Kilka dokumentów z dziejów ruchu prometejskiego lat drugiej wojny światowej
Promethean Movement during the Second World War

Summary/Abstract: The Promethean movement in the policy of II Republic of Poland consisted in offering support to the independence movements and strivings of the peoples making up the then Soviet Union. With active participation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (henceforth referred to as: MFA), II Branch of the General (Main) Command – intelligence services and a number of research institutes, close contacts had been maintained with the émigré governments and politicians representing various nations of the Soviet Union. In recent years, the pressure of current policy has led to a renewed interest in issues relating to Prometheism, which brought about a crop of a number of valuable papers devoted to the interwar period. A lot has already been written about the Promethean movement following the end of the Second World War. Yet relatively little has been written about the war-time history of the movement. The documents presented below are associated with the war period, following the Soviet invasion of Finland. Among the circles of the French and British staff officers there even appeared a conception of bombing the oil fields in the Caucasus – naturally taking advantage of the Turkish airspace and the French military bases on the territory of Syria. It was thought that the subjugated nations in the Caucasus would then rise up against their oppressor. It was in such an atmosphere that a meeting between the representatives of the Caucasian nations and W. Bąkiewicz, which constitutes the subject-matter of analysis contained in the first of the published documents, took place in Istanbul. The second document is a translation of the treaty of the Caucasian Confederacy whereas the third document dates back to the autumn of 1940 and constitutes a commentary to the memorial concerning Promethean issues submitted by a reporter and Promeathean activist W. Pelc; the commentary had been written by Prof. Olgierd Górka, an expert of the Polish government in exile specializing in ethic issues. The above documents are associated with a rather peculiar and paradoxical situation which arose after the fall of the Polish state when for a brief period a time, thanks to propitious political circumstances, Prometheism had a chance to succeed. The conception was to have been realized in cooperation with the allies – France and Great Britain; the pact between Poland and the Allies was to have been directed against the totalitarian Soviet system and indirectly against the Nazi system. However a change of the international situation had quickly made the realization of these plans impossible.

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