewish nationality and members of their families who had Polish citizenship by September 17, 1939, and their resettlement to Poland. In accordance with this agreement, the dispatch began in February 1946, this was carried out by the Resettlement Administration under the control of the Special Control Commission under the Council of Ministers of the USSR.
As of October 31, 1946, almost 1.1 million people were resettled from the USSR to Poland. (of which 810,415 people were from the territory of the Ukrainian SSR), including more than 143 thousand Jews who were transported to British Palestine without delay. About 518 thousand people arrived from Poland to the USSR. (including 482,800 people in the Ukrainian SSR).
The end of the resettlement period to the Ukrainian SSR from Poland was postponed several times (initially, the Soviet side estimated the number of migrants at 391 thousand people) from February, then from mid-1945 to autumn, and then to the beginning of summer 1946. In fact, resettlement from Poland took place until the beginning of autumn 1946 ., and the official completion was announced only at the beginning of May 1947. According to the calculations of the Polish side, after the completion of the resettlement, just over 20 thousand Ukrainians, Rusyns, and Lemkos remained in Poland. By the winter of 1946/1947, estimates were raised to 50 thousand, and then to 80 thousand. Among the reasons why the population refused to leave for the Ukrainian SSR, in addition to the obvious reluctance to leave their homes and property (the settlers took with them certificates of abandoned property, on the basis of which they were paid the appropriate material compensation in the USSR), the authors of works published in the late 20th - early 21st centuries, they also note the influence of both the OUN(b) propaganda, which promised them “deportation to Siberia,” and the actions of the UPA and SB OUN(b) units, which physically destroyed those who signed up to leave. They also killed members of resettlement commissions.
UPA and OUN(b)
The first UPA units - coming from Galicia and Volyn - appeared in the south-eastern regions of the region in the spring and summer of 1944. Active efforts to develop the OUN(b) network began after the separation of “Zakerzonya” (a term used by the OUN(b) to designate the territories lying west of the so-called “Curzon Line”) into a separate “organizational region” of the OUN(b) in March 1945 R. Shukhevych appointed Y. Starukh (“Banner”) as its leader. P. Fedoriv (“Dalnich”) was appointed to lead the SB OUN(b) in the “region”, while the UPA detachments were headed by M. Onishkevich (“Orest”). In the summer of 1945, another reorganization took place in the structure of the OUN(b), as a result of which the territory where the OUN(b) structures were located began to be called VO 6 “Xiang” (Military District “San”).
The first task that the UPA was occupied with in the summer of 1945 was the destruction of resettlement commissions, military personnel of the Polish Army and the destruction by arson of villages from which settlers were evicted to the Ukrainian SSR. Polish settlements and civilians were also destroyed.
The attitude of the local population towards the OUN(b) and UPA, according to the captured reports of the OUN(b), in a number of areas inhabited by Lemkos, was “like people who deserted from the Red Army, did something wrong before the authorities, and having no other way out, left in the forest". “Our movement is viewed with distrust and fear... the general population does not believe that our movement has any weight and does not believe in the success of our cause.” Also, among Ukrainians living in Poland, there were also more harsh assessments: “there are a lot of German police and SS personnel in the UPA, who, saving themselves, involve others in their cause.” They made these conclusions by seeing those whom they remembered from the German police and from stories about “life in the SS and on the German front.”
The Polish police and security forces, which were in the formative stage, were not able to effectively counter the activities of the UPA and OUN(b). In connection with this, a number of areas were actually uncontrolled by the Polish civil administration and large UPA units (numbering more than 100 armed persons) continued to operate on the territory of the Polish People's Republic. In the Ukrainian SSR, such formations were liquidated by the summer of 1945. The total number of UPA detachments, the SB OUN (b) and the OUN (b) network is estimated to be up to 6 thousand participants, of which up to 2.5 thousand are only armed UPA participants.
Operation "R"
At the beginning of March 1947, an instruction of the “Internal Security Corps” (ISC) (Polish: Korpus Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego) was prepared, which stated that the amnesty announced on February 22, 1947 for members of the Polish anti-communist underground (WiN, NHS, former AK activists) gives the opportunity to begin an operation to destroy the “UPA gangs” operating in the Rzeszow and Lublin voivodeships, to which the amnesty does not apply “due to their fascist nature and criminal methods of struggle based on Hitler’s models.”
