Soviet persecution of Poles during World War II

The **Soviet persecution of Poles during World War II** refers to the mass murder and deportations of Poles in territories occupied by the Soviet Union during World War II.

## Overview
Following the invasion of Poland, Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Among minority citizens, 37% were Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans. 

### Katyn massacre
On March 5, 1940, Lavrentiy Beria asked Joseph Stalin to order the killing of 25,700 Polish "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries" in the Soviet-occupied zone. Six members of the Soviet Politburo – Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, Anastas Mikoyan, and Mikhail Kalinin – approved the killing. Weinberg further noted: The victims were mainly captured Polish soldiers, police, doctors, teachers, scientists, engineers and journalists.

#### Genocide question
Over the past decades, it has been debated whether the Katyn massacre could be seen as a genocide. Many Polish academics, including historian Adam Basak, Karolina Kosińska, and prosecutor Małgorzata Kuźniar-Plota, who investigated the massacre, The deportation happened while Polish and Jewish property across the occupied zone was taken over by the Soviets. Polish Jews made up 30% of the Poles deported to Siberia, making them statistically the most targeted group among the deportees. The first wave of deportation in February 1940 saw 220,000 Poles sent to northern European Russia. (also called anti-Polonism or Polonophobia), which predated the Soviet Union. In the Soviet-occupied zone, Russian culture was also imposed on the Poles by reorganizing Polish universities in line with the Statute Books for Soviet Higher Schools, and prioritizing Russian studies while suppressing Polish studies.

## NKVD prisoner massacres
Before Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Soviets were holding hundreds of thousands of political prisoners in NKVD prisons across their occupied Eastern European territories, many of whom were Polish. and Great Purge-related massacres in the 1930s. They were targeted for mass murder over their Polish or Ukrainian identity.

Historian Yury Boshyk wrote: subjecting Poland to communist totalitarianism until 1989, while Soviet troops did not leave Poland until 1993. The puppet state's founding came with the arrest of 25,000 Polish Home Army soldiers, who were deported to Gulags in mainland Russia. However, the armed resistance failed due to the lack of foreign support. Pieczorłag and Uchtiżemłag, located in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in northwestern Russia. March 1968 protests, June 1976 protests, 1971 Łódź strikes, 1980 Lublin strikes, 1981 warning strike, 1981 Polish hunger demonstrations, 1982 demonstrations in Poland and 1988 Polish strikes, which contributed to the fall of the puppet regime in 1989.

### Examples
#### Poland
In December 2019, members of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) said that "the Soviets liberated Poland from German occupation". Poles were killed by Soviet partisans in Naliboki in Nazi-occupied Poland, has been wrongfully blamed on Jews by antisemites. The conspiracy theory is seen by mainstream historians as a form of Holocaust distortion.

## Related pages
* Holodomor
* Soviet deportation of Greeks
* Soviet deportation of Koreans
* Soviet deportations of Chechens and Ingush
* Soviet deportations from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina

## Footnotes
## References