Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1944, The British Commonwealth and Europe, Volume III

760C.61/2147: Telegram

The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman) to the Secretary of State ⁸

Moscow, January 11, 1944.
[Received January 11—12:40 p.m.]

77. On January 5 there was published in London a statement of the Emigrant Polish Government with reference to Soviet-Polish relations,⁹ which contained a series of incorrect assertions, including an incorrect statement concerning the Soviet-Polish frontier. As is well known, the Soviet constitution established the Soviet-Polish frontier in accordance with the will of the population of the western Ukraine and western White Russia, expressed in the plebiscite conducted on a broad democratic basis in 1939. By this plebiscite the territories of the western Ukraine, the population of which is overwhelmingly Ukrainian, entered into the Soviet Ukraine, and the territories of western White Russia, the population of which is overwhelmingly White Russian, entered into Soviet White Russia.¹⁰ The injustice which was committed by the Riga agreement of 1921,¹¹ which was imposed on the Soviet Union, with relation to the Ukrainians living in western Ukraine, and the White Russians living in western White Russia, was thus corrected. The entry of the western Ukraine and western White Russia into the Soviet Union not only did not injure Polish interests, but on the contrary, created a solid basis for a firm and permanent friendship between the Polish people and the neighboring Ukrainian, White Russian and Russian peoples.

The Soviet Government has frequently stated that it advocates the creation of a strong and independent Poland and friendship between the Soviet Union and Poland. The Soviet Government declares again that it desires to establish friendship between the USSR and Poland on the basis of firm good neighborly relations and mutual respect and, if the Polish people so desire, on the basis of an alliance for mutual assistance against the Germans, who are the principal enemies of the Soviet Union and Poland. The adherence of Poland to the Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty of friendship, mutual assistance and post-war cooperation¹² can assist in the realization of this task.

The successes of the Soviet troops on the Soviet-German front hasten each day the liberation of the occupied territories of the Soviet Union from the German invaders. The self-sacrificing struggle of the Red Army and the unfolding military activities of our Allies are bringing closer the defeat of the Hitlerite military machine and effecting the liberation of Poland and of other peoples from the yoke of the German occupants. In this battle of liberation the “Union of Polish Patriots in the USSR”¹³ and the Polish Army Corps which it has created,¹⁴ which is operating hand in hand with the Red Army on the front against the Germans, are already fulfilling their glorious tasks.

Now the possibility of the renaissance of Poland as a strong and independent state is opening up. But Poland should be reborn not by the seizure of Ukrainian and White Russian lands, but by the return to Poland of the ancient Polish lands taken from Poland by the Germans. Only in this way can confidence and friendship by [be] established between the Polish, Ukrainian, White Russian and Russian people. The eastern boundaries of Poland can be fixed by agreement with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Government does not consider the boundaries of 1939 irrevocable. Rectifications may be made in these boundaries to the advantage of Poland so that districts in which the Polish population predominates may be granted to Poland. In this case the Soviet-Polish boundary might follow approximately the so-called Curzon line, which was accepted by the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers in 1919¹⁵ and which envisaged the incorporation of the western Ukraine and western White Russia in the Soviet Union. The western boundaries of Poland should be extended by the incorporation in Poland of ancient Polish lands which long ago were seized by Germany, without which it is impossible to unite the entire Polish nation in its own state, which would receive thereby its necessary outlet to the Baltic Sea. The just aspiration of the Polish people should receive recognition and support.

The Emigrant Polish Government, separated from its people, has shown itself incapable of establishing friendly relations with the Soviet Union.¹⁶ It has also shown itself to be incapable of organizing the active struggle against the German invaders in Poland itself. Furthermore, by its incorrect policy it not infrequently plays into the hands of the German occupants. Meanwhile the interests of Poland and the Soviet Union require the establishment of firm friendly relations between our countries and the union of the peoples of Poland and the Soviet Union in the struggle against the common external enemy, which is demanded by the common cause of our Allies.

Harriman

8. This telegram is the translation of the statement referred to in the Ambassador’s telegram 76, supra.
9. See Polish Series telegram 1, January 5, from London, p. 1216.
10. Following appeals by the “elected” National Assemblies of the Western Ukraine and Western White Russia, in the territories taken from Poland after its collapse, the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union acceded to their petitions and incorporated these areas into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the White Russian Soviet Socialist Republic at the beginning of November 1939. See telegrams 826, October 28, 1939, and 850, November 2, 1939, from Moscow, Foreign Relations, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, pp. 785 and 790, respectively.
11. Treaty of peace between Soviet Russia and Poland signed at Riga on March 18, 1921; for text, see League of Nations Treaty series, vol. vi, p. 51.
12. Signed at Moscow on December 12, 1943, with a protocol of the same date. The official text is published in U.S.S.R., Sbornik deystvuyushchikh dogovorov, soglasheniy i konventsiy, zaklyuchennykh SSSR s inostrannymi gosudarstvami, vol. xi (Moscow, 1955), p. 28; unofficial translation in British and Foreign State Papers, vol. cxlv, p. 238. In regard to the negotiation of this treaty, see Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. iii, pp. 670–734, passim.
13. This organization, successor to an earlier “Committee of Polish Patriots”, held its first congress in Moscow on June 8, 1943, and exchanged letters with Stalin, which were printed in Pravda for June 17, 1943.
14. The Soviet-sponsored Communist Polish army, organized by Maj. Gen. (later in 1944, Lt. Gen.) Zygmunt Berling, which had entered active service about September 1943.
15. The Soviet statement of January 11 wrongly characterized this boundary as the final frontier accepted by the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers in 1919. In the “Declaration relating to the Provisional Eastern Frontiers of Poland” dated at Paris on December 8, 1919, a line is described for the eastern frontier of Poland proceeding from the old frontier between Russia and East Prussia to the point where the former frontier between Russia and Austria Hungary met the Bug River. On November 21 the Supreme Council accepted the text of a Statute of Eastern Galicia in which article 1 laid down a line separating Western and Eastern Galicia, which carried on the line for an eastern frontier of Poland to the juncture with the Czechoslovak frontier in the Carpathian Mountains. These two lines formed a continuous frontier from the border of East Prussia to the border of Czechoslovakia. The Allied and Associated Powers had definitely reserved their decision on the disposition of the territories eastward of these lines which Poland claimed. In the note of July 11, 1920, sent from Spa by George Nathaniel, Earl (later Marquess) Curzon of Kedleston, then the British Foreign Secretary, to Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin, the Foreign Commissar of Soviet Russia, these two lines were detailed as a proposed armistice line in the Polish-Soviet Russian war, but not as a final frontier. Thereafter, this boundary became known as the Curzon line. For further details and descriptions of these lines, see Foreign Relations, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, vol. ix, pp. 272–273, 286, 434, 446–447; ibid., vol xiii, pp. 793–794; British and Foreign State Papers, vol. cxii, pp. 971–972; H. W. V. Temperley, A History of the Peace Conference of Paris (Oxford, 1924), vol. vi, pp. 233–283, 317–322; and S. Konovalov, Russo-Polish Relations: an Historical Survey (London, 1945), pp. 33–38, 57–63.
16. Relations with the Polish Government in Exile had been broken by the Soviet Government on April 25, 1943; see Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. iii, pp. 389–393.