416 POLSKA LUDOWA
In one area, in the treatment of Poland's German minority, the Polish
Communist security services must have earned special admiration from their
Soviet mentors. Particularly in Silesia, German civilians were being rounded up
and maltreated long before the programme of compulsory expulsion approved
at Potsdam was organized. Ex-Nazi prisons and camps were filled with inno-
cents. The jail at Gliwice and the old Oflag at Lambinowice witnessed thousands
upon thousands of deaths. In Wroclaw, the Communist militia preyed on the
dwindling German community without mercy.^6 The expulsion itself was marred
by rape, robbery, and murder.^7 Details of the excesses were not publicly docu-
mented until the 1990s.^8 The first trial of a post-war Communist camp-guard
accused of murder did not take place until the start of the next century (in 2001).
The doubtful legality of the PKWN was of less significance than its practical
subordination to the Soviet authorities. On 31 December 1944, it claimed the
status of a provisional government (RTRP), and on the next morning adjusted
its name accordingly. This step, which was formally recognized only by the
USSR, marks the moment when Stalin finally cast the prevailing ambiguities in
Soviet policy aside. Preparing to meet with Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta, he
made it abundantly clear for the first time, that the future regime in Poland
would principally lie in the hands of his own appointees. Henceforth, the
chances that the Polish Government-in-Exile in London might play an equal role
in post-war Warsaw were very slim indeed. Yet the blessings of unqualified
Soviet support were not unmixed. Unqualified Soviet support implied
unqualified Soviet control. The PPR, in particular, keenly resented its lot. At
a meeting of the Plenum of the Central Committee on 21-2 May 1945,
General-Secretary Gomulka complained that 'the masses do not regard us as
Polish communists at all, but just as the most despicable agents of the NKVD'
(enkawudowska najgorsza agentura). Zawadzki feared that the raping and
looting of the Soviet Army would provoke a civil war. Ochab declared that the
main problems facing the Party were those of the withdrawal of the Soviet Army
and of 'Polish sovereignty'.^9
The position of the RTRP was greatly strengthened on 21 April 1945 by the
signing of a Polish-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Mutual Aid, and Co-operation.
This Treaty, which confirmed the Soviet view of Poland's frontiers and the
Soviet hold over political security in Poland, was drawn up in Moscow without
any reference either to the Western Powers or to the Government-in-Exile, or
indeed to any democratically elected body. Yet it committed Poland to the
Soviet camp for no less than twenty years ahead. It was prompted by the
impending deliberations of the first Conference of the United Nations at San
Francisco, whose prospective decisions regarding Poland it effectively pre-
empted. It was, in fact, a very timely fait accompli, whose one-sided terms,
renewed for a further twenty years in 1965, have determined Poland's domina-
tion by the USSR ever since. Once it was signed and sealed, the leaders of the
RTRP could look forward with equanimity to their intended merger with more
representative Polish politicians from London.