It was also stated that “for the successful implementation of an operation to destroy gangs, it is necessary to organize cooperation between the authorities of the three interested countries (USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia). Operational actions must be linked to a simultaneous resettlement campaign (in the USSR or in Western Lands) population, which is the main support for the UPA gangs.”
The number of personnel involved required for the operation was indicated at 4.3 thousand people. Reinforcements included 19 mortar platoons, 10 armored tank platoons, 19 BA-64 armored vehicles, 10 M-2 armored personnel carriers, 7 SU-57 self-propelled guns and other forces and means necessary for conducting combat operations in wooded areas.
The operation was to begin at concentration points - the cities of Rzeszow, Tarnow, Zamosc.
Proposal for additional resettlement in the USSR
In March 1947, the Polish government turned to the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR with a request for the possibility of placing 15 - 20 thousand migrants on the territory of Soviet Ukraine who expressed a desire to resettle in the Ukrainian SSR. The request was received on March 29-30, 1947 through the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR V. Gusev, where it was stated in particular that “the Poles believe that with such a formulation of the question, some Ukrainians will be asked to leave for the Ukrainian SSR, and it is undesirable to deprive them of this opportunity.”
Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR D. Manuilsky reported on this issue:
“To the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b)U, Comrade L. M. Kaganovich. (...) in connection with the murder of General Swierczewski, the Polish government intends to make a decision on the wholesale eviction of Ukrainians from the Rzeszow and Lublin voivodeships to the territory of the former East Prussia. We have now completed the mass resettlement from Poland to Ukraine. The mainly Ukrainian population, infected with banditry, refused to resettle and remained in Poland. In addition, we currently do not have the necessary housing stock. Therefore, the government of the Ukrainian SSR cannot accept the specified number of immigrants at the same time. My opinion is also supported by the Minister of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR, Comrade. Savchenko. I ask for your consent."
Kaganovich agreed with this proposal.
Task Force "Vistula"
According to the order of the State Security Commission of Poland No. 00189/III dated April 17, 1947, the Wisla Task Force (OG Wisla) was created to carry out the operation, consisting of five army infantry divisions (3rd, 6th, 7th i, 8th, 9th Infantry Divisions of the Polish Army), 1st Division of the Internal Security Corps and two separate regiments (5th Engineer and 1st Automobile). The total number of personnel involved is indicated from 17.5 to 20 thousand soldiers and officers. General leadership was entrusted to the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army, Brigadier General Stefan Mossor.
Liquidation of the UPA and OUN(b)
In the zone of operation of the OG "Wistula" there were kurens (battalions) under the leadership of P. Mykolenko - "Bayda", "Rena", "Zaliznyak" and "Berkut" - and several smaller detachments of the UPA and SB OUN (b). The operation against them was launched on April 19, 1947. The first actions showed the ineffectiveness of using large military formations against small enemy groups. Many of the arriving units were unfamiliar with the terrain and enemy tactics. After intensifying intelligence activities, actions were launched against the Baida and Rena kurens, as a result of which they (according to Polish estimates) lost up to 80% of their personnel. Their remnants were forced out of the territory of the People's Republic of Poland into Czechoslovakia and partly into the USSR. Hundreds (companies) of the Zaliznyak kuren were reduced to 15-25 people, one hundred were completely liquidated. The least damaged by July 22, 1947 was the Berkut kennel, the liquidation of which was to be completed by the 3rd Infantry Division.
By July 30, 623 militants were killed, 796 captured and 56 surrendered voluntarily. Also, 1,582 suspects of belonging to the OUN(b) and UPA network were detained and significant trophies were captured: 6 mortars, 11 heavy and 103 light machine guns, 3 anti-tank rifles, 171 submachine guns, 701 rifles and carbines, 128 pistols, 303 hand grenades, 50 thousand cartridges, 2 radio stations, 20 typewriters, food and other equipment and property.
