Accession of Western Ukraine to the USSR
Back in 1939, no one could have imagined that by annexing Western Ukraine to the USSR thereby, the then Soviet leaders, with their own hands, rolled a kind of "Trojan horse" onto the common territory of the Russian-Ukrainian statehood for all of us at that time.The Soviet leadership, when deciding to include a region absolutely alien in the social and historical terms, into the USSR, did not take into account all the complexity and all the features of the military-political situation that developed at the time of the entry of Soviet troops into Galicia.
Probably, the Soviet leaders did not see their strategic miscalculation behind the large-scale military-diplomatic events of the fall of 1939, which manifested itself only decades later in the future 21st century. However, it is also wrong to blame the same Stalin for annexing new lands to his country, since any state never has extra lands.But carrying out Sovietization, and even on the eve of the outbreak of world war in the troubled, border region, was, of course, one of the most serious mistakes of the country of the soviets. Although the Soviet secret services then worked quite effectively and the leadership of the USSR was probably very well informed about what was happening in the cities and villages of pre-war Galicia and, nevertheless, stubbornly continued Sovietization until the very beginning of the war.
in his memoirs, Pavel Sudoplatov, a well-known veteran of the Soviet special services, described the situation in Western Ukraine in 1939:“Galicia has always been a stronghold of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, supported by leaders such as Hitler and Canaris in Germany, Beneš in Czechoslovakia and Austrian Federal Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. The capital of Galicia, Lvov, became the center where refugees from Poland flocked to fleeing the German occupation forces. Polish intelligence and counterintelligence transported to Lviv all of their most important prisoners - those who were suspected of a double game during the German-Polish confrontation in the 1930s.
I learned about what was happening in Galicia only in October 1939, when the Red Army occupied Lvov. The First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine Khrushchev and his People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Serov went there to conduct a campaign of Sovietization of Western Ukraine on the spot. My wife was sent to Lvov together with Pavel Zhuravlev, the head of the German direction of our intelligence. I was alarmed: her unit was dealing with German agents and underground organizations of Ukrainian nationalists, and in Lvov the atmosphere was strikingly different from the state of affairs in the Soviet part of Ukraine.The Western capitalist way of life flourished in Lvov: wholesale and retail trade was in the hands of private traders who were soon to be liquidated in the course of Sovietization. The Ukrainian Uniate Church enjoyed tremendous influence, the local population supported the organization of Ukrainian nationalists, headed by Bandera's people. According to our information, the OUN was very active and had significant forces. In addition, she had a wealth of experience in underground activities, which, alas, the Serov "team" did not have.
The counterintelligence service of Ukrainian nationalists was able to quickly track down some safe houses of the NKVD in Lviv. The method of tracking them was extremely simple; they started it near the building of the city department of the NKVD and accompanied everyone who came out in civilian clothes and in boots, which betrayed him as a military man: the Ukrainian security officers, hiding their uniforms under their coats, forgot such a "trifle" as shoes. They apparently did not take into account that in Western Ukraine only military men wore boots. However, how could they have known about this, when in the Soviet part of Ukraine boots were worn by everyone, since other shoes simply could not be obtained. "
The fact that the OUN was a very serious enemy was indicated by the example of the same bourgeois Poland, where in the 20-30s Ukrainian nationalists quite actively fought against Polish domination in Galicia and not only through propaganda, but also with the help of terror, they were able to get even to One of the key ministers of the Polish government, Minister of Internal Affairs B. Peratsky, who initiated the creation of concentration camps in the country and a supporter of decisive measures against Ukrainian nationalists, in 1934 Peratsky was killed during a terrorist attack. This assassination attempt was organized by Stepan Bandera, who in 1936, together with his direct executors, was sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment.
We must pay tribute to the Soviet special services, which, long before entering the territory of Galicia, monitored the activities of the OUN and even carried out short and effective special operations directly against the leaders of the Western Ukrainian nationalists themselves, the NKVD seemed to have a presentiment that the struggle against Ukrainian nationalists would be long and bloody.
So, back in 1938. NKVD officer Pavel Sudoplatov killed the then head of the OUN, the former commander of the Sichev Riflemen's corps, Yevgeny Konovalets.
Soon after the unification with the USSR, the nationalists realized that Soviet Ukraine was not their ideal of Ukrainian statehood and that they were not on their way with advice.
As a result, with the beginning of the war, the USSR got a whole rebel army in the person of the OUN as an enemy, in addition to the German Wehrmacht, and all this in the strategically important southwestern direction, where Galicia, along with Transcarpathia, was the gateway to the southern regions of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and further to the southern part of Germany.
Soldiers consider trophies captured in battles on the territory of Western Ukraine.
The population of Lvov welcomes the Red Army troops who entered the city.
A group of delegates to the People's Assembly of Western Ukraine at the city theater.
On September 17, 1939, the Red Army entered the territory of Poland. This year marks exactly seventy years since these epoch-making events. But the political situation now is such that the events of those years are given increased attention by the political elites of both Ukraine and modern Poland. Surely it is worth waiting for the next loud statements about the treacherous attack, about the horrors of the Soviet occupation, about the atrocities of the Red Army soldiers and hypocritical sighs about the fate of "unhappy" Poland. At the same time, all participants in the future political and historical farce will forget about how Poland participated in the “deriban” of Czechoslovakia in 1938, what policy it pursued in relation to the Ukrainian and Belarusian population on its territory, and, of course, that thanks to "Occupation" Ukraine has established itself within its modern borders. Today we will try to remember what actually happened then. In this article I will focus exclusively on the politico-military aspect of those events. We will talk about the social consequences of the "occupation" later.
Today, many pseudo-historians say that the Ribentrop-Molotov Pact contains clauses that obliged the USSR to attack Poland simultaneously with Germany, a week after the German attack, two weeks later, etc. Such statements do not even smell like real history. It's just that the modern political situation requires necessarily to put a bold equals sign between Nazi Germany and the USSR. In reality, the USSR not only did not undertake any obligations regarding the invasion of Poland, but also delayed this moment in every possible way.
Already on September 3, 1939, Ribbentrop sent the ambassador of Germany to the USSR F.V. Schulenburg was instructed to ask Molotov "if the Soviet Union would not consider it desirable for the Russian army to act at the right moment against the Polish forces in the Russian sphere of influence and, for its part, occupy this territory." Similar requests from Germany for the introduction of Soviet troops into Poland took place later. But Molotov replied to Schulenburg on September 5 that "at the right time" the USSR "will absolutely need to start concrete actions," but the Soviet Union was in no hurry to go over to actions.
Moreover, on September 14, Molotov said that for the USSR "it would be extremely important not to take action before the fall of the administrative center of Poland - Warsaw." And it is quite likely that in the event of effective action by the Polish army against Germany, and even more so in the event of a real, and not formal entry into the war of England and France, the Soviet Union would have abandoned the idea of annexing Western Ukraine and Belarus altogether. At least at this stage. But in reality, the Allies did not provide any assistance whatsoever to Poland, which was falling to pieces.
