Pioneers of the Wild West, 1945-1948:
Propaganda, Myth and Memory in the Polish ‘Reclaimed Lands’
Draft: do not cite without the author’s permission
Tomasz Blusiewicz
blusiewicz@fas.harvard.edu
Harvard University
1. The Polish ‘Reclaimed Lands’ in 1945 – an overview
The ‘Reclaimed Lands’ (Ziemie Odzyskane) was a term first coined in Poland to refer to the territory
incorporated at the expense of Czechoslovakia on October 1, 1938. The contested Cieszyn Silesia region
was a source of tensions between the two states after it had been split after the 1920 plebiscite and
then annexed by Poland while the world’s attention focused on the Sudetenland crisis. It is questionable
whether the addition of approximately 230 000 new citizens and 800 km2 of the Zaolzie area was worth
the reputational damage that the country has suffered as a willing accomplice of Hitler’s aggression.
Nonetheless, the annexation was hailed as a historic victory and exploited for propagandistic legitimacy
purposes domestically. President Ignacy Mościcki proudly spoke of ‘the Reclaimed Lands of the Cieszyn
Silesia’ and appropriate festivities had been arranged in the town of Cieszyn. Local ethnic Poles and
soldiers marched through a triumphal arch that announced that they had been waiting for Poland to
return for the past six hundred years.
The Zaolzie returned to Czechoslovakia in 1945 and Poland faced new ‘Reclaimed Lands’ - now on a
much grander scale. More than 100 000 km2 of prewar German territory has been awarded to Poland at
the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. The transfer of this territory was officially presented as a just
compensation for the Polish eastern Kresy borderlands that the Soviet Union invaded in agreement with
the provisions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and kept after 1945. It was a necessary ‘living space’ for
the several million Poles who were about to be expelled from their homeland and ‘repatriated’ west.
The historic task of reintegrating the Reclaimed Lands (further in the paper: RLs) had been transformed
into a propagandistic cornerstone of national mobilization by the new regime. The issue was exploited
by the communist-dominated Lublin Government to buttress its legitimacy, win over support from at
1
least a fraction of the Polish society and eventually – to establish a monopoly of communist power in
Poland. Succinctly put by the communist Vice Prime Minister Władysław Gomułka - “the Western
territories will tie the nation to the system.”1 Stalin thought along parallel lines – Poland will not be able
to stand on its own feet without Soviet support because it will be threatened too severely by the
prospect of German revanchism.
An unprecedented propaganda machine was assembled and put into operation to explain the
necessity and the significance of reintegrating the RLs both to domestic and international audiences. The
questionable origin of the term in the now-decried imperialist interwar Poland was not seen as a
problem. Why did the communists consider it necessary to make as wide an audience as possible
sympathetic to the cause of making the RLs permanently Polish? Most importantly, it was agreed at the
Yalta Conference that some eastern Germany territory was to be temporarily run by the Polish
administration in cooperation with the Red Army until a definitive border treaty would be signed at the
peace conference2. The Lublin Government could count on Stalin’s support in pushing the border all the
way west to the Oder-Neisse line, but at the time it was not yet evident that Stalin’s support was all that
was required to secure such an outcome. The American and British (in particular) positions were
ambiguous and increasingly pro-German. In addition, the London Government in exile was still operating
and of a very different opinion regarding Poland’s new borders. In light of those circumstances, the new
regime thought it highly desirable to present the Western powers with a fait accompli – the RLs already
with Polish population and administration in place at the time of the peace conference3. The first
‘settlers’ followed literally hours behind the Red Army as it approached Berlin in the final months of the
war.
Domestically, the RLs were exploited as a nation-unifying cause to win popular support for the
Lublin Government and the Soviet supported Polish Workers’ Party (PWP). Friendship with the now
brotherly USSR was explicitly presented as the sole guarantor of the new border and the PWP as the
1
Quoted after: Aleksander Kochański, Protokół Obrad KC PPR w Maju 1945 Roku, (Warszawa: Instytut Studiów Politycznych
PAN, 1992), 33.
2For more details, see: Rysiak, Zachodnia Granica Polski Na Konferencji Poczdamskiej : Zbiór dokumentów, 124.
3 See: Stefan Banasiak, Działalność Osadnicza Państwowego Urzędu Repatriacyjnego Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych w Latach 19451947 (Poznań: Instytut Zachodni, 1963), 28. This strategy was applied both on central and local levels of the administration. As
it was expressed by Kazimierz Kuligowski, an official responsible for industrial reconstruction in Wrocław: “the pace of
reconstruction and the quality of administration in Wrocław could turn out to be an important asset in political contests at the
future peace conference.” Quoted after: Mieczysław Markowski, Trudne Dni : Wrocław 1945 r. we Wspomnieniach Pionierów,
(Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im Ossolińskich, 1960), 136.
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sole political party that could foster such friendship4. The abandoned German property and land in the
RLs offered an opportunity to proceed rapidly with the communist policy agenda – nationalization of
industry and trade and agricultural collectivization, initially euphemized as ‘land reform’. The success of
those hallmark policies was in turn to present a model for the rest of the old country, where such radical
changes were tactically undesirable initially5. Furthermore, the anti-German sentiment was a convenient
card to play. The reunification with ‘the cradle of the Slavic peoples’ was a project that no patriotic Pole
could oppose. The Lublin Government, by portraying itself as the sole guarantor and executioner of the
historic mission, was waging a battle for the hearts and minds of the Polish society. It was a difficult
battle in a country were communism had negligible grassroots support, a country invaded and occupied
from the east in 1920, 1939 and 1944, with its elites either buried in the Katyń forest, Kazakh steppe or
Syberian taiga and the lucky survivors on their long way back from various parts of the Eurasian
landmass.
The reintegration of the RLs before the peace conference was extremely difficult to carry out in
practice. The biggest city of the region – Breslau – was turned into a fortress not to be surrendered until
May 7, 1945. Stettin and Die Pommernstellung were among the most bitterly defended parts of the
Reich since they were the gateway to Berlin. Furthermore, out of approximately 9 million people living
in the RLs in 1939, at best 1 million could be considered to some degree Polish6. The Polish officials
estimated that about six million Germans who lived in the RLs in 1939 had either perished or escaped in
direct consequence of military operations. It meant that there were still about three million that “would
have to be removed”7. The transport capacity at hand was extremely limited with most of the rolling
stock either destroyed or operated by the Red Army8. Most major bridges and strategic railway hubs
linking Central Poland with the RLs were gone9. The imposition of communist rule in Poland was not a
foregone conclusion until 1948. In this context, organizing the greatest single population transfer in
4
See: Stanisław Łach, Władze Komunistyczne Wobec Ziem Odzyskanych Po II Wojnie Światowej : Materiały z Konferencji (Słupsk:
Wydawnictwo Uczelniane WSP, 1997), 16-17.
5 Radosław Domke, Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne Polski w Propagandzie Lat 1945-1948, (Zielona Góra: Oficyna Wydawnicza
Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego, 2010), 16-25.
6 Grzegorz Strauchold, Polska Ludność Rodzima Ziem Zachodnich i Północnych : Opinie Nie Tylko Publiczne Lat 1944-1948,
(Olsztyn: Ośrodek Badań Naukowych im. Wojciecha Kętrzyńskiego, 1995), 19.
7 Wojciech Wrzesiński, W Stronę Odry i Bałtyku : Wybór Źródeł, 1795-1950 (Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza Volumen, 1990),
19.
8 Control over the railway lines was transferred by the Red Army to the Polish authorities in August 1945.
9 For example, 7 563 km out of the total 10 707 km of railways were destroyed in the RLs in 1945. Bohdan Gruchaman and
Instytut Zachodni, Polish Western Territories (Poznań: Instytut Zachodni, 1959), 163.
3
history10 was not an easy task. As it was put by a prominent communist Edward Ochab, initially put in
charge of the operation, it had “gigantic proportions”11 that would pose a challenge for any government
in any country even under more peaceful conditions.
