Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union

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Temporary borders created by advancing German and Soviet troops. The border was soon readjusted following diplomatic agreements.

Seventeen days after the

Second World War, the Soviet Union entered the eastern regions of Poland (known as the Kresy) and annexed territories totalling 201,015 square kilometres (77,612 sq mi) with a population of 13,299,000. Inhabitants besides ethnic Poles included Belarusian and Ukrainian major population groups, and also Czechs, Lithuanians, Jews
, and other minority groups.

These annexed territories were subsequently incorporated into the

Western Betrayal). Poland was compensated for this territorial loss with the pre-War German eastern territories, at the expense of losing its eastern regions. The Polish People's Republic regime described the territories as the "Recovered Territories". The number of Poles in the Kresy in the year 1939 was around 5.274 million, but after ethnic cleansing in 1939-1945 by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Ukrainian nationalist forces consisted of approximately 1.8 million inhabitants.[1] The post-World War II territory of Poland was slightly smaller than the pre-1939 land areas, shrinking by some 77,000 square kilometres (30,000 sq mi) (roughly equalling that of the territories of Belgium and the Netherlands
combined).

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

Planned and actual divisions of Europe, according to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, with later adjustments
Main article: Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

Early in the morning of August 24, 1939, the Soviet Union and

Jews.[4] Much of this rural territory had its own significant local non-Polish majority (Ukrainians in the south and Belarusians in the north).[5]

Lithuania, adjacent to East Prussia, would be in the German sphere of influence, although a second secret protocol agreed in September 1939 assigned the majority of Lithuania to the USSR.[6] According to the secret protocol, Lithuania would retrieve its historical capital Vilnius, subjugated during the inter-war period by Poland.

Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, 1939–1941

Further information: Soviet annexation of Western Belorussia and Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia

The Polish–Soviet border, as of 1939, had been determined in 1921 at the

Treaty of Riga peace talks, which followed the Polish–Soviet War.[7] Under the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, two weeks after the German invasion of western Poland, the Soviet Union invaded the portions of eastern Poland assigned to it by the Pact, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland.[8][9] See map
.

During the

German–Soviet Frontier Treaty
, most of whose contents were kept secret.

Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of

Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. Those who did not receive the citizenship or refused to accept it (claiming that they were Polish citizens or not agreeing to enter Ukrainian or Belarusian nationality) were arrested or deported.[17]

In March 1940, the authorities also decided about the fate of refugees from western Poland, who from September 1939 were in Kresy. Deportation of this group of about 75–80 thousand people, consisting mainly of Jews (about 84%), finally began on June 29, 1940, and lasted for nearly a month.

The Soviets organized staged elections,

Lavrenty Beria, the members of the Soviet Politburo (including Stalin) signed an order to execute POWs, labeled "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries", kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus. This became known as the Katyn massacre, in all some 22,000 were executed.[25][26][27][28]

During Perestroika, former top ministers of Stalin such as Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov claimed that in Katyn, of the 22,000 Polish officers, roughly 3,000 were killed by the NKVD in 1940, while others were later executed by Nazis.[29]

During 1939–1941 1.45 million of the people inhabiting the region were deported by the Soviet regime, of whom 63.1% were Poles, and 7.4% were Jews.[14] Previously it was believed that about one million Polish citizens died at the hands of the Soviets,[30] however recently Polish historians, based mostly on queries in Soviet archives, estimate the number of deaths at about 350,000 people deported in 1939–1945.[31] Andrzej Paczkowski puts the number of Polish deaths at 90–100,000 of the 1.0 million persons deported and 30,000 executed by the Soviets.

The

Ukrainian SSR: Drohobych Oblast, Lviv Oblast, Rivne Oblast, Stanislav (later known as Ivano-Frankivsk) Oblast, Ternopil Oblast and Volyn Oblast
.

German occupation 1941–1944

See also: Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
Sectors of prewar Poland under the Nazi German occupational authority

These areas were conquered by Nazi Germany in 1941 during Operation Barbarossa. The Nazis divided them up as follows:

During 1943–1944 ethnic cleansing operations took place in Ukraine (commonly known as the

Massacres of Poles in Volhynia
) which brought about an estimated 100,000 deaths and an exodus of ethnic Poles from this territory.

The Polish and Jewish language population of the regions in 1939 totaled about 6.7 million. During the war, an estimated 2 million persons perished (including 1.2 million Jews). These numbers are included with Polish war losses. 2 million (including 250,000 Jews) became refugees to Poland or the West, 1.5 million were in the territories returned to Poland in 1945 and

1.2 million remained in the USSR.[32] Contemporary Russian historians also include the war losses of Poles and Jews from this region with Soviet war dead.[33]

Soviet 1945 re-annexation and incorporation of the majority of the territories

Curzon-Namier Line's variants. Tehran, 1943

At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union annexed most of the territory it had invaded in 1939.

