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 The deportation of whole groups of the civilian population from their place of origin to different geographic and climatic territories in which to live was, in the Soviet Union, a well tried and well known policy by which the ruling party retained power. Fictitious tales of menace from such groups to the existing system led to merciless repression upon millions of people and they even included children and old people. The Polish population on those territories overrun by the Soviet Union in September 1939, by the first months of 1940 shared the same fate as the Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian 'enemies of the people' who, from the early 1920's, had been dispatched to the forests of North Russia and Siberia where living conditions were beyond endurance. In many cases the deported Poles were housed in posioleks (settlements) built by these earlier deportees.
In the period from the appearance of the Red Army on Polish territories and the outbreak of war between the Soviet Union and Germany i.e. 17th September 1939 and 22 June 1941, there were four deportations of civilian populations â Polish citizens, namely: 9/10 February 1940, 12/13 April 1940, 28/29 June 1940 and the last deportation between 14 and 20 June 1941. According to estimates published up to 1990 the total number of deported civilians (not including POWs, nor people arrested, nor those recruited into the Red Army) reached somewhere between 980,000 and 1,200,000 people. This number, now that part of the deportation documents from Russian archives have been made available to the public, is presently the subject of verification. A Russian historian, Alexander Guryanov, connected with the association 'Memorial', by using the lists of railway transports involving the deported civilian population, estimates the number to be 315,000 with a margin of error of between 10,000 and 15,000. On the other hand the Committee of Army Archivists from the Polish Ministry of National Defence estimates the number deported to be about 352,000. In 1993 historians from the Historical Institute of the University of Wroclaw, provisionally reckoned the number of deportees to be about 330,000 of which 220,000 (63.6%) were Polish nationals. These numbers are undergoing further scrutiny and cannot therefore be asserted as a final figure.
The military settlers were taken away during the first deportation in the night of 9-10th February 1940. According to the first calculations made after the war some 220,000 people were taken at that time but the most recent research lowers this figure to 140,000-150,000. In the Soviet documents these February 1940 deportees are described as 'special deportees - settlers' or sometimes as 'former Polish settlers and foresters'. Similar terminology is used in Polish documents. However interpretation of the word 'settler' requires explanation because quite often in writings on the subject it is used with the addition of the word 'military' which is a misconception. In the East Borderlands, during the 1930's, there were 9,000 military settlers and a large number of civilian settlers only a small number of whom belonged to the Association of Settlers. As we have no lists of the personnel who composed the deported people, it is very difficult to establish how many of these belonged to the group of military settlers. Only an estimation is possible.
It is known, from numerous observations, as well as from the stories contained in this book, that not all the settlers families were deported to the Soviet Union because at an earlier date some of them illegally crossed the border into Polish Western territories occupied by Germany. Besides that, on the day of deportation, some family members were away from home while others managed to escape. It is possible to accept with a fair degree of probability that, at the most, 90% of the settlers i.e. 8,000-8,100 found themselves being deported, together with their families, in February 1940. Judging by the stories reported in this book it is calculated that the average family consisted of 5.5 persons and this complies with accounts gained from other sources. It is therefore possible to estimate that 44,000 - 44,600 persons originating from military settlers families were deported. That constitutes almost one third (30-32%) deported in February and 12-14% deported in 1940-41 of the civilian population - Polish citizens. This means that one in five of Polish nationals deported to the USSR - not counting POWs and prisoners - came from the families of military settlers.
The term 'settler' applied to all those deported in 1940 is very wide of the mark because it includes not only military and civilian settlers but also forest rangers and quite a number of Polish peasants who had lived in the Borderlands for decades. In the February deportation there were also those of Ukrainian and Byelorussian extraction who were likely to be forest rangers.
