Today marks the 83rd anniversary of the Soviet Union’s aggression against Poland and the Day of the Siberian Deportee.
17 September 1939. The Red Army acted militarily against Poland, breaking the non-aggression pact signed in 1932. The official pretext for the aggression was contained in a diplomatic note handed over at 3 a.m. on 17 September by the Deputy People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs. It included a false statement about the disintegration of the Polish state and the flight of the Polish government. As a consequence, the USSR declared all agreements previously concluded with Poland to be null and void – as having been concluded with a non-existent state. Further consequences of the USSR’s aggression against Poland were the mass repression of the Polish population remaining in the eastern territories of the Republic, and the plundering of Polish national property and private assets.
600,000 Soviet soldiers, thousands of tanks and aircraft crossed Poland’s eastern borders on 17 September 1939 to “liberate Belarussian and Ukrainian peasants and workers from the oppression of Polish landowners and bourgeoisie,” as the Kremlin propaganda justified the invasion. pic.twitter.com/qfYME0w0D5
— Institute of National Remembrance (@ipngovpl_eng) September 17, 2022
The Red Army was followed by the NKVD, which had lists of prominent Poles – educated elites, civil servants, clergy – to be eliminated as an obstacle to the Sovietization of the newly captured Polish lands.
The lists were Soviet equivalent of German Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen. pic.twitter.com/GfUIZtw6wP
— Institute of National Remembrance (@ipngovpl_eng) September 17, 2022
“The Day of the Siberian Deportee takes place every year on the anniversary of the invasion of Poland by Soviet Russia in 1939. #OTD we pay tribute to hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of the occupied lands who were exiled to Siberia by the Soviets,” the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland wrote on Twitter.
The Day of the Siberian Deportee takes place every year on the anniversary of the invasion of Poland by Soviet Russia in 1939. #OTD we pay tribute to hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of the occupied lands who were exiled to Siberia by the Soviets. pic.twitter.com/elMN2QhjKt
— Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland (@PremierRP_en) September 17, 2022