Justification for Deportation Poles and other ethnic groups from Eastern Poland?

[1PUK]

I would like to ‘hear’ justifications for the expulsion/deportaion of Polish citizens of various faiths and ethnicities (Polish, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish) from Eastern Poland by the Soviets to special labour camps in Siberia, Kazakhstan and Soviet Asia.

Dates of deportations - February 1940, April 1940, June 1940 and June 1941.

Deported were men women and children, including the old and the very young.

Along the way many died.

Many more died in the camps.
To eat people had to work. If they did not work they were not fed.
If someone became ill and could not work then they were not fed, so generally died.
Some that became ill managed to survive because other members of family shared their rations.

Figures deported vary. Have read upto 1.7 million.
Figures for number that died also varies upto at least a half, maybe more.

Marek

[Egorka]

Hi 1PUK. Do you think it can be justyfied/explained?

[deadkenny]

I can’t see how it could possibly be ‘justified’, at least not according to my definition of ‘justification’. The ‘reason’ is perhaps more clear - a brutal totalitarian regime was trying to strengthen it’s control over a recently annexed territory, in collusion with Nazi Germany. The agreement with Nazi Germany was that no Polish state would be allowed to exist, and both regimes worked to destroy the basis for any such state. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, their ‘cooperation’ over the Polish question obviously ended. However, even then after the war the Soviets set up a Polish nation in the German occupied portion of Poland and former German territory, NOT the eastern portion of Poland occupied in 1939.

[Lexa]

@1PUK

I would like to ‘hear’ justifications for the expulsion/deportaion of Polish citizens of various faiths and ethnicities (Polish, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish) from Eastern Poland by the Soviets to special labour camps in Siberia, Kazakhstan and Soviet Asia.

Dates of deportations - February 1940, April 1940, June 1940 and June 1941.

Deported were men women and children, including the old and the very young.

Along the way many died.

Many more died in the camps.
To eat people had to work. If they did not work they were not fed.
If someone became ill and could not work then they were not fed, so generally died.
Some that became ill managed to survive because other members of family shared their rations.

Figures deported vary. Have read upto 1.7 million.
Figures for number that died also varies upto at least a half, maybe more.

Marek

The Russian historians, on the basis of NKVD archives data, estimate number of Polish citizens subjected to repressions in 1930-1950s in USSR as about 700,000:
http://www.memo.ru/history/POLAcy/vved/Index.htm (in Russian)

There is no justification for it, of course. An explanation: Poland was considered as a potential enemy.