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In the aftermath of the German and Soviet invasion of Poland, which took place in September 1939, the territory of Poland was divided in half between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The Soviets had ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion.
Since 1939 German and Soviet officials coordinated their Poland-related policies and repressive actions. For nearly two years following the invasion, the two occupiers continued to discuss bilateral plans for dealing with the Polish resistance during Gestapo-NKVD Conferences until Germany's Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union, in June 1941.
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was broken and the new war erupted, the Soviets had already arrested and imprisoned about 500,000 Polish nationals in the Kresy region including civic officials, military personnel and all other "enemies of the people" such as clergy and the Polish educators: about one in ten of all adult males. There is some controversy as to whether the Soviet Union's policies were harsher than those of Nazi Germany until that time. An estimated 150,000 Polish citizens were killed by Soviet repressions.
Aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Poland
The Soviet Union took over 52.1% of the territory of Poland (circa 200,000 km²) with over 13,700,000 citizens at the end of the Polish Defensive War. Regarding the ethnic composition of these areas: ca. 5.1 million or 38% of the population were Polish by ethnicity (wrote Elżbieta Trela-Mazur), with 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees from areas occupied by Germany, most of them Jews (198,000). All Polish territories occupied by USSR were annexed to the Soviet Union with the exception of the area of Wilno, which was transferred to Lithuania.
On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany had changed the secret terms of the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact. The formerly sovereign Lithuania was moved into the Soviet sphere of influence and absorbed into the USSR as the brand new Lithuanian SSR among the Soviet republics. The demarcation line across the center of Poland was shifted to the east, giving Germany more Polish territory. By this new and final arrangement – often described as a fourth partition of Poland, the Soviet Union secured the lands east of the rivers Pisa, Narew, Bug and San. The area amounted to about 200,000 square kilometres, which was inhabited by 13.5 million formerly Polish citizens.
Soviet rule
The Soviet Union never officially declared war on Poland and ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion.[6][7] The Soviets did not classify Polish military personnel as prisoners of war, but as rebels against the new Soviet government in today's Western Ukraine and West Belarus.[n] The NKVD and other Soviet agencies asserted their control in 1939 as an inherent part of the Sovietization of Kresy. Approximately 250,000 Polish prisoners of war were captured by the USSR during and after the invasion of Poland.[16] As the Soviet Union had not signed international conventions on rules of war, the Polish prisoners were denied legal status. The Soviet forces murdered almost all captured officers, and sent numerous ordinary soldiers to the Soviet Gulag.[17][18] In one notorious atrocity ordered by Stalin, the Soviet secret police systematically shot and killed 22,000 Poles in a remote area during the Katyn massacre. Among some 14,471 victims were top Polish Army officers, including political leaders, government officials, and intellectuals. Some 4,254 dead bodies were uncovered in mass graves in Katyn Forest by the Nazis in 1943, who invited an international group of neutral representatives and doctors to examine the corpses and confirm the Soviet guilt. 22,000 Polish military personnel and civilians were killed in the Katyn massacre, but thousands of others were victims of NKVD massacres of prisoners in mid-1941, before the German advance across the Soviet occupation zone.
In total, the Soviets killed tens of thousands of Polish prisoners of war. Many of them, like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński, captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September, were killed during the 1939 campaign.
On 24 September, 1939, the Soviets killed 42 staff and patients of a Polish military hospital in the village of Grabowiec, near Zamość. The Soviets also executed all the Polish officers they captured after the Battle of Szack, on 28 September.
The Soviet authorities regarded service to the prewar Polish state as a "crime against revolution" and "counter-revolutionary activity", and proceeded to arrest large numbers of Polish intelligentsia, former officials, politicians, civil servants and scientists, intellectuals and the clergy, as well as ordinary people thought to pose a threat to Soviet rule. In the two years between the invasion of Poland and the 1941 attack on USSR by Germany, the Soviets arrested and imprisoned about 500,000 Poles. This was about one in ten of all adult males. The arrested members of the Polish intelligentsia included former prime ministers Leon Kozłowski and Aleksander Prystor, Stanisław Grabski and Stanisław Głąbiński, and the Baczewski family. Initially aimed primarily at possible political opponents, by January 1940 the NKVD's campaign was also directed against potential allies, including Polish Communists and Socialists. Those arrested included Władysław Broniewski, Aleksander Wat, Tadeusz Peiper, Leopold Lewin, Anatol Stern, Teodor Parnicki, Marian Czuchnowski and many others. The Soviet NKVD executed about 65,000 imprisoned Poles after being subjected to show trials.
