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The Soviet annexation of some 51.6% of the territory of the Second Polish Republic, [20] where about 13,200,000 people lived in 1939 including Poles and Jews, [21] was an important event in the history of contemporary Ukraine and Belarus, because it brought within Ukrainian and Belarusian SSR new territories inhabited in part by ethnic ...
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.
The Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 brought together Ukrainians of the USSR and Ukrainians of what was then Eastern Poland , under a single Soviet banner. In the territories of Poland invaded by Nazi Germany, the size of the Ukrainian minority became negligible and was gathered mostly around UCC (УЦК ), formed in Kraków. [7]
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.
The eastern part of Poland was annexed by the Soviet Union; Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were attached to the Ukrainian SSR. After the annexation, the Soviet NKVD started eliminating the predominantly Polish middle and upper classes, including social activists and military leaders. Between 1939 and 1941, 200,000 Poles were deported to Siberia.
The powers represented divided Europe into spheres of influence and Poland was placed within the Soviet sphere. The Poles were also disappointed by a lack of progress regarding the resumption of Polish-Soviet diplomatic ties, an urgent issue, because the Soviet armies were moving toward Poland's 1939 frontiers. [207]
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.
On September 17, 1939, the Soviet Union declared all pacts with Poland null and void as the Polish state had ceased to exist, and the Soviets joined Nazi Germany in the occupation of Poland. [ 3 ] : 83 The forces of the 6th Red Army of the Ukrainian Front , under Filipp Golikov , crossed the border just east of Lwów and started a quick march ...