Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Soviet invasion of Poland; 500,000 Polish nationals imprisoned before June 1941 (90% male) [1] 22,000 Polish military personnel and officials killed in the Katyn massacre alone [2] 320,000 Poles deported to Siberia in 1939-1941 [3] 100,000 women raped during the Soviet counter-offensive (est.) [4] 150,000 killed by the Soviets [5]
The Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939, [9] breaking relations with the Polish government and repressing Polish citizens in the occupied territories. [10] The outbreak of the Soviet-German War in 1941 and Sikorski-Mayski Negotiations [11] led to the change of Soviet policies towards the Poles, as leniency was needed if Soviets were to recruit and create a Polish force under their command.
Diplomatic relations were, however, re-established in 1941 after the German invasion of the Soviet Union forced Joseph Stalin to look for allies. Thus the military agreement from August 14 and subsequent Sikorski–Mayski Agreement from August 17, 1941, resulted in Stalin agreeing to declare the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in relation to Poland null and void, [29] and release tens of thousands ...
According to the order, the entire operation was to be completed in three months. Subject to arrest and immediate elimination were persons of the following categories: "prisoners of war from the Polish army who after the 1920 war had remained in the Soviet Union, deserters and political émigrés from Poland (such as Polish communists admitted through prisoners' exchange), former members of ...
The "Polish Operation" was a second in a series of national operations of the NKVD, carried out by the Soviet Union against ethnic groups including Latvian, Finnish, German, and Romanian, based on a theory about an internal enemy (i.e., the fifth column), labelled as the "hostile capitalist surrounding" residing along its western borders. [2]
Following the invasion, in April and May 1940 the NKVD secret police perpetrated the single most notorious wartime atrocity against any prisoners of war held by the Soviet Union. In the Katyn massacre nearly twenty-two thousand Polish nationals were murdered in mass executions simultaneously. They included army officers, political leaders ...
Pre-war Poland was portrayed as a capitalist state based on exploitation of the working people and ethnic minorities. Soviet propaganda claimed that unfair treatment of non-Poles by the Second Polish Republic was a justification of its dismemberment. Soviet officials openly incited mobs to perform killings and robberies. [171]
Following the Soviet invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II, in accordance with the Nazi–Soviet Pact against Poland, the Soviet Union acquired more than half of the territory of the Second Polish Republic or about 201,000 square kilometres (78,000 sq mi) inhabited by more than 13,200,000 people. [1]