page_title: Partitions of Poland
section_title: Fourth Partition
hierarchical_section_title: Partitions of Poland / Fourth Partition
caption_attribution_description: English: Poland occupied by Nazi Germany (Third Reich) and the USSR (21/10/1939-22/06/1941)
context_page_description: The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 123 years. The partitions were conducted by the Habsburg Monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, which divided up the Commonwealth lands among themselves progressively in the process of territorial seizures and annexations.
  The First Partition of Poland was decided on August 5, 1772. Two decades later, Russian and Prussian troops entered the Commonwealth again and the Second Partition was signed on January 23, 1793. Austria did not participate in the Second Partition. The Third Partition of Poland took place on October 24, 1795, in reaction to the unsuccessful Polish Kościuszko Uprising the previous year. With this partition, the Commonwealth ceased to exist.
  In English, the term "Partitions of Poland" is sometimes used geographically as toponymy, to mean the three parts that the partitioning powers divided the Commonwealth into, namely: the Austrian Partition, the Prussian Partition and the Russian Partition.
context_section_description: The term "Fourth Partition of Poland" may refer to any subsequent division of Polish lands, including:
  after the Napoleonic era, the 1815 division of the Duchy of Warsaw at the Congress of Vienna;
  the 1832 incorporation of the "Congress Kingdom" into Russia, the 1846 incorporation of the Republic of Kraków into Austria, and the 1848 incorporation of the Grand Duchy of Posen into Prussia; and
  the 1939 division of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union pursuant to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
  If one accepts more than one of those events as partitions, fifth, sixth, and even seventh partitions can be counted, but these terms are very rare. (For example, Norman Davies in God's Playground refers to the 1807 creation of the Duchy of Warsaw as the fourth partition, the 1815 Treaty of Vienna as the fifth, the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk as the sixth, and the 1939 division of Poland between Nazi Germany and the USSR as the seventh.)
  The term "Fourth Partition" was also used in the 19th and 20th centuries to refer to diaspora communities who maintained a close interest in the project of regaining Polish independence. Sometimes termed Polonia, these expatriate communities often contributed funding and military support to the project of regaining the Polish nation-state. Diaspora politics were deeply affected by developments in and around the homeland, and vice versa, for many decades.
caption: The partition of Poland according to the German–Soviet Pact; division of Polish territories in the years 1939–1941
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