ABSTRACT
It has been estimated that approximately 1.3 million Soviet soldiers lost their lives during the Second World War on the territory of present-day Poland (800,000 POWs and 500,000 soldiers who died in combat); there are 638 registered Red Army cemeteries and isolated graves. 1 In post-war Poland, Red Army soldiers had been commemorated as liberators of Poland through obligatory and grand remembrance ceremonies and projects. This changed with the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the early 1990s, many monuments erected in memory of the Red Army soldiers were relocated to war cemeteries, and annual anniversaries cancelled. It appears as if the soldiers have been simply forgotten. Although there have been vigorous debates about the role of the Red Army in establishing communism in Poland, this re-assessment did not concern ordinary soldiers as such, but rather the Soviet political elites in charge of the army. Equally, the distinction between the Red Army soldiers and the NKVD special units has been generally recognised. Major Polish war museums have dedicated exhibitions to the 1940–41 Soviet deportations of Polish citizens, to the Katyn massacre or to Stalin’s unwillingness to help the Warsaw insurgents. But they have not re-assessed the wartime conduct of the Red Army rank and files. During national debates on legislation on sites of memory, on the de-communisation and polityka historyczna, the issue of the conduct of the Red Army was hardly discussed. Generally, the extent to which attitudes towards the Second World War and commemorative practices relating to the Polish–Soviet–German past may vary across Poland, and especially in Poland’s borderlands (Silesia, Pomerania, Warmia and Masuria), has not been reflected in national debates. 2 Red Army monuments were simply treated as symbols of communist power rather than sites commemorating the fallen Soviet soldiers.
