page_title: Polish–Soviet border agreement of August 1945
section_title: World War II partitions
hierarchical_section_title: Polish–Soviet border agreement of August 1945 / World War II partitions
caption_attribution_description: Border Agreement between Poland and the USSR of 16 August 1945
context_page_description: The Border Agreement between Poland and the USSR of 16 August 1945 established the borders between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Republic of Poland. It was signed by the Provisional Government of National Unity formed by the Polish communists. According to the treaty, Poland officially accepted the ceding its pre-war Eastern territory to the USSR which was decided earlier in Yalta already. Some of the territory along the Curzon line, established by Stalin during the course of the war, was returned to Poland. The treaty also recognised the division of the former German East Prussia and ultimately approved the finalised delimitation line between the Soviet Union and Poland: from the Baltic sea, to the border tripoint with Czechoslovakia in the Carpathians.
context_section_description: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 provided for the partition of the Second Polish Republic between the USSR and Nazi Germany. Following the corresponding invasions, a new border was drawn up, though based on the Curzon Line, deviated west of it in several regions. Most notably, was the Belastok Voblast, that was added to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, although most of the region was populated by Poles.
  After Germany's invasion of the USSR, the territory in question was also re-partitioned by the Nazis. Ukraine and Belarus were administered by the occupation Ostland and Reichskommissariat Ukraine Reichskommissariats. Galician territory east of the 1939 border and the Belastok Voblast plus adjacent territory to the east of this were transformed respectively into the Distrikt Galizien and Bezirk Bialystok, and subjugated directly to the Reich. 
  Following the Soviet Union's liberation of Ukraine and Belarus, in 1943/1944 the Tehran conference and Yalta conference discussed upon the future of the Polish-Soviet borders, and the Allied leaders recognised the Soviet right to the territory east of the 1939 border. However, after the liberation of Western Ukraine and Belarus in summer of 1944, a Polish committee formed in the town of Sapotskin sent a letter to Moscow asking that they remain part of Poland. Stalin agreed, and on 29 September, administration of 17 (of the 23) districts of Belastok Voblast (including the city of Białystok) and an additional three (Siemiatycze, Hajnówka and Kleszczele) of the Brest Voblast was passed to the Polish Committee of National Liberation from the BSSR. 
   
  In October 1944 these were joined by a further transfer of Lubaczów, Horyniec, Laszki, Uhnów and Sieniawa raions of the Lviv Oblast from the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In March 1945, an additional batch of land, the Bieszczady, Lesko, and most of Przemyśl raions (including Przemyśl city) were transferred to Poland from the Drohobych Oblast of Ukraine to the now Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland.
  Soon afterwards World War II finished, and as the Provisional Government continued to transfer administration from military to civil bodies, it also finalised its new borders with its neighbors, and in particular, the Soviet Union. 
  Soviet claims, which became the main problem preventing cooperation between the Polish government in London and Moscow during the war, were then accepted by PKWN activists in July 1944. Their consent to the Curzon line signed on July 27, 1944 (Handing half of Białowieża Forest was Stalin's only concession, and representatives of the Polish Committee of National Liberation were afraid to mention the return to Lviv which became part of the Ukrainian SSR) was a condition for sending these activists to Lublin and Chełm. 
  On 16 August 1945, the border agreement was officially signed by Edward Osóbka-Morawski, on behalf of the Provisional Government of National Unity and Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Minister of Foreign affairs. The exchange of ratified documents occurred on 5 February 1946 in Warsaw, and from that date the agreement was in force.
caption: Borders of Poland and Belarus after the agreement
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