New Boiling Point

Just before he flew back from Moscow to London (TIME, Aug. 14), Premier Mikolajczyk asked correspondents if they could tell him who one of the negotiators from Chelm was: a man named Boleslaw Berut. Mikolajczyk had never heard of Berut before. Last week the Lublin government announced that the practically unknown Communist was now President of Poland. His appointment disregarded the fact that Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz has been President in Exile of Poland since October 1939. It also raised the Polish problem to a new boiling point. Plainly Moscow had decided that it was time for the Lublin Poles to act as the official government of Poland.

The decision was underlined by three other moves. The Lublin government: P:Concluded two treaties--with Soviet Ukraine and Soviet White Russia--thus demonstrating one use of the Soviet decree of Feb. 1, 1944 granting the constituent Soviet republics independent control of their own foreign affairs.

P: Began to draft a Polish army of from 200,000 to 500,000 men, banned all other Polish military organizations. Presumably this ban would include the London Government's strong Partisan groups, among which are the forces of General Bor, who was still holding out against the Germans in Warsaw. (Last week, for the first time, Red Army planes dropped supplies to the embattled Partisans in the city.)

P: Decreed an agrarian reform which amounted to a government-sponsored social revolution. Next week the Lublin government will confiscate without compensation all farms of more than 250 acres, redistribute them in twelve-and-a-half-acre lots to poor and landless peasants.

The treaties with the Soviet republics concerned a population transfer of Poles from White Russia and the Ukraine, of White Russians and Ukrainians from Poland. Individuals may decide whether or not they want to move.

Inducements to move include forgiveness of all forms of debt and insurance payments, remission of taxes for two years, granting of five-year loans of 5,000 zloties or rubles (about $1,000). Expatriates may take along their livestock and two tons of goods per family. They will be compensated for property left behind. Peasants who donate their crops to the state will be compensated. On paper the plan looked good. But it would have to be carried out amid mounting tensions.

Last week there were unmistakable signs that not all Poles recognized the right of the Lublin government to govern them. Polpress, the Lublin government's new semiofficial press agency, reported violent resistance to Lublin's efforts to draft its new army, assassination of officials who tried to enforce the decree. Lublin blamed "internal delegates" of the Polish Government in Exile for these "gangster attacks," threatened them with "the full rigor of the law." "All good Poles," said Polpress, greeted the draft with enthusiasm.

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