Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia during WWII

On the basis of a secret clause of the

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those powers to partition Poland between them. The pact was signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ri ...

, the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, capturing the eastern provinces of the Second Polish Republic. Lwów (present-day

Lviv Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukrain ...

), the capital of the

Lwów Voivodeship Lwów Voivodeship ( pl, Województwo lwowskie) was an administrative unit of interwar Poland (1918–1939). Because of the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in accordance with the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, it became occupied by both the Weh ...

and the principal city and cultural center of the region of Galicia, was captured and occupied by September 22, 1939 along with other provincial capitals including

Tarnopol Ternópil ( uk, Тернопіль, Ternopil' ; pl, Tarnopol; yi, טאַרנאָפּל, Tarnopl, or ; he, טארנופול (טַרְנוֹפּוֹל), Tarnopol; german: Tarnopol) is a city in the west of Ukraine. Administratively, Ternopi ...

Brześć Brest ( be, Брэст / Берасьце, Bieraście, ; russian: Брест, ; uk, Берестя, Berestia; lt, Brasta; pl, Brześć; yi, בריסק, Brisk), formerly Brest-Litovsk (russian: Брест-Литовск, lit=Lithuanian Br ...

, Stanisławów,

Łuck Lutsk ( uk, Луцьк, translit=Lutsk}, ; pl, Łuck ; yi, לוצק, Lutzk) is a city on the Styr River in northwestern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Volyn Oblast (province) and the administrative center of the surrounding L ...

, and

Wilno Vilnius ( , ; see also #Etymology and other names, other names) is the capital and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the munic ...

to the north. The eastern provinces of interwar Poland were inhabited by an ethnically mixed population, with ethnic Poles as well as

Polish Jews The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the l ...

dominant in the cities. These lands now form the backbone of modern

Western Ukraine Western Ukraine or West Ukraine ( uk, Західна Україна, Zakhidna Ukraina or , ) is the territory of Ukraine linked to the former Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, which was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austria ...

and

West Belarus Western Belorussia or Western Belarus ( be, Заходняя Беларусь, translit=Zachodniaja Bielaruś; pl, Zachodnia Białoruś; russian: Западная Белоруссия, translit=Zapadnaya Belorussiya) is a historical region of mod ...

. Norman Davies, ''

God's Playground ''God's Playground: A History of Poland'' is a history book in two volumes written by Norman Davies, covering a 1000-year history of Poland. Volume 1: ''The origins to 1795'', and Volume 2: ''1795 to the present'' first appeared as the Oxford Cl ...

'' (Polish edition). Second volume, pp. 512-513. These, added to other posterior and more minor in comparison territorial gains from

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

, resulted in the

Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic ( uk, Украї́нська Радя́нська Соціалісти́чна Респу́бліка, ; russian: Украи́нская Сове́тская Социалисти́ческая Респ ...

gaining in area, and increasing its population by over seven million people from 1938 to 1941. Eastern Galicia and Volhynia were the regions that contributed the most to this.''Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopedia, Volume I'' (1963). Edited by

Volodymyr Kubiyovych Volodymyr ( uk, Володи́мир, Volodýmyr, , orv, Володимѣръ) is a Ukrainian given name of Old East Slavic origin. The related Ancient Slavic, such as Czech, Russian, Serbian, Croatian, etc. form of the name is Володимѣръ ...

. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 831–833 and pp.872–874

Orest Subtelny Orest Subtelny ( uk, О́рест Субте́льний, 17 May 1941 – 24 July 2016) was a Ukrainian-Canadian historian. Born in Kraków, Poland, he received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1973. From 1982 to 2015, he was a Professor ...

. (1988). ''Ukraine: A History''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 455–457. Some other Polish territory also invaded by the Soviet Union was given to

Soviet Belarus The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR, or Byelorussian SSR; be, Беларуская Савецкая Сацыялістычная Рэспубліка, Bielaruskaja Savieckaja Sacyjalistyčnaja Respublika; russian: Белор� ...