By September 17, both the military and civilian Polish authorities had lost any thread of government, and the army was a scattered group of troops. The Germans entered the line Osovets - Bialystok - Belsk - Kamenets-Litovsk - Brest-Litovsk - Wlodawa - Lublin - Vladimir-Volynsky - Zamosc - Lvov - Sambor, thereby occupying about half of Poland's territory, occupying Krakow, Lodz, Gdansk, Lublin, Brest, Katowice, Torun. Warsaw has been under siege since September 14. On September 1, President I. Moscitsky left the city, and on September 5 - the government, which finally left the country on September 17. Commander-in-Chief E. Rydz-Smigly held out in Warsaw the longest, but he also left the city on the night of September 7, moving to Brest. However, Rydz-Smigly did not stay long there either: on September 10, the rate was moved to Vladimir-Volynsky, on the 13th - to Mlynov, and on the 15th - to Kolomyia near the Romanian border. Of course, the commander-in-chief could not normally lead the troops under such conditions. And this only exacerbated the chaos that arose as a result of the rapid advance of the Germans and the confusion at the front.
Thus, due to the effective actions of the Germans, the disorganization of the army and the inability of the leadership to organize the defense of the state, by September 17, the defeat of Poland was completely inevitable. It is significant that even the English and French general staffs, in a report prepared on September 22, noted that the USSR began an invasion of Poland only when its final defeat became obvious.
What alternatives did the Soviet Union have? Not to send troops to Poland? Why on earth? As mentioned above, the Polish army practically ceased resistance, the Germans moved unhindered to the borders of the USSR. So, on September 18, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the OKW Operations Directorate V. Varlimont showed the acting military attaché of the USSR in Germany Belyakov a map on which Lvov entered the future territory of the Reich. After making claims from the USSR, the Germans wrote off everything on the personal initiative of Warlimont. But it is very hard to believe that he was drawing maps contrary to the instructions received from the leadership of the Reich. If the Red Army had not crossed the Polish border on September 17, then in two years the German army would have been 200 kilometers closer to Moscow. And who knows what results it would have led to.
Moreover, the West also recognized the need for a Soviet invasion of Poland. Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, declared in a radio speech on October 1 that “Russia is pursuing a cold policy of self-interest. We would prefer the Russian armies to stand in their current positions as friends and allies of Poland, rather than as invaders. But to protect Russia from the Nazi threat, it was clearly necessary that the Russian armies were on this line. In any case, this line exists and, therefore, the Eastern Front has been created, which Nazi Germany would not dare to attack. "
The most interesting thing is that neither Britain nor France declared war on the USSR, despite allied commitments to Poland. On September 18, at a meeting of the British government, it was decided not even to protest against the actions of the Soviet Union, since England undertook obligations to defend Poland only from Germany. September 23 People's Commissar of Internal Affairs L.P. Beria informed the People's Commissar of Defense K.E. Voroshilov that “the resident of the NKVD of the USSR in London reported that on September 20 of this year. The British Foreign Office has sent a telegram to all the British embassies and press attaché, in which it indicates that England not only does not intend to declare war on the Soviet Union now, but must remain in the best possible terms. " And on October 17, the British announced that London wants to see an ethnographic Poland of modest size and there can be no question of returning Western Ukraine and Western Belarus to it. Thus, the allies, in fact, legitimized the actions of the Soviet Union on the territory of Poland.
Do not forget also that the Soviet Union, in fact, regained the lands seized by the Poles in the 1920s. The lands inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians, towards whom the Pilsudski government pursued a tough colonization policy. So the annexation of Western Ukraine and Belarus in 1939 was not only expedient, but also fair.
Let's move on to considering directly military operations. On September 17, Soviet troops with the forces of the Ukrainian (under the command of the 1st rank commander S.K. Timoshenko) and the Belorussian (under the command of the 2nd rank commander M.P. Kovalev) fronts invaded the eastern regions of Poland. Only some border guards resisted. By the evening of September 18, Soviet units approached Vilna. By the 20th, the city was taken. The losses of the Soviet army amounted to 13 people killed and 24 wounded, 5 tanks and 4 armored vehicles were knocked out. About 10 thousand Poles surrendered. It is characteristic that most of the resistance was offered not by the regular army, but by the local militia, formed from students and high school students.
Meanwhile, the 36th Panzer Brigade at 7 o'clock on September 18 occupied Dubno, where the rear units of the 18th and 26th Polish Infantry Divisions were disarmed. In total, 6 thousand servicemen were taken prisoner, 12 guns, 70 machine guns, 3 thousand rifles, 50 vehicles and 6 echelons with weapons became trophies of the Soviet troops.
An interesting incident occurred on the outskirts of Grodno. On September 20, a motorized group of the 16th Rifle Corps under the command of brigade commander Rozanov ran into a Polish detachment (about 200 people), suppressing the anti-Polish uprising of the local population (I think it is easy to guess about its ethnic composition). In this punitive raid, 17 local residents were killed, including 2 teenagers, 13 and 16 years old. A fierce battle ensued, in which armed local residents took an active part. The hatred for the Poles was very strong.
On September 22, Grodno surrendered. And again, it is characteristic that on the 18th, anti-Polish demonstrations began in the city.
The strength of the "resistance" of the Polish army is very well illustrated by the ratio of those killed and surrendered. So throughout the campaign, the Polish army lost 3,500 people killed. At the same time, 454,700 soldiers and officers surrendered to captivity. The Soviet army lost 1,173 people killed.
At the end of September, the Soviet and German armies met at Lvov, Lublin and Bialystok. Moreover, there were several armed clashes, which led to minor losses on both sides.
Thus, in just a month, the Polish state ceased to exist. The Soviet Union significantly pushed its borders to the west and united almost all ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian lands. The first stage of the Second World War is over.
70 years ago, in September 1939, Soviet power came to Western Ukraine, which was then part of Poland. In less than two weeks, the territories of Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv regions and Volyn became part of the USSR. Now this period is spoken of exclusively as the beginning of the "dark times", of the Soviet occupation. Forgetting, however, that it was then that Ukraine essentially established itself within its present-day borders.
Today we will try to remember what Western Ukraine was like before the "occupation" and what it became after.
The territories annexed to the USSR in the 39th were captured by Poland after the defeat of the Red Army in the 21st year. In the territories annexed in this way, the Polish government began to pursue a tough policy of colonization and polonization, ignoring both "human rights" and "European values". However, the time was then cruel and the Poles acted in the same way as the Germans, French or British would have acted in their place. Now they like to emphasize the "repression" of the totalitarian Soviet regime, although very often the actions of the Soviet authorities were much softer and more humane than European democracies in similar conditions.
Few facts.
The Ukrainian units, which took part on the side of the Poles in the fight against the Red Army, were interned and thrown into the camps behind the barbed wire. Ukrainians were not allowed to study in Ukraine. So an ethnic Ukrainian could theoretically enter a university in Krakow, Warsaw or Poznan (though only theoretically, in reality there were not many such cases), but admission to Lviv University was prohibited.