2. The pioneer myth and a historiographical intervention
In fact, the new regime was unable to launch anything resembling an organized population transfer
until 1946 and the process had not been completed until the late 1950s. Yet around 1.7 million ‘settlers’
found themselves in the RLs by the end of 194512. How did they get there? To answer this question in
detail one would have to describe each individual journey and most of them supplied enough material
for an adventure novel. A train trip from Warsaw to Szczecin (350 miles) could take up to a month and
involved: numerous stops and transfers, marches, travelling on train roofs and in coal wagons, high risk
of being robbed or assaulted not to mention the hunger, thirst, physical discomfort and the usually
extremely scant knowledge of one’s destination. In general, the first wave of settlement was based on a
voluntary, spontaneous and individual decision of each person or family to go and remain in the RLs. In
other words, while the government launched a massive propaganda campaign to encourage Poles to
settle in the RLs already in the early months of 1945, it lacked the resources to centrally plan, conduct
and secure on operation of dimensions so vast. It had to rely on each person’s private willingness and
initiative to leave his or her home, embark on a risky journey and settle in a foreign no-man’s land.
The veracity of the context sketched above is confirmed by a speech by Bolesław Rumiński, an
official from the Ministry of Industry, in the Krajowa Rada Narodowa - the provisional parliament. On 5th
May, 1945, Rumiński said:
“East Prussia – now it is nothing but dead cities with no inhabitants, no livestock; but whatever is still there
is a great treasure for us, it has to be integrated with the national economy. […] We have to take control of
it, the faster the better. Don’t wait for instructions, proclamations. The plan is simple. We have to take
control by means of sending at least 10 percent of the population from just across the old border – without
waiting for those who will come from behind the Bug River [from the Kresy] to conduct the proper
colonization. At this moment, this process of colonization, this march of the peasants, is underway. The
10
Estimating according to the 1939 population figures - it should have included at least 16 million people. In practice, the figure
was closer to 10 million since many persons had by then either perished, escaped or were otherwise displaced. Precise
calculations are impossible and depend on various definitions of who was considered to be a displaced person.
11 Wrzesiński, W Stronę Odry i Bałtyku : Wybór Źródeł, 1795-1950, 20.
12 Mieczysław Jaworski, Na Piastowskim Szlaku : Działalność Ministerstwa Ziem Odzyskanych w Latach 1945-1948, (Warszawa:
Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1973), 128.
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realistic plan. Several thousand peasants have marched since May 1. The peasant understands that it has to
done quickly, without waiting for the State Repatriation Agency; we have to push toward these lands like to
the Promised Land.”13
All those who followed similar appeals were soon to be immortalized in the so-called pioneer myth. The
word myth does not dismiss the reality of the endeavor, to the contrary – the evidence of this paper
makes the heroic nature of the pioneers’ experience manifest. But the main focus is slightly different. I
examine the deliberation process that preceded the pioneers’ decisions to move to the RLs. What
motivated them to make it in the context of all the serious risks that it entailed? Where did they find the
courage to sustain it? What were the most common reasons for and against considered and which
among them were decisive? These questions combine into the central problem of the paper: what was
the relative weight of the impact of the official propaganda campaign and other measures undertaken
by the government compared to exogenous factors not related to government action?
An evaluation of the influence of government supplied information on collective behavior is an
elusive undertaking under any conditions. The inherent limitations of such a pursuit are in this context
aggrandized by the fact that not everything could be said in Poland after 1945 and that the important
things were often said between the lines. Nevertheless, an investigation of diaries, memoirs and
correspondence, both contemporary and written in the several decades that followed, combined with
an analysis of the methods of state propaganda brings certain patterns, hitherto largely neglected in
historiography14, to light. The impact of propaganda’s language on how people narrated their stories of
the early pioneer days in the RLs is well visible and quite specific. The official rhetoric provided a façade
of patriotic phraseology, historic and epic causes behind which a diverse set of existential reasons
rooted in the dramatic postwar conditions emerge as more plausible explanations for why the pioneers
settled in the RLs. More specifically – I argue that one has to consider the state of the society after six
years of war and occupation to understand why there were so many volunteers. All kinds of actions
undertaken by the state encouraging to settle in the RLs might be perceived as attempt to channel the
grassroots mobility potential, but not in terms of a ‘primary mover’ or ‘totalitarian control’ . What is
meant by the term ‘the state of the society’ will became clearer by the end of the paper, but the
annihilation of residential property and arable land, loss of family members and other traumatic
13
Tadeusz Baryła, Warmiacy i Mazurzy w PRL : Wybór dokumentów : Rok 1945 (Olsztyn: Ośrodek Badań Naukowych Im.
Wojciecha Ke̜trzyńskiego, 1994), 30-31.
14 A majority of the memoirs I have surveyed were published (and some of them written) in the late 1950s during the thaw
period following the October regime change in 1956. The fact that they were published during a more liberal period alongside
such elements as criticism of the PWP and the Red Army or kind words about the Catholic Church to some extent mitigate the
authenticity and credibility reservations. More generic limitations inherent for this type of sources naturally do apply.
5
experiences that can subsumed under a general category of uprootedness help to explain why there
existed such a large pool of people looking for a new start in the new Poland of 1945.
The thesis developed above might appear too intuitive to be worth arguing. The enormous amount
of destruction and dislocation in Europe and in Poland in particular has never been seriously questioned.
However, there are several reasons why it is useful. First, there exists a tendency in the historiography
of communist Eastern Europe to transpose the ‘totalitarian’ lens developed to understand the Stalinist
period (1948-56) onto the immediate postwar years as well. The totalitarian perspective leads to a
conceptual mistake of comprehending the entire Polish-German-Soviet population exchange process as
initiated and executed exclusively by the state in which the importance of government control and
orchestration was paramount15. Such a view is misleading because it minimizes the role of individual
agency and spontaneous social organization and movement16. It also exaggerates the actual degree of
control that the new Polish state possessed. Terms such as ‘forced migration’ or ‘population transfer’
widespread in literature17 should be, I argue, used with caution and precise qualification. My research
focuses on propaganda also because in the early postwar years the authorities were often not equipped
with resources beyond ink, paper and words. Furthermore, most of the resources available were
deployed in the literally existential struggle to establish a communist monopoly of power. A more
nuanced view should thus be adopted in which conceptual distinctions between voluntary/involuntary
and organized/unorganized population transfers are seriously observed. These distinctions are
necessary not only for an adequate understanding of what happened in postwar Europe, but also
because the unorganized and voluntary movements preceded the organized and forced and thus
presented the Polish communists with a fait accompli after they finally secured a firmer degree of
control after 1948.18
15
Examples of such an approach can be found in: Czesław Osękowski, Ziemie Odzyskane w Latach 1945-2005 : Społeczeństwo,
Władza, Gospodarka (Zielona Góra: Oficyna Wydawnicza Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego, 2006), 9-24. Philipp Ther and Ana
Siljak, Redrawing Nations : Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944-1948 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 7585 and Gatrell and Baron, Warlands : Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European
Borderlands, 1945-50, 188-205.
16 For example: “[i]n addition, the newly acquired territories were settled by Polish nationals from Central Poland.” Ther and
Siljak, Redrawing Nations …, 83. This perspective is misleading. Polish nationals were a majority and the moved to the RLs first,
not in addition.
17 For example, Mark Kramer makes no provision for the possibility of existence of voluntary population movement in his
introduction to: Ther and Siljak, Redrawing Nations … Also: Gatrell and Baron, Warlands : Population Resettlement and State
Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 1945-50. Introduction. Also: Chapters 8,9,10.
18 The early developments in the RLs had seminal consequences for the integrity of the entire Soviet Bloc. My dissertation
focuses on showing how Stalin’s decision to move Poland west ultimately backfired - it lead to the birth of the Solidarity
movement and strongly contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.
6
Furthermore, among those historians who do divide the resettlement operation in the RLs into
distinct phases, there is a tendency to attribute a decisive role to the effects of state incentivization19 from purely verbal, through material, legal and existential – as an explanatory factor behind the initial
pioneer stage as well20. Some historians argue that the impact of information circulating in private
networks could not have rivaled state propaganda in its scale and impact21. Such a conclusion could
originate from the focus on the content of propaganda without a careful study of how it affected its
audience. This is why a complimentary examination of personal accounts is necessary since it reveals the
existence of considerations and sources of information independent of official propaganda and
demonstrates the vital role that they have played22.
