Fifteen years ago this year, the European Parliament proclaimed 23 August as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, the two most ruthless totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.

The date was chosen in recollection of the signing on 23 August 1939 of the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, also known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (by reference to the last names of the two countries’ foreign ministers, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop). The key supplement to the Treaty was the secret protocol by which the two totalitarian systems divided Central and Eastern Europe into their respective spheres of influence. The protocol stipulated that the USSR would have gained control of Finland, Latvia, and Estonia, and the Third Reich, of Lithuania. In regard to the partition of the Polish territories, a border was anticipated along the rivers Narew, Vistula, and San. Also, the Soviet side emphasised the interest of the USSR in Bessarabia.

The implementation of the secret protocol began with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939. In fulfilment of the Treaty, the Red Army invaded Poland’s eastern provinces on 17 September 1939, stabbing the Polish Army in the back as it was fending off the German aggression. On 28 September 1939, the Third Reich and the USSR signed the Boundary and Friendship Treaty, also known as the second Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The Treaty amended the August arrangements, including by adding Lithuania to the Soviet sphere of influence and moving the German–Soviet border on the territory of Poland from the Vistula to the Bug river. In 1940, the Baltic republics were brutally and unlawfully annexed by the USSR, and the Soviets – with the consent of the Third Reich – divested Romania of Bessarabia. Only Finland managed to avoid the same owing to its victories in the Winter War of 1939/1940 against the Soviets; nonetheless, the Finns eventually lost some of their territory to the USSR.

Initiated by the treaty of 23 August 1939, the collaboration between the Third Reich and the USSR brought about irreversible changes. Central and Eastern Europe, and Poland in particular, has continued to suffer from the atrocities of the Second World War, followed by the reign of the communist regime that spanned 50 years until the final collapse of the USSR.

 

MFA Spokesperson