Here are excerpts from the resolution of the Congress of Ukrainians in Canada in 1924: “In Galicia alone, the Polish gentry authorities closed 682 public schools, 3 teachers' seminaries and 7 private gymnasiums ... In the Ukrainian provinces of Volyn and Polesie, where there is only 8% of the Polish population, out of 2694 there are only 400 Ukrainian public schools, and those are mercilessly Polonized. "
In 1918, there were 3,600 Ukrainian schools on the territory of Western Ukraine. By the 39th year, only 461 remained, of which 41 were private. But even in Ukrainian schools, the teaching of history and geography was conducted exclusively in Polish (isn't it, there is a lot in common with educational policy in modern Ukraine). But the closure of schools and the polonization of the Ukrainian population were not the worst disasters.
Along the new Polish-Soviet border, the Polish government began to allocate land to its veterans. This was done in order to increase Polish influence in the territories inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians.
Only 1% of the electricity generated in Poland came from Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. On the other hand, there were more than half of the total number of prisons in Western Ukraine alone in the whole of Poland - 187 out of 330. Three quarters of all executions in Poland occurred precisely in the "eastern cress".
Naturally, all this led to the emergence of organized resistance. In 1930, the uprising began to gain strength, which swept the Lvov, Stanislavsk, Ternopil and Volyn provinces. Interestingly, during the uprising, OUN militants and communists acted together. The estates of the siege colonists burned all over Western Ukraine. In response, the Polish government carried out the so-called "pacification". Detachments of the Polish police and cavalry disarmed 800 villages, arresting about 5 thousand members of the anti-Polish movement. 50 people were killed, 4 thousand injured, 500 Ukrainian houses were burned. Polish Minister of Internal Affairs Slavoy-Skladovsky later admitted: "If not for pacification, then in Western Ukraine we would have had an armed uprising, for the suppression of which we would need guns and divisions of soldiers."
Is it any wonder that after all this, the Red Army in the 39th was greeted with flowers, and Polish officers literally asked to be hidden in a jail and to strengthen security so as not to become the main characters on the Lynch ships that the local Ukrainian population was going to arrange for them.
For the sake of completeness, it is worth mentioning the "most Ukrainian" city in Ukraine - Lviv. According to the 1931 census, the population was distributed along ethnic lines as follows (belonging to a particular nationality was determined by the spoken language):
- Ukrainians 24,245 people. or 7.8%
- Rusyns 10.892 people. or 3.5%
- Poles 198,212 people or 63.5%
- Jews 75.316 people. or 24.1%
- other 3.566 people or 1.1%
But 45% of Ukrainians were employed as domestic servants, Jews - 4%. 64% of working Ukrainian women worked as domestic servants, 25% of working Poles, and 5% of Jewish women.
As for the richest inhabitants of the city, those who used hired labor, they and their family members constituted 6% of the total population of the city, 11% of the Jewish, 4% of the Polish and 2% of the Ukrainian population.
And here is an excerpt from the memoirs of an indigenous woman from Lviv, 89-year-old Lyubov Yatsenko: “The indigenous population was taken only as janitors, watchmen and domestic servants. The pans scornfully called the Ukrainians "cattle", and sometimes they were not even allowed into the tram. All important positions (lawyers, doctors, teachers, employees of the city administration, the railway) were the privilege of Poles and Jews. "
These figures are well known, but this does not prevent the current Ukrainian manipulators from history to declare that the Soviet regime destroyed the flower of the Ukrainian nation, the intellectual elite, the intelligentsia, etc. Apparently, Ukrainian intellectuals disguised themselves as servants and laborers.
After the end of the Great Patriotic War, the situation in Western Ukraine and in Lvov in particular began to change radically. In 1945-1946, the following factories dismantled in various regions of the USSR were located in Lvov: electric lamp, telegraph equipment, instrumental, agricultural machinery. Construction of a large bus factory began.
Many new enterprises were built in other areas as well. In total, by the end of the fourth five-year plan, 70 large (more than 300 workers) factories and hundreds of small factories were already working in the western regions. And if the level of Ukrainian industry by 1950 exceeded the pre-war level by only 15 percent, the gross output in the western regions increased during this time by 115%, and in the Lviv region by as much as 241%!
The sectoral structure of industry in the western regions has also undergone significant changes. So the products of mechanical engineering and metalworking were produced in comparison with the pre-war years in the Volyn region 20 times more, in Ternopil - 18 times, in Lviv - 19 times.
The development of the industry required appropriate specialists who came from the Eastern regions of Ukraine and from Russia. So in Lvov during the fourth five-year plan, 20 thousand workers and about 2 thousand engineers arrived. But the newcomers could not satisfy the needs of industry in workers' hands, especially since they were needed no less in the east. Therefore, it was urgently necessary to raise the level of education of the inhabitants of Western Ukraine (which, as mentioned above, was in a very deplorable state). To solve this problem, about 10 thousand representatives of the intelligentsia came to the western regions to fight illiteracy, organize health protection, open schools, libraries, reading rooms, etc. By the way, it was these people, honest and disinterested idealists, who took the brunt of the UPA militants. Although less than 10% of them were Komsomol activists or party members. And they did not come to instill an ideology, but only to teach and heal.
Let's get back to our topic. With the construction of industrial enterprises in Western Ukraine and the opening of new educational institutions, the population of cities grew, mostly at the expense of people from rural areas, who, receiving education, joined the ranks of the working class and the intelligentsia. It is the Soviet government that is “to blame” for the fact that Lviv and other large cities of Western Ukraine have become truly Ukrainian. And the Ukrainians have ceased to be servants, second-class people and have taken a worthy place in industry, science, education, medicine.
However, now Ukraine is rapidly getting rid of the legacy of the “totalitarian past”. If this continues, then very soon we will return to the pre-war level. And our children, instead of becoming doctors, scientists, military men, at best, will become janitors or servants of foreign nobles.
Blitzkrieg in Poland
The lightning defeat of the Polish army was an extremely unpleasant surprise for the Soviet leadership, which at first did not intend to conduct military operations in Poland. W. Shearer in his work "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" stated: " The government in the Kremlin, like the governments of other countries, was stunned by the speed with which the German armies swept across Poland.". This is indeed the case.
On September 8, when German armored divisions reached the outskirts of Warsaw, Ribbentrop sent an "urgent, top secret" message to Schulenburg in Moscow that the success of operations in Poland had exceeded "all expectations" and that in the circumstances Germany would like to know about "in military intentions of the Soviet government". The next day V. Molotov replied that “ Russia will use armed forces in the coming days ... Poland was falling apart, and as a result, the Soviet Union needed to come to the aid of the Ukrainians and Belarusians».