Last but not least, the sheer number of considerations in favor and against settling in the RLs and
the immense complexity of the rapidly changing variables that a pioneer had to consider while making
the decision is staggering. Some of the challenges are well-know to historians of e.g. the American West,
but other such as political instability (two opposing governments), ambiguity surrounding the final shape
of the border or the communist revolution in all aspects of social life occurring simultaneously, not to
mention the six years of war and occupation, made for a decision making framework that can be merely
fragmentarily captured by the word uncertainty. Due to its uniqueness and the momentous historic
shifts visible in situ, this framework is worthy of a presentation for its own sake.
19
The basic difference was between the settlers from the ‘old’ (central) Poland and from the Kresy. In the first stage, those
from central Poland were in great majority and they remained in (smaller) majority until it was over: approximately 2.5 million
versus 1.3 million from the Kresy by 1948, plus about one million Poles from abroad, military settlers and expelled Ukrainians.
While the argument about the voluntary character of migration applies primarily to settlers from central Poland, the
generalization that the resettlement from the Kresy was forced, in principle correct, does not apply universally. Some Poles
were given the possibility to stay in the USSR and some of them welcomed the opportunity to leave, as will become apparent
further in the paper.
20 For example: Domke, Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne Polski w Propagandzie Lat 1945-1948, 60.
21 Ibid., 60.
22 It is worth emphasizing again my analysis focuses on the initial wave of settlement in the RLs, roughly between March and
December 1945. As indicated above, the pioneer stage was not the only stage and cannot be thought of as representative of
the entire process. Again in approximate terms – nearly two million people out of the total figure of 4.8 million who had settled
by 1948, can be thought of as participants of that first stage. However, the first stage was critical because the first arrivals set
into motion certain patterns of future organization, including land and property acquisition. In other words, the pioneers from
central Poland were the ones who got the best farms, houses and jobs, something which was difficult to alter as the more
planned stages ensued.
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3. Propaganda? Information?
Several book-length studies dedicated to the issue of propaganda surrounding the RLs are
available23. Its basic outlines are mentioned in the opening paragraphs. On the international level, the
goal was not only to secure a favorable peace settlement in Potsdam, but also to make the international
opinion believe that Poland also held, in addition to the Red Army’s support, legitimate historical and
legal claims on the RLs as well. All of the RLs were to varying degrees linked with Polish statehood,
especially under the medieval Piast dynasty. The East Prussian Hohenzollerns were vassals to the Polish
Crown until mid-seventeenth century and the Prince-Bishopric of Olsztyn was an integral part of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until the first partition of 1772. In terms of ethnography – about one
million inhabitants of the region were brought under the heading of autochthones (non-German, Slavic
natives) in 1945 – Masurians, Warmiaks, Silesians or Kashubians; most of them were somewhere on the
spectrum between Polish and German. They were usually officially framed as forcefully Germanized
Poles. In addition, the Polish delegation in Potsdam claimed that most of the Germans living there had
already escaped – an argument frequently deployed by Stalin as well24.
The RLs were also claimed on moral grounds – as retribution for war damage; on economic grounds
– the industrial areas of Lower Silesia required uninhibited access to the Baltic Sea for export purposes25;
on geopolitical grounds – as the shortest border running along two big rivers making the next German
aggression unlikely, weakening the German war capacity and dealing away with the traditional breading
ground of Prussian Junker militarism26. The varying quality and credibility of justifications turned out to
be largely irrelevant as long as Stalin supported the new border, which he did until his death in 1953. No
Soviet official has ever officially questioned the finality of the Oder-Neisse border settlement.
On the domestic level, all the big causes mentioned above were also present, but they were
connected to more practical visions encouraging settlement in the RLs.27 The chief target audience of
23
All of them in Polish or German, however. For example, see: Domke, Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne Polski w Propagandzie Lat
1945-1948,
Marcin Czyżniewski, Propaganda Polityczna Władzy Ludowej w Polsce 1944-1956 (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe "Grado",
2005).
24 Stalin claimed that no Germans remained in the RLs. The Polish delegation claimed the figure was approx. 1.5 million, which
was an underestimation. Nitschke, Wysiedlenie Czy Wypędzenie? : Ludność Niemiecka w Polsce w Latach 1945-1949, 44-45
25 Hanna Jędruszczak, Wizje Gospodarki Socjalistycznej w Polsce, 1945-1949 : Początki Planowania : Materiały Źródłowe,
(Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1983), 203.
26 Domke, Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne Polski w Propagandzie Lat 1945-1948, 58.
27 One could also call it an informational campaign; a sharp distinction between propaganda and genuine information cannot be
established nor were the two categories imagined as strictly separate. The ministry responsible for propaganda, established in
July 1944, was officially entitled The Ministry for Propaganda and Information.
8
the campaign – landless and poor peasants – could hardly be reached by mass media and thus direct
agitation such as village rallies and door-to-door visits were organized instead. “Lectures toured the
villages and described the government settlement plans for the newly acquired territories in the west.”28
“Gigantic posters”29, proclamations and appeals were attached to city walls or electricity poles in the
villages30. In the main town square in Kraków - a map vividly presenting the opportunities waiting for
the pioneers - the shipyards of Szczecin and the rolling wheat fields of East Prussia – could be seen31.
The government used all the resources it could muster to reach its citizens and make them aware of the
opportunities in the RLs. In general, the campaign was a success in the sense that it would be difficult to
find a conscious adult citizen in the entire country who would not know about the RLs project.
Initially, special reconnaissance missions were organized by the authorities into the RLs to obtain
information about local conditions. Bolesław Drobner, a socialist activist and the first Mayor of Wrocław,
was designated as the leader of one of such reconnaissance groups in March 1945. “Maps, plans,
instructions? I had to search and find everything on my own” – he wrote in a memoir32. The group was
composed of “the ideological thirteen” – journalists, engineers, technicians, officers and artists – plus
ten drivers and fifteen heavily armed policemen.33 Furthermore, “because [the] team had a remarkably
propagandist agenda and was supposed to enter the ‘unknown country’” – three photographers and
two radio reporters were added to the crew34. Drobner’s team reached Wrocław on April 14, yet the
rearguard units of the Red Army stopped them at the outskirts. Festung Breslau was still a scene of
heavy fighting. But it did not discourage the journalists from sending reports back home, soon to be
printed in national newspapers. One of them, from April 20, read: “We are entering Wrocław. One does
not think of the dangers. Joy fills our breasts. The Polish authorities finally made it back to Wrocław,
28
Kruszewski, The Oder-Neisse Boundary and Poland's Modernization; the Socioeconomic and Political Impact, 55.
Zygmunt Dulczewski and Andrzej Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, (Poznań,: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie,
1963), 642.
30 A typical appeal read: “Polish People! Lower Silesia returns to the Motherland! Thanks to the heroic Red and Polish Army,
Polish banners are now billowing over the primeval Piast lands. On the streets of the Silesian towns founded by our ancestors
centuries ago, Polish state emblems are now reappearing. You are not abroad anymore, but at home, in a free, independent
Poland, on the lands of Chrobry and Krzywousty. You ought to dedicate Your talents, efforts and skills to this Poland, to the
grand task of reestablishing Polish-ness in Lower Silesia. […].” May 15th, 1945. Quoted in: Towarzystwo Miłośników Wrocławia
and Markowski, Trudne Dni : Wrocław 1945 r. we Wspomnieniach Pionierów, 93.
31 Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 128.
32 Towarzystwo Miłośników Wrocławia and Markowski, Trudne Dni : Wrocław 1945 r. we Wspomnieniach Pionierów, 77.
33 Ibid. 83.
34 Ibid. 82-83.
29
9
after seven hundred years.”35 Finding undamaged printing presses and rolling out as many similarly
enthusiastic articles as possible was one of the chief goals of Polish journalism in 1945.
