The Activities of the Liquidation Committee for the Affairs of Former Russian Legal Entities in Warsaw (1928–1933)

Abstract

The article deals with the activities of the Liquidation Committee for the Affairs of Former Russian Legal Entities in Warsaw in 1928–33. The main sources for the research were the minutes of the committee meetings and the documents to them (reports, inventory books, balance sheets) contained in the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus; minutes of meetings and working materials of the Polish-Russian-Ukrainian Settlement Commission stored in the Polish Archive of New Acts. By means of special historical methods and methods of statistical analysis, the activities of the Liquidation Committee were analyzed. The relationship of its work with the functioning of the Mixed Settlement Commission was established. Attention is drawn to the inefficiency of the meetings of the bilateral commission for mutual settlement between Poland, on the one hand, and the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR, on the other. The unwillingness of the parties to find an acceptable solution to the problem caused the launch of the liquidation process (sale, division and transfer of property to heirs or the Polish treasury) of joint-stock companies officially registered in the USSR but owning property in Poland. The beginning of the nationalization of property of private banks, urban building, church property, private hospitals, commercial enterprises, and foreign property in the USSR served as an impetus for the activation of the activities of the Liquidation Committee for the Affairs of Former Russian Legal Entities in Warsaw. Decisions in most of the cases were made in favor of the Polish side: the funds received from the sale of property were transferred to the Polish treasury. Only in rare cases, the alienated property was divided among the members, investors, and founders (Mutual Insurance Society of Vitebsk Peasants, Lepiel Mutual Insurance Society). The final part of the article sums up the results of the activities of the Liquidation Committee for the Affairs of Former Russian Legal Entities in Warsaw in 1928–33 and the legitimacy of some liquidation decisions.

Keywords

• liquidation committee
• mixed settlement commission
• treaty of riga
• mutual settlements
• joint stock company