Sztandar Wolności
Sztandar Wolności (English: The Banner of Freedom), was a Polish language newspaper published by the bolshevik Communist Party of Byelorussia in the city of Minsk, between October 1940 and June 1941. The paper existed for less than a year following the Soviet invasion of Poland, and the annexation of Kresy into Byelorussian SSR. Its purpose was to bring the Soviet mindset closer to the ethnically Polish citizens caught under conditions of occupation. Sztandar Wolności shut down during the subsequent German attack on the Soviet positions in eastern Poland, known as Operation Barbarossa.[1]
The editorial staff was composed of Belarusians as well as prewar communists from Poland who chose to collaborate with the Soviets against the Second Polish Republic. They included Jakub Berman and Janina Broniewska. Meanwhile, all press published by Poland was dismantled and banned by the Red Army Directive # 1 of 16 September 1939, and the Polish paper stock forcibly requisitioned.[1]
Notes
- 1 2 Bartłomiej Bernacki, Organizacja i funkcjonowanie sowieckiego rynku prasowego na ziemiach północno-wschodnich II RP w latach 1939–1941 (Organization and the activities of Soviet press in the north-eastern territory of the Second Republic in 1939-1941) Białoruskie Zeszyty Historyczne, 22 (2004), pp. 1-35. OCLC 36703466