Stalin and Gomulka Conversation Regarding the Polish KRN Government

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Further Obstructions by the CBKP

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The issue of arms deliveries moved from a standstill only after Stalin received the KRN delegation again on June 22, 1944. It was then that he learned that despite the promises that he had made to that very delegation a month earlier, arms drops for the AL were still not taking place. Stalin was very irritated by this. D. Manuilski, in charge of Polish affairs on behalf of the WKP/b, was present at the talks and was given a “vigovor” by Stalin. He was given a directive that arms drops were to be taken care of immediately. This had an effect. Already the next day a group of Soviet plenipotentiaries for Polish affairs headed by Manuilski and Berling’s go-between, Major Zhukov, as well as CBKP and the ZPP presidium representatives, appeared at Barvishe near Moscow, where the KRN delegation was staying, in order to reach an agreement with the delegation on the question of how to implement this task as ordered by Stalin. But for the Lublin region and the whole region of “Lublin” Poland governed by the PKWN, it was too late. These areas had been liberated from the German occupation before the Polish Partisan Staff to the War Council of the Polish Army in the USSR (Polski Sztab Partyzancki przy Radzie Wojennej Armii Polskiej w ZSRR), acting in agreement with their people with Poland, had had time to launch the action of dropping arms into those territories. Another interruption of radio communications between the PPR leadership and Moscow as a result of the Germans’ uncovering our radio station, which at the time, if I remember right, was located in Boernerowo near Warsaw, contributed to this.

In an attempt to resume communications, for which drops of transmitters and receivers and personnel to service them were indispensable, I dispatched Loga-Sowiński to the Lublin region, and he tried very hard to contact A. Zawadzki though the radio transmitter of the commander of the Soviet partisan unit, Major Klima.^[1]  Despite multiple attempts to make contact, Zawadzki did not respond to the radio telegrams. He clearly wanted no contact with a representative of the CC PPR. After the war, he let it slip in a conversation with Loga-Sowiński that he did not know who it was who was trying to reach him so insistently. During the June 22 meeting of the KRN delegation with Stalin, Stalin for the first time brought up the issue of creating a Polish government in the sense of taking concrete preparatory steps in that matter. He stressed that “the center of the new government should be Poland and the KRN,” and key ministries, including the position of the main commander of the Polish Army, should be in the hands of representatives in Poland. This corresponded to the position of the PPR leadership and the KRN presidium. Before the KRN delegation left for Moscow, I informed Spychalski that we see the candidate for a future commander of the Polish Army, created on the basis of the Polish Army in the USSR, in the person of General “Rola” M. Żymierski.

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¹ [orig. note] The landing units, ca. 100 soldiers, led by Czesław Klima had been assembled on the other side of the Bug River and were made up of Polish volunteers by the Polish Partisan Staff (Polski Sztab Partyzancki), and then transferred to the Lublin region. Shortly before liberation, it was made part of the AL.

The above statements by Stalin forced the CBKP-led Presidium of the ZPP to define their stand vis-à-vis the KRN (and hence of the CBKP vis-à-vis the KC PPR). It was a simple matter of recognizing clearly the supremacy of the KRN over the ZPP (I indicated this in my writing of January 12, 1944 sent to Moscow) and the Polish Army in the USSR. Yet the ZPP authorities, or more precisely the CBKP, tried to avoid this, still aspiring to play a decisive role in the preparatory process of creating a Polish government and to place themselves in a position of independence vis-à-vis the KRN. This is confirmed by a resolution of the Presidium of the ZPP of June 24, 1944.

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