A ‘Potemkin Reality’: Bolshevik Preparations for Visits of Polish Diplomats and Officials to Soviet Institutions and Enterprises in the 1930s

Abstract

On the basis of materials from post-Soviet and Polish archives the author discusses attempts to show Soviet reality in as good a light as possible by hiding the traditional communist disorder that were taken by the Bolsheviks in relation to Polish diplomats and consular officials and tourists in the 1930s as well as provides the answer to the question of what their perception of the mystification under way was. As Soviet materials attest, until the mid-1930s the Soviets strove to show foreigners the ‘Soviet paradise’ in a positive light. They expended much energy in that regard. The greatest undertaking was the visit of the French politician Édouard Herriot, but as the data provided in the present article, this practice was also used, to a lesser extent, in relation to other foreigners. A profound analysis of the archival base allows the author to state that employees of the Polish Foreign Service in the Soviet Union did not allow themselves to be swayed by the propagandistic images showed them by their Soviet hosts.