Our Notes & References

A fascinating piece of political lobbying, published in May 1945 by anti-Soviet Poles in exile and claiming Eastern Galicia for Poland, with a wealth of statistics and three maps.

From 1944, a group of people naming themselves the ‘Polish Ministry of Preparatory Work Concerning the Peace Conference’, affiliated with the London-based Polish government-in-exile, started a series of ‘Information Notes’ discussing post-war Polish and surrounding territories. “Primarily intended for the use of students and writers on international affairs” (introduction), these Notes were aimed above all, directly or indirectly, at the governments taking part in peace conferences, especially in Potsdam in July 1945. Trying to “give the basic facts essential to the settlement of Polish post-war problems” (introduction), the exiled Polish officials intended to convey their anti-Soviet views on the future politics of the country.

In spite of writing here as a ‘Polish Ministry’, they deemed necessary to clarify at the beginning that “any opinions [here] are not necessarily those of the Polish Government”, which was fully Soviet-backed at the time.

The authors definitely want Lvyv and the surrounding region to come back to Poland – like other territories: the booklet states that Lvyv (Lwów) and Vilnius (Wilno) are the two most beautiful cities of Poland. The work gives a fine historical overview since the foundation of the city, showing in parallel and in a positive light Lvyv’s important role in Polish history as well as the Polish contribution to the region. The city and Galicia are described in various details, including rather extensive statistics, covering in particular the strong Jewish population, the use of various languages (Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, German), and industrial output, focusing on the regional oil production and its importance for Poland.

While two maps discuss borders, the third one gives a visual representation of the pre-war, 1931 ‘nationalities in main towns of Eastern Galicia’.

An extensive bibliography in English, German and Polish concludes the publication.

It seems that ours is the last of seven ‘Information Notes’ published. The other ones cover not only territorial questions, but also economic themes as well as questions of populations (such as the German minority in Poland, in the sixth Note).

Scarce: we could trace only 3 copies of this booklet in the US (Chicago, Kansas and Yale) and one in Canada (Lethbridge). There are some copies in Europe (UK, Netherlands, Germany and Poland) but we couldn’t find any example passing through the trade in recent decades.

The other ‘Information Notes’ are equally uncommon, with inconsistent and patchy holdings: they are usually found independently from each other.

Provenance

Prof. Philip Longworth (1933-2021, historian and writer, esp. on Russian history).