There were several kinds of argumentation used by the authorities to quicken the population flow
into the RLs. Prospective economic benefits were perhaps the most popular, especially among the
peasantry. The RLs were portrayed as a land of plenty with fertile soil and abandoned farmsteads
waiting for new owners. The peasants were promised at least ten hectares of land36. Many German
farmers left in a hurry as the front approached with livestock now roaming untended and no one to
harvest the grain. That is why the bureaucrats insisted on settling as many farmers as possible as soon as
possible in order to prevent waste and hunger during the next winter and spring37. The peasants were
promised land ownership and reminded of their misery under the landowners (panowie) of imperialist
Poland38. If they moved to the RLs - a civilizational ascent awaited them: from the hey-covered wooden
huts with clay floors to redbrick-covered stone mansions equipped with cutting-edge mechanized
technology39.
Industrial workers were presented with a similarly enticing prospect. The industrial prowess of
Germany was no longer a threat, but an opportunity now. The world-renowned firms like the LinkeHofmann train factory in Wrocław or the ports and shipyards of Gdańsk and Szczecin were advertised in
the press as vacant and waiting for the new employees40. A system of patronage was set up – a coal
mine in prewar Polish Upper Silesia would take care of its Lower Silesian counterpart and send volunteer
crews41. In contrast to the ‘old’ Poland - where nationalization took place later - all non-agricultural
assets were taken over by the state immediately in the RLs, including church property. The press and
35
Ibid. 84-85.
Domke, Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne Polski w Propagandzie Lat 1945-1948, 61.
37 As it was put by a Red Army officer at a meeting with peasants from central Poland in March 1945: “You - Poles - have to take
over the villages, put everything in order and when the spring comes, you have to plough, sow and plant because first of all – it
will all be Polish, second – we need bread, and third – bread will not come from central Poland or Russia because there is
none.” Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 447.
38 A perspective of an autochthon peasant from the prewar German Upper Silesia: “The local folk here were afraid of the old,
aristocratic Poland where the lords run their estates in such a way that poor villagers from Galicia crossed the border to work
for us. This was the kind of Poland that the Germans were telling us about prior to the plebiscite in 1920.” Zdzisław Jerzy Bolek,
Wróciła Polska : Pamiętniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, (Warszawa: Iskry, 1974), 42.
39 From an article in Trybuna Robotnicza in April 1945: “The returning western territories belong to the best of the German
Bauernstand […]. A peasant from Volhynia or Polesie will have to adapt quickly to the new farming methods.” Quoted in:
Domke, Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne Polski w Propagandzie Lat 1945-1948, 63.
40 Towarzystwo Miłośników Wrocławia and Markowski, Trudne Dni : Wrocław 1945 r. we Wspomnieniach Pionierów, 200.
41 With special benefits offered for those who volunteered, including wage premium of up to 150 percent of the previous wage.
Hanna Jędruszczak, Upaństwowienie i Odbudowa Przemysłu w Polsce 1944-1948; Materiały Źródłowe, (Warszawa: Państwowe
Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1967), 261.
36
10
numerous agitators were promising quick and easy rewards thanks to the new revolutionary social
order: guaranteed employment and housing, social security and professional advancement.
In addition to economic visions, the communists were not hesitant to play the old nationalist, antiGerman card. Władysław Gomułka, imprisoned for his ‘nationalist-rightist deviation’ in 1949, led the
nationalist choir. As the term ‘Reclaimed Lands’ suggests, the fundamental idea was that Poland was not
simply taking over a part of Germany in lieu of compensation, but that the thousand year long struggle
with the Germanic Drang nach Osten has finally been won and the Polish workers and peasants could
now safely return to the cradle of their Slavic forefathers42. Historians spoke of the long-awaited reversal
of the misguided early modern Jagiellonian conception of eastward colonial expansion. Poland now
returned to the original, natural and rightful boundaries established in the tenth century43. A once-in-anational lifetime window of opportunity was open and had to be used quickly to secure a permanent,
rightful re-Polonization of those lands. The patriotic duty called on each Pole to contribute to the
successful completion of the grand mission.
Both economic and patriotic arguments were embedded within the larger framework of postwar
reconstruction that promised a brave new future for the now homogenous, industrial and egalitarian
Poland. Equality and fair distribution of wealth were emphasized rather than socialism; the word
‘collectivization’ was in fact prohibited. Only it 1946 was the idea smuggled under the heading of
‘settlement-parcelization cooperative societies’44. The historic territorial shift westward was presented
in parallel to the equally historically just and long-awaited arrival of a People’s Republic, yet no one
dared to speak of communism openly until 194845. The idealism of the early days is reflected, for
example, in a report by Dr. Zygmunt Chrzanowski, a delegate of the Western Association [Związek
Zachodni] to East Prussia. He reported on his visit in April 1945:
“East Prussia is a land for pioneers and idealists who go there to work and receive proper reward and not to
seek easy enrichment. […] They have to pull up their sleeves, get down to hard work and be ready for
severe hardships during the first year. We have to inform anyone who wants to go there about this very
well.”46
42
Domke, Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne Polski w Propagandzie Lat 1945-1948, 57-61.
Baryła, Warmiacy i Mazurzy w PRL : Wybór dokumentów ; Rok 1945, 1.
44 Łach, Władze Komunistyczne Wobec Ziem Odzyskanych Po II Wojnie Światowej : Materiały z Konferencji, 17.
45 It was an unspoken but direct order from Moscow. Those who spoke of Marxism, communism, collectivization or Bolshevism
were reminded of the correct party line. For example, see a memoir by a Polish Marxist intellectual, Adam Schaff: Próba
Podsumowania, (Warszawa: Scholar, 1999), 119.
46 Baryła, Warmiacy i Mazurzy w PRL : Wybór dokumentów ; Rok 1945, 30.
43
11
The measures undertaken on the central level were usually a mix of propaganda and information,
with the balance changing in favor of the latter the more local and case-specific the information was. In
the Party newspaper Trybuna Ludu [People’s Tribune] one could read about where employment was to
be found. The State Repatriation Office was set up. It offered food, shelter and local guidance: maps,
navigation tools, brochures, pamphlets. Despite those efforts, knowledge that the early settlers could
rely on was fragmentary. One often heard widespread “nebulous, fairy-tale news”47, “the most
horrifying stories on how Poles are mistreated there”48 and “gossips circulating even during the journey
[to] the Reclaimed Lands that what awaits us is a huge desert and that our new life […] will have to start
from erecting a clay dugout.”49
4. In words of the pioneers
In trying to understand the nature of the impact of propaganda on decisions and behavior of
individuals and families, it is helpful to investigate it in three ways. The first is to examine the
motivations of the pioneers that were clearly unrelated or at odds with official propaganda. The second
is to search for correspondence and connections between the two. The third is to understand the
relationship between propaganda and all the other sources of information and motivation. Finally, it is
also helpful to contrast the propaganda-painted picture with reality – a thread running through the
entire paper. Schematic as it is, it will constitute the paper’s analytic scheme.
4.1. The Wild West and the Great Escape
The most prominent common thread unifying a great majority of personal accounts is the notion of
the ‘Wild West’. Usually put in quotations, it was an unambiguous reference to what Poles imagined to
be the American ‘Wild West’ as they knew it from literature and films. The ubiquitous presence of this
term is striking, but also unsurprising given the initial conditions in the RLs. Interestingly, many settlers
mentioned it as one of the main reasons making them anxious of travelling to the RLs while others
presented it as a source of fascination. The Wild West picture run contrary to the official picture of the
land overflowing with milk and honey and it was a more veritable representation of what was seen as a
Hobbesian state of primeval anarchy and lawlessness. A gun or at least a grenade was a necessity (it was
not hard to find) and travelling alone was considered silly. For example, the first organized train from
47
Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 563.
Bolek, Wróciła Polska : Pamiętniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, 280.
49 Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 560.
48
12
Warsaw to Szczecin in September 1945 was assaulted twice by organized gangs of robbers, two settlers
were killed and several wounded50.
