Reunification of the peoples of Belarus and Ukraine on September 17, 1939

Before presenting you with a selection of photographs about the events that took place 78 years ago, I want to make a reservation that there are also photos that Russophobic historians use in anti-Soviet and Russophobic propaganda to prove the union of the USSR and Germany (which did not exist) and identify Nazi Germany and the USSR. There was only short-term cooperation, the purpose of which was the demarcation of borders, the transfer to the Soviet Union of territories and settlements previously captured by the Germans during the occupation of Poland. And also the photographs show the meeting of the soldiers of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army on these lands, which simply could not be, as a result of the advance of the armies into the interior of the country.

In order to debunk false myths about the alleged union of fascist Germany and the USSR, such photos with a  true  description are included in this collection. The article and video below will also shed light on those events.

On September 17, 1939, the Red Army entered Poland. The political situation now is such that the political elites of both Ukraine and modern Poland pay increased attention to the events of those years. We constantly hear loud statements about the perfidious attack, about the horrors of the Soviet occupation, about the atrocities of the soldiers of the Red Army and hypocritical sighs about the fate of "unfortunate" Poland. At the same time, they 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 the “occupation” Ukraine and Belarus established themselves within modern boundaries. Today we will try to remember what actually happened then. This article focuses solely on the military-political aspect of those events.

Today, many pseudo-historians say that the Ribentrop-Molotov Pact contains clauses that obligated the USSR to attack Poland simultaneously with Germany, a week after the German attack, two weeks later, etc. Such statements do not even smell of real history. It's just that the current political situation requires that a bold equal sign be placed 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 F.V. Schulenburg was instructed to ask Molotov “whether the Soviet Union would not consider it desirable that the Russian army should 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 entry 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 move on to actions.

Moreover, on September 14, Molotov declared that for the USSR “it would be extremely important not to start acting before the administrative center of Poland, Warsaw, falls.” And it is quite likely that in the event of effective actions of the Polish army against Germany, and even more so in the event of a real, rather than formal, entry into the war of England and France, the Soviet Union would have generally abandoned the idea of ​​joining Western Ukraine and Belarus. At least at this stage. But in reality, the Allies did not provide any help to Poland, which was falling apart.

By September 17, both the military and civilian Polish authorities had lost any threads of governing the country, and the army was a scattered group of troops.

The Germans reached the line Osovets - Bialystok - Belsk - Kamenetz-Litovsk - Brest-Litovsk - Vlodava - Lublin - Vladimir-Volynsky - Zamosc - Lvov - Sambir, thereby occupying about half of the territory of Poland, occupying Krakow, Lodz, Gdansk, Lublin, Brest, Katowice, Torun. Warsaw has been under siege since 14 September. As early as September 1, President I. Mościcki left the city, and on September 5, the government, which on September 17 finally left the country. Commander-in-Chief E. Rydz-Smigly lasted the longest in Warsaw, but he left the city on the night of September 7, moving to Brest. However, Rydz-Smigly did not stay there for a long time: on September 10, the headquarters was transferred 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 in such conditions.

Thus, in view of 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 absolutely inevitable. It is significant that even the British and French General Staffs, in a report prepared on September 22, noted that the USSR began the invasion of Poland only when its final defeat became obvious.

What alternatives did the Soviet Union have? Do not send troops to Poland? Why? As mentioned above, the Polish army practically ceased resistance, the Germans moved freely to the borders of the USSR. So, on September 18, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Operational Directorate of the OKW, V. Warlimont, showed the acting military attache of the USSR in Germany, Belyakov, a map on which Lvov was part of the future territory of the Reich. After the presentation of claims from the USSR, the Germans attributed everything to Warlimont's personal initiative. But it is very hard to believe that he drew maps contrary to the instructions received from the leadership of the Reich. If on September 17 the Red Army had not crossed the border of Poland, then in two years the German army would have been 200 kilometers closer to Moscow. And who knows what the results would be.

Moreover, the need for a Soviet invasion of Poland was also recognized in the West. Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, said in a radio speech on October 1 that “Russia is pursuing a cold policy of self-interest. We would have preferred the Russian armies to stand in their present positions as friends and allies of Poland rather than as invaders. But in order to protect Russia from the Nazi threat, it was clearly necessary that the Russian armies stand on this line. In any case, this line exists and, consequently, the Eastern Front has been created, which Nazi Germany will not dare to attack.