The number of Poles who died due to Soviet repressions in the period 1939-1941 is estimated as at least 150,000.
Initially, the Soviet occupation gained support among some citizens of the Second Polish Republic. Some members of the Ukrainian population welcomed the unification with Soviet Ukraine. The Ukrainians had failed to achieve independence in 1919 when their attempt at self-determination was crushed during the Polish–Soviet and Polish-Ukrainian Wars. Also, there were pre-war Polish citizens who saw the Soviet NKVD presence as an opportunity to start political and social agitation. Many of them committed treason against the Polish state by assisting in round-ups and executions of Polish officials. Their enthusiasm however faded with time as it became clear that the Soviet repressions were aimed at all peoples equally.
Mass deportations to the East
Approximately 100,000 Polish citizens were arrested during the two years of Soviet occupation. The prisons soon got severely overcrowded, with all detainees accused of anti-Soviet activities. The NKVD had to open dozens of ad-hoc prison sites in almost all towns of the region. The wave of arrests and mock convictions contributed to the forced resettlement of large categories of people ("kulaks", Polish civil servants, forest workers, university professors, "osadniks") to the Gulag labour camps and exile settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union.
Altogether the Soviets sent roughly a million people from Poland to Siberia. According to Norman Davies, almost half had died by the time the Sikorski - Mayski Agreement had been signed in 1941. Around 55% of the deportees to Siberia and Soviet Central Asia were Polish women.
In 1940 and the first half of 1941, the Soviets deported a total of more than 1,200,000 Poles in four waves of mass deportations from the Soviet-occupied Polish territories. The first major operation took place on February 10, 1940, with more than 220,000 people sent primarily to far north and east Russia, including Siberia and Khabarovsk Krai. The second wave of 13 April 1940, consisted of 320,000 people sent primarily to Kazakhstan. The third wave of June–July 1940 totaled more than 240,000. The fourth and final wave occurred in June 1941, deporting 300,000.
According to the Soviet law, all residents of the annexed area, dubbed by the Soviets as citizens of former Poland, automatically acquired Soviet citizenship. But, actual conferral of citizenship required individual consent and residents were strongly pressured for such consent. Those refugees who opted out were threatened with repatriation to German-controlled territories of Poland.
The Poles and the Soviets re-established diplomatic relations in 1941, following the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement; but the Soviets broke them off again in 1943 after the Polish government demanded an independent examination of the recently discovered Katyn burial pits.[citation needed] The Soviets lobbied the Western Allies to recognize the pro-Soviet Polish puppet government of Wanda Wasilewska in Moscow.
Deportations, though, continued in June 1944, around 40,000 soldiers and Polish Underground State officials who refused to join the Soviet-controlled Army were relocated to the most remote areas of the USSR. The following year, between 40,000 and 50,000 people - mostly from Upper Silesia - were deported to forced labor camps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_of_Polish_citizens_(1939%E2%80%931946)
Notes:
Gross 1997, chpt. Sovietisation of Poland's Eastern Territories. From Peace to War, p. 77. ISBN 1571818820.
Sanford, George (2005). Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940. Routledge. pp. 20–24. ISBN 0415338735.
AFP / Expatica (30 August 2009), Polish experts lower nation's WWII death toll, Expatica Communications BV.
Joanna Ostrowska, Marcin Zaremba, "Kobieca gehenna" (The women's ordeal), Polityka - No 10 (2695), 2009-03-07; pp. 64-66. (in Polish)
Dr. Marcin Zaremba Archived 2011-10-07 at the Wayback Machine of Polish Academy of Sciences, the co-author of the article cited above – is a historian from Warsaw University Department of History Institute of 20th Century History (cited 196 times in Google scholar). Zaremba published a number of scholarly monographs, among them: Komunizm, legitymizacja, nacjonalizm (426 pages),[1] Marzec 1968 (274 pages), Dzień po dniu w raportach SB (274 pages), Immobilienwirtschaft (German, 359 pages), see inauthor:"Marcin Zaremba" in Google Books.
