Poland’s largest opposition group has responded to the government’s plans to seek war reparations from Germany by calling for it to also pursue them from Russia as the successor to the Soviet Union, which invaded Poland along with Nazi Germany in 1939.
“If we are talking about the settlement of war grievances and damages, we must talk about those who led to the outbreak of World War Two, that is fascist Germany and the communist Soviet Union,” said Borys Budka, head of the parliamentary caucus of the centrist Civic Coalition (KO).
He noted that, under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Berlin and Moscow agreed to divide up Poland between them, a plan that was put into action when Germany invaded from the west on 1 September 1939 and the Soviet Union from the east on 17 September.
“That is why we want to mention Russia as an entity responsible for the Second World War in this reparations resolution, with all its consequences,” Budka told the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
As a result of Soviet occupation, at least tens of thousands of Polish citizens were killed – including 22,000 military officers and intelligentsia during the Katyn massacres – while hundreds of thousands were imprisoned or deported to Siberia.
With a new session of parliament starting today, KO intends to submit a resolution calling for reparations from both Germany and Russia. If that is not accepted, it will seek to add amendments to that effect to a resolution by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party calling for reparations from Germany.
KO’s resolution, the text of which has been published by Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, calls for Germany and Russia “to unequivocally accept political, historical, legal and financial responsibility for the consequences of…the unleashing of the Second World War by the Third German Reich and the USSR”.
It notes that “the then allied Germany and USSR” oversaw “occupation, systematic genocide and mass deportations of Polish citizens”, including “the Katyn massacre, which had the character of genocide”.
“Poland has never received compensation for the enormity of harm caused to Polish citizens by the Third German Reich and the USSR,” it concludes.
"Sprawa reparacji była pułapką, zastawioną przez PiS". Posłom KO udało się z niej zręcznie wydostać? https://t.co/4k3wQ6XdaX
— Dziennik.pl (@DziennikPL) September 14, 2022
The issue was sparked on 1 September when senior PiS figures – including party chairman Jarosław Kaczyński and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki – announced that Poland would be seeking reparations from Germany for war damages calculated to be worth $1.3 trillion.
In response, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has reiterated Berlin’s longstanding position that the issue of reparations was legally settled long ago, with Poland having renounced its right to compensation in the 1950s and later governments confirming that decision.
The Polish government, however, intends to press ahead with its claim. Morawiecki has announced that he will “soon” pass a diplomatic note to Germany on the issue, and Warsaw is hoping that will then open negotiations.
While PiS has repeatedly called for reparations from Germany, in 2020 Kaczyński said that Russia “should also pay” for the damage caused by the Soviet invasion and occupation.
In response to those remarks, Russia’s ambassador to Warsaw claimed that in fact Poland “has an unpaid debt to Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union” for “liberating” them from Nazi Germany.
Under the official Russian historical narrative promoted by Vladimir Putin, the Soviet Union did not invade Poland in 1939. Russian state entities have also sought to deny or downplay Soviet crimes against Poles such as the Katyn massacres.
Main image credit: TASS/Wikimedia Commons (under public domain)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
