Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (26 page)

Yet some things didn’t change. The Red Army marched as always to the sound of political propaganda. Once again, the Red Army was advancing to liberate the people. So it was taken for granted that the people should rise in arms to welcome their liberators.

He would be described as ‘the son of a Warsaw railwayman’, ‘the Marshal of Two Nations’, a true proletarian and internationalist, who had chosen the services of Russia and the Revolution from his own free will. The description was not entirely true. But it served the purpose. For on the central sector of the Eastern Front in early 1944, Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky was the man of the moment. The General who had delivered the coup de grâce to the German army at Stalingrad had now been chosen to spearhead the Red Army’s attack on the Reich, heading in the first instance for the Vistula. It is more than likely that he harboured ambitions to lead the subsequent attack on Berlin.

The beauty of the story, for those who wished to embroider it, was that the Soviet commander could himself be presented as a son of the Vistula Land. He had certainly spent much of his youth there. With the help of relatives, he had been able to attend the
Gymnazium
of the Merchants’ Company in Warsaw. He was said to have worked as a stonemason’s apprentice on the Poniatovski Bridge: and, in 1912, after participating in a revolutionary protest, to have spent time in the notorious Paviak Jail.

In reality, Rokossovsky was a typical product of the ethnically mixed borderlands of the old Tsarist Empire. He was not a full-blooded Russian; but he was not really a Pole either. His father was descended from a family of déclassé Polish nobles, who had participated in the Risings of 1831 and 1863 and who had subsequently been stripped of their lands and status. By adopting the elite profession of train driver, he travelled widely in the western provinces of the Empire, and married a Russian woman. Konstanty was their eldest son, born on 21 December 1896, when they
were living at Velikie Luki, an important railway junction in north-western Russia. He apparently spoke Polish to his father’s side of the family, and Russian to his mother’s side. He moved with his parents to Warsaw at the age of five, and took up residence on Steel Street in the right-bank suburb of Praga. Thanks to his accent, he was reportedly teased by the local children, who called him ‘Rusek’ (‘little Russian’). Less than two years later, when his father was killed in a railway accident, he was left with his Russian mother to struggle along as best they could. Fortunately, the boy was tall, handsome, strong, and athletic.

One should remember, of course, that the ‘
’ of the early twentieth century, which Rokossovsky would have remembered, was in the middle of a wave of intense Russification. It was not the proud Polish city of past and future times. It was a provincial Tsarist city, full of Russian officials and of Russian soldiers, the centre of a region which had been told to forget all its previous historic connections and which had recently been renamed the ‘Privislanskiy Kray’ or ‘Vistula Land’. Its skyline was dominated by the massive Russian Orthodox Cathedral, then under construction. As one learns from the childhood memoirs of another resident, Mme Curie, Russian was the language of instruction in all schools, even for pupils whose mother tongue was not Russian. All the main street signs were written in Russian. Russian money was in circulation, Russian weights and measures were in force, and time was measured by the old Russian calendar, thirteen days behind the rest of Europe. For Western tourists, who arrived clasping their Baedekers, this was the gateway to Tsardom:

Warsaw
(
Warszawa
,
: Ger
Warschau
, FF.
Varsovie
; 320 ft.), the capital of the General Government of Warsaw and an important railway centre, lies on the left bank of the
Vistula
. [It is located] on the elevated edge of a valley, descending abruptly to the river, here
¹
/
₄
–
¹
₃
m. in width, and gradually merging on the W. in a wide and undulating plain. The city contains 872,500 inhab. . . . and a strong garrison. Its appearance is far more like that of West Europe than of Russia. Warsaw is the seat of the Governor-General of Warsaw, . . . of [two] Archbishops, of the Commandant of the military district . . . and of a Russian university. Divided into twelve police precincts (including Praga), [it] consists of the
Old Town
(
,
Stare Miasto
), the
New Town
, (
,
Nove Miasto
), to the N., and of
Vola
,
Mokotó v
, and other suburbs. On the right bank of the Vistula lies
Praga
. The river is crossed by three bridges . . . Whole quarters of the town are occupied by Jews, whose inattention to personal cleanliness has become proverbial. Warsaw is a flourishing industrial centre . . . and carries on a considerable trade.

