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The second partition of Poland; a study in diplomatic history (1915) online; Lukowski, Jerzy. The Partitions of Poland 1772, 1793, 1795 (1998); online review; McLean, Thomas. The Other East and Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Imagining Poland and the Russian Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) pp. 14–40.
The first Russian partition took place in the late 17th century when the forced Treaty of Andrusovo signed in 1667 granted Russia the Commonwealth's territory in the Eastern Ukraine. [3] Under the Third Partition of Poland Russia acquired Courland, all Lithuanian territory east of the Nieman River, and the remaining parts of Volhynian Ukraine.
The Soviet (as well as German) invasion of Poland was indirectly indicated in the "secret protocol" of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed on 23 August 1939, which divided Poland into "spheres of influence" of the two powers. [8] German and Soviet cooperation in the invasion of Poland has been described as co-belligerence. [9] [10]
German and Soviet soldiers stroll around Sambir after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland. [17] By the end of the invasion, the Soviet Union had taken over 51.6% of the territory of Poland (about 201,000 square kilometres (78,000 sq mi)), with over 13,200,000 people. [8]
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.
The borders of Poland resembled the borders of the German-Russian gains in World War 2, with the exception of the city of Bialystok. This is called the Curzon line. The small area of Trans-Olza, which had been annexed by Poland in late 1938, was returned to Czechoslovakia on Stalin's orders.
German & Soviet advance in Poland September 1939 Damage of the American Embassy in Warsaw in the aftermath of the battle. John Gunther wrote in December 1939 that "the German campaign was a masterpiece. Nothing quite like it has been seen in military history". [85] The country was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union.