Preliminary arrangements

Soon after the Soviet re-entry to Poland in July 1944 in pursuit of the German army, the Polish prime minister from London flew to Moscow along with Churchill in an attempt to prevent the Soviet annexation of Poland in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed by the Soviet Union.[34] He offered a smaller section of land, but Stalin declined, telling him that he would allow the exiled government to participate in the Polish Committee of National Liberation.[35] An agreement between the Allies was reluctantly reached at the Yalta Conference where the Soviets would annex the entirety of their Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact portion of Eastern Poland but would grant Poland part of Eastern Germany in return. These agreements were then confirmed and consolidated at the Potsdam Conference.[35] Thereafter, eastern Poland was annexed into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.[35] The Western Allies were unaware of the existence of the secret clause dividing Poland between Hitler and Stalin already in 1939 along the Curzon Line.[36]

Returned areas

Some parts of eastern Poland occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939 with an area of 21,275 square kilometres (8,214 sq mi) and 1.5 million inhabitants near Białystok and Przemyśl were returned to postwar Poland.[37]

Border treaty

Main article: Polish–Soviet border agreement of August 1945

On August 16, 1945 the Communist-dominated

Roman Catholic 30.1%, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church 26.7%, Jewish 9.9%, Other 1.7%.[38]

Further events

From 1944 until 1952 the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) were engaged in an armed struggle against the communists. As a result of the skirmishes between the UIA and Soviet units, the Soviets deported 600,000 people from these territories and in the process 170,000 of the local population were killed in the fighting. See also Operation Vistula.[39]

In June 1951, the Soviet–Polish border was realigned in two areas.

See also

Notes

  1. ISBN 978-83-86842-56-8
  2. ^ a b c Text of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, executed August 23, 1939
  3. ^ Wilson Center, Secret Texts of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact, 1939 Archived 2011-01-11 at the Wayback Machine Point 1 of the secret supplementary protocol signed on August 23, 1939, is changed so that the territory of the Lithuanian state is included in the sphere of interest of the USSR because, on the other side, Lublin voivodeship and parts of Warsaw voivodeship are included in the sphere of interest of Germany
  4. Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union according to the last official Polish census, the population was over 38% Poles (5.1 million), 37% Polish Ukrainians (4.7 million), 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help
    )     Also in: Wrocławskie Studia Wschodnie, Wrocław, 1997.
  5. ISBN 0-691-09603-1 (Google books link)
  6. ISBN 0-7007-1599-1
  7. ISBN 0-19-285152-7
    , pp. 115–121
  8. ^ Roberts 2006, p. 43
  9. ISBN 0-415-33873-5
    .
  10. ISBN 978-0802071910
    .
  11. ^ Telegram of the German Ambassador in the Soviet Union, (Schulenburg) to the German Foreign Office Moscow, Moscow, September 16 "The Avalon Project : Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939–1941". Archived from the original on 2007-04-30. Retrieved 2007-04-30.: ...the Soviet Union had thus far not concerned itself about the plight of its minorities in Poland and had to justify abroad, in some way or other, its present intervention.
  12. ISBN 0-691-09603-1
    .
  13. ^ Concise statistical year-book of Poland, Polish Ministry of Information. London June 1941 pp. 9 & 10
  14. ^
    ISBN 0-7864-0371-3
    p. 14
  15. ISBN 83-7096-281-5
    .
  16. ISBN 1-57181-339-X
    .
  17. ^ Kamil Stepan (2015). "II wojna światowa na Kresach". polityka.pl (in Polish). Retrieved October 15, 2019.
  18. ^ Bartłomiej Kozłowski (2005). ""Wybory" do Zgromadzeń Ludowych Zachodniej Ukrainy i Zachodniej Białorusi". Polska.pl (in Polish). NASK. Archived from the original on June 28, 2006. Retrieved March 13, 2006.
  19. ISBN 0-691-09603-1. [1]
  20. ISBN 83-240-0077-1
    .
  21. ^ (in Polish) Encyklopedia PWN, "OKUPACJA SOWIECKA W POLSCE 1939–41", last accessed on 1 March 2006, online Archived 2005-04-20 at the Wayback Machine, Polish language
  22. ^ Piotrowski 2007, p. 11
  23. ISBN 0-14-025184-7
    .
  24. ISBN 83-7038-168-5
    .
  25. ^ a b Fischer, Benjamin B., "The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field", Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1999–2000.
  26. Sanford, Google Books, pp. 20–24.
  27. ^ "Stalin's Killing Field" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on June 13, 2007. Retrieved 2008-07-19.
  28. ISSN 0261-3077
    . Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  29. ^ "L.M. Kaganovich about the Katyn case. 'In Russian'". Archived from the original on 2022-08-28. Retrieved 2021-08-12.
  30. ^ Franciszek Proch, Poland's Way of the Cross, New York 1987. p. 146
  31. ^ Project In Posterum [2] (go to note on Polish Casualties by Tadeusz Piotrowski)
  32. ^ Krystyna Kersten, Szacunek strat osobowych w Polsce Wschodniej. Dzieje Najnowsze Rocznik XXI– 1994, pp. 46 & 47
  33. ISBN 5-86789-023-6
    p. 84
  34. ^ Wettig 2008, p. 47
  35. ^ a b c Wettig 2008, pp. 47–48
  36. ISBN 978-1783331086
    .
  37. ^ " U.S. Bureau of the Census The Population of Poland Ed. W. Parker Mauldin, Washington, 1954 p. 140
  38. ^ " U.S. Bureau of the Census The Population of Poland Ed. W. Parker Mauldin, Washington, 1954 pp. 148–149
  39. ^ Vadim Erlikman. Poteri narodonaseleniia v XX veke : spravochnik. Moscow 2004.
    ISBN 5-93165-107-1
    pp. 22 & 34

References
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