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Following the Polish victory upon the Battle of Warsaw, the Soviets sued for peace and the war ended with an armistice in October 1920. [35] The parties signed a formal peace treaty, the Peace of Riga, on 18 March 1921, dividing the disputed territories between Poland and Soviet Russia. [36]
In February, Polish troops marched east to face the Soviets; the new Polish Sejm declared the need to liberate "the northeast provinces of Poland with their capital in Wilno [Vilnius]". [21] After the German World War I troops had been evacuated from the region, the Battle of Bereza Kartuska, a Polish–Soviet skirmish, took place. [70]
The Soviets established several new chairs, particularly the chairs of Russian language and literature. The chairs of Marxism-Leninism, and Dialectical and Historical Materialism, aimed at strengthening Soviet ideology, were opened as well. [11] Polish literature and language studies were dissolved by Soviet authorities.
On September 17, 1939, the Red Army invaded the territory of Poland from the east. The invasion took place while Poland was already sustaining serious defeats in the wake of the German attack on the country that started on September 1, 1939. The Soviets moved to safeguard their claims in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. [3] [4]
According to the Soviet law, all residents of the annexed area, dubbed by the Soviets as citizens of former Poland, [167] automatically acquired Soviet citizenship. However, actual conferral of citizenship still required the individual's consent and the residents were strongly pressured for such consent. [146]
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.
Communist propaganda called the Polish resistance the "bands of White Poles", or "the protégés of the Gestapo." [2] On 23 June 1943 the Soviet leaders ordered the partisans to denounce Polish partisan to the Nazis. [2] The Soviet units were authorized to “shoot the [Polish] leaders” and “discredit, disarm, and dissolve” their units. [2]
All Polish institutions were abolished, and all Polish officials, civil servants, and police were deported to Siberia or Central Asia. [12] Ukrainian organizations not controlled by the Soviets were limited or abolished. Hundreds of credit unions and cooperatives that had served the Ukrainian people between the wars were shut down. All local ...