History

On September 17, 1939 the Red Army entered Polish territory, acting on the basis of a secret clause of the

between the Soviet Union and

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. The Soviet Union would later deny the existence of this secret protocol, claiming that it was never allied with the German Reich, and acted independently to protect the Ukrainian and

White Ruthenia White Ruthenia ( cu, Бѣла Роусь, Bela Rous'; be, Белая Русь, Biełaja Ruś; pl, Ruś Biała; russian: Белая Русь, Belaya Rus'; ukr, Біла Русь, Bila Rus') alternatively known as Russia Alba, White Rus' or W ...

n (modern Belarusian) minorities in the disintegrating Polish state. Anna M. Cienciala (2004)
''The Coming of the War and Eastern Europe in World War II''
(lecture notes,

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. T ...

). Retrieved 15 March 2006. Composed of mostly ethnic Ukrainian Soviet troops under the command of Marshal

Semyon Timoshenko Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko (russian: link=no, Семён Константи́нович Тимоше́нко, ''Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko''; uk, Семе́н Костянти́нович Тимоше́нко, ''Semen Kostiantyno ...

, the Soviet forces occupied the eastern areas of Poland within 12 days, capturing the regions of Galicia and

Volhynia Volhynia (also spelled Volynia) ( ; uk, Воли́нь, Volyn' pl, Wołyń, russian: Волы́нь, Volýnʹ, ), is a historic region in Central and Eastern Europe, between south-eastern Poland, south-western Belarus, and western Ukraine. The ...

with little Polish opposition, and occupying the principal city, Lwów, by September 22. According to

, Soviet troops were greeted with genuine joy by the Ukrainian villagers due to the Polish government's discrimination against the Ukrainian minority in previous years. Not all Ukrainians trusted the Soviet regime responsible for the Ukrainian Famine of 1932–1933. pp. 1001–1003. In practice, the poor generally welcomed the Soviets, while the elites tended to join the opposition, despite supporting the unification of Ukraine. Andrzej Nowak
''The Russo-Polish Historical Confrontation''

Sarmatian Review The ''Sarmatian Review'' () is an English-language peer-reviewed academic tri-quarterly journal devoted to Slavistics (the study of the histories, cultures, and societies of the Slavic nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe). The '' ...

, January 1997, Volume XVII, Number 1. Retrieved 16 July 2007. Immediately after entering Poland's territory, the Soviet army helped to set up "provisional administrations" in the cities and "peasant committees" in the villages in order to organize one-list elections to the new "People's Assembly of Western Ukraine". The

elections An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold Public administration, public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative ...

were designed to give the annexation an appearance of validity, but were far from free or fair. The voters had a choice of only one candidate, often a local communist or someone sent to western Ukraine from Soviet Ukraine for each position of deputy; the communist party commissars then provided the assembly with resolutions that would push through nationalization of banks and heavy industry and transfers of land to peasant communities. Elections took place on October 22, 1939; the official numbers reported participation of 93 percent of the electorate, 91 percent of whom supported the appointed candidates. Based on these results, the People's Assembly of Western Ukraine, headed by Kyryl Studynsky (a prominent academic and figure in the

Christian Social Movement Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρισ ...

), consisted of 1,484 deputies. They met in Lwów on October 26–28, where they were addressed by

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...

and other representatives of the

. The assembly voted unanimously to thank Stalin for liberation and sent a delegation headed by Studynsky to Moscow to ask for formal inclusion of the territories into the Ukrainian SSR. The Supreme Soviet voted to do so on November 1, 1939 and on November 15 a law was passed making the former eastern Polish territories a part of the Ukrainian SSR.

