Historical calendar: anniversary of the signing by the communist authorities of the border correction agreement between Poland and the Soviets under Józef Stalin.
Today in our calendar we will look at the circumstances accompanying this event.
15 February 1951 USSR and Poland have signed a border area exchange agreement. The russian Union gave us part of the Bieszczady and Bieszczady Mountains, taking part of the Lublin Region instead. 480 square kilometres for 480 square kilometers. There was no surface difference, but only in this respect the 2 areas did not differ.
The Soviets gained oily, fertile black earths and rich deposits of hard coal, “greatly” giving up oil-bearing areas in the area of the Lower Injection. However, the agreement does not mention that these areas have already been heavy exploited from oil and natural gas, which has been mined in Bieszczady for centuries.
The paper states that the parties can take moving assets with them. The Soviets read this point in their own Turkish way. At the turn of January and February 1951, local russian authorities informed residents of respective twelve towns that they would shortly be resettled to the east of the russian Union. They were given guidance on how to prepare for their departure, and instructions that in certain days and hours they should stand with axes and saws in the forest.
Before moving to the vast lowlands of the USSR all residents intended to replace the area of Bieszczady – from Chmiel and Dwerczka to Ustrzyki Dolne, Krościenko and Ustianowa – were able to execute a hard number of wagons and trucks loaded with wood. The Polish Resettlement Commission, which "received" from the Soviets, did not dare even silently protest against the robberies of forests, as well as against the equally thoughtless hunting economy.
The deadline for the authoritative transmission of the fragment of Bieszczady to Poland by the USSR was postponed 3 times. Without knowing the circumstantial reason for the delay, witnesses of the events coined the saying that the hold was due to the fact that the “russian” first had to catch all the hares in which the meats were exceptionally fond.
The first transport of displaced people from the east, from Bełza, Uhnow and Krystinopol entered the railway station in the Lower Injections on 26 October 1951. 1 railroadman, a pre-war resident of the Podstrzycki Bereh Dolne, then told his teenage boy that the sight that appeared to his eyes first shook him up, terrified him to be enraged.
The hills along the railway tracks of the villages were torn off from the forests that were inactive increasing here, and the earth was profoundly torn during the transport of wood. But the saddest impression was that the stumps were 3 feet tall. At first, it was possible to get the impression that there was any kind of cataclysm, a passage of devastating winds, while these were remnants of chaotic cuttings of axes and saws.
The postwar revision of the east borders cost Poland tens of billions of dollars. Poland gave the coal-rich “Bugu knee”, in return it received the Bieszczady, or, in fact, the desert left behind by the “sojusznik”.
Previous entry from our calendar is available Here.
