POLAND: Mission to Moscow

Rugged, rosy-cheeked Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, Premier of the Polish Government in London, hurried to No. 10 Downing Street. Wins.ton Churchill had urgent news for him: Joseph Stalin, who did not recognize the London Polish Government and had just recognized the Polish Committee of National Liberation (TIME, July 31), had agreed to see Mikolajczyk.

With the tense haste of a man who knew it was now or never, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk summoned his Cabinet. In a paneled drawing room at No. 18 Kensington Palace Gardens, under a staring portrait of late great Premier Wladislaw Sikorski, apostle of Russo-Polishrapprochement, the ministers listened to the news. President Wladislaw Raczkiewicz, a diehard Russophobe, rose theatrically, said coldly: “I wash my hands of this.” Then he stalked out. But his colleagues stayed on for hours of bitter but subdued talk.

The hard facts of power politics stared them in the face. Their own survival and the inner peace of Poland lay in Russia’s hands. Neither Britain nor the U.S. was likely to risk good relations with Russia for a forlorn Polish cause. Before them lay a message from the Polish underground: “We who are fighting the Germans must work with the Russians.”

There was no alternative. The ministers gave their blessing to the Premier’s trip, voted him power to “reestablish relations with Stalin.” Stanislaw Mikolajczyk did not lose a minute. He rushed to pack his bags, donned a light overcoat, motored to the airfield where a British plane waited.

With him went suave Foreign Minister Tadeusz Romer, grey-bearded Council President Stanislaw Grabski.

Planning at Chelm. As the mission winged to Cairo and on to Teheran, where a Russian plane and a cordial invitation from the Kremlin awaited them, the new Polish Committee of Liberation, from its provisional seat at Chelm, busily shaped Poland’s future. The Committee issued a history-making manifesto, which outlined not only the Polish, but presumably the Russian blueprint for Eastern Europe above the Carpathians:

¶ Eastward, Poland must accept the Curzon Line as its border with Russia,

¶ Westward, Poland must expand to include “ancient Pomorze [Pomerania], Upper Silesia, East Prussia, with its broad outlet to the sea, and Polish outposts on the Oder.” No plan for German dismemberment had gone as far as this: it would lop from prewar Germany a large (roughly 26,000 sq. mi.),populous (about 6,500,000), rich (coal and iron mines, farm lands) territory, most of which had not belonged to the Slavs since the 11th Century. It would push Poland’s border to within 50 miles of Berlin.

¶ A Pan-Slav alliance with Russia and Czechoslovakia must keystone Poland’s foreign policy. “The Slavs must form a united front against Germany.”

¶ Poland must become a “parliamentary democracy.” Its base must be the small farm family. It must undertake a sweeping agrarian reform. Large estates must be cut down to a maximum of 247 acres. Every peasant must farm his own land. Thus Poland would scrap a semifeudal land economy.

¶ In the new Poland, German property must be confiscated. Presumably German inhabitants would be forced to emigrate. This would make even more staggering the job, for which UNNRA last week drafted a plan, of resettling some 20,000,000 European D.P.s (Displaced Persons).

Toasts in the Kremlin. Of the Poles who, with Russian prompting, were making these sweeping plans, the world knew almost nothing. But most of the Committee’s 15. known members hailed from prewar Poland’s Peasant, Socialist and Labor Parties. Many had been underground fighters—against the Pilsudski Government as well as the Germans. A few had been taken prisoners by the Russians when Stalin and Hitler partitioned Poland.

Their chairman was a sharp-nosed, blue-eyed locksmith’s son, Edward Boleslaw Osubka-Morawski, a veteran socialist.

To Chairman Osubka-Morawski and his colleagues Joseph Stalin tendered high honor last week. They went to the Kremlin to sign an agreement whereby Russia recognized the Committee’s right to administer liberated Poland. The pact followed the pattern of that signed by Russia with the Czechoslovak Government, which has its own civil officers ready to enter Czechoslovakia on the heels of the Red Army. That night Joseph Stalin invited the Polish Committee to a many-course banquet. With vodka and champagne, host and guests toasted the new era in Polish-Russian relations.

Into this atmosphere of accomplished facts headed Stanislaw Mikolajczyk. Ringing in his mind, perhaps, was a comment of the Times of London: “Mikolajczyk is making the trip to Moscow rather late.” More heartening was Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden’s statement in Parliament: Britain will “continue to recognize the Polish Government led by Mr. Mikolajczyk as the Government of Poland.” The Premier and his British and U.S. backers hoped that Joseph Stalin would be generous, that he would promote a union of the London Poles and the Moscow Poles, that he would postpone a final territorial settlement until after the war.