The term Wild West was also commonly used to describe the travel conditions of 1945. Bogusław
Jędrzejec, coming back to Poland in May 1945 from for forced labor in Germany, wrote:
“I’m looking at the platform. Real hell! A passenger train to Katowice is about to depart. Just then I have
clearly realized what the ‘Wild West’ really meant. The train roofs were full of passengers with huge boxes
and packages of all kinds. People travelled not only on the staircases, but also on the bumpers, with luggage
on their knees.”51
The pioneers travelled either in coal or cattle cars. They dubbed their trains ‘cattle-express’ [bydlęcypośpieszny]52. There was no schedule, the route was changed along the way and the passengers often
had to organize alcohol (the only recognizable currency in 1945) collections to make the railway
servicemen more cooperative.
A vast majority of the pioneers denied that quick enrichment was something they were after while
admitting it was what drove most of their travel companions. Not all the pioneers intended to settle
permanently and the distinction between infamous szabrownik53, the person who was in the RL to
scavenge the abandoned property, and the pioneer remained fluid. Some memoirists concluded that
“the Klondike gold rush”54 and “Eldorado”55 were metaphors not powerful enough to convey the scale of
the looting. Lawlessness led to lax moral standards and a general mood of living fast and loving fee
captured in the following ditty:
In the Wild West / Na Dzikim Zachodie
All sorts of wonders you find / Wszelakie sa cuda
A girl a day / Dziewczynka na co dzien
Vodka and binge… / Koryto i wóda…56
50
Tadeusz Białecki, Z Nad-Odrzańskiej Ziemi : Wspomnienia Szczecinian, (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1974), 87.
Bolek, Wróciła Polska : Pamiętniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, 18.
52 Ibid. 264.
53 This term is difficult to translate. It originates from the German schaben (to scrape) and a marauder is perhaps its best English
equivalent. In Polish culture, this term refers specifically to pillage of the post-German (poniemiecka) property after the war. As
it was expressed by one memoirist: “many thick volumes could be written about it”. Ryszard Hajduk, Pierwsze Lata Władzy
Ludowej we Wspomnieniach Opolan, (Katowice: Śląsk, 1971), 11. Others called it a “national sport”. Any picture of the RLs is
severely incomplete without a consideration of szaber, but in this paper I follow the pioneers’ distinction between themselves
and the szabrownicy and leave it out of the main focus.
54 Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 584.
55 Ibid. 501.
56 Ibid. 364.
51
13
Others dismissed the Wild West imagery as exaggerated – an invention of “those who had spent all of
their life behind a desk and now consider a five hundred kilometers long journey into an unknown
territory as an extraordinarily adventurous escapade.”57 These words were written by Janusz Szyndler - a
sixteen year old soldier of the Home Army who fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. He continued:
“In fact the Reclaimed Lands were never similar to the dangerous, desolate prairies of the famous
American West […] where people took justice in their hands, rode horses and threw lassos.” The term
Wild West emerged due to “gossips of alleged riches and a bit of fantasy.”58
Szyndler’s account of the Wild West is valuable also because it demonstrates the process-like nature
of the entire resettlement operation and its gradual evolution. This important characteristic escapes a
historian’s attention when the lens of forced migration is adopted. He summarized it well in an
anecdote:
“When I left in 1945 my aunts bid me farewell with fear in their eyes. They tried to convince me that I
was going to be killed by the Germans or other […] gangs. Two years later I was welcomed back in
Warsaw with pomp as the proverbial uncle from America (read: the West), a country of opportunities.
After five years a curious ‘how is it going’ was asked and we compared the conditions. After ten years
there were no questions, because everything was virtually uniform [in the two Polands].”59
This gradualist perspective is also developed by Janusz Palichowski from the Gdańsk region: “As time
went by, the conditions of life and activity have changed: the period of grand improvisation [and]
creative zeal when enthusiasm and good will replaced solid skills was irrevocably gone.”60
The notion of the Wild West was an allure for many and a worry for most, but it was something that
was both virtually not conveyed by official propaganda and the number one factor that each settler had
to take into account when making the decision. A similarly important reason affecting the pioneers’
decision was what happened in their towns and villages during the war. Jerzy Ristow, who was eighteen
when he returned to Warsaw in 1945 from forced labor in Germany, wrote that he “felt bad and
somehow alien in the ruins of Warsaw”61. Jerzy decided to board the first available settlers’ train from
Warsaw to Szczecin. A similar reaction was recorded by Izabela Grdeń, who was an eighteen year old
artisans’ daughter from the Kresy. Her memories of “the bombings in the memorable year 1939
conflated with the assaults of banderowcy [the Ukrainian Insurgent Army], fires and screams of the
57
Ibid. 590.
Ibid. 589.
59 Ibid. 590.
60 Bolek, Wróciła Polska : Pamiętniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, 281.
61 Ibid. 92.
58
14
children and women murdered by them. Everyone was tired of it all. We wanted to escape and forget.
We thus signed up en masse. There were commissions, they surveyed, estimated and promised
compensation for the lost property and [they] left people in numb stupor when confronted with the
‘unknown’.”62 Many similar accounts indicate that the number of people who either had lost a lot of
what tied them to their previous life or who wanted to forget about it was very large in 1945. All that
they had to be informed about was that there existed a place that promised a new start.
The dilemma of choosing between staying in the ‘old’ Poland and resettling was well summarized by
Stanisław Dulewicz, a high school teacher from Kraków, who was deported to a small Pomeranian town
for agricultural labor in 1944. Just after the war ended in May 1945, he noticed a collective “split
personality syndrome”63 experienced by his compatriots. On the one hand, the prospect of staying in
Pomerania “created a prospect of prosperity and social advancement in the near future, which would
not be the case if we went back home.”64 Dulewicz’s family house was destroyed, those “who were in
need of our hearts were now lying in their graves”65 and there was no one waiting for his return.
However, Kraków was still his home while Pomerania a place where he performed slave labor for the
Nazis. Yet the arguments in favor of staying in Pomerania prevailed in Dylewicz’s case, the same way
they did for the 30-50 new settlers coming to his town from central Poland each day. “Even for the
strongly decimated population”66, the number of remaining intact houses and apartments was not
nearly sufficient there.
While only implicitly conveyed in the memoirs written in, after all, communist Poland with its
extensive censorship apparatus, the uncertainty with respect to the political future of the country was
literally tangible. Zofia Zielińska, a young girl who settled in Barlinek in Pomerania, remembered a
conversation she had with an elderly lady met on a train. The lady spoke of her son who “went through
a lot and knew a lot. He sa[id] that that Polish government which resides in London allegedly disagrees
with the one we have right now. But you know - that prewar government has some experience in ruling
the country, unlike the new ones, still uneducated.”67 The ‘new ones’ tried to foster a sense of security
among the settlers by putting posters glowing with patriotic imagery. But just below the captions – Zofia
wrote – that said “’the Western Lands always ours’ immediately after they appeared someone wrote:
62
Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 195.
Ibid. 491.
64 Ibid. 491.
65 Ibid. 491.
66 Ibid. 501.
67 Bolek, Wróciła Polska : Pamiętniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, 111.
63
15
‘Never!’” 68 Anxiety about ‘reactionary German revisionism’ did not end after the Potsdam Conference.
In fact it intensified after the Byrnes speech in Stuttgart in September 1946. Nevertheless, the moment
of celebration when the news from Potsdam reached the settlers figures prominently in numerous
accounts. “In the dining hall, I announced that Szczecin was Polish. It was when Stalin, Churchill and
Roosevelt were in Berlin. […] The joy was immense among the Poles [while] several Germans committed
suicide that day.”69
The fear of collectivization, also mentioned implicitly in the memoirs, was something that peasants
experienced long after they had resettled. In 1945, especially during the harvest, mutual assistance and
tool sharing was a subsistence necessity, but also a reason to worry about the government’s intentions.