The Polish Army's own medical losses amounted to 59 killed and 59 wounded servicemen, the Internal Security Corps lost 52 servicemen killed and 14 wounded. Also, 152 civilians died from the actions of the OUN-UPA.
To consider the cases of those captured and detained, a special judicial body was created within the framework of the Wisła OG. Until July 22, 1947, they had issued 112 death sentences, 46 people had been sentenced to imprisonment, and cases against 230 people had not yet been considered. To hold the suspects, a filtration camp was created, which received the name “Central Labor Camp in Jaworzno.” Until its liquidation in January 1949, 3,870 people (including 700 women) passed through it, of whom 168 people or 4.3% died during their stay. One of the last to be placed in it were 112 members of the UPA, transferred by Czechoslovakia.
Population relocation
In areas of military clashes, the population was given 24 to 48 hours to gather. There were also isolated cases when the population was evacuated during daylight hours, and isolated cases when the collection time was even shorter. The conditions of resettlement differed from resettlement in the USSR in that the peasants moved along with large cattle and agricultural equipment, as well as the fact that those resettled were settled dispersedly, no more than several families in one locality, the creation of areas of compact residence was not allowed.
Until July 29, 1947, 137,833 people were resettled in 5 voivodeships - 46,118 of them to Szczecin; in Olshtynske - 58,367; Wroclaw - 20,938; Poznan - 7345, Gdansk Voivodeship - 3929 (as of June 30, 7 trains with 1.3 thousand people had not yet arrived at their destination).
Further events
On July 17, 1947, OG "Wistula" was disbanded, the continuation of the tasks of eliminating small OUN-UPA groups was entrusted to military groups 5th and 7th military districts. in places where the liquidation and resettlement operation was completed, military personnel of OG "Wistula" were involved in haymaking and harvesting on farmland abandoned by the resettlers; by July 30, up to 50% of the grain was harvested.
In Czechoslovakia, in parallel with Operation Vistula, from June 10, 1947 until the fall of 1947, Operation Action B was carried out, in which units of the Czechoslovak armed forces and security services acted to intercept the combined UPA detachments - Brodych, Burlaki and Gromenko, who tried to break out of Poland into the American occupation zones in Austria. Some of the UPA units were defeated, more than 100 people were captured and then handed over to the Polish side, some of those responsible for crimes on Czechoslovak territory were convicted on the spot. In total, several small OUN-UPA groups managed to infiltrate the American occupation zone total number from 200 to 300 persons. The structures of the UPA and OUN(b) in Poland were formally dissolved by R. Shukhevych as “completely lost” in the early autumn of 1947. The commander of VO 6 “Syan” M. Onishkevich (“Orest”, “Bogdan”, “Bily”) himself was taken alive along with the archive on March 2, 1948.
Political assessments
On August 3, 1990, the Polish Parliament condemned the forced relocation of Polish citizens. In July 2007, in a joint statement, Ukraine and Poland condemned Operation Vistula. Earlier, the World Congress of Ukrainians called on President Yushchenko to demand that the Polish government, as well as the UN, condemn, apologize and compensate for this ethnic cleansing.
Historiography
Until the early 90s of the twentieth century, historiography about the event was represented mainly by publications of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada and the USA, where the event was assessed from the perspective of the forced relocation of the population, which was characterized as “the deportation of Ukrainians from ethnic Ukrainian territories by the communist regime of Poland.” With the collapse of the Warsaw bloc in Poland, a number of authors characterize this event as “initiated by the communist regime of Poland at the instigation of the USSR.” In general, in Polish historiography the event is assessed from the perspective of the liquidation of the OUN-UPA, although there are other points of view and justifications regarding the advisability of relocating the population. With Ukraine's independence, individual authors continued and developed their assessment of the North American diaspora. At the same time, some authors sometimes use the term “ethnic cleansing” and “Polonization of ethnically Ukrainian territories.”