On September 12, Hitler, in a conversation with the commander-in-chief of the ground forces, Colonel-General Brauchitsch, said: “ The Russians, obviously, do not want to perform ... The Russians believe that the Poles will agree to make peace". However, despite the facts, Professor R. Zyugzhda groundlessly believed that the Polish “ the campaign of the Red Army was a surprise for Germany, caused her anxiety: he cut off the Reich from the Romanian oil, did not give an opportunity to gain a foothold in Galicia».
Hitler wanted to force the Soviet Union to officially enter the war. A. Orlov noted: “ Immediately after England and France entered the war, Ribbentrop persistently suggested that the USSR send its troops to Poland.».
What caused this persistence? If the Soviet government then began to act on the essentially provocative hint of Hitler and immediately send its troops into Poland, this could lead to grave military and political consequences for us. Then, as Russian military historians rightly point out, “ there were no guarantees that Britain and France would not declare war on the USSR if the Red Army crossed the Soviet-Polish border". If this happened, the Western democracies would declare the USSR the same aggressor as Germany, which would have seriously increased the chances of making peace with Britain and France and quickly freeing all the forces of the Wehrmacht to carry out the main task of the Nazi leadership - the conquest of living space in the east. Even the famous critic of the Soviet leadership headed by Stalin L. Bezymensky admitted: the USSR “ would be isolated in a future clash with Germany. However, the Soviet Union was careful enough».
Under pressure from A. Yakovlev and the anti-advisers headed by him, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1989 condemned the secret protocols on the spheres of influence of Germany and the Soviet Union. However, V. Sidak, in his publications in Pravda and other publications, including scientific ones, proved that the documents presented to the deputies by the Yakovlev commission were forgeries. This is especially evident after the first published by him in Pravda on June 16, 2011, full-scale images of the original of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and those forgeries that have repeatedly appeared under this name in the foreign and Russian press. G. Perevozchikov-Khmuryi in Sovetskaya Rossiya also provided serious evidence that there were no "secret protocols".
But if we assume that "secret protocols" did exist, then in this case, too, only those who neglect the most complex historical reality can scourge the Soviet leadership from the standpoint of some abstract ideal.
On September 8, 1939, the US Ambassador to Poland reported to Washington: “ The Polish government leaves Poland ... and goes through Romania ... to France". What should the Soviet leadership have done when the Polish government fled, and the Germans approached Brest and Lvov? Let them occupy Western Belarus, Western Ukraine, the Baltic States and start a war against us by attacking Minsk and Leningrad?
On September 14, 1999, the anti-Russian Memorial considered our defense of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine "a tragedy for their residents" and called on the Russian leadership to "publicly call it a crime." But in 1939, former British Prime Minister Lloyd George wrote to the Polish ambassador in London: “ The USSR occupied territories that are not Polish and which were taken by force by Poland after the First World War ... It would be an act of madness to put the Russian advance on a par with the advance of Germany". Churchill foresaw a military clash between Germany and the USSR. Therefore, speaking on the radio on October 1, 1939, he actually justified the entry of Soviet troops into Poland: “ To protect Russia from the Nazi threat, it was clearly necessary that the Russian armies were on this line.».
Meanwhile, A. Yakovlev in December 1989 declared that the Soviet Union entered World War II not in 1941, but in September 1939. This deceitful idea was taken up by other anti-Soviets. So, A. Nekrich writes in his book "1941, June 22": " In the first period of the war, the Soviet Union had an incomplete military-political alliance with Germany. It should be considered unfinished, since there was no formal military alliance". In his opinion, Soviet troops actually fought on the side of Germany: “P Poland fell, its territories were divided between Germany and the USSR. ... Thus, the Soviet Union entered the Second World War on September 17, 1939, and not on June 22, 1941, as is commonly believed ...“Here it is, a typical falsification of history.
Western Ukraine and Western Belarus meet liberators
Let's go back to the early autumn of 1939. By September 17, German troops defeated the main groupings of the Polish army, which lost 66,300 killed and 133,700 wounded in battles. On September 17, Red Army units entered Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. The Soviet government set out in a note handed to the Polish ambassador in Moscow V. Grzybowski the reasons for this step:
« The Polish-German war exposed the internal bankruptcy of the Polish state. Within ten days of military operations, Poland lost all of its industrial areas and cultural centers. Warsaw as the capital of Poland no longer exists. The Polish government has disintegrated and shows no signs of life. This means that the Polish state and its government have virtually ceased to exist. Thus, the agreements concluded between the USSR and Poland were terminated. Left to itself and left without leadership, Poland turned into a convenient field for all kinds of accidents and surprises that could pose a threat to the USSR. Therefore, being neutral hitherto, the Soviet government can no longer be neutral about these facts. The Soviet government also cannot be indifferent to the fact that the consanguineous Ukrainians and Belarusians living in Poland, abandoned to their fate, remain defenseless. In view of this situation, the Soviet government issued an order to the High Command of the Red Army to order the troops to cross the border and take under their protection the life and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus».
The Polish Supreme Commander, Marshal Edward Rydz-Smigly, ordered his troops on 17-18 September: “ Not to engage in battles with the Soviets, to resist only in case of attempts on their part to disarm our units that have come into contact with Soviet troops. Continue the fight with the Germans. The encircled cities must fight. If Soviet troops approach, negotiate with them in order to achieve the withdrawal of our garrisons to Romania and Hungary". The main part of the Polish troops surrendered in whole formations. From September 17 to October 2, 1939, 452,536 people were disarmed, including 18,729 officers. In short-term battles against Soviet troops, units of the Polish army and gendarmerie lost 3,500 killed and 20,000 wounded. During this period, our army irrevocably lost 1475 people.
The arrival of Soviet troops not only warned, but in a number of cases stopped the ongoing massacre of persons of Polish nationality. On September 20, in his report, the head of the Political Directorate of the RKKA L. Mehlis noted that the Polish officers “ the Ukrainian peasants and the population, who became more active with the arrival of the Red Army and are cracking down on Polish officers, are afraid of the fire. It got to the point that in Burshtyn, Polish officers, sent by the corps to school and guarded by a minor guard, asked to increase the number of soldiers guarding them as prisoners in order to avoid possible reprisals against them.».
V. Berezhkov, now living in the United States, recalled in his book "Next to Stalin": " As a witness to the events that took place in the autumn of 1939, I cannot forget the atmosphere that prevailed in those days in Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. We were greeted with flowers, bread and salt, treated with fruits and milk. In small private cafes, Soviet officers were fed free of charge. Those were genuine feelings. The Red Army was seen as a defense against Hitler's terror. Something similar happened in the Baltics". In 1999, the peoples of Belarus and Ukraine celebrated the 60th anniversary of their reunification as a great holiday.
On October 22, 1939, elections were held to the People's Assemblies of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. 92.83% of the population of Western Ukraine took part in the voting, of which 90.93% voted for the nominated candidates. In Western Belarus, 96.71% of the population participated in the elections. Of these, 90.67% voted for candidates who supported Soviet power. On October 27, the People's Assembly of Western Ukraine unanimously adopted a declaration on the establishment of Soviet power and on joining the Soviet Union. On October 29, the same decision was made by the People's Assembly of Western Belarus. The fifth, extraordinary session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on November 1 adopted a resolution on the inclusion of Western Ukraine in the Ukrainian SSR, and on November 2 - on the inclusion of Western Belarus in the Byelorussian SSR.
