THE ACTIVITY OF THE PROFESSOR OF LVIV POLYTECHNIC ZYGMUND KLEMENSIEWYCH: MATERIALS OF THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF THE UKRAINIAN SSR IN 1940

Abstract

The initial Soviet repression against the Polish population in October 1939 are studied.The methodology of establishing Soviet rule in Western Ukrainian lands, particularly in Lviv are explored. It is shown the territorial division of the Lviv region and the city of Lviv, as well as the Sovietization processes of the Lviv Polytechnic Institute, during which Communist Party, Komsomol and trade union organizations were created. For the first time, it has been researched the criminal case of the prominent Polish professor of physics and chemistry Zygmunt Aleksander Robertovich Klemensiewicz (Zygmunt Aleksander Klemensiewicz, 1886–1963), dean of the Lviv Polytechnic. The professor was unjustifiably sentenced to five years of corrective labor by a special session of the NKVD USSR in 1940, he was accused of willfully crossing the demarcation border between the USSR and Hungary. The course of the preliminary investigation was considered, from these materials the surnames of close relatives and family members were revealed.For the first time, his personal photos, as well as those of his wife and daughter, were submitted for publication. The professor’s professional path as a scientist and pedagogue is reproduced from his personal testimony in criminal case. The course of the investigation in Skole, Lviv, Kyiv, and Kharkiv are observed chronologically. The dates of his studies and stay at the Maria Skladovska-Curie Radium Institute in Paris are indicated.It is noted that the investigative materials of the Soviet special service’s complement unknown facts from the biography of Z. Klemensiewicz. These investigative materials help to conducted more objectively research of the social and political situation in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR after their accession to the USSR. It is analyzed socio-political attitudes and the course of repressions among Lviv Polytechnic academics and their family members carried out based on the documentary materials of the Branch Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine, the Archive of the SBU in Lviv Oblast, the State Archive of Lviv Oblast, and the archive of the Lviv Polytechnic National University.