see also
- Volyn massacre
- The tragedy of Janova Dolina
- The tragedy of Guta Penyatskaya
- Pavlokom massacre
- Sakhryn massacre
- Horajce massacre
- Massacre in Zavadka Morochovskaya
- Skopov massacre
- Eviction of Ukrainians from Poland to the Ukrainian SSR
- OUN(b)
- UPA
- Zakerzonie
Notes
- Butsko O. Ukraine - Poland: migration processes of the 40s. - Kiev: Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 1997
- p.88 Ukrainian historical magazine No. 3 2002 ISSN 0130-5247
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Yu. Shapoval OUN and UPA on the territory of Poland 1944-1947 ISBN 966-02-1803-6
- p.234 I. Ilyushin “UPA and AK. Confrontation in Western Ukraine" K. 2009 ISBN 978-966-518-465-2
- p.15 Yu. Shapoval OUN and UPA on the territory of Poland 1944-1947 ISBN 966-02-1803-6
- pp.55-56 Yu. Shapoval. OUN and UPA on the territory of Poland 1944-1947 ISBN 966-02-1803-6
- p.108 Yu. Shapoval. OUN and UPA on the territory of Poland 1944-1947 ISBN 966-02-1803-6
- p.86 Ukrainian historical magazine No. 3 2002 ISSN 0130-5247
- p.89 Ukrainian historical magazine No. 3 2002 ISSN 0130-5247
- p.88 −90 Ukrainian historical magazine No. 3 2002 ISSN 0130-5247
- Tadeusz Walichnowski. At the origins of the fight against the reactionary underground in Poland. 1944-1948. Kyiv, “Naukova Dumka”, 1984. p.253
- p.230 Yu. Shapoval OUN and UPA on the territory of Poland 1944-1947 ISBN 966-02-1803-6
- page 90 Ukrainian historical magazine No. 3 2002 ISSN 0130-5247
- “Action B” or the hunt for the UPA
- Poland and Ukraine in a joint statement condemned Operation Vistula - Yushchenko (Ukrainian)
- I. Tsependa Operation Vistula in Polish historiography Ukrainian historical magazine No. 3 2002 ISSN 0130-5247
- Y. Nikolaets The problem of the OUN-UPA and mass deportations during the war period in Ukrainian historiography History of Ukraine: less common names, ideas, facts. - Kiev Institute of History of Ukraine NAS of Ukraine, 2008. - No. 35. - p.329-347
Literature
- K. Miroszewski, Ukraińcy i Łemkowie w Centralnym Obozie Pracy Jaworzno, Pamiętny rok 1947, Rzeszów 2001.
- Butsko O. Ukraine - Poland: migration processes of the 40s. - Kiev: Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 1997. - 217 p.
- Y. Shapoval OUN and UPA on the territory of Poland 1944-1947 Kiev: Institute of History NAS of Ukraine, 2000 ISBN 966-02-1803-6
- Promotion "VISLA". 1947 / Order: Z. Gajovnicek, B. Gronek, S. Kokin and in. Editorial team: S. Bogunov, Z. Gajovnicek, B. Gronek and in. State Archives of the Security Service of Ukraine; Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration of the Republic of Poland. Institute of National Remembrance - Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish People; NAS of Ukraine. Institute of Political and Ethnic Research. - Warsaw-Kiev, 2006 ISBN 83-89078-93-7
- 1947: “VISLA” action - the apogee of deportation operations of the 40-50s. XX century Exhibition for documents of the CDKFFA of Ukraine named after. G. S. Pshenichny, as well as the State Administration of the SBU. (Ukrainian)
- Shevchenko K.V. How the Rusyn-Lemkos had their homeland amputated: Operation “Vistula” (1947) (Russian) // M.A. Kolerov Russian collection. Research on the history of Russia: Collection. - Moscow: Regnum, 2010. - T. VIII. - pp. 260-273. - ISBN 978-5-91150-034-4.
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Operation Vistula, Operation Vistula is
Operation Vistula Information About
Mutual waves of resettlement of people exchanged between the USSR and Poland in the 40s of the last century were provoked by the actions of Ukrainian nationalists
From Zakerzonie to Pomerania
April 28 marks seventy years since the beginning of Operation Vistula, when the authorities of the Polish People's Republic organized the mass resettlement of Ukrainians who lived in the area of the Soviet-Polish border, in the so-called “Zakerzonie”. That is, on the lands of the Rzeszow, Lublin and Krakow voivodeships inhabited by a mixed population, west of the “Curzon Line”, on the basis of which the new Soviet-Polish border was established.
