In the aftermath of the death of
Joseph Stalin and the start of
destalinization, about 250,000 people were repatriated, including about 25,000 political prisoners from the
Gulags. Notable Poles repatriated during that time include
Czesław Niemen,
Władysław Kozakiewicz,
Lew Rywin, and
Anna Seniuk. By the late 1940s, up to one million ethnic Poles remained in the Soviet Union. Deprived of all educated leaders, who had already left for Poland, the Poles found themselves in the middle of several local conflicts, which took place in the
Lithuanian SSR and
Ukrainian SSR (see
Lithuanian partisans,
Ukrainian Insurgent Army). In the western part of
Byelorussian SSR, which still had a
substantial Polish minority, several Polish guerrilla units operated until the early 1950s, especially in the area of
Lida. Furthermore, the campaign of
collectivization affected Polish villages from a wide belt, ranging from
Vilnius to Ukraine’s
Ternopil. Those farmers who resisted it were sent to
Siberia, and the terror continued until the mid-1950s. On 15 November 1956, a Polish delegation consisting of
Władysław Gomułka and
Józef Cyrankiewicz left for Moscow to initiate talks about the so-called repatriation. Due to their efforts, by end of that year some 30,000 Poles were allowed to leave the Soviet Union and settle in the
People's Republic of Poland. On 25 March 1957, the ministers of internal affairs of both countries,
Wladyslaw Wicha and
Nikolay Dudorov, signed an agreement, upon which all individuals who before 17 September 1939 (see
Soviet invasion of Poland) were citizens of the
Second Polish Republic, together with their spouses and children, were able to move to Poland. In many cases, however, Polish citizenship was difficult to prove, since documents were missing or lost. In such situations, the Polish government had to provide evidence. Furthermore, ethnic Poles were scattered not only in former eastern provinces of Poland, but also all over the Soviet Union. Reaching them was often difficult, and to make matters worse, the process was overseen by the former Stalinist prosecutor, , who had himself sent Poles to Siberia in the 1940s. Despite all these obstacles, the number of repatriated Poles steadily grew: Altogether, in the five-year period, 245,501 Poles left the Soviet Union. The vast majority of them came from former Polish territory,
Kresy Wschodnie - from the Lithuanian SSR (46,552),
Byelorussian SSR (100,630), and
Ukrainian SSR (76,059). Most of them settled in the
Recovered Territories, where they found employment at
State Agricultural Farms. After the repatriation, some 360,000 Poles still remained in Soviet Ukraine. Most of them resided in the area of
Zhytomyr and
Berdychiv, but also in the city of
Lviv, where in 1959 the Polish population was about 17,000. In Soviet Belarus, some 540,000 Poles remained, and in Lithuania, 230,000. ==See also==