Soviet policies in the newly annexed territories

Law and order

A week after the start of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, on 8 September 1939,

Lavrentiy Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; rus, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavréntiy Pávlovich Bériya, p=ˈbʲerʲiə; ka, ლავრენტი ბერია, tr, ; – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolsheviks ...

issued an order, according to which

Narkom A People's Commissariat (russian: народный комиссариат; Narkomat) was a structure in the Soviet state (in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, in other union and autonomous republics, in the Soviet Union) from 1917– ...

of NKVD in Ukrainian SSR

Ivan Serov Ivan Alexandrovich Serov (russian: Ива́н Алекса́ндрович Серóв; 13 August 1905 – 1 July 1990) was a Russian Soviet intelligence officer who served as the head of the KGB between March 1954 and December 1958, as well as ...

had to organize the NKVD operational groups (opergroups).Konstantin Nikitenko.
The bloody "Gold" of the 1939 September. Sovietization of Western Ukraine (Кровавое "золото" сентября 1939-го. Советизация Западной Украины)
'. The

Mirror Weekly ''Dzerkalo Tyzhnia'' ( ua, Дзеркало тижня), usually referred to in English as the ''Mirror Weekly'', was one of Ukraine's most influential analytical weekly-publisher newspapers, founded in 1994.anti-Soviet elements". Despite that, to assist, the NKVD special groups out of the Kiev Special Military District (from July 1939 to June 1941

Kiev Military District The Kiev Military District (; , abbreviated ) was a military district of the Imperial Russian Army and subsequently of the Red Army and Soviet Armed Forces. It was first formed in 1862, and was headquartered in Kiev (Kyiv) for most of its exis ...

had status "special") were allocated several additional battalions of 300 warriors each, Serov asked Beria to allow him to create new groups and increase staff of "punishers". The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine

asked the chief of the Special Department of the Ukrainian Front Anatoliy Mikheyev, a 28 year old major, "What kind of a job is it when no one is executed?" On 14 December 1939, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine adopted a resolution "On the payment of pensions to pensioners of the former Western Ukraine (О выплате пенсий пенсионерам бывшей Западной Украины)" which in the first months in

alone left over 4,300 residents without pensions (those included former police servicemembers, civil officials, judges, "cult servants"). The majority of those pensioners lived the rest of their lives in shelters for the infirm and disabled. For the Red Army and its servicemembers, law and order in occupied Lviv was a merely a formality. Pogroms, rape, robberies, and unreasonable executions became an everyday occurrence. The military shot prisoners as well as civilians. Looting spread. The unlawful incidents became so big a problem that the 6th Army prosecutor Nechyporenko was forced to write a personal letter to Stalin asking to intervene and stop the atrocities. Special brutality was noted against priests and bishops; in particular, the Chekists (members of Cheka) made bishop Symon walk naked on the streets of

Kremenets Kremenets ( uk, Крем'янець, Кременець, translit. ''Kremianets'', ''Kremenets''; pl, Krzemieniec; yi, קרעמעניץ, Kremenits) is a city in Ternopil Oblast (province) of western Ukraine. It is the administrative center o ...

towards a local prison hitting him with rifle stocks on the way.

Government and administration

The lands annexed by the Soviet Union were administratively reorganized into six

oblast An oblast (; ; Cyrillic (in most languages, including Russian and Ukrainian): , Bulgarian: ) is a type of administrative division of Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine, as well as the Soviet Union and the Kingdo ...

s similar to those in the rest of the Soviet Union (

Drohobych Oblast Drohobych Oblast ( uk, Дрогобицька область, translit=Drohobytska oblast; December 4, 1939May 21, 1959) was an oblast in the Ukrainian SSR. It had a territory of 9.6 thousands of km³ and, as of 1956, population of 853,000. Histo ...

Lviv Oblast Lviv Oblast ( uk, Льві́вська о́бласть, translit=Lvivska oblast, ), also referred to as Lvivshchyna ( uk, Льві́вщина, ), ). The name of each oblast is a relational adjective—in English translating to a noun adjunct w ...

Rivne Oblast Rivne Oblast ( uk, Рі́вненська о́бласть, translit=Rivnenska oblast), also referred to as Rivnenshchyna ( uk, Рі́вненщина) is an oblast (province) of Ukraine. Its administrative center is Rivne. The surface area of th ...