Photo: incognita.day.kiev.ua
1947 Resettlement of Ukrainians from Zakerzonia by the Poznan Internal Security Corps battalion
This military-administrative campaign had two main goals - to destroy the economic, mobilization and social base that had developed in this region for the OUN(b) and UPA, and also to populate the territories that were empty after the exodus of the German population in the south of East Prussia and Pomerania, which went to Poland following the Second World War. Mostly peasants were subject to resettlement. They were delivered in carts and cars to railway stations, and sent to their new place of residence in railway trains, along with cattle and agricultural implements. At the same time, the settlers were resettled in such a way as not to create on the former German territories areas densely populated by Ukrainians.
Four kuren (battalions) of the UPA, which operated in the area of Operation Vistula, tried to disrupt the resettlement, however, they were defeated by the Polish army, losing more than a thousand people. At the same time, Bandera’s own killed dozens of Polish security forces and 152 civilians as a result of these battles. As a result, by the end of the year, 137,833 people from Ukrainian and mixed families were resettled to the territory of the northern and western voivodeships of Poland, after which the nationalist underground, which had previously operated in the regions bordering the USSR, virtually ceased its activities. active work. Already in the fall of 1947, after the capture of the local OUN leader Miroslav Onishkevich, the UPA leadership stated that nationalist organizations in Zakerzonye were completely lost, and announced their dissolution.
Photo: incognita.day.kiev.ua
1947 Action "Wistula". A Polish officer interrogates captured UPA militants from Stepan Stebelsky's detachment
Death of General Walter
The prerequisite for the start of Operation Vistula was constant clashes with members of the Ukrainian nationalist underground, which continued after the formal end of the war. UPA militants, who were based in forests and mountains, using the population of Ukrainian villages as a personnel base, continued to carry out attacks on representatives of the Polish government and ethnic Poles. On the other hand, representatives of the Polish population carried out attacks on Ukrainians - as retaliation for the massacre of the Polish population in 1943-1944.
The bloody trauma of the war years led to deep internal conflict between representatives of the two communities, and at Polish-Soviet negotiations various ways to solve this problem were constantly discussed. Already in 1945, an agreement “On the exchange of population” was concluded, which provided persons of Polish and Jewish nationality who had Polish citizenship before 1939 with the right to voluntarily renounce Soviet citizenship and resettle to Poland. As part of this campaign, ethnic Poles - including residents of Galicia and Volyn - were sent for resettlement to Poland, and Ukrainians, also at their request, were resettled on the territory of Soviet Ukraine. As a result, by 1946, more than a million people were resettled from the USSR to Poland, and almost half a million citizens moved from Poland to Ukraine.
However, the leadership of the OUN(b) tried in every possible way to disrupt the process of exchange of the Polish-Ukrainian population. Nationalist propaganda convinced peasants that they would be sent to Siberia, and militants actively exterminated citizens and members of resettlement commissions who agreed to move. Local Polish authorities could not cope with the situation, and in March 1947, the legendary Polish General Karol Swierczewski, a hero of the anti-fascist struggle in Spain, where he was known under the pseudonym “General Walter,” arrived at the Polish-Ukrainian border. During this inspection trip, Sverchevsky’s guards entered into a shootout with Bandera’s men, as a result of which the Polish military leader was mortally wounded. It was this incident that served as the formal reason for carrying out Operation Vistula.
Photo: incognita.day.kiev.ua
1947 Warsaw. Funeral of General Karol Swierczewski
Wisla today
In the nineties and zeros, the post-communist Polish government condemned Operation Vistula, trying to blame the leadership of the Polish communists for it. However, this did not meet with much approval in Polish society. And not only because in the first post-war years Poland was formally governed by the “Provisional Government of National Unity,” which included representatives of non-communist parties. Most Poles were aware that the exchange of population with the USSR and the defeat of the nationalist underground ultimately made it possible to overcome the consequences of the massacre of the Polish population, preventing the expansion and conservation of the interethnic conflict in Western Ukraine and South-Eastern Poland. Not to mention the fact that the operation of the Polish government was provoked by the active terrorist activities of the Ukrainian nationalist underground.
