414 POLSKA LUDOWA
The formation of the PKWN reflected at the central level what was happen-
ing on the local level throughout the length and breadth of Poland. Despite later
legends, the Lublin Committee was created in Moscow and was imposed by the
Soviet authorities. In the politics of the communist camp, it may have been the
Kremlin's 'tit' for Gomulka's 'tat' when in'January 1944 he had formed the
National Homeland Council (KRN) without Moscow's prior approval. It con-
tained a mixture of communist and non-communist members, the former drawn
from both the Moscow-based Union of Polish Patriots (ZPP) and Central
Bureau of Polish Communists (CBKP), and from the Warsaw-based Polish
Workers Party (PPR). The Warsaw group, which included Gomutka and Bierut,
did not arrive in Lublin until 31 July, that is, not until nine days after their sig-
natures were supposedly placed on the Committee's Manifesto. They had been
reluctant to leave the capital, where the outbreak of the Rising was daily
expected, and then had to follow a tortuous route across the Front and into the
Soviet lines. They did not reach full agreement with their colleagues from
Moscow until 15 August. This means that all the documents relating to their
agreement, though drawn up in August, had to be carefully antedated to 21 July
to create an appropriate appearance of spontaneous unanimity.^2 Here was mod-
ern Poland's Targowica.
The Manifesto of the Committee, distributed in Chelm and Lublin and
described in advance by Moscow Radio, cannot possibly have been properly
endorsed by the leadership of the PPR in Warsaw. It must have been prepared and
printed in Moscow, and as such reflected Soviet rather than Polish communist
wishes.^3 The key appointments to the Committee were made with Stalin's express
approval. They included Edward Osobka-Morawski (Chairman), Stanislaw
Radkiewicz (Security), and Michal Rola-Zymierski (Defence). These men, whose
adherence to Soviet policy was a prior condition of their nomination, were essen-
tially Soviet employees. They were destined to keep their jobs throughout the gov-
ernmental changes of the next three years. At this stage, they were completely
dependent on Moscow's support. As Stalin himself told Rola-Zymierski, 'When
the Soviet Army has gone, they will shoot you like partridges.'^4
A vital element of the arrangement lay in the provision that the PKWN cede
full control of the Soviet Army's 'rear areas' to the Soviet security forces. In
practice, the 'rear areas' came to encompass the whole of Poland, and the 'secu-
rity forces' consisted of a second army of occupation entirely independent of the
main Soviet military command. For the NKVD was a law unto itself. It pos-
sessed several divisions of elite troops at its own disposal; it ran the counter-
intelligence organization 'Smyersh'; and it posessed its own private cadres of
policemen, detectives, agents, and procurators, to whom all the nascent Polish
security organs were subordinated. As a result, the former 'Gestapoland' passed
almost without interruption into an unrestrained hunting-ground for Beria's
men. Symbolically, the former HQ of the Gestapo at Natolin outside Warsaw
was immediately taken over by the NKVD command. Throughout Poland, as
the military Front advanced, Gestapo prisons became NKVD prisons; former