Yu Afanasyev appreciated “ the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939; a parade of Soviet and German troops in Brest in the autumn of the same year; the occupation of the Baltic States, Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and Bessarabia in 1940; Stalin's congratulations to Hitler on each of the victories won in Europe, up to June 1941; toasts in honor of the Fuhrer in the Kremlin ... as the actual participation of the USSR until mid-1941 in the war on the side of Germany against the Western allies". But we have to repeat once again that the USSR was forced to conclude an agreement with Germany. There was also no "joint military action" by the German and Soviet troops in Poland.
The question of the "victory parade" in Brest, which was "hosted" by General Guderian and brigade commander Krivoshein, also remains speculative. For the Red Army, the "parade" was a "diplomatic" step to avoid unwanted consequences. The same goal, according to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, "was pursued by Stalin's toasts and congratulations to Hitler." The fact is that Hitler intended to capture most of the Baltic states. On September 25, 1939, he signed secret directive No. 4, which provided for “ in East Prussia, to keep on alert the forces sufficient for the quick capture of Lithuania, even in the event of armed resistance". Inclusion in Nazi Europe did not bode well for the Baltic peoples. The head of the SS G. Himmler in 1942 put forward the task of "total Germanization" of the Baltic states within 20 years.
In the fall of 1939, the USSR concluded agreements on mutual assistance with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and, on their basis, brought its troops into these states. This strengthened the security of our northwestern borders, significantly helped prepare for repelling Hitler's aggression.
At present, the West is hysterically shouting about the USSR's criminal occupation of the three Baltic republics in 1940. In fact, the masses there swept away the pro-German governments, established Soviet power and decided to join the USSR. About this convincingly - on the basis of historical documents - writes Yu. Yemelyanov in the article "Occupation or Revolution?" On July 26, 1940, the London Times noted that “ the unanimous decision to join Soviet Russia "of the peoples of the Baltic states" reflects ... not pressure from Moscow, but a sincere recognition that such a way out is a better alternative than being included in the new Nazi Europe».
Liberation of Bessarabia
K. Kolikov, who does not know much about history, announced that the USSR had attacked Bessarabia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. He did not attack them. Bessarabia has never belonged to Romania. Taking advantage of our then weakness, Romania captured it in 1918, but in 1940 the USSR returned Bessarabia to itself, restoring historical justice. But B. Sokolov for some reason (apparently in a sleepy state) decided that we “ it is worth apologizing to Romania for aggression and occupation».
In October 1939 Churchill told the Soviet plenipotentiary Maisky: “ From the point of view of the correctly understood interests of England, the fact that the entire east and southeast of Europe is outside the war zone has not a negative, but a positive meaning. For the most part, England has no reason to object to the actions of the USSR in the Baltics. Of course, some of the sentimental leaders may cry over the Russian protectorate over Estonia or Latvia, but this should not be taken seriously.". He admitted: “ In favor of the Soviets, it must be said that it was vital for the Soviet Union to push as far west as possible the starting positions of the German armies so that the Russians had time and could gather forces from all parts of their colossal empire. If their policies were coldly calculating, they were also highly realistic at the time.».
Failed compromise
The Soviet-Finnish border was only 32 kilometers from Leningrad. Our government offered the Finns to move the border away from this city. L. Garth reasoned: “R The Russians wanted to provide better cover for the land approaches to Leningrad, pushing the Finnish border on the Karelian Isthmus so that Leningrad was not in danger of heavy artillery shelling. This change in the border did not affect the main defenses of the Mannerheim Line ... In exchange for all these territorial changes, the Soviet Union offered to cede the Rebola and Poraiorpi areas to Finland. This exchange, even in accordance with the Finnish White Paper, gave Finland an additional area of 2,134 square meters. miles as compensation for the cession to Russia of territories with a total area of 1,066 sq. miles.
An objective study of these requirements shows that they were drawn up on a rational basis in order to ensure greater security of Russian territory without causing any serious damage to the security of Finland. Of course, all this would prevent Germany from using Finland as a springboard for an attack on Russia. At the same time, Russia did not receive any advantage for attacking Finland. In fact, the regions that Russia proposed to cede to Finland would expand the borders of the latter at the narrowest point of its territory. However, the Finns rejected this proposal too.».
After that, the Soviet government decided to achieve a safer border for Leningrad by military means. The idea of V. Novobranets that the war with Finland “ was not an objective necessity. It was Stalin's personal whim, caused by unclear reasons.". An ardent “democrat” S. Lipkin asked an absurd question: “ Why, shortly before the greatest war, did we not manage to defeat the small army of Finland?"If we did not defeat her, then why did she give the Karelian Isthmus and the city of Vyborg to the Soviet Union? Another thing is that this victory in the war with the Finns was far from being as brilliant as the Soviet command had hoped for.
The top political leadership of the USSR initially misjudged Finland's military potential. Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army Marshal of the Soviet Union B. Shaposhnikov, summoned to the Military Council to discuss the planned war against Finland, presented a plan that took into account the real capabilities of the Finnish army and a sober assessment of the difficulties of breaking through its fortified areas. " And in accordance with this, - later recalled Marshal of the Soviet Union A. Vasilevsky, - he assumed the concentration of large forces and resources necessary for the decisive success of this operation. When Shaposhnikov named all these forces and means planned by the General Staff, which had to be concentrated before the start of this operation, Stalin laughed at him. It was said something like that, they say, in order to cope with this very ... Finland, you require such enormous forces and resources. On such a scale, there is no need for them.».
Our army launched an offensive with insufficient forces and means, suffered heavy losses, and only a month later approached the Mannerheim line. When the Military Council discussed the issue of the further conduct of the war, " Shaposhnikov reported, in essence, the same plan that he reported a month ago". He was accepted. The re-launched operation was crowned with complete success, the Mannerheim line was quickly broken through.
At the headquarters of the commander of the Finnish troops, Marshal Mannerheim, there was a representative of Gamelin, General Clement-Grancourt. According to a member of the French military mission, Captain P. Stelen, the main task of the French representatives was to "keep Finland in a state of war by all means." On March 19, 1940, Daladier declared in Parliament that for France “ The Moscow Peace Treaty is a tragic and shameful event. This is a great victory for Russia».
Hitler on March 8, 1940, wrote to Mussolini about the Soviet-Finnish war: “ Taking into account the possibilities of maneuver and supply, no force in the world could have achieved such results in a frost of 30-40 degrees, which the Russians achieved already at the very beginning of the war.". It is interesting how Hitler on April 12, 1942 explained the failure of the German blitzkrieg: “In The whole war with Finland in 1940, as well as the entry of the Russians into Poland with outdated tanks and weapons and out-of-uniform soldiers, is nothing more than a grandiose disinformation campaign, since Russia at one time had the weapons that made it along with Germany and Japan, a world power". An interesting zigzag in the thoughts of the Fuhrer. How is it explained?
