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Russia recognized the authenticity of this protocol, which paved the way for Hitler’s attack on Poland, and condemned it. About it spoke and Vladimir Putin in an interview with TASS in March 2020:
“We condemned the secret protocols of Molotov and Ribbentrop, Russia did it.”
But the Foreign Ministry for some reason prefers not to pay attention to this, without even trying to explain why Hitler’s Germany suddenly began to offer the Stalinist USSR to join the military operations against Poland.
Indeed, from September 1 to 17, Soviet troops were in no hurry to invade Poland, although Germany pushed the treaty partner to such actions – apparently hoping that in this case Great Britain and France would recognize the USSR as the aggressor and declare war on it. September 10 German Ambassador to the USSR Werner von Schulenburg reported to Berlin:
“At yesterday’s meeting, I got the impression that Molotov promised a little more than one might expect from the Red Army.”
On September 17, Stalin nevertheless decided to join the practical division of Poland and “the final clarification of the question”, as stated in the secret protocol, about the fate of the Polish state. By this time, Germany had already managed to seize part of Polish territory, which, according to a secret protocol, was in the Soviet “sphere of interests.” After the start of the Soviet “liberation campaign”, German troops not only stopped advancing, but also handed over the city of Brest they had captured to the USSR. A joint German-Soviet military parade was held in Brest, which was hosted by a German general, future inspector general of tank forces Heinz Guderian and Soviet brigade commander Semyon Krivoshein. The latter, however, in his memoirs claimedthat it was not a parade, but just a solemn march, although Guderian insisted on holding a parade, but this changes little: it is impossible to argue with the fact that Soviet and German troops held a joint solemn ceremony in the captured Polish city.
Much of the German-occupied territory east of the secret protocol line remained under German occupation; in exchange for the new Soviet-German Treaty of Friendship and Border, signed on September 28, 1939, the USSR received Lithuania. As for the question of Poland’s independence, on September 25, von Schulenburg sent to Berlin:
“Stalin considers it wrong to leave the independent Polish state.”
By that time, the Soviet-Polish non-aggression pact, signed in 1932, existed and was in force. Under this agreement, the USSR confirmed the recognition of the border established by the Riga Treaty of 1921, that is, the belonging to Poland of the territories included in the Byelorussian and Ukrainian SSRs in 1939 – the very ones that the Foreign Ministry now calls “occupied by Poland.” On September 17, 1939, the USSR declared this treaty invalid, on the grounds that “the Polish government has disintegrated and shows no signs of life. This means that the Polish state and its government have actually ceased to exist, ”as it was said in the note of the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov to the Ambassador of Poland Vaclav Grzybowski.
But Poland at that time, although it suffered heavy losses, had not yet been destroyed as a state. The defense of Warsaw from Nazi troops continued until September 28, although the Red Army had already captured the east of the country and the defenders of the capital were actually surrounded. The Polish leadership was located in the part of the country that was not occupied by the Germans; the residence of President Ignacy Moscitsky was moved to the city of Olyka (now the Volyn region of Ukraine). On September 17, when the Red Army had already invaded Poland, President, Prime Minister Felitsian Skladkovsky and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Edward Rydz-Smigly held a meeting in the city of Kuty (now Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine), at which they decided to evacuate the government to Romania. Moscitsky crossed the border with Romania on September 17 at 21:45.
The meetings of the Soviet invaders with flowers, most likely, were: the Ukrainian population was subjected to discrimination in pre-war Poland, part of it could well welcome the expulsion of the Poles and the entry into the Ukrainian SSR. Yes, and pro-communist sentiments in pre-war Europe were quite widespread, although the Soviet-German treaties significantly damaged the reputation of the USSR in the eyes of European anti-fascists. But this does not mean at all that the Red Army was advancing across Poland in a triumphal march, without encountering resistance. So, the city of Grodno resisted from 20 to 22 September.
Why the Foreign Ministry talks about the liberation of Poland by Soviet troops at the end of the war and about Rokossovsky’s Polish origins is difficult to understand. The events that took place after Germany’s attack on the USSR can hardly be called a direct consequence of the “liberation campaign,” as the Foreign Ministry calls it, following the official Soviet historiography.
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