"Forcibly Expelled from Poland." Ukraine Changes Law on Deportees

The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, recognized on Wednesday those citizens who were forcibly displaced from Poland (the Polish People's Republic) after World War II as deported. The adopted law guarantees these individuals or their family members compensation from the state in the form of a one-time financial aid payment.

The new law amends the 2014 law on the restoration of the rights of persons deported on ethnic grounds. The 2014 law defined deportation as "the forced resettlement, for reasons of nationality, of nations, national minorities, and persons from their places of permanent residence based on decisions made by state authorities of the former USSR or union republics." The law now adds that this definition also applies to those forcibly resettled from Poland , "including under international agreements between the USSR and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic—PAP), which was part of the Soviet Union, with Poland in the years 1944-51.

The previous version of the law stated that Ukraine considered deportations carried out based on decisions by the authorities of the then USSR and the union republics to be "illegal and criminal acts." This section has now been amended to also list decisions made under international agreements between the USSR/USSR and Poland in 1944-51.

The Act states that it applies to "persons who were forcibly resettled in the years 1944-51 as persons of Ukrainian ethnic origin" and that these resettlements were accompanied by the confiscation of property and the restriction of political, social, economic and cultural rights.

Data on the Verkhovna Rada website shows that the changes have been considered by parliament since 2019.

On September 9, 1944, the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) government, imposed on Poland by Joseph Stalin, signed a population exchange agreement with the government of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), providing for the voluntary departure of Ukrainians from Poland. A year later, in September 1945, three divisions of the Polish Army began forcibly expelling the Ukrainian population. This operation was carried out brutally. Professor Jan Pisuliński, author of the first monograph on the deportation of Polish Ukrainians to the USSR, estimated in 2017 that between 1944 and 1947, nearly half a million Ukrainians left 22 counties in southeastern Poland, of whom a quarter of a million were forcibly deported. (PAP)

awl/ mms/ mhr/