860c.01/8–945

No. 1136
Memorandum by the Polish Deputy Prime Minister (Mikołajczyk)1
[Translation]
secret

Poland is to be strong, free, independent and sovereign. Poland is to live in alliance with Soviet Russia, with Great Britain and France, and in friendship with the United States and the Slav countries.

This is possible on the following conditions:

(1)
The Soviet forces and the NKVD should quit the territories accorded to, and delimited for, the Polish State.
(2)
The Polish Army is to become a national army.
(3)
The so-called Security should cease to terrorize the community.
(4)
The émigrés and Polish troops should return swiftly, and elections should be held, before which the western frontiers should be settled.
(5)
There should be freedom of the Press and freedom of concourse and the genuine organization of the five Parties in Poland. The [Page 1129] P. P. R. (translators note—the Polish Labor Party or really, the Communist Party) does enjoy these freedoms, the P. P. S. (Polish Socialist Party) only enjoys them in part, whilst the Democratic party is at this moment more or less an extension of the P. P. R.
The Peasant’s Party, thanks to which the Provisional Government of National Unity has been formed and the Polish Government recognised, does not have freedom of action, nor does the Labor Party.
(6)
Personal freedom and the right of property should be safeguarded within the framework of the law.
(7)
The elections should take place at the latest in December or February on the basis of the electoral laws resulting from the 1921 constitution. There must be found a method of ensuring the fairness of the elections. Fair elections are impossible as long as Soviet troops and the NKVD remain in Poland. Elections on the basis of the 1921 constitution are rendered impossible by interpretations relating to the electoral system. These follow the conception of the PKWN (translator’s note: Polish Committee of National Liberation), which was based on the 1921 constitution, and they introduce artificial majorities by the appointment—beside the political parties—of various professional and social organizations which are adjuncts of a party already possessing its own representatives in Parliament (Sejm).

  1. Handed to Harriman at a meeting attended also by Dunn and Matthews. See ante, p. 395.