Edward Apanel, whose family resettled from the Kresy in June 1945, wrote: “there was no way that
kolkhozes could be established at the time, but some of us complained that the teamwork was nothing
else than showing the way to get there and that we will be forced to sign up.”70 It was equally difficult
for them to believe in the promised land reform and for a good reason – very similar promises were
often made and virtually unrealized in interwar Poland. “It was hard to believe in land for free and in the
participation in governance, but we did believe in the Reclaimed Lands.”71 As there was less arable land
to be distributed in central Poland than in the RLs, some peasants left after it became apparent that
they would get little where they lived but could count on more if they resettled.72
Those peasants who did trust the new rulers of Poland were stigmatized by their neighbors who
disregarded the appeals. There were several reasons – “the sermons of the priest behind the pulpit, a bit
of fear of the heirs’ [landowners] return, a bit of fear of the gangs.”73 Most importantly, however, they
were “leaving their patrimony and their folks behind to embrace the unknown.”74 This negative image of
the pioneers is reflected in a sermon by a priest in a Lower Silesian town just after three Polish settlers
were killed by the Wehrwolf in 1945: “… and let them speak that only the szabrownicy go to the
Reclaimed Lands; that we are all globetrotters here […] we know who we are and who we will be.”75 In
other words, the decision to resettle was not merely a decision where to live. It was a political
manifestation and it was perceived as such.
68
Ibid. 176.
Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 319.
70 Bolek, Wróciła Polska : Pamiętniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, 168.
71 Ibid. 265.
72 Ibid. 265.
73 Ibid. 265.
74 Ibid. 265.
75 Ibid. 29.
69
16
Edward Apanel’s story is also insightful because it shows the depth of intergenerational conflict
running through families. Edward became a member of the voluntary militia battalions organized by the
PWP “in order to honor the October Revolution. My mother could not come to terms: ‘They gave us the
farm because they had to! My husband and your father died at the front.’”76 Occasionally the
relationship was reverse and it was the parents who convinced their children to embrace the new
ideology. Jan Krukowski, a peasant from Galicia who was wounded on the Italian front fighting for “our
dear Austria”77 and then on the Polish front fighting the Bolsheviks in 1920, in 1945 “pulled his son out
of the forest” [his son was a Home Army partisan] and then decided his family should answer the call to
settle in the RLs. “It was difficult to make up your mind […] Those were the days of extraordinary tension
when our entire society lived on the crossroads not knowing which way to go.”78
There was one other important aspect of the postwar Polish society which was not addressed by the
official propaganda directly. With the war over in May 1945, it had been suddenly released from prisonlike conditions which often reduced life to a struggle for survival and left no space for cultural expression
in the public sphere. The RLs project provided new space to express the accumulated, long suppressed
energy. Jerzy Ristow wrote: “when I arrived to Szczecin in 1945, I felt like everything was possible, like I
found myself in a city with great opportunities and that it was only up to us to shape its future.”79 It was
an attitude shared by Ryszard Szyndler who moved to Koszalin in the summer of 1945: “Today, after
long reflection, I think that the desire to find a vent for my youthful energy and opening up a broad field
for my personality was decisive [in the decision to resettle]”80 The allure of a place where the sky was
the limit found reflection in many memoirs written by the younger pioneers81.
A close analysis of how knowledge about the RLs circulated in 1945 reveals that only the most
general information was provided by the state while the details were supplied by the word of mouth
and local networks. Zygmunt Szeloch was a young man from central Poland who knew that “new settlers
were arriving to the Reclaimed Lands, new factories were set up, new lands were claimed and a new
Polish life was slowly setting in. I knew so little, however, that I could not take the decision on my own
and leave to god-knows-where.”82 He was then told by a stranger he met on a train about where exactly
jobs and apartments were available and about the lies of “hostile propaganda” that claimed that the RLs
76
Ibid.172.
Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 162
78 Ibid. 163.
79 Bolek, Wróciła Polska : Pamiętniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, 101.
80 Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 576.
81 At the same time, their friends were hiding in the forests engaged in partisan warfare against the new regime.
82 Bolek, Wróciła Polska : Pamiętniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, 215.
77
17
were “a temporary fact, that a Third World War was to erupt soon and that the Germans will return to
take what is theirs.”83 “Reliable news of an eyewitness” – received by Jerzy Brinken of Warsaw in June
1945 was “a most lucky circumstance”84 especially since it was brought by his sister from Szczecin “full
of greenery [with] free apartments to choose from and a job.”85
The issue of public trust is a critical one when evaluating propaganda’s impact. It cannot be gauged
precisely, but suffice it to say that Poles had substantial apprenticeship in reading in between the lines
of the ‘party line’, first under the Russian, Austrian and German empires for over a hundred years and
then under the Nazis and the Soviets. The value of a trusted, personal source of information regarding
the situation in the RLs is prominent in numerous memoirs and cannot be overestimated.
4.2. Are the Bolsheviks right?
The scarcity of land in interwar Poland was a real problem that thecommunists wanted to turn into
mass political support. It found reflection in many memoirs and was an important factor behind the
emergence of the large pool of people for whom the promise of land ownership had a special appeal.
Franciszek Kluska from a small village in central Poland was one of them. He applied for a permit to
settle in the RLs already in May 1945 after reading an official manifest posted in his village. He later
wrote about his place of birth: “the soil was poor, divided into tiny fragments with lots of landless flock,
with several wealthy farmers unable to hire all of them; no industry at all… poverty gaping wherever you
turned.”86 An evaluation not uncommon for the expellees from the Kresy was that “everything in
comparison with what we left behind the Bug River was splendid”87 even if it could not compensate for
the sorrow of expulsion. Similar descriptions can be found in hundreds of accounts. In this respect the
picture of the land of plenty painted by the authorities was often verified positively and was perhaps the
most effective argument of the entire campaign.
Some people sought to verify the rosy official picture on their own and organized reconnaissance
groups to obtain more information. Ryszard Smaga, a fifteen year old boy from Kraków in 1945, wrote
about his father being “tempted by the ‘heavenly delicacies’ brought from the ‘lands overflowing with
milk and honey’ [who then] left in early August 1945 in a group of ‘bliss seekers’ together with his
83
Ibid. 214.
Białecki, Z Nad-Odrzańskiej Ziemi : Wspomnienia Szczecinian, 62.
85 Ibid. 62.
86 Bolek, Wróciła Polska : Pamiętniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, 257.
87 Ibid. 167.
84
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friends.”88 Ryszard’s own first impression was mixed. The scenic beauty of the Sudety Mountains and
“the fruit gardens evoked admiration, especially among those who had only seen fruit gardens with
plums, pears and apples.”89 But upon closer inspection of their destination - the image was spoiled by
“the bodies of dead soldiers and civilians rotting on the streets” and “certain individuals whom no one
trusted”90. Peasants, on the other hand, usually wrote in terms of a confirmation of what they had been
promised by what they saw. Especially the ones from the Kresy frequently spoke about “a real Promised
Land. Just think - we have received a furnished house, around the house - ripe fields of wheat and corn
that we could harvest and thresh for ourselves with no limits or quotas.”91
The economic dimension of official propaganda emerges as quite convincing in the accounts of the
pioneers. The first encounters with German architecture and rolling hills provide a vivid confirmation:
“…we have crossed the old Polish-German border. From a boundless plain we entered a rolling
landscape full of forests and hills, from where the rural huts were wooden and thatch-roofed to the
country of stone mansions with redbrick roofs. The road itself marked the border. Thus far we travelled
on break-stone and now on asphalt.”92 However, disappointment of raised expectations was also not an
uncommon reaction. The impression depended on the region to which the pioneers moved and to what
extent it was destroyed, pillaged or ‘evacuated’ by the Red Army93. In general, the reactions of those
peasants who settled in a relatively unscathed countryside (especially in Lower Silesia) were positive
while those who visited East Prussia, Pomerania, larger towns and especially Wrocław and Szczecin,
were more skeptical and not infrequently terrified.
The latter reaction emerges clearly in the collection of memoirs written by the first settlers in
Wrocław entitled The Difficult Days. One of them wrote: “When I think of our city in 1945, I can hardly
believe that tens of thousands of Poles were able to live and work here. Electricity, gas, water were
unavailable for months, so was public transport, food was scarce and public safety – especially at night –
was not good. Why did those people not run away from the unfriendly and unapproachable ruins?”94 On
88
Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 213.
Ibid. 213.
90 Ibid. 214.
91 Ibid. 233.The accounts of the expelled Kresowiacy merit special caution – the fact that they could not entertain the option of
return cannot be emphasized enough.
92 Barbara Chlabicz, Wyjście Na Prostą; Pamiętniki z Lat 1944-1969, (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1973), 125.