Joanna Ostrowska Archived 2016-03-14 at the Wayback Machine of Warsaw, Poland, is a lecturer at Departments of Gender Studies at two universities: the Jagiellonian University of Kraków, the University of Warsaw as well as, at the Polish Academy of Sciences. She is the author of scholarly works on the subject of mass rape and forced prostitution in Poland in the Second World War (i.e. "Prostytucja jako praca przymusowa w czasie II Wojny Światowej. Próba odtabuizowania zjawiska," "Wielkie przemilczanie. Prostytucja w obozach koncentracyjnych," etc.), a recipient of Socrates-Erasmus research grant from Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin, and a historian associated with Krytyka Polityczna.
Tomasz Szarota & Wojciech Materski (2009), Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami, Warsaw: Institute of National Remembrance, ISBN 978-83-7629-067-6 (Excerpt reproduced in digital form).
Telegrams sent by Schulenburg, German ambassador to the Soviet Union, from Moscow to the German Foreign Office: No. 317 Archived 2009-11-07 at the Wayback Machine of 10 September 1939, No. 371 Archived 2007-04-30 at the Wayback Machine of 16 September 1939, No. 372 Archived 2007-04-30 at the Wayback Machine of 17 September 1939. The Avalon Project, Yale Law School. Retrieved 14 November 2006.
1939 wrzesień 17, Moskwa Nota rządu sowieckiego nie przyjęta przez ambasadora Wacława Grzybowskiego (Note of the Soviet government to the Polish government on 17 September 1939, refused by Polish ambassador Wacław Grzybowski). Retrieved 15 November 2006.
"Terminal horror suffered by so many millions of innocent Jewish, Slavic, and other European peoples as a result of this meeting of evil minds is an indelible stain on the history and integrity of Western civilization, with all of its humanitarian pretensions" (Note: "this meeting" refers to the most famous third (Zakopane) conference).
Conquest, Robert (1991). Stalin: Breaker of Nations, New York, N.Y.: Viking. ISBN 0-670-84089-0
"In the 1939-1941 period alone, Soviet-inflicted suffering on all citizens in Poland exceeded that of Nazi-inflicted suffering on all citizens. (...) The Soviet-imposed myth about "Communist heroes of resistance" enabled them for decades to avoid the painful questions faced long ago by other Western countries." Johanna Granville, H-Net Review of Jan T. Gross. Revolution from Abroad.
Citing Norman Davies' passage from God's Playground, Piotrowski writes: "In many ways, the work of Soviet NKVD in Eastern Poland proved far more destructive than that of Gestapo." Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide... McFarland & Company. p. 9. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3.
Trela-Mazur, Elżbieta (1998) [1997]. Włodzimierz Bonusiak; Stanisław Jan Ciesielski; Zygmunt Mańkowski; Mikołaj Iwanow (eds.). Sovietization of educational system in the eastern part of Lesser Poland under the Soviet occupation, 1939-1941 [Sowietyzacja oświaty w Małopolsce Wschodniej pod radziecką okupacją 1939-1941]. Kielce: Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna im. Jana Kochanowskiego. pp. 43, 294. ISBN 83-7133-100-2.. Also in: Trela-Mazur 1997, Wrocławskie Studia Wschodnie, Wrocław.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_of_Polish_citizens_(1939%E2%80%931946)
"Kampania wrześniowa 1939" (in Polish). Archived from the original on May 9, 2006. Retrieved 2007-07-16. (September Campaign 1939) from PWN Encyklopedia. Internet Archive, mid-2006. Retrieved 16 July 2007.
Piotrowski, Tadeusz (1988). "Ukrainian Collaborators". Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947. McFarland. pp. 177–259. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. "How are we ... to explain the phenomenon of Ukrainians rejoicing and collaborating with the Soviets? Who were these Ukrainians? That they were Ukrainians is certain, but were they communists, Nationalists, unattached peasants? The Answer is "yes"—they were all three".
Gross, Jan T. (1997). Bernd Wegner (ed.). From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia and the World, 1939-1941. Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt (corporate author). Berghahn Books. pp. 47–79, 77. ISBN 1-57181-882-0 – via Google Books preview.
