The Power of Freedom. Mart Laar

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      On 1 September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and the Second World War began. The German army advanced rapidly and destroyed the main forces of the Polish army. On 17 September, Red Army troops poured across the Polish border and completed the conquest. Poland capitulated on 4 October 1939 and was divided between the two aggressors. Looking at footage from the common ‘victory’ parade arranged in Lvov, we see the satisfied faces of Soviet and Nazi officers – their common historical enemy, Poland, had been wiped from the map. The occupation of Poland by both the Nazis and the Soviets provided the rest of the world with stark evidence of the terror that totalitarian powers were capable of inflicting. Between 1939 and 1941, the Gestapo and the Russian secret police (NKVD) cooperated with each other, actively exchanging information and arresting suspects wanted by their partner in crime. The Nazis commenced the Holocaust that killed millions of Jews. Other Poles were murdered in order to suppress the remainder of the population controlled by the Nazis. The brutality of the Soviets matched that of the Nazis. In 1939, the Soviet Union took control of over 52.1 % of the territory of Poland, with over 13.7 million people. Initially, the Soviet occupation gained support among some members of the non-Polish population, but their enthusiasm quickly faded as it became clear that Soviet repression was aimed at all national groups equally. There were four major waves of deportations from the conquered territories between 1939 and 1941. Older Polish sources estimate that altogether as many as 2 million people were lost due to deportations, conscription and arrests. According to Soviet documents, the number of people deported is lower – 320,000 – to which 43,000 interned POWs can be added. The Soviets arrested and imprisoned 107,140 Poles between 1939 and 1941, including former officials, officers and natural ‘enemies of the people’, such as the clergy, executing about 65,000 Poles during two years of occupation.17 During the early stages of the war the Soviets killed thousands of Polish prisoners of war. In 1940, the NKVD systematically executed 21,768 former Polish officers, political leaders, government officials and intellectuals who had been imprisoned during the 1939 war. Some 4,254 of them were discovered in 1943 in mass graves in Katyn Forest.18 The Soviets’ intention was to kill as many members of Poland’s intelligentsia as possible in order to weaken any future Polish state. The fact that most of the imprisoned officers were from all these professional groups is a consequence of the fact that they were reservists. Even today, Russia’s leaders do not want to acknowledge this crime, attacking the Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s film about the Katyn massacre and claiming it to be ‘anti-Russian’ propaganda. Wajda’s father was also killed in Katyn and throughout the entire Soviet period, he was unable to talk publicly about what had really happened to him.19

      In late September 1939, the Soviet Union began exercising the liberties it had been granted by Hitler in the Baltics. First, it issued an ultimatum to Estonia to sign a treaty allowing the deployment of Soviet military troops on Estonian soil. Although most of the population wanted to reject the Soviet demands, Estonian political leaders decided in favour of a peaceful solution. After signing the treaty, the Red Army marched into Estonia in October 1939, occupying the bases allotted to it and promising not to violate Estonia’s independence. In the following months, the Soviet Union signed similar pacts with Lithuania and Latvia. Finland, however, rebuffed Soviet demands and heroically defended its decision in the Winter War of 1939–1940. Despite heavy territorial and human losses, Finland succeeded in retaining its most cherished treasure – its national independence. Finland thereby avoided the fate of the Baltic States and kept its place СКАЧАТЬ