This opinion has become even more popular in last years, when Polish society observes anti-Polish actions that regularly occur now in post-Maidan Ukraine. As a result, the Polish authorities decided not to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of Operation Vistula and refused to allocate funds for events dedicated to this date.
“There is a reluctance of the state to different levels somehow respond to the anniversary of Operation Vistula. The difference in attitude towards this event a few years ago and now is obvious. There is an appeal from Polish historians, experts and other persons to the Marshals of the Sejm and the Senate with determinations that Operation Vistula was justified, and conferences are held and studies are published based on these theses. That is, regression is observed at several levels,” said the chairman of the Association of Ukrainians in Poland, Piotr Tima.
Against this background, Ukrainian nationalists are making attempts to present Operation Vistula as genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Ukrainian population - blaming the communists in Kiev for this and fanning anti-Polish sentiments among the nationalist electorate, which is constantly in need of new enemies of the nation. On April 20, the Institute of National Remembrance held in Kyiv round table on the topic: “The Vistula action is a crime of the Polish communist regime,” in which MPs Nikolai Kniazhitsky and Anna Gopko took part. And there is no doubt that this event will be noticed in Poland, contributing to a further deterioration in relations between the two countries.
58,367 people
At the end of Operation Vistula, both the UPA and the organizational network of the OUN(b) virtually ceased to exist in Poland.
UPA and OUN(b)
The first UPA units - coming from Galicia and Volyn - appeared in the south-eastern regions of the region in the spring and summer of 1944. Active efforts to develop the OUN(b) network began after the separation of “Zakerzonya” (a term used by the OUN(b) to designate the territories lying west of the so-called “Curzon line”) into a separate “organizational region” of the OUN(b) in March 1945. R. Shukhevych appointed Y. Starukh (“Banner”) as its leader. P. Fedoriv (“Dalnich”) was appointed to lead the SB OUN(b) in the “region”, while the UPA detachments were headed by M. Onishkevich (“Orest”). In the summer of 1945, another reorganization took place in the structure of the OUN (B), as a result of which the territory where the OUN (B) structures were located began to be called VO 6 “Xiang” (Military District “San”).
The first task that the UPA was occupied with in the summer of 1945 was the destruction of resettlement commissions, military personnel of the Polish Army and the destruction by arson of villages from which settlers were evicted to the Ukrainian SSR. Polish settlements and civilians were also destroyed.
The attitude of the local population towards the OUN(b) and UPA, according to the captured reports of the OUN(b), in a number of areas inhabited by Lemkos, was “like people who deserted from the Red Army, did something wrong before the authorities, and having no other way out went into the forest " “Our movement is viewed with distrust and fear... In general, the population does not believe that our movement has any weight and does not believe in the success of our cause.” Also, among Ukrainians living in Poland, there were also more harsh assessments: “there are a lot of German police and SS personnel in the UPA, who, saving themselves, involve others in their cause.” They made these conclusions by seeing those whom they remembered from the German police and from stories about “life in the SS and on the German front.”
The Polish police and security forces, which were in the formative stage, were not able to effectively counter the activities of the UPA and OUN(b). In this regard, a number of areas were virtually uncontrollable by the Polish civil administration and large UPA units (numbering more than 100 armed persons) continued to operate on the territory of the Polish People's Republic. In the Ukrainian SSR, such formations were liquidated by the summer of 1945. The total number of UPA SB OUN (b) units and the OUN (b) network is estimated to be up to 6 thousand participants, of which up to 2.5 thousand are only armed UPA participants.
Operation "R"
At the beginning of March 1947, instructions for the “Internal Security Corps” (ISC) were prepared (Polish. Korpus Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego ), which indicated that the amnesty announced on February 22, 1947 for members of the Polish non-communist underground (AK, WiN (Polish. Wolność i Niezawisłość), NHS (Polish. Narodowe Siły Zbrojne) etc.) makes it possible to begin an operation to destroy the “UPA gangs” operating in the Rzeszow and Lublin voivodeships, to which the amnesty does not apply “due to their fascist nature and criminal methods of struggle based on Hitler’s models.”
