860C.01/690: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 28—7:40 p.m.]
1078. A member of the Embassy has been advised by a reliable source that General Berling47 called a preliminary conference in his apartment at the Hotel Moskva on March 21 to which 16 leading members of the Union of Polish Patriots48 and of the Polish Army were invited. Wanda Wasilewska49 was not present. The informant stated that General Berling informed the gathering that in view of the rapidity of military developments in the south, where Polish troops were active, the time had come to consider the formation of “organs” which should be prepared to take over the administration of Polish territory. The General is reported to have said that any government of Poland that is formed must be a “narodowe” government, that is, a government of the people and the Army. The Embassy was advised that no concrete decisions or resolutions were adopted at the conference as it was [of] a preliminary character, but that a second conference would be called in the near future. The informant could not state whether it was planned to organize a Polish government in the Soviet Union. There is reason to believe, however, that for the present it is proposed to set up administrative organs which will function as such in Polish areas west of the Curzon line50 as they are liberated from the Germans.
The Embassy was also advised that mobilization of additional Polish units and inclusion into the Polish Army of guerrillas in the western Ukraine are progressing satisfactorily. In this connection the Soviet press (Pravda March 27) has reported that a large part of the recently organized Third Polish Division is made up of recruits from the western oblasts of the liberated Ukraine and of former participants in the “illegal organizations created by the emigrant Polish Government in London”.
- Lt. Gen. Zygmunt Berling, commander of the Polish army organized in the Soviet Union.↩
- This organization of Poles sympathetic to Communism, successor to an earlier “Committee of Polish Patriots”, held its first congress in Moscow on June 8, 1943, and exchanged letters with Premier Stalin which were published in Pravda for June 17, 1943.↩
- Wanda Lvovna Wasilewska was chairman of the Union of Polish Patriots.↩
- See footnote 15, p. 1220.↩