, Stanislav (later known as Ivano-Frankivsk) Oblast, Tarnopil Oblast and

Volyn Oblast Volyn Oblast ( uk, Воли́нська о́бласть, translit=Volýnsʹka óblastʹ; also referred to as Volyn or Lodomeria) is an oblast (province) in northwestern Ukraine. Its administrative centre is Lutsk. Kovel is the westernmost town ...

). The civilian administration in those regions annexed from Poland was organized by December 1939 and was drawn mostly from newcomers from eastern Ukraine and Russia; only 20% of government employees were from the local population. It was falsely assumed by many Ukrainians that a disproportionate number of people working for the Soviet administration came from within the Jewish community. The reason for this belief was that most of the previous Polish administrators were deported, and the local Ukrainian intelligentsia who could have taken their place were generally deemed to be too nationalistic for such work by the Soviets. In reality, most positions were staffed by ethnic Ukrainians from the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, in the eyes of many Ukrainians the Jews came to be associated with Soviet rule, which contributed to rising anti-Jewish sentiments.Ukrainian Collaboration in the Extermination of the Jews during the Second World War: Sorting Out the Long-Term and Conjunctural Factors
by John-Paul Himka, University of Alberta. Taken from ''The Fate of the European Jews, 1939–1945: Continuity or Contingency'', ed. Jonathan Frankel (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), Studies in Contemporary Jewry 13 (1997): 170–189. The

Polish language Polish (Polish: ''język polski'', , ''polszczyzna'' or simply ''polski'', ) is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group written in the Latin script. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In a ...

was eliminated from public life, and

Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...

became the language of the government and the courts. All Polish institutions were abolished, and all Polish officials, civil servants, and police were

deported Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

.Paul Robert Magocsi. (1996). ''A History of Ukraine''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Ukrainian organizations not controlled by the Soviets were limited or abolished. Hundreds of credit unions and cooperatives that had served the Ukrainian people between the wars were shut down. All local Ukrainian political parties were abolished, and between 20,000 and 30,000 Ukrainian activists fled to German-occupied territory; most of those who did not escape were arrested. For example, Dr. Dmytro Levitsky, former head of the moderate Ukrainian political party

Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance The Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance, (UNDO) ( uk, Українське національно-демократичне об'єднання, УНДО, ''Ukrayin'ske Natsional'no-Demokratichne Obyednannia'', pl, Ukraińskie Zjednoczenie Naro ...

(UNDO) that had dominated Ukrainian political life between the world wars and chief of the Ukrainian delegation in the pre-war Polish parliament, was arrested alongside many of his colleagues, deported to Moscow, and never heard from again. The elimination of the individuals, organizations and parties that represented moderate or liberal political tendencies left the extremist

Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists ( uk, Організація українських націоналістів, Orhanizatsiya ukrayins'kykh natsionalistiv, abbreviated OUN) was a Ukrainian ultranationalist political organization esta ...

, which operated in the underground, as the only political party with a significant organizational presence left in western Ukraine.

Education and healthcare

Due to the sensitive location of western Ukraine along the border with German-held territory, the Soviet administration made attempts, initially, to gain the loyalty and respect of the Ukrainian population. Healthcare, especially in the villages, was improved dramatically. Between the two world wars, Poland had drastically reduced the number of Ukrainian-language schools. Many of these were now reopened and, although Russian became a mandatory foreign-language course, the schools were taught in Ukrainian. Ukrainian was reintroduced in the

University of Lviv The University of Lviv ( uk, Львівський університет, Lvivskyi universytet; pl, Uniwersytet Lwowski; german: Universität Lemberg, briefly known as the ''Theresianum'' in the early 19th century), presently the Ivan Franko Na ...

(where the Polish government had banished it during the interwar years), which became thoroughly Ukrainized and renamed after Ukrainian writer

Ivan Franko Ivan Yakovych Franko (Ukrainian: Іван Якович Франко, pronounced ˈwɑn ˈjɑkowɪtʃ frɐnˈkɔ 27 August 1856 – 28 May 1916) was a Ukrainian poet, writer, social and literary critic, journalist, interpreter, economist, ...

