Galicia and Soviet power in 1939-1941. Way to Calvary
The fate of Western Ukraine was decided in the dramatic conditions of the beginning of the Second World War. In September, 1939, the Red Army troops entered the territory of Western Ukrainian lands in order, as reported in official documents, to prevent the Germans from occupying these lands. On the very first day, they managed to advance deeper into the territory by 70-100 kilometers and capture the cities of Ternopil, Rivne, Chertkov. The next day, Lutsk, Galich, Stanislav were taken under control, and a day later the Soviet troops reached the city of Lviv.
The local population ambiguously perceived the appearance of the Red Army in Western Ukraine. Some considered them liberators, others - occupiers. Most of the Polish civil servants — engineers, officers, lawyers, and doctors — together with their families, were forced to emigrate. Only on that part of Poland, which was occupied by the Germans, about 20-30 thousands of people, mostly young people, moved.
But the bulk of the Western Ukrainian population, including employees in the commercial and industrial sector, middle-level technical personnel, employees of cooperative and financial bodies, waited for events to develop in the future, without showing any activity. There were also those who, behind external activity, tried to hide their true moods and attitudes, thus trying to protect themselves.
Almost immediately after the entry of Soviet troops into the territory of Western Ukraine, representatives of political parties formed a delegation headed by the elder of Ukrainian political figures in Galicia, 80-year-old Kost Levitsky. During the meeting between the delegates, representatives of the Red Army and civilian high-ranking officials, which took place on 24 on September 1939, they assured of their full loyalty and readiness to cooperate with the new authorities. In return, they asked only to preserve the opportunity for the activities of Ukrainian cultural, educational and economic institutions. However, the Soviet government did not keep its promises.
And the whole thing was that the leadership of the USSR among its priorities in Galicia saw the rapid and complete destruction of not only real, but also possible political opponents. That is why the repressions that began in September-October of 1939 affected almost all leaders of political parties. They were arrested and taken eastwards. According to the "Krakow news" for 1942 a year, more than 250 Galician intellectuals died or were exported to Siberia during these repressive measures. Almost exactly the same way, without any noise, mostly at night, the leaders of Jewish and Polish political organizations and parties were also arrested.
The repression tightened with the onset of 1940. Thus, the decision of the regional party committee of the city of Drohobych stated that due to the fact that more than 3 thousands of enemy elements were in leadership positions at many trading enterprises, cooperatives, and industry, local party bodies were obliged to carry out a decisive struggle.
The deportations of the Western Ukrainian population of 1939-1941, which were used as a measure of administrative punishment and political persecution, became a real tragedy for the people. The repressive actions carried out by the Soviet leadership had not only political and ideological, but also economic and class reasons. First of all, these measures were intended to undermine the structure of the Polish administrative and state apparatus, property and management system. Thus, such a policy led to the fact that not only the real enemies who opposed it were included in the lists of the enemies of the Soviet Union, but also the loyal-minded population, which very critically evaluated the methods of building power undertaken by Stalin.
Soviet officials, together with the NKVD, everywhere sought out "counter-revolutionaries" and "enemies of the people", using Stalin's theory of class struggle as a guide to action. All suspicious, in their opinion, individuals were taken on record, they were followed by surveillance. Thus, they automatically turned into the most possible candidates for destruction or arrest. The other side of the problem was that the Soviet economic sphere was developing in a command-administrative system, which required a constant influx of fresh labor. This problem was particularly acute in the Far East, in Siberia and in the North. All those people who were repressed from Western Ukraine, turned into a cheap and powerless labor force, which was intended for the development and settlement of the most remote Soviet areas. And since all the deported Ukrainians fell under the special settlement regime, respectively, they did not have any political or economic rights.
To date, it has not been possible to establish the exact number of people deported from Western Ukraine in 1939-1941. Different works give different numbers. For example, Professor Jan Gross from the United States of America indicates the number of 1 million 250 thousands of deportees, referring to the memorandums of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the London émigré government in Poland.
According to the claims of Moscow historians Valentina Parsadanova and Nikolai Bugay, this figure is already 1 million 173 thousands of deported. In their studies, they used the documentation that is stored in the State Archives of Russia.
Polish scientist Andrzej Szczesniak conducts a more detailed study, stopping at each separate stage of deportation. So, the victims of the first period were 220 thousands of people. The second period already covered 320 thousand, the third - 220 thousand and, finally, the fourth - about 300 thousand civilians. Moreover, as the researcher notes, among the deportees were not only skilled workers, wealthy peasants, railway workers and intellectuals, but also members of their families, including children.
According to archival materials, deportation plans were developed in Moscow and operated by repressive structures. Planning for mass deportation events began in 1939. According to the Soviet-German agreement on 28, September 1939 was planned to deport Ukrainians and Belarusians from border areas. In January, the 1940-meter frontier was determined by the instructions of the politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), and in April of that year, the leadership of the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR was tasked to evict more than 800 thousands of people.
Another similar action of the Soviet leadership led to the complete eviction of residents from a large area of the Lviv region. This is the construction of the Yavorov landfill, which began in the same year 1939. Most of the population of Lviv and Yavorov were forcibly taken to Bessarabia and remote areas of the USSR.
At the end of December 1939, with the adoption of the provision on special settlers and their employment, all the work on the preparation and conduct of deportation measures was entrusted to the NKVD. According to the archive data of the Information Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, more than 1940 thousand people were subject to 95 for a year of deportation from Western Ukraine. In order to transport such a number of people, more than 3 were allocated with a half thousand cars that were not designed for such purposes at all.
The first wave of deportation took only three days, but during this short period of time more than 89 thousand people were taken out. At the second stage, the well-to-do peasants who owned plots of land more than the established norm were subject to deportation. Formally, the reason for their deportation was to live in close proximity to military facilities, which were built not only along the borders, but also in the depths of the Western Ukrainian territories.
The third wave of deportation included the families of the repressed who were in camps for prisoners of war, as well as former officers, police gendarmes and landowners.
During the implementation of the deportation activity, much attention was paid to the confiscation and redistribution of household property and production resources. Private property has become common. Over the years, more than 2 thousands of industrial enterprises have been confiscated. Lands, cattle, equipment and seeds confiscated from the landowners were distributed to landless or landowner peasants. The reorganization was also subjected to the education system, which was rebuilt under the Soviet way and consisted in the prohibition of the Ukrainian language.
However, the arbitrariness of the NKVD has caused widespread discontent among the population. Thus, the policy of the Soviet Union in Western Ukraine did not at all contribute to stabilizing the situation in the region.
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