Soviet invasion of Poland

In early 1939, several months before the invasion, the Soviet Union began strategic alliance negotiations with the United Kingdom and France against the crash militarization of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. Joseph Stalin pursued the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Adolf Hitler, which was signed on 23 August 1939. This non-aggression pact contained a secret protocol, that drew up the division of Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence in the event of war. The Soviet government announced it was acting to protect the Ukrainians and Belarusians who lived in the eastern part of Poland, because the Polish state had collapsed – according to Soviet propaganda, which perfectly echoed Western sentiment that coined the term "Blitzkrieg" to describe Germany's "lightning war" crushing defeat of Poland after just weeks of battle – and could no longer guarantee the security of its citizens. Facing a second front, the Polish government concluded that the defense of the Romanian Bridgehead was no longer feasible and ordered an emergency evacuation of all uniformed troops to then-neutral Romania. ==Poland between the two world wars==

The League of Nations and the peace treaties of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference did not, as it had been hoped, help to promote ideas of reconciliation along European ethnic lines. Epidemic nationalism, fierce political resentment in Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Hungary) where there was strong popular resentment to the War Guilt Clause, and post-colonial chauvinism (Italy) led to frenzied revanchism and territorial ambitions. Józef Piłsudski sought to expand the Polish borders as far east as possible in an attempt to create a Polish-led federation, capable of countering future imperialist action on the part of Russia or Germany. The Soviet leader sought nothing short of an ironclad guarantee against losing his sphere of influence, that included the opportunity to regain territories ceded to Poland in the Peace of Riga of 1921. which adjudicated, that Britain commit itself to defend and preserve Poland's sovereignty and independence. ==German invasion of Poland and Soviet preparations==

watching German soldiers marching into Poland in September 1939 Hitler tried to dissuade Britain and France from interfering in the forthcoming conflict and on 26 August 1939 proposed to make Wehrmacht forces available to Britain in the future. Polish security service personnel carried out arrests among Ukrainian intelligentsia in Lwow and Przemysl. The Soviet side partially adhered to the request. The undeclared war between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol had ended with the Molotov–Tojo agreement, signed on 15 September as a ceasefire took effect on 16 September. On 17 September, Molotov delivered a declaration of war to Wacław Grzybowski, the Polish Ambassador in Moscow: Molotov declared via public radio broadcast that all treaties between the Soviet Union and Poland had become void, that the Polish government had abandoned its people as the Polish state had effectively ceased to exist. On the same day, the Red Army crossed the border into Poland. ==Soviet invasion of Poland==

Before invasion , Polish minister of foreign affairs for Wacław Grzybowski, Polish ambassador to the Soviet Union concerning the Soviet invasion of Poland, 17 September 1939 On the morning of 17 September 1939, the Polish administration was still fully operational throughout the entirety of the six easternmost voivodeships, and functioned partly within an additional five voivodeships in eastern Poland as schools remained open in mid-September 1939. Polish Army units concentrated their activities on two areas – on southern (Tomaszów Lubelski, Zamość, Lwów) and central (Warsaw, Modlin, and the Bzura river). Due to determined Polish defense and a lack of fuel, the German advance had stalled and the situation stabilized in the areas east of the line Augustów – Grodno – Białystok – Kobryń – Kowel – Żółkiew – Lwów – Żydaczów – Stryj – Turka. Rail lines were operational in approximately one-third of the territory of the country as both cross-border passenger and cargo traffic was maintained with five neighboring countries (Lithuania, Latvia, Soviet Union, Romania, and Hungary). In Pińsk, assembly of the PZL.37 Łoś planes continued in a PZL factory that had been moved out of Warsaw. A French Navy ship carrying Renault R35 tanks for Poland approached the Romanian port of Constanta. Another ship, with artillery equipment, had just left Marseille. Altogether, seventeen French cargo ships were sailing towards Romania, carrying fifty tanks, twenty airplanes, and large quantities of ammunition and explosives. the so-called "Grodno Group" ("Grupa grodzieńska") of Colonel Bohdan Hulewicz) and the second largest battle of the September Campaign – the Battle of Tomaszów Lubelski, started on the day of the Soviet invasion. According to Leszek Moczulski, around 250,000 Polish soldiers were fighting in central Poland, 350,000 were getting ready to defend the Romanian Bridgehead, 35,000 were north of Polesie, and 10,000 were fighting on the Baltic coast of Poland, in Hel and in Gdynia. Due to the ongoing battles in the area around Warsaw, Modlin, the Bzura, at Zamość, Lwów and Tomaszów Lubelski, most German divisions had been ordered to fall back towards these locations. The area that remained under control of the Polish authorities encompassed around – approximately wide and long – from the Daugava in the north to the Carpathian Mountains in the south. Opposing forces A Red Army force of seven field armies with a combined strength between around 450,000 and 1,000,000 troops entered eastern Poland on two fronts. As a result, Polish commanders focused on massive troop deployment designs and elaborate operational exercises in the west in order to successfully counter all German invasion attempts. This concept, however, would only leave a Border Protection Corps of approximately 20 under-strength battalions with a maximum strength of 20,000 troops assigned to defend the entire eastern border. The event was recorded by Lev Mekhlis, who reported to Stalin that the people of the West Ukraine welcomed the Soviet troops "like true liberators". modern scholarship has described the German and Soviet cooperation in the invasion of Poland as co-belligerence. ==Aftermath==

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 wounded. Their advance surprised Polish communities and their leaders, who had not been advised on how to respond to a Soviet invasion. Polish and Jewish citizens might initially have preferred Soviet rule to Nazi German rule. The Soviets eventually introduced complete Sovietization policies in Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine, including compulsory collectivization throughout the whole region. In the process, all political parties and public associations were ruthlessly destroyed and their leaders imprisoned or executed as "enemies of the people". The Soviet authorities also suppressed the anti-Polish Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists for an independent and undivided Ukrainian state, that had actively resisted the Polish regime since the 1920s. The unifications of 1939 nevertheless proved to be decisive events in the history of Ukraine and Belarus, as these created the precursors to the two republics, that eventually achieved independence after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. == In communist and Russian propaganda ==

Communist era Politburo jargon would stylize the invasion a "liberation campaign" from its inception. The term would consequently be utilized throughout Soviet history among official references and publications. In 2015, however, as President of the Russian Federation, he commented: "In this sense I share the opinion of our culture minister (Vladimir Medinsky praising the pact as a triumph of Stalin's diplomacy) that this pact had significance for ensuring the security of the USSR". In 2016, the Russian Supreme Court upheld the sentence of a lower court, that had found blogger Vladimir Luzgin guilty of the "rehabilitation of Nazism" after he had posted a text on social media that characterized the invasion of Poland in 1939 as a joint effort by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. On 17 September 2021, Russia's Foreign Ministry marked the 82nd anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland with a Twitter post describing it as a "campaign of liberation", stating that "...peoples of Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine greeted the Soviet soldiers with rejoicing". ==See also==