4th Division Organized By The Soviet Union
In 1944, the Soviet Union also stood up a Polish 4th Infantry Division within the Polish First Army, part of the 1st Belorussian Front. The division consisted primarily of Poles deported to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics after the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, although many of the officers and commissars were from the USSR. As part of the First Army, this eastern incarnation of the 4th Division fought in Poland near Warsaw, at Kolberg, and north of Berlin in Germany during 1944-45.
Following the end of the war, the Soviet-organized 4th Division was incorporated into the army of the People's Republic of Poland. By a Resolution of the Provisional Government of May 26, 1945 the division's personnel and equipment (with the exception of artillery and the sanitary battalion) served as a nucleus to form the staff and some branches of the Internal Security Corps (KBW). The division commander became the first commander of the Internal Security Corps.
Following reformation from two reserve infantry regiments, the division was stationed in the town of Krosno Odrzańskie as part of the Silesian Military District. During the Cold War, the division became mechanized on the organizational lines of Soviet motor rifle divisions.
The 4th Division also participated in the suppression of protests in Poznań in 1956.
The 4th Mechanized Division was inactivated in 1998.
Read more about this topic: 4th Infantry Division (Poland)
Famous quotes containing the words soviet union, division, organized, soviet and/or union:
“If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“O, if you raise this house against this house
It will the woefullest division prove
That ever fell upon this cursed earth.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The puritanical potentialities of science have never been forecast. If it evolves a body of organized rites, and is established as a religion, hierarchically organized, things more than anything else will be done in the name of “decency.” The coarse fumes of tobacco and liquors, the consequent tainting of the breath and staining of white fingers and teeth, which is so offensive to many women, will be the first things attended to.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
““Is there life on Mars?” “No, not there either.””
—Russian saying popular in the Soviet period, trans. by Vladimir Ivanovich Shlyakov (1993)
“In externals we advance with lightening express speed, in modes of thought and sympathy we lumber on in stage-coach fashion.”
—Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)