GalleryBEHIND THE POLISH CLAIMS
Polish claims to Western Byelorussia and the Western Ukraine go back, primarily, to the end of the 14th Century, when, as a state, Poland was more unified and, therefore, more powerful than Russia. In alliance with the similarly more unified Lithuanian State, Poland conquered parts of Russia.
The situation was reversed in the 18th Century. Its neighbors, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, had been unifying and centralizing their state power, outstripping Polish power. Together they absorbed Poland in a series of partitions of Polish territory.
Therefore, if historical precedent be used to justify Polish claims, similar historical claims could be advanced against her very national existence! And not only the three powers mentioned, but Lithuania and Sweden could also advance claims upon Polish territory.1
But the ideas that move and condition the war efforts of the United Nations have no affinity with such "historic" claims. They are based on the principle of the self-determination of nations, to which the Soviet Union has subscribed.2 Russian revolutionary circles called for the liberation of Poland from Russian rule and when the revolution occurred, one of the first acts of the new Soviet Government was to acknowledge Poland's independence.3
| 1 | This contention posits that ex factis jus oritur—might makes right, ignores Polish rights of indigenous territorial settlement, and fails to note that the original union of Lithuania and Poland was an alliance sealed by the peaceful marriage of monarchs: Jogaila (to become Władysław II Jagiełło) and Jadwiga of Poland (who continued to reign as queen regnant of Poland until her death). |
| 2 | The Soviet Union had, by 1943, signed or subscribed to numerous treaties and pacts recognizing the inviolability of its neighbors' borders and permanently renouncing aggression, including: the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928)—having signed a specific protocol with Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and Romania on February 9, 1929; a treaty of friendship and trade with Poland (1931); a treaty renouncing the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with respect to Poland (1941, subsequent to Hitler's invasion of the USSR), and the Atlantic Charter (1941). Stalin personally reaffirmed Soviet adherence to the Atlantic Charter on November 6, 1941: "We have not and cannot have any such war aims as the seizure of foreign territories and the subjugation of foreign peoples whether it be peoples and territories of Europe or the peoples and territories of Asia.... We have not and cannot have such war aims as the imposition of our will and regime on the Slavs and other enslaved peoples of Europe who are awaiting our aid. Our aid consists in assisting these peoples in their struggle for liberation from Hitler's tyranny, and then setting them free to rule on their own lands as they desire. No intervention whatever in the internal affairs of other nations." According to Soviet propaganda, 100,000,000 Eastern Europeans were not subjugated after WWII but, instead, freely chose to join the Soviet family through annexation or alliance; indeed such "self-determination" of peoples in joining was protected under the Atlantic Charter which Stalin committed to uphold. |
| 3 | The actual circumstances of Soviet recognition of Poland in 1921 were in no way related to Soviet beneficence. Lenin had envisioned Poland as Soviet Communism's bridgehead to Germany and the rest of Western Europe. To that end, by August, 1920, Bolshevik forces had advanced to the very outskirts of Warsaw, seemingly on the verge of victory, when they sufferred a crippling defeat at the hands of the Poles in the Battle of Warsaw—Cud nad Wisłą, the "Miracle at the Vistula." This and subsequent Polish victories eventually forced the Bolsheviks to sue for peace. |
