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The history of Poland from 1945 to 1989 spans the period of Marxist–Leninist regime in Poland after the end of World War II.These years, while featuring general industrialization, urbanization and many improvements in the standard of living, were marred by early Stalinist repressions, social unrest, political strife and severe economic difficulties.
Large territories of Polish Second Republic were ceded to the Soviet Union by the Moscow-backed Polish government, and today form part of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. Poland was instead given the Free State of Danzig and the German areas east of the rivers Oder and Neisse (see Recovered Territories), pending a final peace conference with ...
In 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland and partitioned it pursuant to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. [124] After the invasion, Germany annexed the lands it lost to reformed Poland in 1919–1922 by the Treaty of Versailles: the Polish Corridor, West Prussia, the Province of Posen, and parts of eastern Upper Silesia.
Map showing the border adjustment. The territory ceded by Poland is marked in red, while the territory ceded by the USSR is marked in pink. The 1951 Polish-Soviet territorial exchange, also known as the Polish-Soviet border adjustment treaty of 1951, was a border agreement signed in Moscow between the Republic of Poland and the Soviet Union.
On 17 September, a Soviet invasion of Poland began. The Soviet Union quickly occupied most of the areas of eastern Poland that were inhabited by a significant Ukrainian and Belarusian minority. The two invading powers divided up the country as they had agreed in the secret provisions of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Soviet control over the Polish People's Republic lessened after Stalin's death and Gomułka's Thaw, and ceased completely after the fall of the communist government in Poland in late 1989, although the Soviet-Russian Northern Group of Forces did not leave Polish soil until 1993. The continuing Soviet military presence allowed the Soviet Union ...
By the end of the Polish Defensive War the Soviet Union had taken over 52.1% of the territory of Poland (circa 200,000 km 2), with over 13,700,000 people.The estimates vary; Professor Elżbieta Trela-Mazur gives the following numbers in regards to the ethnic composition of these areas: 38% Poles (ca. 5.1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans.
The Polish–Soviet border, as of 1939, had been determined in 1921 at the Treaty of Riga peace talks, which followed the Polish–Soviet War. [7] Under the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, two weeks after the German invasion of western Poland, the Soviet Union invaded the portions of eastern Poland assigned to it by the Pact, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland.