Current Book: The Spring Will be Ours by Andzej Paczkowski.

I told myself some time ago that I will finish this one before taking on another book. And I have a stack ready.

I am actually very impressed with this book. I read quite a lot on the subject of Polish history and for a long time I was looking something that talks about the influence of NKVD and UB over the changing political situation post 1946. This book offers great account.

Paczkowski is a good writer. In a very simple example: a lengthy paragraph names many underground political organizations (with details and names), so many in fact that the reader no longer can keep track of them, only to emerge with the general structure of how the underground formed and functioned summarizing the complexity. Paczkowski’s use of detail draws the skeleton of complexity and sophistication of the structure of the underground. There were thousands of groups that eventuality merged into AK [Armia Krajowa – Home Army]

Not the easiest book to read on a commute to and from work but I am fascinated with the cleverness in the use of brute physical force and dark intellect of the soviets. In a nutshell when Stalin divided Poland with Hitler his immediate concern was to liquidate the officer corps (Doctors, Lawyers, University Professors, etc…) of the Polish Army. Later though propaganda he used the events as a German crime which served as disbelief and enabled him to cut off all ties to the Polish government-in-exile in London. Since he needed a governing body for advancing Red Army into Polish territory he pulled out able individuals form Siberian camps and thus created a government by the ‘Polish Nationals’ as the legitimate organ of Polish politics. In the mid 1940s the NKVD and UB, as well as smaller groups of the police systematically destroyed (intimidation, threats of ‘various’ documents, physical threats, etc…) any opposition encountered. In the end this created a blanket of uniform ‘socialist’ appearance and the west blinked its eyes on Poland.

Interesting stuff. The book spans from 1939 to 1989. I am now somewhere near the middle where the political structures are merged or eliminated under the pressure of the Soviets around the years 1945-1947. Rich details in this book.