860C.01/8–144: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 2—12:45 a.m.]
2832. For the President and the Secretary. I called on Mikolajczyk yesterday. Bonier was also present. Mikolajczyk expressed himself as being extremely pessimistic about the outcome of his visit to Moscow. He believed that with the successful Allied landings in France and improved military outlook Stalin had changed his attitude. He could not reconcile Stalin’s statements to Lange with his own final talks with Lebedev and other recent Soviet actions. He said he was now convinced that the Soviet Government intended to communize Poland.
I told him that it was of course impossible for me to attempt to reconcile conversations of others but I could assure him that from my many conversations over many months with Stalin and Molotov there had been consistency in the point of view and objectives expressed and that since January it had been plain that the Soviets were unwilling to recognize his Government as long as it included the named individuals who rightly or wrongly were considered irreconcilably antagonistic to friendship with the Soviet Union. I explained that it was my opinion that this question came first and that other matters including the boundary question could not be dealt with until this question had been disposed of. In some detail I explained to him the evidence that satisfied me that the Soviet Government had no intention of communizing Poland.
I told him that I believed he could reach an agreement providing he was willing and in a position to eliminate individuals from his Government and bring in some of the members of the new Committee of Liberation. He said that he could get the resignation of Sosnkowski and others except the President but it had to be in connection with a constructive move. He did not know however whether he should take responsibility for bringing into the Polish Government people without previous political standing and who were not representative of the established Polish parties. He explained the shortcomings of several of them.
Marowski,54 a Social Democrat had had a difference with his party some years ago and had later acted quite improperly in using the name [Page 1303] of the party organ The Worker when in June 1942 he had started an underground publication without authorization from his party. He admitted that Marowski when contacted by members of the party had agreed to give up the name.
Vitos55 had left the Peasant Party many years ago.
General Rola-Zhimersji56 had a prison record. Mikolajczyk later admitted that Kola had been imprisoned because of disagreement with Pilsudski57 and that the sentence was of a political nature but he contended that this incident had taken him out of the line of the senior command.
In reply I commented that in history national emergencies found strange bedfellows.
He described the military achievements of his underground forces which he appeared to consider had made the rapid advance of the Red Army possible. He said he had been informed that the commanding Polish officers at Vilna had been imprisoned by the Red Army after assisting in the liberation of the city. He explained that if this type of treatment continued it would end all cooperation with the Red Army.
I told him that it was his responsibility, not my Government’s, to negotiate a settlement but it was of great interest to the United States that all Poles should unite for the defeat of the Germans in collaboration with the Red Army. I said it was obvious that Stalin wanted to find a solution and that he knew the United Nations were looking upon the treatment of Poland as a test case of Soviet foreign policy.
Mikolajczyk heartily endorsed the latter and said that to be successful in this the Soviet Government would have to deal with his Government. I pointed out that the Soviets were ready to look at things from a long view and take criticism for a considerable period of time providing the final results accomplished their ends.
The British Ambassador saw Mikolajczyk shortly before I did. His impression of Mikolajczyk’s attitude was the same as mine and he had talked to him along the same lines.
Mikolajczyk saw Molotov58 later in the day. I will get a report of this meeting tonight.
- Edward Boleslaw Osubka-Morawski, Chairman of the Polish Committee of National Liberation and Director of Foreign Affairs.↩
- Andrzej Witos, Vice Chairman of the Polish Committee of National Liberation and Director of Agriculture and Agricultural Reform.↩
- Col. Gen. Michal Rola-Zymierski, Polish Director of National Defence.↩
- Jozef Pilsudski, Marshal of Poland; Chief of State, 1918–22; Prime Minister, 1926–28, 1930; quasi-dictator until his death in 1935.↩
- Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union.↩