Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, called the statement made by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, Pavel Yablonsky, “ball-shy”. The diplomat believes that Warsaw supposedly has the right to demand “reparation” from Moscow for the damage that the USSR allegedly caused to Poland during the Second World War.

“Pavel, stop playing ball games,” Zakharova wrote on her Facebook.

Recall that on the eve of Jablonski, speaking on the Polish Radio Zet, said that Warsaw has every right to demand reparation from Moscow.

“This is absolutely unconditional. If someone commits war crimes ... there is no reason not to talk about it, ”Yablonsky emphasized.

According to Yablonsky, the Soviet Union “occupied” Poland for several decades and is allegedly guilty of the deaths of several hundred thousand or even a million Poles.

Arguing the need to demand reparations from Russia, Polish historians and politicians pay attention to the experience of the Baltic countries. It is not the first year that the leaderships of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have been seeking “compensation” from Russia for “Soviet occupation”. In 2015, the ministers of justice of the three countries estimated their losses at € 300 billion. Russia traditionally rejects these claims.

Warsaw previously officially demanded reparations from Berlin. The working group created in the country's parliament estimated the damage caused by the Nazis at $ 1 trillion. Germany itself considers the issue of paying reparations closed.

The fact is that after the war ended, Poland received compensation at the expense of East Germany. In 1953, the Polish People’s Republic and the German Democratic Republic signed an agreement under which Warsaw refused reparations. However, the current Polish leadership has also managed to blame Moscow on this issue. Last year, Polish Minister of Defense Marius Blaszczak declared that Warsaw refused to pay back then because it was “under the rule of Russia”.

  • Jaroslav Kaczynski
  • Reuters
  • © Kacper Pempel

Polish appetites

A few days earlier, the leader of the Polish ruling party, Law and Justice, Jaroslav Kaczynski, in an interview with the German newspaper Bild, stressed that Poland has every right to demand reparation from both Germany and Russia. Kaczynski emphasized that he considers the USSR and Nazi Germany equally responsible for the outbreak of World War II.

The leader of PiS was supported by the head of the Polish parliamentary committee on reparations Arkadiusz Mulyarchik. According to him, to demand reparation from Russia is “important and necessary”. They supported this idea in the Polish opposition. So, the deputy of the Sejm from the Left faction, Maciej Konechny, noted that drawing attention to the damage caused to Poland by the Soviet Union would be appropriate .

Some Polish historians also supported this position. For example, Professor Wojciech Polak from the University. Copernicus in Torun said that the USSR allegedly carried out a "genocide policy" in Poland similar to that pursued by Nazi Germany, and exported industrial equipment from the country. Another professor, Wojciech Rosczkowski, said that the USSR was guilty of the death of a million Poles and the violation of many international treaties, and therefore Poland can now demand compensation from Russia.

Prior to this, in mid-January, the Polish Ministry of Culture claimed rights to a number of works of art located in Russia.

However, neither historians, nor the Foreign Ministry, nor Polish politicians have yet decided on the amount that Moscow may require.

This is not the first time the topic of “Russian reparations” has been voiced in Poland’s media space. In 2017, PiS deputy of the Sejm, Jan Mosinsky, and Polish Deputy Minister of Justice Patrick Yakiy, stated that Warsaw could demand reparation from Moscow under the 1921 Riga Treaty. Then Soviet Russia pledged to pay Poland 30 million rubles in gold.

In the past, in the Polish media it was possible to meet demands for compensation from Moscow even for sections of the Commonwealth in the 18th century. In February 2019, a petition was sent to the U.S. President Donald Trump on the White House website to help Poland receive reparations from Germany and Russia. In September, Lukasz Adamski, an employee of the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Accord, made an appeal to demand reparations from Moscow.

Unpaid debt

New calls for payments from Russia began to be voiced by Polish politicians amid increasing confrontation between Moscow and Warsaw on the interpretation of the history of World War II.

In December last year, the outrage of the Polish authorities provoked a statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who called the “Polish anti-Semitic” ambassador of Poland to Germany in the 1930s, Jozef Lipsky, who called for a monument to Adolf Hitler if he sent all the Jews to Africa.