. The Soviet authorities established a branch of the

Ukrainian Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU; uk, Національна академія наук України, ''Natsional’na akademiya nauk Ukrayiny'', abbr: NAN Ukraine) is a self-governing state-funded organization in Ukraine th ...

in Lviv, and some leading non-Communist Ukrainian scholars were invited to staff these institutions. University students from Eastern Ukraine were brought to Lviv and western Ukrainian students, professors, and other cultural figures were sent on Soviet-funded trips to Kiev. An unintended result of such exchanges was that the Galician youth were disagreeably surprised by the material poverty and widespread use of Russian in Soviet Ukraine, while the incoming students to western Ukraine became exposed to and sometimes came to adopt the typical form of

Ukrainian nationalism Ukrainian nationalism refers to the promotion of the unity of Ukrainians as a people and it also refers to the promotion of the identity of Ukraine as a nation state. The nation building that arose as nationalism grew following the French Revol ...

dominant in the west.John Armstrong (1963). ''Ukrainian Nationalism''. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 63–72 In contrast to the dramatic expansion of educational opportunities within the Soviet system, non-Soviet controlled educational institutions such as the popular

Prosvita Prosvita ( uk, просвіта, 'enlightenment') is a society for preserving and developing Ukrainian culture and education among population that created in the nineteenth century in the Austria-Hungary Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. By the ...

society reading rooms, the

Shevchenko Scientific Society The Shevchenko Scientific Society () is a Ukrainian scientific society devoted to the promotion of scholarly research and publication that was founded in 1873. Unlike the government-funded National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the society ...

, libraries and community theaters, and the Russophile Stauropegion Institute were closed or abolished.

Land reform

In the annexed territories, over 50 percent of the land had belonged to Polish landlords while approximately 75% of the Ukrainian peasants owned less than two hectares of land per household. Starting in 1939, lands not owned by the peasants were seized and slightly less than half of them were distributed to landless peasants free of charge; the rest were given to new collective farms. The Soviet authorities then began taking land from the peasants themselves and turning it over to

collective farms Collective farming and communal farming are various types of, "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member- ...

, which affected 13% of western Ukrainian farmland by 1941. This caused the peasants to turn against the Soviet regime.

Religious persecution

At the time of the Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia, the

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church , native_name_lang = uk , caption_background = , image = StGeorgeCathedral Lviv.JPG , imagewidth = , type = Particular church (sui iuris) , alt = , caption = St. George's ...

had approximately 2,190 parishes, three theological seminaries, 29 monasteries, 120 convents and 3.5 million faithful.Bohdan Bociurkiw. (1989). Sheptytskyi and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Under the Soviet Occupation of 1939–1941, pp. 101–123. Taken from ''Morality and Reality: The Life and Times of Andrei Sheptytskyi'', edited by

Paul Robert Magocsi Paul Robert Magocsi (born January 26, 1945 in Englewood, New Jersey) is an American professor of history, political science, and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto. He has been with the university since 1980, and became a F ...

. Edmonton Canada: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta. Its leader,

Andrey Sheptytsky Andrey Sheptytsky, OSBM (; uk, Митрополит Андрей Шептицький; 29 July 1865 – 1 November 1944) was the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church from 1901 until his death in 1944. His tenure span ...

, was seen as a "father figure" by most western Ukrainians. The married

Western Ukrainian Clergy The Eastern Catholic clergy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church were a hereditary tight-knit social caste that dominated Ukrainian society in Western Ukraine from the late eighteenth until the mid-twentieth centuries, following the reforms inst ...

and their children formed a caste that had a high degree of influence within Ukrainian society.Orest Subtelny. (1988). ''Ukraine: A History.'' Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp.214–219. Using his moral influence, Sheptytsky persuaded all but approximately 100 of the Ukrainian Catholic priests in western Ukrainian to stay with their flock in western Ukraine rather than flee from the Soviet regime. Due to its immense popularity, as well as that of Sheptytsky, among the western Ukrainian people, the Soviet Union did not attempt to abolish the

nor persecute its leader at that time. Instead, it sought to limit the Church's influence by banishing its presence from schools, preventing it from printing (20 Ukrainian Catholic journals or newspapers were shut down), confiscating lands from which it derived income, closing monasteries and seminaries, levying high taxes, and introducing anti-religious propaganda into schools and the media. The Soviets also attempted to undermine the Church from within. A prominent Lviv priest and close confidante of