It was also stated that “for the successful implementation of an operation to destroy gangs, it is necessary to organize cooperation between the authorities of the three interested countries (USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia). Operational actions must be linked to a simultaneous campaign for the resettlement (to the USSR or to the Western Lands) of the population, which is the main support for the UPA gangs.”
The number of personnel involved required for the operation was indicated at 4.3 thousand people. Reinforcements included 19 mortar platoons, 10 armored tank platoons, 19 BA-64 armored vehicles, 10 M-2 armored personnel carriers, 7 SU-57 self-propelled guns and other forces and means necessary for conducting combat operations in wooded areas.
The operation was to begin at concentration points - the cities of Rzeszow, Tarnów, Zamość.
Proposal for additional resettlement in the USSR
In March 1947, the Polish government turned to the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR with a request for the possibility of placing 15 - 20 thousand migrants on the territory of Soviet Ukraine who had expressed a desire to resettle in the Ukrainian SSR. The request was received on March 29-30, 1947 through the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR V. Gusev, where it was stated in particular that “the Poles believe that with such a formulation of the question, some Ukrainians will be asked to leave for the Ukrainian SSR, and it is undesirable to deprive them of this opportunity.”
Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR D. Manuilsky reported on this issue:
“To the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b)U, Comrade L. M. Kaganovich. (...) In connection with the murder of General Swierczewski, the Polish government intends to make a decision on the wholesale eviction of Ukrainians from the Rzeszow and Lublin voivodeships to the territory of the former East Prussia. We have now completed the mass resettlement from Poland to Ukraine. The mainly Ukrainian population, infected with banditry, refused to resettle and remained in Poland. In addition, we currently do not have the necessary housing stock. Therefore, the government of the Ukrainian SSR cannot accept the specified number of immigrants at the same time. My opinion is also supported by the Minister of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR, Comrade. Savchenko. I ask for your consent."
Kaganovich agreed with this proposal.
Task Force "Vistula"
According to the order of the State Security Commission of Poland No. 00189/III dated April 17, 1947, the Wisla Task Force (OG Wisla) was created to carry out the operation, consisting of five army infantry divisions (3rd, 6th, 7th i, 8th, 9th Infantry Divisions of the Polish Army), 1st Division of the Internal Security Corps and two separate regiments (5th Engineer and 1st Automobile). The total number of personnel involved is indicated from 17.5 to 20 thousand soldiers and officers. General leadership was entrusted to the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army, Brigadier General Stefan Mossor.
Liquidation of the UPA and OUN(b)
In the zone of operation of the OG "Wistula" there were kurens (battalions) under the leadership of P. Mykolenko - "Bayda", "Rena", "Zaliznyak" and "Berkut" and several smaller detachments of the UPA and SB OUN (b). The operation against them was launched on April 19, 1947. The first actions showed the ineffectiveness of using large military formations against small enemy groups. Many of the arriving units were unfamiliar with the terrain and enemy tactics. After intensifying intelligence activities, actions were launched against the Baida and Rena kurens, as a result of which they (according to Polish estimates) lost up to 80% of their personnel. Their remnants were forced out of the territory of the People's Republic of Poland into Czechoslovakia and partly into the USSR. Hundreds (companies) of the Zaliznyak kuren were reduced to 15-25 people, one hundred were completely liquidated. By July 22, 1947, the smallest Berkut kuren suffered the least damage, the liquidation of which was to be completed by the 3rd Infantry Division.
By July 30, 623 militants were killed, 796 captured and 56 surrendered voluntarily. Also, 1,582 suspects of belonging to the OUN(b) and UPA network were detained and significant trophies were captured: 6 mortars, 11 heavy and 103 light machine guns, 3 anti-tank rifles, 171 submachine guns, 701 rifles and carbines, 128 pistols, 303 hand grenades , 50 thousand cartridges, 2 radio stations, 20 typewriters, food and other equipment and property.