The Russian president then also sharply opposed attempts to rewrite history and assign to the USSR some responsibility for the outbreak of World War II. It is this interpretation of history that the current Polish leadership adheres to.

The foreign ministries of the two countries exchanged lunges against each other, and Polish President Andrzej Duda even refused to go to Israel to the Holocaust Forum due to the fact that, unlike Vladimir Putin, they were not ready to give him the floor.

On January 27, speaking at events in Poland on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Russian Ambassador to this country Sergey Andreev noted that Poland is “in unpaid debt” to Russia, and not vice versa.

“Poland exists today thanks to the victory of the Soviet Union in World War II. Were it not for this victory, there would be neither Poland nor Poles on this earth. It is known what fate was entrusted to this country and its people by the leaders of the Third Reich, ”the ambassador emphasized.

In turn, the Russian embassy in Germany recalled that during the liberation of Poland, 600 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers were killed.

“Only thanks to them, Poland today exists as a state,” the Russian diplomatic mission emphasized.

In a conversation with RT, Russian State Duma deputy Dmitry Belik noted that the Red Army saved the Polish people from destruction.

“If this did not happen, today in Poland there would simply be nobody to lie about the war,” Belik said.

  • Monument to the Soviet-Polish brotherhood in arms in the center of Legnica, 2018
  • © Alexey Vitvitsky / RIA News

"Poland is completely insolent"

According to experts, Polish politicians should be reminded that the USSR actively helped Poland to restore the industry destroyed by the war. From the documents declassified by the Russian side, it follows that in the first difficult post-war years for Soviet people, Poland received agricultural products free of charge.

In addition, thanks to the position taken by the USSR in negotiations with the Allies on the anti-Hitler coalition, Poland received the lands of Silesia, Northern Pomerania and East Prussia, formerly part of Germany.

“It was only thanks to the Soviet side and Stalin’s personal persistence that Poland gained Eastern German territories,” Albina Noskova, chief researcher at the Department of History of Eastern Europe after the Second World War, told the RT Department of History of East Europe. “The economic potential of these former German territories was significantly higher than the potential of the eastern voivodships that Poland had before 1939.”

According to the historian, Poland has no reason to demand anything from Russia.

“This is some kind of propaganda-political device,” said Noskova. - We have no debts to Poland. And if you recall how much it cost the Soviet side to banish the Nazis from Polish lands? Remember the Soviet soldiers lying in Polish soil. Were their lives worthless? ”

According to the expert, the current leadership of Poland uses applications for reparations from Russia for the purposes of “internal propaganda” and for economic reasons - Warsaw needs money.

“Of course, there are both economic and political motives. Sometime, the infusions that Poland receives from the European Union must come to an end. The fall in the living standards of the Poles will immediately respond to positions and influence, the ability to control the national consciousness on the part of the ruling group, ”says Albina Noskova.

According to Vadim Trukhachev, a lecturer at the department of foreign regional studies and foreign policy of the Historical Archive Institute of the Russian State Humanitarian University, “Poland will receive less from the EU general box office when the UK leaves the EU, simply because the box office itself will become scarcer,” but the main reason for the demands for reparations from Russia is internal political.

“In Poland, parliamentary elections were held and presidential elections are coming. Politicians are actively campaigning, and Russia is used here as an internal political scarecrow. The ruling party here shows its “patriotism”, how it cares about Poland, ”Vadim Trukhachev emphasized in an interview with RT.

At the same time, according to the expert, Moscow can also bill Warsaw if it continues to adhere to an unconstructive position.

“Let's calculate how much the Soviet Union invested in Poland, and what was built in socialist Poland from what Poland now uses. And we’ll think about who owes more to whom, ”Trukhachev said. - You can recall that the Poles reached Smolensk in the recent past, a lot of things were desecrated, blown up, and spoiled there. It is high time to put forward counterclaims, if glimpses of the mind are not visible from that side. Poland was completely insolent because Russia had not responded to it for many years, considering it below its dignity. ”