Letter to the Prime Minister of Poland 10 December 2017

My wife and I sent a letter to the prime minister of Poland. The letter is dated 10 December 2017. It is nine pages long.

The full text of the letter is published on my website lsborkowski.com.

Bolshoi mistake of the BBC

Reporting on the concert marking the 26th anniversary of John Paul II pontificate, BBC made an important mistake:

16 October, 2004
Pope John Paul II has marked his 26th year as head of the Roman Catholic Church by attending a concert given by Russia's Red Army Choir. [...]
On the stage, bathed in red light, the choir founded 70 years ago by soldiers who took part in the Bolshevik revolution sang traditional Russian songs in full dress military uniform. [...]
[The Pope] seemed delighted [...]

In Russia there are two choirs bearing the same name of Red Army Choir. One is indeed the army choir. The other, however, is an ensemble of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, established in 1939 as the Ensemble of the NKVD. The concert in the Vatican was given by the NKVD Ensemble (see also here). The BBC text refers to the Alexandrov Ensemble, which is the original Red Army Choir.

29 January 2021, Correction

I have to correct the post. The BBC reported correctly that the Red Army Choir visited the Pope JPII in October 2004. The Choir of the Ministry for Internal Affairs came to the Vatican at the end of the 1980s. This, however, makes John Paul II look even worse.

The BBC report does not mention the Red Army Choir's last song of their Vatican performance, which was "Oka". Oka is the anthem of the Polish Communist First Division formed in the Soviet Union in 1943.

Bolshevik deception

The website of the Polish 11th Armored Cavalry Division includes a page devoted to its history. The Division was originally formed as the 11th Infantry Division of the 3rd Communist Army. The formation process began in October 1944 in the area of Lublin. Division formation was abandoned after nearly three months. Earlier the formation of the 3rd Army was also abandoned.

The Division was formed again in the area of Łódź in March 1945. The name was later altered to Motorized, Mechanized, Armored, again Mechanized, and finally Armored Cavalry in 1992.

Communists decided to equip the division with the "traditions" of the Communist 1st Dresden Armored Corps from the last days of WWII in Europe.

Dirty trick no. 1.
The name of King Jan III Sobieski was added in 1983. This was of course a dirty trick, since Communists did not want and essentially did not have anything in common with earlier Polish traditions.

Dirty trick no. 2
The website claims that Division became a heir to "tradition of the 1st Polish Armored Division under command of gen. Stanisław Maczek", which fought in western Europe together with forces of Poland's western allies. Poland's western army was under control of the legal Polish government located for most of WWII in exile in London.

This history article is illustrated with pictures of Polish soldiers of the Polish Army on the western front, subordinated to the Polish government in exile.

There is not a single picture of soldiers of the Communist 11th Division in the entire article.

The declaration of continuation of traditions of the 1st Polish Armored Division is fake, of course.

Polish version of this text

Bridges to nowhere

When I looked at the website of the project Knowledge Bridges Between Poland, Britain and Europe, which ran during the academic year 2016-17 at St Antony's College at the University of Oxford European Studies Centre, I found nothing that I could identify as significant from my perspective. This is a program aimed at preservation of an essentially Communist/Russian narrative. Important questions are not asked.

The opening sentence of introduction to that program reads

"Nearly 30 years after its democratic breakthrough, Poland poses a puzzling and fascinating case for scholars, public intellectuals, and journalists."

This sentence is indicative of a very deep, fundamental failure in the study of this region of Europe. Unfortunately U of Oxford is not alone in this failure.

Lech S. Borkowski's Letter to the Prosecutor General of Poland 19 February 2016

My 25-page letter to the Prosecutor General of Poland is in Polish and has not been translated yet.

- - - - - - - - - -

Dr hab. Lech S. Borkowski
[...]
Zielona Góra

Andrzej Seremet
Prokurator Generalny
ul. Rakowiecka 26/30
02-528 Warszawa

Zielona Góra, 19 Lutego 2016

Szanowny Panie Prokuratorze,

Informuję o łamaniu praw człowieka i praw podstawowych moich, mojej żony i mojej córki.

Moja rodzina - ja, moja żona i córka - została zaatakowana w roku szkolnym (akademickim) 2011/12. Działania przeciwko mnie były prowadzone na Uniwersytecie im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu od początku mojego zatrudnienia, tj. od 1995 r. Pierwsze represje wobec mojej żony pojawiły się wkrótce po zawarciu przez nas związku małżeńskiego. We wrześniu 2011 rozpoczęto przeciwko niej serię brutalnych, bezwzględnych, niczym nie uzasadnionych prowokacji i represji w Państwowej Szkole Muzycznej w Zielonej Górze.

W lutym i w marcu 2012 zorganizowano jednoczesne prowokacje wymierzone w członków mojej rodziny.

(1) Ja zostałem zaatakowany na Wydziale Fizyki Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu,

(2) Moja żona została zaatakowana w jej miejscu pracy w Państwowej Szkole Muzycznej w Zielonej Górze,

(3) Moja córka Julia Borkowska została zaatakowana 8 i 9 lutego 2012 w szkole podstawowej przy ulicy Truskawkowej w Zielonej Górze.

W każdym z tych trzech przypadków zastosowano typowo komunistyczne metody prowokacji. Ataki zostały starannie zaplanowane, przygotowane i skoordynowane.

[...]

---

The letter is available at lsborkowski.com/pol/.

BUT HOW CAN WE BE SURE

On Monday, 3 April 2017, Russian authorities announced that a bomb exploded on a train in Sankt Petersburg's metro. The blast was said to have occurred in the train travelling between stations.

However, pictures and and video shown later were not convincing.

Skepticism is the correct approach towards all kinds of announcements by the Russian authorities and Russian media.

Although one might ask "But why would they lie"?, a more appropriate question is "Why wouldn't they"?

Paraphrasing words from one of Roy Lichtenstein's paintings, we should ask:

BUT... IN A POST-1917 WORLD HOW CAN WE BE SURE?

Comrade Capitalist

Yesterday, 1 April 2017, The Times of London published an article by Rachel Sylvester about Bill Browder (William Felix Browder), the grandson of the E. Browder (1891-1973), the General Secretary of Communist Party USA from 1930 to 1945. B. Browder allegedly rebelled against Communism in the family,

The grandson of Earl Browder, the former leader of the American Communist Party[*], he became a capitalist as an act of rebellion and spent more than a decade living as a businessman in Moscow, running Russia's most successful investment fund. He was deported in 2006 after he started to expose corruption, and was blacklisted by the Russian government as a "threat to national security". Since then he has been convicted in absentia on what he calls trumped-up charges and sentenced to nice years in jail.

This story is not credible. His success in Moscow was possible precisely because of the Communist heritage and the trust of the Russian leadership which he must have enjoyed. Capitalism here is only a facade.

Diagnosis: Bill Browder is not acting against Moscow's leadership, but with full support thereof.

Was the second name "Felix" given to him in reverence of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chief of the Communist secret police, first Cheka, then GPU and OGPU, in post-1917 Soviet Russia?

[*] It is interesting that the article does not provide the correct name of the Party, which is the Communist Party USA.