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Note from Molotov to Polish Ambassador Tadeusz Romer on the Soviet Government's Decision to Break Off Relations with the Polish Government

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By Skriabin, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich (Molotov)

Katyn: A Crime Without Punishment

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Document 104

Note from Molotov to Polish Ambassador Tadeusz Romer on the Soviet Government's Decision to Break Off Relations with the Polish Government

The English text given here is in DPSR, vol. I, no. 315. The Russian text ends with the words “Please accept, Mr. Ambassador, the assurances of my highest respect.” Molotov presented the note personally to Polish Ambassador Romer, who refused to accept it because he could not agree with the charges against his government, but the note was delivered in an envelope to his hotel.

25 April 1943, Moscow

Note of the Soviet Government to the Polish Government Mr. Ambassador,

On behalf of the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I have the honor to notify the Polish Government of the following:

The Soviet Government considers the recent behavior of the Polish Government with regard to the USSR as entirely abnormal, and violating all regulations and standards of relations between two Allied States. The slanderous campaign hostile to the Soviet Union launched by the German Fascists in connection with the murder of the Polish officers, which they themselves committed in the Smolensk area on territory occupied by German troops, was at once taken up by the Polish Government and is being fanned in every way by the Polish official press.

Far from offering a rebuff to the vile Fascist slander of the USSR, the Polish Government did not even find it necessary to address to the Soviet Government any inquiry or request for an explanation on this subject.

For a list of the numerous Polish inquiries about the missing prisoners addressed to Soviet authorities, see the Polish minister of defense communiqué, London, 16 April 1940, DPSR, vol. I, no. 307; Russian translation, KD2/188. For the Polish official statement of 17 April, see doc. 103. The Soviet reply was a violent attack on the Polish government in Pravda on 19 April, titled “Polish Collaborators of Hitler”; see KD2/189.

Page 310

Having committed a monstrous crime against the Polish officers, the Hitlerite authorities are now staging a farcical investigation, and for this they have made use of certain Polish pro-Fascist elements whom they themselves selected in occupied Poland, where everything is under Hitler's heel, and where no honest Pole can openly have his say.

This is a reference to the official German investigation and the Poles allowed by the Germans to visit Katyn in the first half of April; for more, see doc. 105a and the introduction to Part III.

For the “investigation,” both the Polish Government and the Hitlerite Government invited the IRC, which is compelled, in conditions of a terroristic régime, with its gallows and mass extermination of the peaceful population, to take part in this investigation farce staged by Hitler. Clearly such an “investigation,” staged behind the back of the Soviet Government, cannot evoke the confidence of people possessing any degree of honesty.

The German occupation of Poland was much more brutal than that of Czechoslovakia. The IRC was not compelled to act. On 23 April it announced that it could not undertake the investigation (Soviet consent was lacking). On the next day, British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden told Sikorski that Stalin would not break off relations if the Polish government withdrew its appeal to the IRC and declared that the Katyn affair was “an invention of German propaganda.” Sikorski said he would not push the appeal but could not blame the Germans. On 4 May the Polish government declared that the appeal to the IRC had lapsed.

The fact that the hostile campaign against the Soviet Union commenced simultaneously in the German and Polish press, and was conducted along the same lines, leaves no doubt as to the existence of contact and accord in carrying out this hostile campaign between the enemy of the Allies—Hitler—and the Polish Government.

There was no such cooperation between the Polish and German governments in this or any other matter. For the Soviet press campaign against the Polish government, see Ewa Rosowska, Otnoshenia Polshii SSSR v 1939-1945 Godakh i Sovetskaia Pressa [Soviet-Polish Relations in the Years 1939-1945 and the Soviet Press] (Candidate of Historical Sciences dissertation, Moscow State University, Moscow, 1993), chap. 3, section 3, part 2, esp. pp. 123-146. A. M. Cienciala would like to thank Dr. Rosowska, a co-editor of the Polish Katyn volumes, for giving her a copy of her dissertation.

While the peoples of the Soviet Union, bleeding profusely in a hard struggle against Hitlerite Germany, are straining every effort for the defeat of the common enemy of the Russian and Polish peoples and of all freedom-loving democratic countries, the Polish Government, to please Hitler's tyranny, has dealt a treacherous blow to the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Government is aware that this hostile campaign against the Soviet Union is being undertaken by the Polish Government in order to exert pressure upon the Soviet Government by making use of the slanderous Hitlerite fake for the purpose of wresting from it territorial concessions at the expense of the Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Belorussia, and Soviet Lithuania.

This is a reference to the Polish government's official stance on the inviolability of the prewar Polish-Soviet frontier.

All these circumstances compel the Soviet Government to recognize that the present Government of Poland, having slid on the path of accord with Hitler's Government, has actually discontinued allied relations with the USSR, and has adopted a hostile attitude toward the Soviet Union.

On the strength of the above, the Soviet Government has decided to sever relations with the Polish Government.

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Document Details

Document TitleNote from Molotov to Polish Ambassador Tadeusz Romer on the Soviet Government's Decision to Break Off Relations with the Polish Government

AuthorSkriabin, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich (Molotov)

RecipientRomer, Tadeusz

RepositoryN/A

ID #N/A

DescriptionN/A

Date1943 Apr 25

AOC VolumeKatyn: A Crime Without Punishment

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