Doctor of Historical Sciences A. Orlov considers the Soviet-Finnish war " in a sense, "unnecessary", generated by the political miscalculations of both countries". But much more miscalculations were made by the Finnish rulers, who were then pursuing a short-sighted foreign policy.
The oath of the Finnish officer included the following solemn words: “ Just as I believe in one God, I believe in Greater Finland and its great future.". Väine Voinomaa, a prominent public figure in Finland, wrote to his son about how Tanner, the chairman of the Social Democratic faction in the Finnish parliament, said on June 19, 1941: “ The very existence of Russia is already unjustified, and it must be eliminated», « Peter will be wiped off the face of the earth. " The Finnish borders, according to President Ryti, will be established along the Svir to Lake Onega and from there to the White Sea, “Stalin's canal remains on the Finnish side". Such plans of conquest were supported by a considerable part of the Finnish population.
On July 10, 1941, the Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish Armed Forces K. Mannerheim, a former general of tsarist Russia, ordered them “about free the lands of the Karelians". After difficult battles with the Finns on October 1, 1941, our troops were forced to leave Petrozavodsk. In a US note on November 11, 1941, the Finnish government stated: “ Finland seeks to neutralize and take the offensive positions of the enemy, including those lying beyond the 1939 borders. It would be imperative for Finland and in the interests of the effectiveness of its defense to take such measures already in 1939 during the first phase of the war, if only its forces were sufficient for this.».
By the way, we will point out: of the 20,000 Russian population of Petrozavodsk, captured by the Finns in 1941, 19,000 were in a concentration camp, where they were fed "horse corpses of two days ago." Is this not what B. Sokolov had in mind when he called us “ apologize to Finland"? In vain does he think that “ Finland's position could have been completely different in 1941. Perhaps even neutral". We must not forget that the Finnish government dreamed of creating a great Finland.
« Indeed, did the victory in the Finnish campaign strengthen the security of the USSR in general and Leningrad in particular? - argued B. Sokolov. - There is only one answer: no, it did not strengthen, but, on the contrary, weakened". He tries to find arguments in favor of this conclusion: “ In June 1941, Finnish troops, together with the Nazis, attacked the Soviet Union and already on August 31 captured the notorious village of Mainila. In some two or three months, the Finns reached the former border on the Karelian Isthmus and even crossed it, which, however, did not cause the fall of Leningrad».
But this author, captured by anti-Soviet miasms, did not try to answer very essential questions. What would have happened if the Finnish troops had launched an offensive from the previous border? Where would they be in two or three months? Berezhkov correctly put the question: “ What would happen if the border with Finland passed where it ran until the spring of 1940. Another question: would Leningrad have resisted? It means that there was something in it, it means that we cannot say that we have only lost, discredited ourselves».
Noting that as a result of the victory over the Finns of the USSR, " improved its strategic position in the north-west and north, created the prerequisites for ensuring the security of Leningrad and the Murmansk railway", A. Orlov considered that" the territorial gains of 1939-1940 turned into major political losses". But it can be unerringly asserted that they were more than covered by the fact that German troops attacked us from positions 300-400 kilometers away from the old borders. In November 1941, they approached Moscow. Where would they be if the Soviet Union had not pushed the border to the west?
L. Bezymensky, condemning the policy of the Soviet government in 1939 and 1940, said: “ Stalin, it seemed, could triumph. But the cost of the delay was dire. After June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht divisions quickly passed through the regions of Western Belarus, Western Ukraine and the Baltic States, which the Red Army did not manage to master and adapt to defense.».
Would it have been better for our country if it had not achieved this "postponement"? If the German armed forces in 1939 launched an offensive against Soviet troops from positions near Leningrad, Minsk and not far from Kiev? Bezymensky chose not to touch upon this inevitable and fundamentally important question. And without an answer to it, the arguments and assessments of the professor lose their validity.
Colonel-General V. Cherevatov correctly concluded: “ Hitler, even before the start of hostilities against the USSR, lost to I.V. Stalin had two of the most important strategic operations - the battle for Space and the battle for Time, by which he doomed himself to defeat already in 1941.».
Sitting war
England and France declared war on Germany, which attacked Poland. Observers called it either "sit-down" or "strange" war. It actually became an inherently unambiguous attempt to continue the failed policy of “appeasement” of the aggressor. The German command announced that from September 1939 to May 1940, the German army lost on the Western Front only 196 people killed, 356 people wounded, 144 people missing, as well as 11 aircraft. This development of events confirmed the correctness of the Soviet government's assessment of the position of Britain and France, which, wishing to avoid a real war with Germany, wanted to push it against the Soviet Union.
During the Soviet-Finnish War, Western European states. To this end, it was decided to form an expeditionary force of 150,000 people to be sent to Finland, as well as to bomb the Soviet oil fields in Baku, Maikop, and Grozny. On March 12, 1940, Prime Minister Daladier announced that France had supplied Finland with 145 aircraft, 496 guns, 5,000 machine guns, 400,000 rifles and 20 million rounds of ammunition. Chamberlain announced on March 19 in the British Parliament that 101 aircraft, 114 guns, 185,000 shells, 200 anti-tank guns, 100 Vickers machine guns, 50,000 gas shells, 15,700 air bombs, a lot of uniforms and equipment were sent from England to Finland. 11,600 foreign volunteers arrived in Finland. Among them there were 8680 Swedes, Danes - 944, Norwegians - 693, American Finns - 364 and Hungarians - 346.
The French headquarters developed a plan of military action against the USSR, which provided for the landing of an Anglo-French landing in Pechenga (Petsamo) and air strikes against important targets on Soviet territory. In the memorandum of the Chief of the General Staff of the French Navy, Admiral Darlan to the Prime Minister E. Daladier, the need for such an operation was justified as follows: In the Murmansk region and in Karelia, thousands of political exiles are being held, and the inhabitants of the concentration camps there are ready to rise up against the oppressors. Karelia could eventually become a place where anti-Stalinist forces inside the country could unite».
In December 1939, the deputy chief of the French Air Force General Staff, General Bergerie, said that the Anglo-French allies would launch an attack on the Soviet Union not only in the north, in Finland, but also in the south, in the Caucasus. " General Weygand commands troops in Syria and Lebanon. Its forces will advance in the general direction of Baku in order to deprive the USSR of the oil produced here. From here, Weygand's troops will advance towards the allies advancing on Moscow from Scandinavia and Finland.».
« I was surprised and flattered, - wrote P. Stelen in his memoirs, - that I was privately introduced to an operation of such a large scale. The idea of the operation was expressed on the map with two curved arrows: the first from Finland, the second from Syria. The pointed arrowheads of these arrows were connected in the area east of Moscow.". These projects, striking in their stupidity, distracted the British and French from the most important thing - the real strengthening of their defenses.
Alexander OGNEV.
Front-line soldier, professor, honored scientist.
