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Soviet annexation of Polish lands in 1939 (in red), superimposed on a modern map of Ukraine. On the basis of a secret clause of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, capturing the eastern provinces of the Second Polish Republic.
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.
Map of Wołyń (Volhynia) and Eastern Galicia in 1939. The recreated Polish state covered large territories inhabited by Ukrainians, while the Ukrainian movement failed to achieve independence. According to the Polish census of 1931, in Eastern Galicia, the Ukrainian language was spoken by 52% of the inhabitants, Polish by 40% and Yiddish by 7%.
The Polish–Soviet War (February 1919 – March 1921) was an armed conflict between Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine on the one hand and the Second Polish Republic and the short-lived Ukrainian People's Republic on the other. The war was the result of conflicting expansionist ambitions.
Fighting was concentrated in south-eastern areas of the Second Polish Republic and western Ukraine. The occupation of Poland by Germany and Soviet Union in September 1939 led to demands by Ukrainian nationalists for a new Ukrainian state which would include the Polish areas of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia.
1940 USSR postage stamp celebrating the "liberation" of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. On the basis of a secret clause of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, capturing the eastern provinces of the Second Polish Republic.
Polish prisoners of war captured by the Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 In October 1939, Molotov reported to the Supreme Soviet that the Red Army had suffered 737 deaths and 1,862 wounded men during the campaign, a casualty rate that widely contradicted Polish specialist's claims of up to 3,000 deaths and 8,000 to 10,000 ...
Pre-war Poland was portrayed as a capitalist state based on exploitation of the working people and ethnic minorities. Soviet propaganda claimed that unfair treatment of non-Poles by the Second Polish Republic was a justification of its dismemberment. Soviet officials openly incited mobs to perform killings and robberies. [171]