Experiencing Borders and Resettlement in Postwar Lviv: Everyday Practices

State Archives of Lviv Oblast (DALO), P-1350: Resettlement Department of the Lviv Oblast Executive Committee, inventory 2, case 118, volume VII, sheet 4–5.(Materials on complaints from resettlers from Poland (including complaints and correspondence with the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and with oblast and district executive committees, as well as other party and Soviet bodies, regarding the resolution of complaints, 1954)).

[Resolution: “We must help!” Signature and date illegible on the margins of the document.]

Kyiv, 14 Shevchenko Boulevard

Resettlement Committee

I, Myroslava Pavlivna Lozynska, born in 1924, have a secondary education. I am a resettler from Poland (1946) and Ukrainian by nationality.

From 1950 until July 22, 1953, I worked in Lviv as a second-class saleswoman in Store No. 1 of “Yuvelirtorh,” earning a salary of 399 rubles.

Throughout my employment, I never received a single complaint from customers or supervisors.

At the end of 1952, K. H. Yanitska, a Polish nationalist and the wife of a Polish army officer who has lived in England since 1939, was appointed head of my department.

From her very first day, she treated me with open hostility and harassed me relentlessly because I am Ukrainian and a resettler. Her behavior made it impossible for me to continue working in that store. On several occasions, I appealed to the manager of the Interoblast Office of “Yuvelirtorh,” Comrade I. I. Matov, asking to be transferred to another store, but he deliberately ignored my requests, saying, “Wait, disregard her—Yanitska is crazy,” and so on. In the end, I was forced to submit a resignation request on July 22, 1953.

I am a widow—my husband, an accountant at a savings bank and an athlete, died in an accident in 1944 in the city of Peremyshl.

I have two children, born in 1943 and 1944, who are entirely dependent on me.

Since my dismissal, as I have no earnings, I have been searching for work, but in vain. Everywhere I go, people express sympathy, yet the answer is always the same: “We have nothing for you—come back tomorrow” and so on. Comrade Dobrzhynskyi, head of the Oblast Trade Department, is so busy that he cannot spare a single minute for local residents or displaced people.

For this reason, I have appealed to the party organizations in Lviv, asking for assistance in finding employment.

Comrade Kikh, a deputy and member of the Lviv and Kyiv oblast committees, took up my case right away. At her request, both the Lviv Oblast Trade Department (headed by Dobrzhynskyi) and the Interoblast Office of “Yuvelirtorh” (headed by Comrade Matov) promised to employ me immediately.

However, five months have now passed, and I have still not been hired. My children and I have nothing to live on.

Based on the above, I respectfully request that an order be issued to employ me in Lviv in a position corresponding to my qualifications, so that I may support my children and live a peaceful life, something guaranteed to every citizen by Stalin’s just Constitution.

I attach my character reference to this application.

/M. P. Lozynska/

Address: Lviv, Kolhospna (Hallia) Street, No. 7, Apt. 2.

December 18, 1953

State Archives of Lviv Oblast (DALO), fund П-319, inventory 1, case 22 (Work plans and minutes of party meetings of the Lviv Tobacco Factory, 1954), sheets 42–43.

Minutes No. 5 of the meeting of the Party Bureau of the Primary Party Organization of the Lviv Tobacco Factory, September 3, 1954.

Present: Members of the Party Bureau – Melikhov, Nakonechnyi, Glebkina, Moskal, Yurenko.

Agenda:

1. <…>
2.  <…>
3. Regarding the statement of Comrade Berezhetska, medical center worker.
4. <…>
5. <…>

3. Reported by: Comrade Melikhov, on the statement by Comrade Berezhetska, medical center worker.

Comrade Berezhetska appealed to the party organization on July 12 with a complaint stating that the cloakroom attendant, Comrade Mudshytuk, during a review of her complaint in the director’s office, expressed the opinion that Comrade Berezhetska is a Pole and has no place in the Soviet Union, but should live in Poland, where she could engage in the slaughter of Ukrainians and shed their blood.

Speakers:

Nakonechnyi: The claim that Comrade Mudshytuk used the women’s hygiene room for purposes other than intended has not been confirmed. We called Comrade Grisiyo and spoke with him about the matter. He is elderly, and it seems to me that there was nothing of the sort.

Comrade Mudshytuk was raised in Poland, in Panska Poland; she is herself a migrant and has personally experienced national hostility. Therefore, some remnants of this still persist in her. She was wrong to express an idea alien to Leninist-Stalinist national policy. It is trur that she prevented cigarettes from being stored in the medical station, and you as well, Comrade Berezhetska, has not been entirely honest about that.

Melikhov: I do not know what led you, Comrade Berezhetska, to escalate your relations with Comrade Mudshytuk to this extent. But this is not what we are discussing now. What we are concerned about is that Comrade Mudshytuk voiced a nationalist idea aimed at inciting national hostility. Everyone knows that all peoples live in friendship and harmony in the Soviet Union, thanks to the respectable policy of the Party on the national question. Any actions aimed at provoking national enmity in the Soviet Union will be punished. Dismissal is not appropriate—it would be unwise. Our task is to educate people. I propose that Comrade Mudshytuk be given a reprimand, and that Communist Shnerkh carry out explanatory work among the workers of the medical center and the economic department.

Resolved: To reprimand Comrade Mudshytuk for expressing views alien to the Soviet system. To instruct the FZK (factor committee, trans.) and Comrade Shnerkh to conduct explanatory work at the medical center and the economic department on the question of friendship among the peoples of the USSR.