The most interesting thing is that neither England nor France declared war on the USSR despite their allied obligations 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 assumed obligations to defend Poland only from Germany. September 23 People's Commissar of Internal Affairs L.P. Beria informed 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 British embassies and press attachés stating that Britain not only does not intend to declare war on the Soviet Union now, but must remain on the best possible terms. And on October 17, the British announced that London wanted to see an ethnographic Poland of modest size and that Western Ukraine and Western Belarus would be returned to it. Thus, the allies, in fact,

Do not forget also that the Soviet Union, in fact, returned to itself the lands occupied by the Poles in the 20s. Lands inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians, in relation to which the Pilsudski government pursued a harsh policy of colonization. So the accession of Western Ukraine and Belarus in the 39th year was not only expedient, but also fair.

direct military action.

On September 17, Soviet troops, using the forces of the Ukrainian (under the command of the commander of the 1st rank S.K. Timoshenko) and the Belorussian (under the command of the commander of the 2nd rank M.P. Kovalev) fronts, invaded the eastern regions of Poland. Resistance was offered only by some posts of the border guards. 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 10,000 Poles surrendered. Characteristically, for the most part, resistance was provided not by the regular army, but by the local police, formed from students and high school students.

Meanwhile, the 36th Tank Brigade occupied Dubno at 07:00 on September 18, where the rear units of the 18th and 26th Polish Infantry Divisions were disarmed. In total, 6 thousand military personnel were captured, 12 guns, 70 machine guns, 3 thousand rifles, 50 vehicles and 6 trains 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 collided with a Polish detachment (about 200 people), who suppressed the anti-Polish uprising of the local population (I think it’s easy to guess about its ethnic composition). In this punitive raid, 17 local residents were killed, including 2 teenagers aged 13 and 16. A fierce battle ensued, in which armed local residents took an active part. The hatred towards the Poles was already very strong.

On September 22 Grodno surrendered. And again, it is characteristic that already on the 18th, anti-Polish demonstrations began in the city.

The strength of the “resistance” of the Polish army is very well indicated by the ratio of those killed and those who surrendered. So throughout the campaign, the Polish army lost 3,500 people killed. At the same time, 454,700 soldiers and officers surrendered. 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 in its composition almost all ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian lands. The first stage of the Second World War is over.

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, spitting on both “human rights” and “European values”. However, the time was cruel then, and the Poles acted in exactly the same way as the Germans, French or British would have acted in their place. Now they like to stick out the “repressions” of the totalitarian Soviet regime, although very often the actions of the Soviet authorities were much softer and more humane than European democracies under similar conditions.

Few facts.

Ukrainian and Belarusian units, which participated on the side of the Poles in the fight against the Red Army, were interned and thrown into camps behind barbed wire. Ukrainians were not allowed to study on the territory of Ukraine. So an ethnic Ukrainian or Belarusian could theoretically enter a university in Krakow, Warsaw or Poznan (though only theoretically, in reality there were not so 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: “Only in Galicia, the Polish-gentry authorities closed 682 public schools, 3 teachers' seminaries and 7 private gymnasiums ... In the Ukrainian provinces of Volyn and Polissya, where there are only 8% of the Polish population, out of 2694 There are only 400 Ukrainian public schools, and they are being mercilessly polonized.”

Along the new Polish-Soviet border, the Polish government began allocating land to its veterans. This was done in order to increase Polish influence in the territories inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians.

Only 1% of electricity generated in Poland came from Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. On the other hand, prisons in Western Ukraine alone had more than half of their total number in all of Poland - 187 out of 330. Three-quarters of all executions in Poland fell on “eastern cresses”.

Naturally, all this led to the emergence of organized resistance. In 1930, the uprising began to gain strength, which engulfed the Lvov, Stanislav, Ternopil and Volyn voivodeships. Interestingly, during the uprising, OUN militants and communists acted together. The estates of the settlers-colonists blazed throughout 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 participants in the anti-Polish movement. 50 people were killed, 4 thousand maimed, 500 Ukrainian houses were burned. The Minister of the Interior of Poland, Slavoj-Skladovsky, later admitted: “if it weren’t for pacification, then in Western Ukraine we would have had an armed uprising, to suppress which guns and divisions of soldiers would have been needed.”

Is it any wonder that after all this, the Red Army was greeted in 1939 with flowers, and the Polish officers literally asked to put them in jail and increase security so as not to become the main characters on the lynch ships that the local Ukrainian population was going to arrange for them.

---

Предлагаем посмотреть другие страницы сайта:
← The Second Rzeczpospolita - Part 2 - Anti-Katyn | How old is Russia? →