, Havriil Kostelnyk, who had been the principal critic of the Vatican's Latinization policies and spokesperson for the "Easternizing" trend within the Ukrainian Catholic Church, was asked to organize a "National" Greek Catholic Church, with Soviet support, that would be independent of the Vatican and which would split the faithful in western Ukraine. At this time, he refused to cooperate, even after the autumn of 1940 when the Soviets arrested his youngest son in order to blackmail him. After Sheptytksy's death, however, Kostelnyk would play a significant role in the destruction of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Arrests, though not of a mass nature, were used in order to terrify the religious leaders. For example, in June 1940, the superior of the

Studite The Monastery of Stoudios, more fully Monastery of Saint John the Forerunner "at Stoudios" ( grc-gre, Μονή του Αγίου Ιωάννη του Προδρόμου εν τοις Στουδίου, Monē tou Hagiou Iōannē tou Prodromou en to ...

convent in Lviv, Olena Viter, was imprisoned and tortured in order to "confess" that Sheptytsky was a member of the

and that she was supplying him with weapons. She refused to do so. By the summer of 1941, in Western Ukraine, 11 or 12 Greek Catholic priests were murdered or went missing, and fifty-three were imprisoned or deported. Despite the various restrictions, the

was left as the only remaining independent Ukrainian institution that operated openly in Ukrainian territory. Church attendance soared, and contemporary accounts described churches never having been as full as they became under Soviet rule, with long lines forming in front of confessional booths. The western Ukrainian people attempted to protect their Church from Soviet restrictions. Peasants, even among the poorest ones, were reluctant to accept land taken from the Church and offered to them, and as late as in May 1940, some villages had not yet expropriated church lands, while others distributed much of it to priests' families. Priests made homeless were taken in by parishioners. Children, who no longer learned religion in school, started obtaining religious instruction privately. The

Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC; uk, Українська автокефальна православна церква (УАПЦ), Ukrayinska avtokefalna pravoslavna tserkva (UAPC)) was one of the three major Eastern Orthod ...

in Volhynia faced similar restrictions to those of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church; moreover it underwent pressure to subordinate itself to the Moscow Patriarch. Many Orthodox priests fled the Soviet regime, resulting in a large number of newly consecrated priests who were not necessarily fit for their duties, weakening and demoralizing the Church somewhat. The Orthodox hierarchs in western Ukraine were left alone, however.

Deportations and demographic changes

Initially, the Soviet authorities deported primarily political figures as well as all Polish officials, civil servants, police, and Polish citizens who had fled from the Germans. The exact number of Poles deported to Siberia or Central Asia between 1939 and 1941 remains unknown, and has been estimated at from under 500,000 to over 1,500,000. Additionally, tens of thousands of German-speaking people from Volhynia were also moved to German-controlled territory. In April 1940 the Soviet authorities in the annexed territories began to extend their repressive measures towards the general Ukrainian population. This coincided with the removal of Soviet troops of ethnic Ukrainian origin, who had become too friendly with local Ukrainians, and their replacement by soldiers from Central Asia. The Soviet authorities began arresting and deporting anyone suspected of disloyalty to the Soviet regime. In villages, people were denounced by their neighbors, some of whom were Communist sympathizers while others were opportunists. Deportations became indiscriminate, and people and their families were deported for "crimes" such as having relatives or visiting abroad, or visiting friends while the friends were arrested. Because many of those making denunciations were perceived to be Jews, anti-Jewish sentiments among the Ukrainian population increased. Ultimately, between 1939 and the beginning of Operation Barbarossa approximately 500,000 Ukrainians would be deported to Siberia and central Asia. 100,000 Jews fleeing Nazi terror in German-occupied Poland arrived in the territories newly annexed by the USSR.