That February deportation, as well as the three which followed, was prepared using details supplied by the NKVD under the supervision of the Commissar of Internal Affairs, Lavrentii Beria. On 5th December 1939 the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR had already undertaken resolution number 2001-558 concerning the deportation of settlers families and those of the forestry service from the territory of the western parts of the Ukraine and Byelorussia which had been confirmed by Stalin's instructions of the 19th and 25th December. More detailed instruction on this subject was issued on 29th December. Neither of these resolutions clearly specifies the reasons for the deportation of the settlers. Professor Chackiewicz from Minsk is of the opinion that the settlers' 'guilt' was their military past and their loyalty to the 'bourgeois' Polish Government. Undoubtedly this is true but one can also add that the NKVD was apprehensive that the military settlers, the majority of whom owned firearms, would support anti-Soviet demonstrations and were also influenced by feelings of possible retaliation for the events of 1920.
Instructions described the settlers as spetzpereselentzy (special deportees) and defined that they could take only clothing, underwear, shoes, bedding, kitchen and dining utensils, one month's supply of food for all the family, small agricultural and domestic implements, personal valuables and money without limit. The total weight of luggage was not to exceed 500 kg per family. The entire farm together with its land and equipment had to be turned over to the local authority.
The act of evicting the 'settlers' in any particular district consisting of 250-300 families was supervised by a threesome of officials led by the district head of the NKVD. To help him he had the services of a large number of confidential workers like Party members, the militia and local activists. In Byelorussia there were 4,005 'threesomes' in 37 operational territorial divisions employing 16,279 people of whom 11,674 had been brought over from East Byelorussia part of the USSR. The overall supervision of the February deportation was performed by Beria's deputy, V.V. Chernyshev, aided in the Ukraine by I.A. Serov and M. Merkulov and in Byelorussia by L.F. Tsanava.
The lists of the names of the military settlers and members of their families was completed by 5th January 1940. Although those compiling the lists did not give their true reason for doing this the settlers began to suspect there existed some hidden agenda involving further arrests or maybe even deportation but they thought this would only involve the settlers themselves and, perhaps, young male adults. But, during the night of 9/10th February, when in some regions the climate dipped to -40ºC settlers families were woken by insistent knocking on their doors before which stood a member of the NKVD accompanied by militia men and, more often than not, a known local activist. After having had a decree of deportation read out to them they were ordered to pack indispensable items and food and to do this were often allowed little more than half an hour. 'Get ready with your possessions' (sobiraisya s veshchamy) ordered the Soviet official, the behaviour of whom was often over zealous. In many cases the father settler was held under the sight of a rifle barrel leaving his wife to pack their belongings while simultaneously calming her weeping children woken in the middle of the night and terrified by the situation. Equally it happened that the 'authorities' representatives helped to pack and advised the taking of a lot of food, especially warm clothing and such useful articles as a sewing machine for example. They cautioned: 'you are travelling a long way and there you won't eat honey from spoons'. Any resistance was out of the question and where it occurred it only led to the escape of no more than one person. Armed resistance was the exception. In the district of Wolkowysk on Osada Koladycze (Kaledicze) the settler Leon Wysocki offered armed resistance but was killed during the shoot-out.
The NKVD possessed detailed information on each individual member of the families. There were instances where the older children who were at schools away from the osadas were taken that same night from where they were lodging and brought to the point of transport where their families were assembled. There were also less pleasant instances when the settlers children who had been absent from home during the deportation were winkled out a few days or even weeks later and deported to different places from that of their family.
The Ukrainian or Byelorussian population's attitude towards the deportation of the settlers was very varied. The daughter of a settler from the Wilno Province remembered: 'In front of our house stood a group of locals from the nearby village, many of these had previously worked for us and they now waited to plunder our home following our departure but mother went back into the house again and after a while there came the noise of shattering glass and crockery, the smell of kerosene, which she poured over what remained of our possessions'. In his later letter, following the plans executed in Byelorussia, the local head of NKVD, Tsanava, reported that the local population had been passive in its attitude, though information from some districts indicated that the action met with their approval which was shown by the help they gave in providing local transport and by their take over of abandoned properties. Given these bases it is very difficult to form a general opinion since anxiety concerning their own fate, especially since at that time some Ukrainians and Byelorussians were among the deported, could have influenced the behaviour of the local people.