Encyklopedia PWN 'KAMPANIA WRZEŚNIOWA 1939' Archived 2006-05-09 at the Wayback Machine, last retrieved on 10 December 2005, Polish language
Out of the original group of Polish prisoners of war sent in large number to the labour camps were some 25,000 ordinary soldiers separated from the rest of their colleagues and imprisoned in a work camp in Równe, where they were forced to build a road. See: "Decision to commence investigation into Katyn Massacre". Institute of National Remembrance website. Institute of National Remembrance. 2004. Archived from the original on July 19, 2006. Retrieved March 15, 2006.
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (2004). Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939-1947. Lexington Books. ISBN 0-7391-0484-5.
Fischer, Benjamin B., ""The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field Archived 2010-03-24 at the Wayback Machine", Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1999–2000. Retrieved 16 July 2007.
Sanford 2005, p. 23; also in Olszyna-Wilczyński Józef Konstanty Archived 2008-03-06 at the Wayback Machine, Encyklopedia PWN. Retrieved 14 November 2006.
"Śledztwo w sprawie zabójstwa w dniu 22 września 1939 r. w okolicach miejscowości Sopoćkinie generała brygady Wojska Polskiego Józefa Olszyny-Wilczyńskiego i jego adiutanta kapitana Mieczysława Strzemskiego przez żołnierzy b. Związku Radzieckiego. (S 6/02/Zk)" (in Polish). Archived from the original on January 7, 2005. Retrieved 2005-01-07. Polish Institute of National Remembrance. Internet Archive, 16.10.03. Retrieved 16 July 2007.
(in Polish) Rozstrzelany Szpital Archived 2007-03-07 at the Wayback Machine (Executed Hospital). Tygodnik Zamojski, 15 September 2004. Retrieved 28 November 2006.
(in Polish) Szack. Encyklopedia Interia. Retrieved 28 November 2006.
Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1996). A World Apart: Imprisonment in a Soviet Labor Camp During World War II. Penguin Books. p. 284. ISBN 0-14-025184-7.
Władysław Anders (1995). Bez ostatniego rozdziału (in Polish). Lublin: Test. p. 540. ISBN 83-7038-168-5.
Jerzy Gizella (November 10, 2001). "Lwowskie okupacje". Przegląd Polski (in Polish) (November 10). Archived from the original on April 27, 2006.
Karta Centre, REPRESJE 1939-41 Aresztowani na Kresach Wschodnich Archived 2006-10-21 at the Wayback Machine (Repressions 1939-41. Arrested on the Eastern Borderlands.) Ośrodek Karta. Last accessed on 15 November 2006.
Jan Tomasz Gross (2003). Revolution from Abroad. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 396. ISBN 0-691-09603-1.
Myron Weiner, Sharon Stanton Russell, ed. (2001). "Stalinist Forced Relocation Policies". Demography and National Security. Berghahn Books. pp. 308–315. ISBN 1-57181-339-X.
The actual number of deported in the period of 1939-1941 remains unknown and various estimates vary from 350,000 ((in Polish) Encyklopedia PWN 'OKUPACJA SOWIECKA W POLSCE 1939–41' Archived 2005-04-20 at the Wayback Machine, last retrieved on March 14, 2006, Polish language) to over 2 million (mostly World War II estimates by the underground). The earlier number is based on records made by the NKVD and does not include roughly 180,000 prisoners of war, also in Soviet captivity. Most modern historians estimate the number of all people deported from areas taken by Soviet Union during this period at between 800,000 and 1,500,000; for example R. J. Rummel gives the number of 1,200,000 million; Tony Kushner and Katharine Knox give 1,500,000 in their Refugees in an Age of Genocide, p.219; in his Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917, p.132. See also: Marek Wierzbicki; Tadeusz M. Płużański (March 2001). "Wybiórcze traktowanie źródeł". Tygodnik Solidarność (March 2, 2001). and Albin Głowacki (September 2003). "Formy, skala i konsekwencje sowieckich represji wobec Polaków w latach 1939-1941". In Piotr Chmielowiec (ed.). Okupacja sowiecka ziem polskich 1939–1941 (in Polish). Rzeszów-Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej. ISBN 83-89078-78-3. Archived from the original on 2003-10-03.
