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leader of a new, secret section of the underground. This was an exaggeration. But the tactic paid off.
    Piasecki’s guards halted his interrogation. They removed him from ordinary military supervision and took him directly to Ivan Serov, the Soviet general who had organized the “cleansing” and pacification of eastern Poland in 1939, and who had been brought back to carry out the same task in the rest of Poland in 1944. Serov had already organized the arrests of General Wilk and General Okulicki, and was trying to find out as much as he could about the Home Army. To Piasecki’s immense surprise, Serov was not much interested in Piasecki’s Falangist past: like most Soviet officials, he considered anyone who was not a communist to be “far right” by definition, and distinctions between social democrats and radical right-wingers did not concern him. He was far more interested in Piasecki’s wartime underground activity, in his alleged “clandestine” connections, in his political views, and in his declared contempt for the London government in exile. 42
    By his own account, Piasecki was pleased to discover that he had much in common with the Soviet general. He admired men of power, he was delighted to talk philosophy, and he had some positive things to say about the new regime. He told Serov that he approved of the communist-dominated provisional government and admired the land reform. He enthusiasticallyendorsed the expulsion of the Germans and the acquisition of the Western territories. He lauded the “idea of a bloodless social revolution and the transfer of power to workers and peasants.” But he also told Serov that the new communist government was going to have difficulties attracting the loyalty of Poles, with their deep anti-Russian prejudices and their paranoia about occupation. Which, of course, was true.
    He offered to help. “I am deeply convinced,” he told Serov in a memo, “that through my influence I can mobilize the reluctant strata of society for active cooperation.” He promised, in other words, to persuade the patriotic, nationalist elements of the underground to support the new regime. Pia-secki’s memo was eventually forwarded toColonel Roman Romkowski, the secret policeman in charge of counterintelligence, as well as to Władysław Gomułka, then the communist party boss. 43
    In the decades afterward, this enigmatic conversation—an exchange between a famously cruel NKVD general and a famously charismaticPolish nationalist—attained an almost legendary status in Warsaw. No one knew at the time exactly what had transpired, but everyone had a theory. In 1952, Czesław Miłosz wrote a fictional version of the encounter in
Zdobycie Władzy
(
The Seizure of Power
), a novel he published after emigrating to the West. Of course, Miłosz’s account is imaginary. But as one of Piasecki’s biographers points out, Miłosz was in Warsaw in 1945, he would have heard accounts of this famous meeting, and he had himself been tempted into cooperation with the new regime. His account thus has a ring of authenticity, particularly when Kamienski, the Piasecki figure, warns the Soviet general that “you are hated here” and tells him to expect resistance:
    “Ah,” said the general, leaning his chin on his hands—“you are counting on internal opposition … But conspiracy, in our system, is impossible. You know that. Encouraging more murders will just increase the numbers of victims. We are starting to build trains and factories. We have got back the Western territories, which of course were always Slavic, almost to Berlin—and if I’m not mistaken, that was your prewar program. Those territories can only be held with our help. And so?”
    Eventually, the general in the novel comes to the point: Kamienski/Pia-secki would be set free, even allowed to publish a newspaper, on the conditionthat he “recognize the status quo, and help us reduce the number of victims.” Kamienski/Piasecki