The myth of the voluntary annexation of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus to the USSR
The main myth associated with the so-called "liberation campaign" of the Red Army in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus in September 1939 was undertaken to save the Ukrainians and Belarusians of Poland from German occupation after the defeat of the Polish army. At the same time, it was denied that Soviet troops entered Poland in pursuance of a secret additional protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, according to which the eastern provinces of Poland were withdrawn into the Soviet sphere of interests. It was also argued that Soviet troops crossed the Soviet-Polish border on September 17 precisely because on that day the Polish government and the main command of the army left the country. In fact, on that day, the Polish government and the commander-in-chief, Marshal Edward Rydz-Smigly, were still on Polish territory, although they had left Warsaw.
According to the Soviet propaganda myth, the overwhelming majority of the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus welcomed the arrival of the Red Army and unanimously spoke out in favor of joining the USSR.
In reality, the ethnic composition of the population of the annexed territories was such that it excluded the possibility that the majority of the inhabitants would speak in favor of joining the USSR. In 1938 in Poland, according to official statistics, out of 35 million inhabitants, there were 24 million Poles, 5 Ukrainians, and 1.4 million Belarusians. However, at Stalin's instructions, Pravda wrote about 8 million Ukrainians and 3 million Belarusians employed by Red The army of the Ukrainian and Belarusian provinces. There, elections were held to the People's Assemblies of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. The elections were held according to the principle: one person for one seat. Only communists and their allies were nominated for deputies, and any agitation against them was prohibited. In October 1939, the People's Assemblies proclaimed Soviet power and appealed to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a request for reunification with Ukraine and Belarus, which was granted in November.
Stalin did not hold a plebiscite on joining the USSR in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. There was no certainty that the majority of the population of the liberated territories would vote for joining the USSR, and it is unlikely that anyone in the world would recognize its clearly falsified results. According to the 1931 census, 5.6 million Poles, 4.3 million Ukrainians, 1.7 million Belarusians, 1.1 million Jews, 126 thousand Russians, 87 thousand Germans and 136 thousand people lived in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. representatives of other nationalities. In Western Belarus, Poles prevailed in Bialystok (66.9%), Vilensk (59.7%) and Novogrudok (52.4%) provinces, Belarusians - only in Polessk (69.2%). Western Belarus was home to 2.3 million Poles, 1.7 million Belarusians and 452 thousand Jews. In Western Ukrainian voivodeships, Poles prevailed in Lvov (57.7%) and Tarnopil (49.7%) voivodeships (in Tarnopil voivodeship, Ukrainians accounted for 45.5%), Ukrainians - in Volyn (68.4%) and Stanislavovsky (68.9 %). In Western Ukraine, there were 3.3 million Poles, 4.3 million Ukrainians and 628 thousand Jews.
In Western Ukraine, the illegal Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which advocated the independence of Ukraine, was popular. The OUN members fought against the Polish authorities, including using terrorist methods. They also attacked Soviet representatives. Ukrainian nationalists were no less hostile to the Soviet regime than they were to the Poles. There was no noticeable Belarusian national movement in Western Belarus. But a significant part of the Belarusian population of Western Belarus was made up of Belarusian Catholics, who were culturally and politically oriented towards the Poles. And the Poles made up about half of the population of Western Belarus.
The Ukrainian and Belarusian population in Poland (mostly peasants) fought for their national rights, but they were not going to join the USSR, having heard about terror and famine. And the Ukrainians and Belarusians lived in Poland more prosperous than the poor Soviet collective farmers. Nevertheless, the invasion of the Red Army was received calmly, and even with enthusiasm by the Jews, who were threatened with Hitler's genocide. However, the measures of the Soviet power quickly led to the fact that in 1941, the Ukrainians and Belarusians greeted the Germans with bread and salt, as liberators from the Bolsheviks.
Polish general Vladislav Anders cited in his memoirs the stories of Lviv residents about how the Bolsheviks "robbed not only private property, but also state property," how the NKVD penetrated into all spheres of life, about crowds of refugees who, having learned what it was like to live under the Bolsheviks, despite what, they want to go to the lands occupied by the Germans.
There were many facts of looting and arbitrary executions by the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army.
The commanders who were guilty of arbitrary executions did not suffer any serious punishment. People's Commissar of Defense Kliment Voroshilov just reprimanded them, pointing out that there was no deliberate ill will in the actions of those guilty of illegal actions, that all this took place “in an atmosphere of hostilities and an acute class and national struggle of the local Ukrainian and Jewish population with the former Polish gendarmes and officers ".
Quite often the murders of Poles were committed by the local Ukrainian and Belarusian population. Secretary of the Brest Regional Committee of the KP (b) B. Kiselev said in April 1940: “There were many such murders of the sworn enemies of the people, committed in the people's anger in the first days of the arrival of the Red Army. We justify them, we are on the side of those who, having come out of captivity, dealt with their enemy. "
On the Western Ukrainian and Western Belarusian lands, even before June 22, 1941, massive forced collectivization began. The intelligentsia was accused of "bourgeois nationalism" and repressed. Before the start of the Great Patriotic War, 108 thousand people, mostly Poles, were arrested in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. Most of them were shot on the eve and in the first weeks of the Great Patriotic War. Only by the verdicts of the tribunals and the Special Council, 930 people were shot. About 6 thousand more prisoners were shot at the beginning of the war during the evacuation of prisons in Western Ukraine and more than 600 people in Western Belarus.
In December 1939, a predatory monetary reform was carried out. Zloty on accounts and deposits of the population were exchanged for rubles at the rate of 1: 1, but for an amount not exceeding 300 zlotys.
The behavior of many representatives of the new government did not arouse sympathy among the population. So, as noted in the party documents, in the Drohobych region "the head of the NKVD RO of the Novostreletsk region, Kochetov, on November 7, 1940, drunk, in a village club in the presence of the head of the RO of militia Psekh, he severely beat the farm laborer Tsaritsa with a revolver, who was taken to the hospital in a difficult situation." ... In the Bogorodchansky district of Stanislavskaya oblast, the communist Syrovatsky "summoned the peasants on the tax issue at night, threatened them, forced the girls to cohabitation." In the Obertyn district of the same region, "there were massive violations of revolutionary legality."
In a letter addressed to Stalin, the assistant to the Rivne regional prosecutor Sergeev noted: “It would seem that with the liberation of Western Ukraine, the best forces of the country, crystal-clear and unshakable Bolsheviks, should have been sent here for work, but the opposite happened. Most of them were big and small crooks, whom they tried to get rid of at home ”.
The Soviet cadres who replaced the Polish administration were often unable to establish the economy. One of the delegates of the Volyn regional party conference in April 1940 was indignant: "Why were they watered the streets every day under the Poles, swept them with brooms, and now there is nothing?"
