I Saw The New Poland - Taschenbuch

I SA THE NEW POLAND by Anna Louise Strong AN ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS BOOK LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY BOSTON 1946 lGBT 1945, , 19 .. i, BY ANNA LOUISE STRONG, INCLUDING THE RIGHT to REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS THEREOF IN ANY FORM FIRST EDITION Published January 1946 ATLANTIC-LITTLE, BROWN BOOKS ARE PUBLISHED BY LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS PUNTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Contents Preface Why Poland 3 I Diplomatic Car to Poland n II Lublin 3 6 III Table Companions in Lublin 59 IV Chiefs of State 8s V The New Polish Army 106 VI Warsaw Front 127 VII Bors Uprising 15 VIII Land Reform 79 IX Radzyn 202 X A Government Is Born 226 XI Warsaw - the Capital 237 XII United They Stand 259 Index 273 113iSTi7 JAN n W46 I SAW THE NEW POLAND Why Poland C 4HURCHILL and Stalin stood together in the Government Box when the curtain fell and lights blazed on in the crystal chandeliers. The applause for the ballet shifted abruptly towards the back center of the Moscow Opera House and swelled to a sudden roar. Diplomats of all United Nations, men in uniforms of all the Allied Armies, rose from their seats, demonstratively greeting the Chiefs. Soviet officials and favored factory workers, bending over the railings of galleries, cheered wildly. That night in early October, 1944, was the first time in all the years of war that I felt the tension in Moscow relax. The British Prime Minister had come for one of those conferences by which the Allies were working out a common program for our postwar world. When he publicly exchanged handshakes with Stalin and then with the American Ambassador, Averell Harriman, and bowed to the plaudits of the crowded theater, harmony not alone from the or chestraflooded the air. Over the bitter wrack of war stole a breath of the coming peace, 3 I SAW THE NEW POLAND Days went by. The discussions dragged on longer than expected. It was easy to guess why. We corre spondents did not need the hint of the British attach at one of his daily press conferences, Since the P. M. is spending four fifths of his time on Poland, to know that this was the snag. We knew that Stanislaw Miko lajczyk, prime minister of the Polish government in London, had come in Churchills private plane, that Boleslaw Bierut and Edward Osubka-Morawski, the big shots doing the actual job in Poland, had flown in from the Lublin Committee. Four-cornered nego tiations were going on. From the universal insistence that they were progressing it was clear that they hadnt reached the goal. When Churchill finally re ceived us in the British Ambassadors big study in front of a cheerful log fire and under imposing por traits of the Empires historic and reigning sover eigns and entertained us with reminiscences of the Boer War, we knew that Poland was still off record except for generalities. Poland was no new caldron of conflict. It has been a source or an object of wars since the Middle Ages, It was both of these in that fateful summer of 1939 when Polands refusal of Russias proposals of aid against Hitler blocked the military negotiations be tween Britain, France, and the USSR. The collapse of that Allied conference gave the green light to the second World War of which Poles were the first vic tims. Throughout five years of war the same Polish Governments unsettled differences with Moscow WHY POLAND clouded Allied unity, endangering the stability of thefuture peace. The immediate problem that brought the British Prime Minister to Moscow arose from the liberation of one third of Poland. In the summer of 1944 the Red Army drove west and entrenched itself on the Vistula, preparing for further advance. A Polish Army of one hundred thousand Poles organized in the Soviet Union took part in these victories...