Aftermath

Following the Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia, the Ukrainian SSR would gain more land following the

Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina The Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina took place from June 28 to July 3, 1940, as a result of an ultimatum by the Soviet Union to Romania on June 26, 1940, that threatened the use of force. Bessarabia had been part of the Kin ...

. Due to it, Ukraine gained Northern Bukovina, Northern Bessarabia, Budjak (Southern Bessarabia) and the

Hertsa region The Hertsa region, also known as the Hertza region ( uk, Край Герца, Kraj Herca; ro, Ținutul Herța), is a region around the town of Hertsa within Chernivtsi Raion in the southern part of Chernivtsi Oblast in southwestern Ukraine, ne ...

from

. However, the

Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic * ro, Proletari din toate țările, uniți-vă! (Moldovan Cyrillic: ) * uk, Пролетарі всіх країн, єднайтеся! * russian: Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! , title_leader = First Secr ...

(Moldavian ASSR) within Ukraine was abolished and large parts of it were given to the newly created

Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic ( ro, Republica Sovietică Socialistă Moldovenească, Moldovan Cyrillic: ) was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union which existed from 1940 to 1991. The republic was formed on 2 August 1940 ...

(Moldavian SSR), which emerged from the rest of Bessarabia. On June 22, 1941 Operation Barbarossa began, and western Ukraine was captured within weeks. Prior to retreating, the Soviet authorities, unwilling to evacuate prisoners, NKVD prisoner massacres, chose to kill all inmates whether or not they had committed major or minor crimes and whether or not they were held for political reasons. Estimates of the number of people killed vary from 15,000 to 40,000. Due to the brutality of the Soviet administration, many Ukrainians initially welcomed the German invasion. On June 30, 1941, Nachtigall Battalion, Ukrainian nationalist commandos under German command captured

which had been evacuated by Soviet forces and Proclamation of Ukrainian statehood, 1941, declared an independent state allied with Nazi Germany. This movement was quashed by the Germans, who split up western Ukraine. Galicia, which had once been part of Austria, was made part of the General Government together with occupied Poland, while Volhynia was split off and attached to the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Romania also regained its former lands and expanded further into Ukrainian territory, including the important city of Odessa, through the formation of the Transnistria Governorate, not formally annexed by Romania but administrated by it. All of these regions would be captured and reintegrated into Soviet Ukraine in 1944. The Ukrainian SSR's borders would change during the rest of World War II or shortly after it. It was given Carpathian Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia and some Danubian islands and the Snake Island (Black Sea), Snake Island in the Black Sea from Romania but lost Zakerzonia to Soviet-occupied Poland. The same thing would happen with the Belastok Region of Soviet Belarus. The 1954 transfer of Crimea from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR would ultimately consolidate the legally and internationally recognized borders of Ukraine existing today.

Importance for the Ukrainian and Belarusian statehood

The Soviet annexation of some 51.6% of the territory of the Second Polish Republic, where about 13,200,000 people lived in 1939 including Poles and Jews, was an important event in the history of contemporary Ukraine and Belarus, because it brought within Ukrainian SSR, Ukrainian and Belarusian SSR new territories inhabited in part by ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian people, and thus unified previously separated branches of these nations. The Polish population transfers (1944–1946), postwar population transfers imposed by Joseph Stalin, and the mass killings of the Holocaust, solidified the mono-ethnic character of these lands by nearly a complete eradication of the Polish and Jewish presence there. Ukraine and Belarus achieved independence in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union and became nation states delineated by borders of the 50-year-old republics. p. 17. "The process of amalgamation", wrote

, a Canada, Canadian historian of Ukrainians, Ukrainian descent, "was not only a major aspect of the post-war period, but an event of epochal significance in the history of Ukraine."Subtelny (1988), p. 487.

References

{{Soviet occupation Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic History of Ukraine (1918–1991) Poland in World War II Military history of the Soviet Union Annexation Territorial disputes of the Soviet Union Poland–Soviet Union relations Soviet Union–Ukraine relations September 1939 events 1939 in Poland 1939 in the Soviet Union