Warsaw . . . is said to have been founded in the 12th cent., and . . . till 1526 was the residence of the Dukes of Masovia, on whose extinction it fell to Poland. King Sigismund II. Augustus fixed his residence here in 1550, and Sigismund III. [Vasa] made it the capital After the extinction of the Jagiello family in 1572, all the kings of Poland were elected on the Field of Vola. . . . Both Augustus II. and Augustus III. took great pride in the beautification of their capital . . . After the death of August III. (Oct. 5th, 1763) [it] was the scene of constant disorder, until the Russians . . . forced the electors to choose the colourless Stanislaus Poniatovski as their king. . . . Fresh disorder in 1794 ended in . . . the third partition of Poland. Poniatovski abdicated; Warsaw fell to the share of Prussia and became capital of the province of South Prussia.

On Nov. 28th, 1806, the French, under Davout and Murat, entered Warsaw. By the Peace of Tilsit (July 7th, 1807) . . . [it] was made the capital of a grand-duchy. The Congress of Vienna (1814) transferred the grand-duchy to Russia, which raised Warsaw to the rank of capital of the kingdom of Poland. The great Polish Revolution of 1830 began with an uprising in Warsaw, and ended on Sept. 7th, 1831, with the storming of the city by the Russians under Paskévitch. Warsaw was also the focus of the risings against Russian rule in 1861–64. Since the restoration of quiet the growth of Warsaw’s prosperity has been continuous.

Principal Attractions
(1 day) Royal [Castle]: street scenes in the [Cracow Faubourg], the Marshalkovska, and the Novy Sviat: the Saxon Garden: view from the lantern of the Lutheran Church: Aleya Uyazdovska, especially towards evening: Imperial Château of Lazienki: Cathedral of St John: Old Town: the Alexander Bridge. Those who have a little more time should not omit a visit to Villanov. . . .

To the right of [the Cracow Faubourg] rises the Greek Catholic Cathedral of St Alexander Nevski, built in the Byzantine style in 1894–1912 from the plans of Benois. It has five gilded domes and a separate belfry, 240 ft. high. To the W. stands the former Saxon
Palace, once the residence of Polish Kings . . . [now] the headquarters of the Military District. To the N. is the former Bruhl Palace, built by the favourite of Augustus III. and now the Telegraph Office. . . .

By following the Zyazd, the wide street which descends from the [Castle] Square, we obtain a good view of the water-front . . . Below the terrace lie some of the stables of the
sotnyas
(squadrons) of the Circassians and Cossacks forming the Governor-General’s bodyguard . . .

Praga
Again starting from [Castle] Square, we follow the Zyazd towards the E. and reach the iron-girder Alexander Bridge . . . 560 yds. long and constructed by Kierbed
(1865). Smoking on the bridge is forbidden.

The bridge affords a pretty view. To the N. we see the Citadel, commanding the Vistula, the railway-bridge, and the buildings of the Old and New Towns, extending down to the brink of the river. In front of us, on the hill, lies the Royal [Castle] . . . with its terraced garden and the church of St Anne.

The bridge leads to the once fortified suburb of Praga on the right bank of the Vistula.

After the second partition of Poland, Praga . . . was captured by Suvorov, at the head of 25,000 Russians, on Nov. 5th, 1794 . . . Suvorov informed the Empress of his victory in the three words ‘Hurrah, Praga, Suvorov,’ and she replied, ‘Bravo, F-M, Catherine.’

In the Alexandrovska, to the right is the Gothic Church of SS Florian & Michael erected in 1901; to the left the small Greek Catholic Church of Mary Magdalen with five gilded domes (1869). The Alexander Park stretching along the Vistula is frequented mainly by the lower classes.
⁵

For Rokossovsky’s generation, Warsaw was the epicentre of revolution and rebellion. The November Rising of 1830–31 and the January Rising of 1863–64 had both led to bitter Russo-Polish wars, and had both served as major catalysts in the growth of modern Russian nationalism. In 1905–6, Warsaw joined St Petersburg in the revolutionary disturbances; and determined strikes lasted longer in the Tsar’s Polish provinces than in Russia proper. The long history of conflict had created a stereotype. In Russian eyes, Warsaw was a nest of troublemakers.