93 From an instruction by the Ministry of Industry to the Operational Groups sent to the RLs issued in March 1945: until the Red
Army officially (by means of special commissions) transfers its property rights to the Polish state, the Red Army order no.
220172/S was to be executed, which meant that “all the assets […] were to be considered legitimate war reparations.” See:
Jędruszczak, Upaństwowienie i Odbudowa Przemysłu w Polsce 1944-1948; Materiały Źródłowe, 147.
94 Towarzystwo Miłośników Wrocławia. and Markowski, Trudne Dni : Wrocław 1945 r. we Wspomnieniach Pionierów, 199.
89
19
the walls of the remaining buildings in Szczecin “one could see the German inscriptions: ‘Wir kapituliren
nie’ or ‘Tod den Bolschewiken’ and next to them in Polish and Russian: ‘Min nie ma’95. Even during the
second winter in Wrocław (1946/1947), “fat rats with long white tails, fearing no one, roamed the
streets and visited the settlers’ apartments.”96 The Promised Land looked more attractive in the
countryside, but not also not always97.
The frequently disappointed expectations provide evidence that the propaganda campaign had a
tangible effect. The goal was to put as many people into the RLs as soon as possible and the
psychological well-being of the settlers, especially of those from distant regions for whom it was difficult
to return, was a luxury. A settler from Przemyśl (south-east Poland) wrote about his first reaction to the
destruction he saw in the RLs:
“We spent the second night on the train, sunk in the reflection about our situation and the conditions of
those Reclaimed Lands from our dreams, which so far composed a gloomy picture of devastation. We
understood how much effort awaited us before we rebuild these lands. […] Our disappointment came too
quickly, at the very beginning of our move.”98
The last glance at the train “reminded [him] about the voluntarily abandoned hometown with our
families and friends.”99
4.3. National in form, socialist in content
The impact of propaganda and all kinds of state orchestrated incentives provides only a partial
explanation for why there were so many pioneers willing to settle in the RLs in 1945. State propaganda
efforts addressed only a fraction of the concerns they faced. Where the impact of the state emerges
more clearly is the language through which the pioneers narrated their experiences – through a very
specific set of terms developed in the public discourse to frame the RLs project. Rhetorical analysis is
extremely difficult in this context due to a great variety of extra-textual and usually political issues
affecting interpretation100. This difficulty manifests itself also in the impossibility of precise evaluation of
95
It meant - clear of mines. Bolek, Wróciła Polska : Pamietniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, 95.
Ibid. 103.
97 Stanisław Bania, a village administrator in Pomerania who entered the RLs in March 1945, wrote: “I knew the village well and
when I entered it, I could not recognize it. The village was right between the Polish [i.e. the Soviet] and the German fronts for
three weeks. I could not understand how I could start working here, how I will able to do everything I was told to do by the
military [Red Army] commander whom I promised to uphold my commitments”. Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki
Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 447.
98 Ibid. 101.
99 Ibid. 376.
100 The fundamental problem is intentionality. Some of the memoirs must have been written with the awareness that they
might be surveyed by a censor, hence the question to what extent the content that could presumably appear as desirable to
the censor was included consciously. This is a difficult issue that applies to a large part of the sources surveyed for this paper. It
96
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the responsiveness of the pioneers to the patriotic call of duty. Below I present several representative
examples and discuss the emerging patterns, but more research, including source criticism, needs to
done to reach firmer conclusions.
Teachers emerge as a social group most receptive to the official rhetoric. They used the patriotic
phraseology extensively and mentioned affirmatively all kinds of arguments in support of the
reincorporation of the RLs put forward on the international arena. This observation is somewhat
perplexing since most of the Polish intelligentsia (especially on the local level) had a reputation for being
hostile to communism, which is reflected in the fact that only two hundred teachers had been party
members by 1948101. With this consideration in mind, it is impossible to assess to what extent they were
in fact driven by the call to patriotic duty independently of communist propaganda and to what extent
some of the rhetoric they used was an instrumental and conscious insertion due to their awareness of
how to please the censors in communist Poland. Even if it was genuine in particular instances, the
question of representativeness cannot be neglected.
With all the reservations in mind, a number of teachers who settled in the RL wrote in the following
vain:
“I’m going to the Reclaimed Lands! I have heard that there exists an acute shortage of teachers. And the
Polish child, after so many years of Hitlerite violence, must study now. There has been no education for the
last five years and there is so much to make up. A Polish teacher cannot be missing where the Polish
children await. I’m off!”102
Many similar accounts also explicitly juxtaposed this kind of motivation to economic, adventurist and
‘egoistic’ mindsets of other settlers. However, some of the stories follow the party line so closely that
doubts about their credibility cannot be neglected. For example, a teacher from Poznań who came to
Szczecin in July 1945 wrote that his desire to come to Szczecin first occurred to him during the Christmas
Eve of 1940. He announced to his family: “after the war we will all meet in the Polish Szczecin […]. The
war will be long, but Szczecin will return to Poland.”103 His family called him a dreamer and his words
were met with smirks of unbelief, but his determination remained unchanged. The same author also
justified his preference for Szczecin over Poznań by his fascination with the Baltic Sea. He wrote about
is mitigated by the fact that the main argument is precisely about the divergence between official propaganda and the
reactions to it.
101 Łach, Władze Komunistyczne Wobec Ziem Odzyskanych Po II Wojnie Światowej : Materiały z Konferencji, 326. Czesław
Osękowski, Społeczeństwo Polski Zachodniej i Północnej w Latach 1945-1956 : Procesy Integracji i Dezintegracji. (Zielona Góra:
Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna im. Tadeusza Kotarbińskiego, 1994), 199.
102 Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 526.
103 Ibid. 370.
21
“the drive to the sea and sailing voyages” running in the blood of “our sons and grandsons […] inherited
from their Slavic ancestors.”104 Similar meta-patriotic formulations like the claim that Szczecin was
located in “the direction in which the first Piast knight teams headed ages ago”105 were couched in the
language emphasizing the “victory of epochal justice”106 and reunification with the motherland and bear
verbatim resemblance to the official rhetoric.
Countless examples of a similar phraseology can be found. Two more should suffice to demonstrate
the general trend. Franciszek Buchtalarz, a pioneer in Szczecin and a high school teacher from central
Poland before the war, justified his decision to resettle in the following way:
“Certainly, I could have led a peaceful life under normal conditions if I decided to stay in Poznań […] I have
chosen Szczecin because that ‘something’ within me was stronger than reason, which called to do the
opposite. The dream of the Polish Piast knights driving toward Pomerania in order to unite the Slavic tribes
with the motherland transformed itself into the tangible fact of new crews of settlers, composed of knights
of labor, peasants, workers and intelligentsia; all of them willing to live, work and bury their tired bones in
the primeval, Polish soil of Szczecin.”107
Jerzy Brinker from Warsaw, also a high school teacher:
“My first day in Szczecin was not over yet, but I already felt sympathetic for this city. After all, it is our Polish
Szczecin, which we will set up in our own, Polish way. It will serve Poland and the nation; it will soon
become a major port and a window to the world. It will serve the southern and western Poland; the river
Odra will assume a life-giving function of a communication artery. The future of Szczecin is ours – Polish.”108
Some pioneers went in their historic-patriotic zeal so far that they disregarded factual accuracy. The
streets of a Pomeranian town “cleaned by several sweepers with their usual German pedantry” could
not have “remembered the days of the Jagiellonians” as some pioneers believed, because they were
never a part of the Jagiellonian realm109. It is not improbable that the verbatim copy of the propaganda
lines into a personal memoir was done to signal its lack of authenticity. For example, Tadeusz
Wojciechowski from Poznan wrote about his impressions from Szczecin and the Odra River. “On a wall
of a big, corner edifice – a plaque which said: Chrobry Embankment [Bolesław Chrobry was the first king
of Poland]. I reach back to my historical memory. Yes, it is Bolesław, the son of Mieszko the First, who
dug in the border poles here. And so it follows – it is not an annexation of Szczecin to Poland but its
104
Ibid. 372.
Ibid. 373.
