page_title: Soviet invasion of Poland
section_title: Domestic reaction
hierarchical_section_title: Soviet invasion of Poland / Soviet invasion of Poland / Domestic reaction
caption_attribution_description: Soviet propaganda poster showing the bad fate of a peasant under Polish yoke and the liberation by the Red Army (text in Ukrainian)
context_page_description: The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military operation by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, sixteen days after Germany invaded Poland from the west. Subsequent military operations lasted for the following 20 days and ended on 6 October 1939 with the two-way division and annexation of the entire territory of the Second Polish Republic by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This division is sometimes called the Fourth Partition of Poland. The Soviet invasion of Poland was indirectly indicated in the "secret protocol" of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed on 23 August 1939, which divided Poland into "spheres of influence" of the two powers and questioned the future existence of the Polish state.
  The Red Army, which vastly outnumbered the Polish defenders, achieved its targets encountering only limited resistance. Some 320,000 Polish prisoners of war had been captured. The campaign of mass persecution in the newly acquired areas began immediately. In November 1939 the Soviet government annexed the entire Polish territory under its control.
context_section_description: The response of non-ethnic Poles to the situation added a further complication. Many Ukrainians, Belarusians and Jews welcomed the invading troops. Local Communists gathered people to welcome Red Army troops in the traditional Slavic way by presenting bread and salt in the eastern suburb of Brest. For this occasion a sort of triumphal arch was made of two poles, decked with spruce branches and flowers. A banner, a long strip of red cloth with a slogan in Russian, glorifying the USSR and welcoming the Red Army, crowned the arch. The local reaction was mentioned by Lev Mekhlis, who told Stalin that the people of West Ukraine welcomed the Soviets "like true liberators". The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists rebelled against the Poles, and communist partisans organized local uprisings, such as that in Skidel.
caption: Posters from the Soviet Union showing the bad fate of Ukrainian peasants under Polish yoke and the liberation by the Red Army.
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