The Polish Army's own medical losses amounted to 59 killed and 59 wounded servicemen, the Internal Security Corps lost 52 servicemen killed and 14 wounded. Also, 152 civilians died from the actions of the OUN-UPA.
To consider the cases of those captured and detained, a special judicial body was created within the framework of the Wisła OG. Until July 22, 1947, they had issued 112 death sentences, 46 people had been sentenced to imprisonment, and cases against 230 people had not yet been considered. To hold the suspects, a filtration camp was created, which received the name “Central Labor Camp in Jaworzno”. Until its liquidation in January 1949, 3,870 people (including 700 women) passed through it, of whom 168 people or 4.3% died during their stay. Among the last to be placed in it were 112 UPA members transferred by Czechoslovakia.
Population relocation
In areas of military clashes, the population was given 24 to 48 hours to gather. There were also isolated cases when the population was evacuated during daylight hours, and isolated cases when the collection time was even shorter. The conditions of resettlement differed from resettlement in the USSR in that peasants were resettled along with cattle and agricultural equipment, and also in that those resettled were dispersed, no more than a few families in one locality, and the creation of areas of compact residence was not allowed.
Until July 29, 1947, 137,833 people were resettled in 5 voivodeships - 46,118 of them to Szecin; in Olshtynske - 58,367; Wroclaw - 20,938; Poznan - 7345, Gdansk Voivodeship - 3929 (as of June 30, 7 trains with 1.3 thousand people had not yet arrived at their destination).
Further events
On July 17, 1947, OG "Wistula" was disbanded; the continuation of the tasks of eliminating small OUN-UPA groups was entrusted to military groups of the 5th and 7th military districts. In places where the liquidation and resettlement operation was completed, OG Wisla soldiers were involved in haymaking and harvesting on farmland abandoned by the resettlers; up to 50% of the grain was harvested by July 30.
Political assessments
Historiography
Until the early 90s of the twentieth century, historiography about the event was represented mainly by publications of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada and the USA, where the event was assessed from the perspective of the forced relocation of the population, which was characterized as “the deportation of Ukrainians from ethnic Ukrainian territories by the communist regime of Poland.” With the collapse of the Warsaw bloc in Poland, a number of authors characterize this event as “initiated by the communist regime of Poland at the instigation of the USSR.” In general, in Polish historiography the event is assessed from the perspective of the liquidation of the OUN-UPA, although there are other points of view and justifications regarding the feasibility of relocating the population. With Ukraine's independence, individual authors continued and developed their assessment of the North American diaspora. At the same time, some authors sometimes use the term “ethnic cleansing” and “Polonization of ethnically Ukrainian territories.”
see also
Links
- Butsko O. Ukraine - Poland: migration processes of the 40s. - Kiev: Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 1997
- p.88 Ukrainian historical magazine No. 3 2002 ISSN 0130-5247
- Yu. Shapoval OUN and UPA on the territory of Poland 1944-1947 ISBN 966-02-1803-6
- p.234 I. Ilyushin “UPA and AK. Confrontation in Western Ukraine" K. 2009 ISBN 978-966-518-465-2
- p.15 Yu. Shapoval OUN and UPA on the territory of Poland 1944-1947 ISBN 966-02-1803-6
- pp.55-56 Yu. Shapoval. OUN and UPA on the territory of Poland 1944-1947 ISBN 966-02-1803-6
- p.108 Yu. Shapoval. OUN and UPA on the territory of Poland 1944-1947 ISBN 966-02-1803-6
- p.86 Ukrainian historical magazine No. 3 2002 ISSN 0130-5247
- p.89 Ukrainian historical magazine No. 3 2002 ISSN 0130-5247
- p.88 −90 Ukrainian historical magazine No. 3 2002 ISSN 0130-5247
- Tadeusz Walichnowski. At the origins of the fight against the reactionary underground in Poland. 1944-1948. Kyiv, “Naukova Dumka”, 1984. p.253
- p.230 Yu. Shapoval OUN and UPA on the territory of Poland 1944-1947 ISBN 966-02-1803-6
- page 90 Ukrainian historical magazine No. 3 2002 ISSN 0130-5247
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