106 Ibid. 370.
107 Ibid. 415.
108 Białecki, Z Nad-Odrzańskiej Ziemi : Wspomnienia Szczecinian, 69.
109 Bolek, Wróciła Polska : Pamiętniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, 19.
105
22
return [sic] to the motherland, or using the politicians’ language – an act of historic justice.”110 Sarcastic
or not, the point about the pervasiveness of official propaganda language remains valid.
Equally elusive, if less frequent, statements have been made by workers and peasants. When a
young pioneer and a member of a socialist youth organization was sent to party’s ideological school, she
“experienced [it] as a demolition of [her] old views on the lives of societies and [her] own. They were
destroyed by the October Revolution, word after word uttered on a given subject.”111 She continued:
“the words of the lecturer invaded my brain cells destroying the previous view of what the communist
revolution was really about.”112 Given the rich record of the workers’ resistance against the communist
regime in Poland and the circumstances in which some of the accounts cited in this paper were
published (i.e. published officially) it is safe to assume that some of the verbatim transplantations of
propaganda into personal accounts were meant as a ridicule.
If such a complete reversal of a worldview was nonetheless occasionally genuine, it was most
manifest in how the attitude of some Poles toward the western Allies had changed. Britain and America
were no longer allies in a just cause, but reactionary revisionists supporting the Nazis. In a diary entry
from April 5th, 1946, a young communist Feliks Siemiankowski wrote:
“Churchill’s speech from Fulton does not want to leave my mind. He defends the Germans and says that
Warsaw steals in deep into their territory and throws out millions of Germans as if he did not know that the
lands by the Odra and Neisse Rivers are the historic Slavic soil, their reincorporation is a modest redress for
the sum of suffering and victims of our heroic nation.”113
In the final analysis, for the majority of the workers, peasants and youth settling in the RLs the term
‘Reclaimed Territories’ was unambiguous and unworthy of dwelling on its origins and significance at
length. They narrated their fate as a return to where their forefathers once tilled the land. Bronisława
Piotrowska, who was a ten year old girl from Kresy in 1945, “frequently asked [her] mother why this
region is called the ‘Reclaimed Lands’”. The answer was that “the Reclaimed Lands are called this way
because they were taken away from the Germans, who took it away from us very long ago.”114 In many
memoirs the issue is not explored beyond this statement, it is accepted as a fact of life.
110
Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 363.
Bolek, Wróciła Polska : Pamiętniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, 71.
112 Ibid. 71.
113 Feliks Siemiankowski, Trudne Dni : Dziennik Aktywisty PPR, 1945-1948, (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1974), 32.
114 Bolek, Wróciła Polska : Pamiętniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, 278.
111
23
5. Conclusion
The propaganda campaign did not stop after the Potsdam Conference. It reached its culmination at
the Reclaimed Lands Exhibitions in Wrocław in the summer of 1948. It was both an exhibition and a
series of celebrations and events commemorating the three years of reintegration. Prepared for over
two years and visited by two million people, including such figures as Picasso or Huxley, it became a
benchmark in its own class of propaganda weapons115. In the words of the Exhibition’s Director, it had
two major components. The first one was a presentation of progress in reconstruction, “an answer to
the revisionist German claims of the imperialist circles” who were trying to convince the world that the
RLs “were going to remain a desert in the heart of Europe.”116 The second was historic - a
documentation of “the ten centuries of the Polish-German struggle”.117 The Exhibition occupied a
prominent spot in public memory. In the words of one of its visitors, it made “a huge impression […].
What really stuck in my memory was the Victory Rotunda. I stood in front of ‘the wall of struggle’ and
looked at the map of Poland AD 1000 and the current one. What I felt then cannot be expressed.”118
The Exhibition symbolizes the peak of attention that the RLs project received as a national cause. In
the 1950s, the official policy was reoriented toward blurring the distinction between the RLs and the
rest of Poland. A new administrative division and a redirection of investment stream to other regions
were among the first signs of the general shift away from investing in the RLs. East Prussia and
Pomerania became the most impoverished provinces in Poland, a process of reverse migration began to
be recorder by demographers and the entire region became known as Ziemie Wyzyskane (not
Odzyskane) – the Exploited, Abused Lands.
A quantitative evaluation of the effect of propaganda on both the quantity of settlement and the
decision-making of those who did respond positively is impossible. The sample of people who decided to
write about their experiences in memoirs was certainly not representative of the entire population,
which also explains the memoirists’ skepticism with respect of the motivations of other settlers. This
attitude was summarized by Jan Jakubek, a teacher in the Vistula Estuary region:
“A couple of words about the population that has arrived to this region. I got acquainted with them very
well. […] About 5 percent of them manifested complete devotion to reconstruction and administration.
They were the true pioneers about whom we can say that they were heroes and builders who did not arrive
115
For more details, see: Jakub Tyszkiewicz, Sto Wielkich Dni Wrocławia : Wystawa Ziem Odzyskanych we Wrocławiu a
Propaganda Polityczna Ziem Zachodnich i Północnych w Latach 1945-1948 (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Arboretum, 1997).
116 Wystawa Ziem Odzyskanych, Katalog Oficjalny Wystawy Ziem Odzyskanych 1948 (Wrocław: Prasa i Wiedza, 1948), 12.
117 Ibid. 13.
118 Chlabicz, Grochol and Olszewska, Wyjście Na Prostą; Pamiętniki z Lat 1944-1969, 118.
24
here to look for riches, personal happiness. All of their effort, health, talent and youth was dedicated to the
fatherland in a moment which occurred in Polish history only once in a thousand years.” 119
In the final analysis, the kind of methodology applied in this paper enables to appreciate the role of
individual agency and how it complimented and eluded state control. In the same way it would be
impossible to argue that the entire population exchange would have happened without state assistance,
or without states starting world wars in the first place, it is misguided to apply the totalitarian lens of
analysis in which the population is a passive object operated upon by impersonal bureaucratic forces.
The high level of social dislocation apparent in the evidence is an example of how factors exogenous to
the state were in fact conducive to the success of the resettlement operation and how they influenced
its ultimate course and outcomes. The high level of social dislocation, undesirable and unfortunate as it
was, contributed considerably to the initially voluntary and spontaneous character of the resettlement
operation and this fact had profound consequences for the future not only of the RLs, but also of
Poland, Polish-German relations and the entire Soviet Bloc and the Cold War world.
Even if no definitive answer with respect to the impact of propaganda can be reached, the
complexity of the decision making framework faced by the pioneers emerges as a rich topic for further
study. Some of the psychological effect of wartime trauma can be traced to how they were subjectively
experienced by ordinary people. No words can capture the complexity of those experiences better than
two episodes. On May 1, 1946 in Czaplinek - Tempelburg until 1945 - the residents organized their first
Labor Day parade. Most of them landless peasants from the Kresy, they marched through the ruins of a
German town to the accompaniment of a military orchestra playing both the Red Army’s Katyusha and
the Crying Willows – a popular song of the underground Home Army still fighting in the forests at the
time.120 Around the same time in Kostrzyń – the Prussian Küstrin where Frederick the Great was
imprisoned by his father – cadets from a socialist youth organization (OMTUR) served as altar boys
wearing “blue shirts and red ties under the white surplices”.121 They did it because there was “not
enough time for political reeducation” of their parents and the boys wanted to let them know that the
local priest had nothing against the red ties and thus “no offense of the divine” was to be found under
communism122.
119
Dulczewski and Kwilecki, Pamiętniki Osadników Ziem Odzyskanych, 726.
Bolek, Wróciła Polska : Pamiętniki z Pierwszych Lat Powojennych Na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, 195.
121 Ibid. 244.
122 Ibid. 245.
120
25
The early pioneer days in the RLs were permeated by sharp paradoxes, bewildering uncertainty,
great fears and high hopes. Chaos, anarchy and might over right ruled supreme. A study focusing on
official documents might lead to different observations – each bureaucrat involved attempted to impose
some order on the messy reality to the best of his or her abilities. While this is perhaps universally true –
a study of personal accounts serves in this context as a corrective to the hitherto dominant statefocused narratives of the early years in the Polish Wild West.
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