In 1939-1940, about 280 thousand Poles were deported from the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus to the eastern regions of the USSR, including 78 thousand refugees from the regions of Poland occupied by the Germans. About 6 thousand people died on the way. In June 1941, just before the start of the Great Patriotic War, 11 thousand "Ukrainian nationalists and counter-revolutionaries" were also deported from Western Ukraine. With the outbreak of World War II, many natives of the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus deserted from the Red Army or evaded mobilization.
The issue of international legal recognition of the Soviet annexation of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus was finally resolved by the Treaty on the Soviet-Polish state border, which the USSR signed with the pro-communist government of Poland on August 16, 1945. The Soviet-Polish border passed mainly along the Curzon line, but with the return to Poland of the cities of Bialystok and Przemysl (Przemysl).
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Photo chronicle TASS
On September 17, 1939, in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Soviet troops entered the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus
The Polish campaign of the Red Army in September 1939, known in Soviet historiography as the liberation campaign in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, ended with the annexation of these territories to the Soviet Union, which were mostly lost following the results of the Peace of Riga in 1921. Currently, they are part of the Grodno and Brest regions of Belarus, as well as the Volyn, Rivne, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil regions of Ukraine.
End of Poland
The actions of the Soviet Union, whose troops entered the territory that was still formally part of Poland on September 17, 1939, are debatable in history. Thus, the bulk of modern Polish researchers interpret these events as the aggression of the USSR against Poland and the division of the country between Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union as a result of the "criminal" Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. At the same time, the Poles categorically do not like to remember that by the time the Red Army soldiers crossed the state border, Poland as a state had actually ceased to exist. Its armed forces were defeated by the Wehrmacht, and the government fled to Romania. Moreover, less than a year before, Poland, without any remorse, in an alliance with the same Nazi Germany, “chopped off” the Teshin region from Czechoslovakia.
In any case, the Poles did not offer serious resistance, and basically surrendered. On September 19, Soviet troops occupied Vilna (Vilnius), which a month later was transferred to Lithuania, which the current authorities of this country prefer not to remember. In Western Belarus, on September 17, the Red Army entered Baranovichi, on September 22 - in Grodno, Bialystok and Brest, on September 24 - in Suwalki. On the territory of Western Ukraine, on September 17, Rovno and Ternopil were occupied, on September 18 - Dubno and Lutsk, on September 19 - Stanislav and Galich, on September 20 - Volodymyr-Volynsky, on September 21 - Kovel, on September 22 - Lvov and Stryi, on September 24 - Drohobych, September 26 - Kholm, September 27 - Yavorov, September 29 - Przemysl.
The military operation to disarm the Polish armed formations actually ended by October 1, 1939. By agreements with the German side, a demarcation line was established, which did not go beyond the so-called Curzon line - the eastern border of Poland, established by the Entente countries at the end of 1919.
The transfer of the border post on the liberated territory on the border of the USSR with Poland / TASS photo chronicle
Western reaction
It is noteworthy that the western allies of Warsaw - Great Britain and France, which on September 3, 1939, two days after the start of the German invasion of Poland, declared war on Germany, took the actions of the USSR for granted. Yes, there was also a loud parliamentary speech by British Prime Minister Chamberlain about "a knife stuck in Poland's back" and anti-Soviet articles in the Western press. But it all ended very quickly.
Already on September 27, 1939, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, in a letter to the Polish diplomatic envoy in London, stated that the actions of the USSR cannot be compared with the actions of Nazi Germany, since “Russian troops occupied territory that was not Polish and which was taken by force by the Poles after Of the First World War ". He also acknowledged that residents of Polish Ukraine have the right to reunite with residents of Soviet Ukraine. A similar position was taken by Winston Churchill, who took the post of Prime Minister of Great Britain a few months later. On October 1, 1939, he said that Russia needed to take this line in order to protect itself from possible aggression from Nazi Germany.
Help "class brothers"
Western Belarus. An old peasant woman greets soldiers and commanders of the Red Army in the town of Molodechnoye. Photo chronicle TASS
The actions of the Soviet Union in September 1939 were fully justified both from a military-political point of view and from the point of view of historical expediency. In fact, the reunification of Western Russian lands, which had previously been torn away from Russia, took place. True, in Soviet propaganda, the main emphasis was by no means on this fundamental point, but on class solidarity - "the liberation of the working people of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus from the Polish gentry, landowners and bourgeoisie." This was expressed in a popular song to verses by Yevgeny Dolmatovsky and Vladimir Lugovsky:
“We are going for the great Motherland
Help our brothers in the class.
Every step our army has taken
Chases away the ominous night! "
At the same time, the directives of the political departments of the Red Army also focused on Polish chauvinism in relation to the "fraternal peoples of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus" and inciting ethnic hatred, in particular, the prohibition of the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages.
It is worth saying that the overwhelming majority of the population of the Western Russian lands welcomed the arrival of the Red Army and greeted Soviet servicemen with flowers and red flags. The bodies of Soviet power and the elected People's Assemblies created on the territory taken under control of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus spoke in favor of joining the Soviet Union. On November 1-2, 1939, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR approved the corresponding appeals. Thus, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus became part of the Ukrainian SSR and the BSSR, respectively.
The annexation of Western Ukraine, 1939. Western Ukraine. Lviv. A column of workers at the 7 November celebration. Photo by M. Ozersky / TASS photo chronicle
Why modern Ukraine has less rights to Lviv than Poland
Speaking about the annexation of the Western Russian lands of Galicia and Volhynia to the Soviet Union, it should be said that it was then, in 1939-1940, that the Soviet leadership, represented by Stalin, completed the territorial formation of a state entity called Ukraine, which, with minor changes, has survived to this day. Unfortunately, there was no question of returning these territories to the common Russian space. Rather, on the contrary, the communist government did everything to fully Ukrainize them. In this regard, the policy of decommunization pursued by the Kiev regime and refusal of legal succession from the Ukrainian SSR in favor of the nationalist UPR is a struggle with the founding fathers of Ukraine and ... an act of separatism. Yes, it was an act of separatism and nothing else. For in the current realities, Poland, which considers itself the legal successor of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, has a much greater right to the territories lost in 1939 than modern Nazi Ukraine, which declared war on the Soviet legacy and proclaimed itself the legal successor of the UPR.
In support of the above, we will cite a specific historical fact. One of the idols of Ukrainian nationalists, Simon Petliura, who in 1918-1920 was the head of the Directory (government) of the UPR, in April 1920 signed the Warsaw Pact with the Polish dictator Jozef Piłsudski. In accordance with this document, all of Western Ukraine, including Galicia, part of Volyn, as well as Lemkivschina, Kholmshchyna and Nadsania, was recognized as the territory of Poland. Thus, Petliura, hoping to return to Kiev on Polish bayonets, with his own hands transferred the territory of the former West Ukrainian People's Republic (ZUNR) to Poland, with which on January 22, 1919 he signed the "Act of evil" (unification agreement). In honor of this "Act of evil," which has creakily existed for just over a year, since the time of Kuchma, Ukraine has celebrated the "day of conciliarity", and Petliura was elevated to the rank of a national hero.
However, nothing new, what country - such are the heroes.
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