Abstract
There were a few thousand Polish communists in Soviet Russia in the first years after the October Revolution. The Polish Bureau of Agitation and Propaganda at the Russian Communist Party [Bolsheviks] – the so-called Polbiuro – was the most important agenda of Polish communists. This article concerns the position of Polish communists in the Soviet state, their role in the Polish-Bolshevik War, activity amongst the Polish population in post-revolutionary Russia as well as amongst Polish POWs. The article is an attempt to answer the question: how to evaluate the activity of Polish communists in the Soviet country in the first years after the revolution? Text is based mainly on archival material from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) in Moscow and collections of a few Ukrainian and Polish archives (Donetsk, Warsaw).
Highlights
There were a few thousand Polish communists in Soviet Russia in the first years after the October Revolution
The substantial part of Polish communists stayed in Russia during the years of 1918–1922; there are difficulties in determining the number of Poles in the territories under the Soviet rule before 1926
Polish communists in Russia were interested in showing the largest possible number of Poles
Summary
The substantial part of Polish communists stayed in Russia during the years of 1918–1922; there are difficulties in determining the number of Poles in the territories under the Soviet rule before 1926. According to the so-called Polbiuro (Polish Bureau of the Russian Communist Party [Bolsheviks]), the most important Polish agenda in Soviet Russia, in August 1921 the number of Poles was not less than 3,000,000 of which the largest concentrations were in the former provinces of Belarus: Minsk, Gomel, Vitebsk, and Right Bank of Ukraine.
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