Kielce Pogrom - Theory of Soviet Involvement

Theory of Soviet Involvement

Scholars have alleged that the Kielce pogrom was organized by communist or Soviet forces, possibly for propaganda purposes. While it is beyond doubt that a mob consisting not only of civilian gentiles of Kielce but also members of the communist police and army carried out the pogrom, there has been considerable controversy over possible outside incitement. The hypothesis that the event was secretly provoked or inspired by Soviet intelligence services has been put forward, and a number of similar scenarios are offered. None has been proven by the post-communist investigation.

Aleksander Wat, Tadeusz Piotrowski, logician Abel Kainer (Stanisław Krajewski), and Jan Śledzianowski, allege that the events were part of a much wider action organized by Soviet intelligence in countries controlled by the Soviet Union (a very similar pogrom took place in Hungary), and that Soviet-dominated agencies like the UBP were used in the preparation of the Kielce pogrom. Polish communist and Soviet commanders were in the locality. The most notable was the Jewish expert Nathan Spychaj (a.k.a. Natan Shpilevoi or Szpilevoy) who was also the brother of a senior official in Stalin's puppet Polish regime; plus a high-ranking GRU officer for special operations, Mikhail Diomin. It was also uncommon behavior that numerous troops from security formations were present at the place and did not prevent the "mob" from gathering, at a time when even a gathering of five people was considered suspicious and immediately controlled.

Michael Checinski, a former Polish Military Counter-Intelligence officer, emigrated to United States after the 1968 Polish political crisis, where he published his book in which he asserts that the events of Kielce pogrom were a well planned action of the Soviet intelligence in Poland, with the main role in planning and controlling the events being played by Mikhail Diomin, and with the murders carried out by some Poles, including Polish policemen and military officers.

On July 19, 1946, former Chief Military Prosecutor Henryk Holder wrote in the letter to the deputy chief of LWP General Marian Spychalski that "we know that the pogrom wasn't only a fault of Police and Army guarding the people in and around the city of Kielce but also members of the official government who took a role in it."

One line of argument that implies external inspiration goes as follows: The 1946 referendum showed that the communists had little support and only vote rigging won them a majority in the carefully controlled poll - hence, it has been alleged that the UBP organized the pogrom to distract the Western world media's attention from the fabricated referendum. Another argument for the incident's use as distraction was the upcoming ruling on the Katyn massacre in the Nuremberg Trials, which the communists tried to turn international attention away from, placing the Poles in an unfavorable spotlight (the pogrom happened on July 4—the same day the Katyn case started in Nuremberg, after the Soviet prosecutors falsely accused the Nazis of the massacre which was actually committed by the Soviets themselves in 1940).

Jan T. Gross attributes the massacre to what he describes as Polish hostility towards the Jews. Gross's book, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, offers a somewhat different and more nuanced interpretation. Gross, while agreeing that the crime was initiated not by a mob, but by the communist police, and that it involved people from every walk of life except the highest level of government officials in the city, says that the indifference of the majority of Poles to the Jewish Holocaust combined with demands for the return of Jewish property confiscated during World War II created a climate of "fear" that pushed Poles to commit violence against Jews.