It is a well-known fact that the topic of mutual relations between Poland and Russia remains sensitive, to say the least. Soviet crimes such as the Holodomor, the Katyń massacre or the mass deportations to Siberia are mostly known to the public.

However, there is one chapter of Polish-Russian relations that does not receive the attention it deserves up to this day. Namely the infamous Polish operation of the NKVD which took place between 1937 and 1938. 

The so-called Polish Operation was a mass ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Soviet security services (NKVD) on the civilian Polish population living in the USSR in 1937-1938. 

In accordance with order number 00485 of the 11th of August 1937, an operation was initiated against the Polish minority living in the USSR, which lasted until mid-November 1938. On the basis of this very order, 111,091 people were sentenced to the death penalty.

According to the calculations made by a history professor from Harvard Terry Martin, during what is commonly called the Great Purge, a Pole living in the USSR was 31 times more likely to be shot than representatives of any other ethnic minority during this bloody Stalinist period. 

The scale of the massacre was immense. As a result of all the different criminal operations targeting Poles during the Great Purge, it is believed that not less than 200.000 people were killed. It is virtually ten times more than the figures from the Katyń massacre of 1940. 

In his book entitled Klęska Imperium Zła (The defeat of the Evil Empire), the Sovietologist from the University of Krakow Andrzej Nowak argues that one-fourth of all Polish inhabitants of the Soviet Union perished as à result of the Great Purge from which more than half of adult men.

The topic of the Polish Operation is unfortunately ill-know not only in Europe but also in modern-day Russia where the memory of this shameful event remains an absolute taboo.

Author: Sébastien Meuwissen

Photo: Pixabay