Komitet Wszechsłowiański w Moskwie 1941-1947

Abstract

The Pan-Slavonic Committee in Moscow was founded at the instigation of the Soviet leadership in the period of the first serious defeats suffered by USSR in the war with the Germans. It established its constitutional and organisational shape and its programme in the months of August to October 1941. Its task was, by calling on common origins and customs of the Slavonic peoples and the Slavonic traditions of national liberation struggles, to activate the armed fight at the rear of the German armies, and also to gain moral, political and material support for the USSR and other Slavonis countries among the Slavonic emigres. The Committee attempted to implement its propaganda and educational objectives by the organisation of mass events (e. g. the Pan-Slavonic congresses in Moscow), by preparing proclamations and appeals to the Slavonic nations, radio programmes, articles in the Soviet and foreign press or Slavonic themes, visits to army units, issuing the periodical „Slawianie” and other initiatives. According to ist founding principles the Committee was designed to be an overall-democratic antifascist organisation and a representative of the new direction in development of the Slavonic ideathe so-called Slavonic movement. It was supposed to act, during and after the war, to promote the development and strengthening of cooperation between all the Slavonic nations and states. However, already during the war time this principle became warped. The Committee began to show itself as the executor and odvocate of the political interests of the communist movement and the imperialist objectives of Stalinism. This came about, among other things, due to the fact that the Committee members were almost exclusively communists to whom the Slavonic ideas were entirely foreign. Moreover, the Committee was not an independent institution but subjected both in its activities and organisation to the Soviet authorities and the Sovinformbiuro. Hence obviously the Committee’s efforts did not meet with any support from the representatives of emigre governments, e.g. Polish or Jugoslavian or from the noncommunist independence activists in the Slav countries. After the war the Committee was the force behind the formation in Slavonic countries dependent on the USSR of Slavonic national committees (among others, a Slavonic Committee was set up in Poland in 1945). In the context of the political situation of the time the activities of these Committees rapidly became one of the means of gaining sympathy for communism and for the Soviet Union among the populations of the Slavonic countries. This led to almost complete alienation from the actual idea of Slavonic unity and consequently to its demise. After the Slavonic Congress in Belgrade (December 1946) when a new Pan-Slavonic organisation, the All-Slavonic Committee was formed, at the beginning of 1947 the Moscow Pan-Slavonic Committee reformed itself and became the USSR Slavonic Committee. It should be added that the Soviet-Jugoslavian conflict caused the breaking off of the operations of the Pan-Slavonic Committee in Belgrade.