RUSSIA-POLAND: Unity at a Price

In a paneled room of the British Foreign Office, Russia’s Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, Ivan Maisky, completed the toughest diplomatic job of his career. It had been a comparatively routine assignment to make alliances with the exiled Governments of Norway, The Netherlands, Czecho-Slovakia (TIME, July 28), now that Russia herself had been attacked by the Nazis. But Poland was different.

Historically the Poles have no love for the Russians, have liked them even less since they divvied Poland up in 1939 with Russia’s erstwhile ally Germany. For three weeks Ambassador Maisky and British officials labored in the interest of a united front against Hitler to make the Poles forget Russia’s seizure of their soil and oppression of their people, not to mention Russia’s continuing detention of 300,000 Polish prisoners of war in Russia.

Last week, as Winston Churchill and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden looked benignly on, Ambassador Maisky and Poland’s Premier General Wladyslaw Sikorski put their names to a pact satisfactory to both countries. The treaty, under which Russia washed out the 1939 conquest but did not guarantee Poland’s former boundaries, was officially approved, but many Poles found it far from agreeable. Two members of the Polish Cabinet (General Casimir Sosnkowski and Marjan Seyda) had steadfastly voted against it. Foreign Minister August Zaleski left the Cabinet before it was signed as a protest against adopting any treaty that was not unanimously approved.

Understanding Polish feelings, the British arranged that General Sikorski should sign the treaty at one end of a long table while Ambassador Maisky signed at the other end.