Operation Vistula in the Bieszczady Mountains: Activities of the 1st Division of the Internal Security Corps

Abstract

The article describes the participation of a special division of the Internal Security Corps (Korpus Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego – KBW) in Operation Vistula, which involved the displacement of over 140,000 Ukrainians from south-eastern Poland in 1947. The KBW was a formation modeled on the Internal Forces of the NKVD but was much more indoctrinated and devoted to the Communist Party than units of the Polish Army. Established in April 1947, the 1st Division of the KBW consisted of 4,623 soldiers grouped in nine battalions. Thus, it constituted a quarter of the forces carrying out the displacements. From 28 April to the end of July, the division displaced 8,867 people from the Bieszczady Mountains. As the author points out, two-thirds of the displaced were women and children, and the action itself was brutal. Train stations were crowded with people who camped in the open air until the departure of the train and received starvation rations for the journey. In addition to Ukrainians, 1,600 local Poles were also resettled to larger towns. The Polish population was indoctrinated and forced to participate in propaganda meetings. Under pressure from the army, units of the Polish Workers’ Party were established in villages, which was to emphasise the support allegedly given to communists by the local population. The article also outlines parallel anti-insurgency activities, as a result of which local Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrayins'ka povstans'ka armiia – UPA) units were decimated and forced to break through to the Soviet Union or the West. During the actions against the partisans, the KBW killed 105 and captured 63 UPA soldiers. They also detained 59 people suspected of collaborating with the underground movement. Although the deportations were justified by the necessity to destroy the UPA units operating in the region, their actual goal was the forced Polonisation of the disliked national minority. In the author’s opinion, the participation of the KBW in Operation Vistula emphasises the ideological and repressive nature of the entire operation.