Norman Davies (1982). God's Playground. A History of Poland, Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 449–455. ISBN 0-19-925340-4.
B. G. Smith. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History: 4 Volume Set. Oxford University Press. 2008 p. 470.
"Represje 1939-1941". Indeks represjonowanych (in Polish). Stanisław Ciesielski, Wojciech Materski, Andrzej Paczkowski (2nd ed.). Warsaw: Ośrodek KARTA. 2002. ISBN 83-88288-31-8. Archived from the original on 2006-02-22.
Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide... McFarland & Company. p. 295. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. See also review
Jan T. Gross, op.cit., p.188
Zvi Gitelman (2001). A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present. Indiana University Press. p. 116. ISBN 0-253-21418-1.
Sanford 2005, p. 127; Martin Dean Collaboration in the Holocaust. Retrieved 15 July 2007.
"Poland". Poland | Communist Crimes. Retrieved 2020-08-30.
Davies, Europe: A History, pp. 1001–1003.
Gross, pp. 24, 32–33.
Peter D. Stachura, p.132.
Piotrowski, pp. 1, 11–13, 32.
(in Polish) Represje 1939-41 Aresztowani na Kresach Wschodnich Archived 2006-10-21 at the Wayback Machine (Repressions 1939–41. Arrested on the Eastern Borderlands.) Ośrodek Karta. Retrieved 15 November 2006.
Piotrowski, p.11
Rieber, pp. 14, 32–37.
Wojciech Roszkowski (1998). Historia Polski 1914-1997 (in Polish). Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Naukowe PWN. p. 476. ISBN 83-01-12693-0.
Adam Sudoł, ed. (1998). Sowietyzacja Kresów Wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej po 17 września 1939 (in Polish). Bydgoszcz: Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna. p. 441. ISBN 83-7096-281-5.
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.
"Ivan Franko National University of L'viv". Archived from the original on February 10, 2006. Retrieved March 14, 2006.
Karolina Lanckorońska (2001). "I - Lwów". Wspomnienia wojenne; 22 IX 1939 - 5 IV 1945 (in Polish). Kraków: ZNAK. p. 364. ISBN 83-240-0077-1.
Craig Thompson-Dutton (1950). "The Police State & The Police and the Judiciary". The Police State: What You Want to Know about the Soviet Union. Dutton. pp. 88–95.
Michael Parrish (1996). The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939-1953. Praeger Publishers. pp. 99–101. ISBN 0-275-95113-8.
Peter Rutland (1992). "Introduction". The Politics of Economic Stagnation in the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 9. ISBN 0-521-39241-1.
Victor A. Kravchenko (1988). I Chose Justice. Transaction Publishers. p. 310. ISBN 0-88738-756-X.
(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
Jan Tomasz Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia, Princeton University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-691-09603-1, p. 35
Gross, op.cit., page 36
The Great Globe Itself: A Preface to World Affairs By William Bullitt, Francis P. Sempa
Soviet NKVD, at www.warsawuprising.com
The establishment of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944-1949 By Norman Naimark
Poland's holocaust By Tadeusz Piotrowski. Page 131. ISBN 0-7864-2913-5.
God's Playground: 1795 to the Present By Norman Davies
Since Stalin, a Photo History of Our Time by Boris Shub and Bernard Quint, Swen Publications, New York, Manila, 1951. Page 121.
Janusz Wróbel,* "Wyzwoliciele czy okupanci? Żołnierze sowieccy w Łódzkiem 1945–1946." (PDF, 1.48 MB) Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej 2002, nr 7. Quote in Polish: "Poza jednostkowymi aktami gwałtów, zdarzały się ekscesy na skalę masową."
Dr Janusz Wróbel is a research scientist with the Institute of National Remembrance, author of scholarly monographs about Soviet deportations and postwar repatriation of Poles, including Uchodźcy polscy ze Związku Sowieckiego 1942–1950, Łódź, 2003, Na rozdrożu historii. Repatriacja obywateli polskich z Zachodu w latach 1945–1949, Łódź 2009, 716 pages, and many seminars.[3]
Katherine R. Jolluck, "The Nation's Pain and Women's Shame." In Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe By Nancy Meriwether Wingfield, Maria Bucur. Indiana University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-253-34731-9
"Putin's Big Lie", The Atlantic, January 5, 2020