Those deported were transported to railway collecting points, sometimes at a dozen or so kilometres distance, and were then allocated to the specially brought in trains. According to the ruling of the 29th December one transport (eshelon) was to consist of 55 trucks of which one passenger coach was reserved for the escort and one for first-aid help. In each truck, bolted from the outside, were to travel 25 people but - as is shown by many reports - the number was much higher, even exceeding 50 people per coach. 'Medical care' was supposed to be provided by a medical orderly and two nurses. During the journey there was to be one hot meal and 800 grams of bread per person in every 24 hours. In reality there were days when the escorts did not open the trucks and the food supply was limited to hot water and the odd loaf of bread supplemented by a drop of soup which had to last for a few days for everyone in the truck. The stove, situated in the middle of the truck, did not give off enough heat and there were times when, during the night, women's hair froze to the sides of the truck. In these conditions people were sick, dying and even children were born. An opening in the wagon floor served as a toilet which, to keep up appearances, the deported screened with a blanket.
Though the completion of the transport was all but done in one day, for some reason, it was prolonged into the next two days. After that delay the trains moved east. The crossing of the border caused tears and the singing of patriotic and religious songs such as 'We Will Not Forsake Our Land' and 'Into Thy Care'. Meanwhile from the very onset of the deportation the regional NKVD heads sent reports of the progress of the action to their superiors who, in their turn, sent information every two to four hours to Beria.
The journey to the appointed destination lasted over three weeks. Though they tried not to show it people were physically and mentally exhausted. It is worth quoting a fragment of one story: 'The train sped along and in the evening when it stopped at some station or other the door bolts were removed and from each truck a few men with buckets went off to collect water and sometimes soup and bread. To this day I remember how our soldier fathers even in these circumstances hemmed in as they were with soldaty (Soviet guards) marched off all but dismissive of the rifle butts and sang such legionnaire songs as 'The heart rejoices, the soul rejoices, when Pilsudski's first cadre tramples on the Muscovite'. One after another the days passed by with us either still travelling or standing at the side of the railtrack'. Arrival at the last major railway station, in most cases this was Kotlas (Archangel region), did not mean the end of the journey. Depending upon the final destination further travel was by sledge, local narrow gauge railway or river coal barges, the last option of which in this desperately severe weather was particularly difficult to withstand.
In spite of the few weeks of planning the resettlement procedure was chaotic in the extreme. Included in the transport lists were people who should not have been such as the infirm and the desperately sick. Konradov, the Chairman of OTP Gulag NKVD (Special Branch NKVD supervising the deportation) in his letter to the Deputy Commissar of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (undated) gave a very long list of people who were deported without reason. Among them appears the name of a military settler from Volhynia, Companion of the Order Virtuti Militari Klemens Grzybowski, deported to NKVD Uzlag in Molotov region on whose personal questionnaire someone made this note: 'Do not deport, bound for unknown destination'.
According to the report submitted by the commissars supervising the resettlement the deportation of 10th February 1940 was made up thus:
Number of families 26,790 139,286 persons
Planned number of families (27,563) (147,957) persons
of these: from West Ukraine 17,206 89,062 persons
(17,753) (95,065) persons
from West Belorussia 9,584 50,224 persons
(9,810) (52,892) persons36
The actual number deported is slightly lower than planned because some of the families were away from home or people were sick as well as various similar reasons. When comparing the actual number with that of the plan for the February deportation one notes that 8,671 people avoided exile but a considerable number of these were deported in the following months. Different sources provide similar information. According to reports sent to Beria in April 1940 by the above mentioned Konradov, the total of deported settlers numbered 139,590 who came from 27,468 families. The document entitled 'Information concerning the special deportees listed by lands and counties' gave the 1st April 1940 total as 139,169 persons. Similar numbers to this are arrived at by considering the materials used in the military convoys according to which the number deported in February 1940 was between 140,000 and 143,00037.
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In the Soviet Special Posioleks
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