Remembering the Soviet Invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939
Did Historical Amnesia Blind the West to Putin's Imperial Ambitions?
The Soviet invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939 was a direct consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the agreement between Hitler and Stalin that helped make the Second World War possible. The Soviet Invasion unleashed terror against the Polish population: the systematic destruction of the country’s elites, four waves of mass deportations to remote settlements, places of exile and forced-labour camps across the Soviet Union, and widespread murder and repression. It also marked the beginning of a historical trajectory that would ultimately exclude Poland from the political West for nearly half a century.
Yet the anniversary is not merely a matter of historical remembrance. It offers a revealing insight into both the Soviet and contemporary Russian imperial modus operandi, especially as manifested in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Officially, the Soviet Union intervened to “rescue” national minorities in an allegedly defunct Polish state, a pretext Moscow continues to invoke to this day. In reality, it was implementing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Concluded on 23 August 1939, this ostensible “non-aggression pact” between two totalitarian regimes paved the way for war. Its secret additional protocol provided for the partition of Poland and Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union subsequently supplied Nazi Germany with raw materials, including oil, grain, cotton and metals, that were indispensable to the Third Reich’s war machine. The two regimes also cooperated directly through logistical arrangements, shipments across Soviet territory and joint military ceremonies, including the German–Soviet parade in Brest-Litovsk. Against this backdrop, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland on 17 September 1939.
In October, sham elections were held in Soviet-occupied Poland to legitimise the incorporation of the annexed territories into the Soviet Union. A ruthless policy of Sovietisation began immediately afterwards. Executions, arrests and sentences were followed by mass deportations to remote settlements, places of exile and forced-labour camps across the Soviet Union. On the night of 9–10 February 1940, the first of four waves of deportations began. The initial targets were Polish military and civilian settlers, forestry employees and their families. They were later joined by teachers, civil servants, business owners, and Polish and Jewish refugees from the German-occupied General Government. Some died during the journey; many others succumbed to hunger, disease and the inhuman living and working conditions they encountered in exile.
In the spring of 1940, the Soviet regime murdered approximately 22,000 Polish officers, police officers, officials and other prisoners in the Katyn massacre and at other killing sites: a deliberate strike at the heart of the Polish elite. The historian Professor Andrzej Paczkowski estimates that around one million Polish citizens were affected by Soviet repression in its various forms including arrest, deportation, torture and other forms of persecution between 1939 and 1941. He puts the number of deaths at between 90,000 and 100,000.
These historical patterns remain visible today. Putin’s Russia is once again resorting to the same instruments: the pretext of “protecting” minorities: first in Georgia in 2008, then in Crimea and the Donbas in 2014, and again during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in 2022; the deportation of civilians and children from occupied territories; political assassinations and show trials of opposition figures; and the systematic suppression of culture and education in occupied regions.
Video: Roger Moorhouse for the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in London, 2019.
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