Soviet Annexation
At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union annexed most of the territories it had occupied in 1939, although territories with an area of 21,275 square kilometers with 1.5 million inhabitants were returned to Poland, notably the areas near Białystok and Przemyśl.
After the Soviet re-invasion of Poland in July 1944, the Polish government-in-exile prime minister flew to Moscow with Churchill to attempt to oppose annexations of its Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact portion of eastern Poland by the Soviet Union. He offered a smaller section of land, but Stalin declined, telling him that he would allow the exiled government to participate in the Polish Committee of National Liberation. An agreement was reluctantly reached at the Yalta Conference where the Soviets would annex the entirety of their Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact portion of Eastern Poland, but would grant Poland part of Eastern Germany in return. Thereafter, eastern Poland was annexed into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
On August 16, 1945 the communist dominated Polish government signed a treaty with the USSR to formally cede these territories. The total population of the territories annexed by the USSR, not including the portion returned to Poland in 1945, had an estimated population of 10,653,000 according to the 1931 Polish census. In 1939 this had increased to about 11.6 million. The composition by language group was Ukrainian 37.1%, Polish 36,5%, Belarusian 15.1%, Yiddish 8.3%, Other 3%. Religious affiliation: Eastern Orthodox 31.6%, Roman Catholic 30.1%, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church 26.7%, Jewish 9.9%, Other 1.7%.
From 1944 until 1952 the Ukrainian Insurgent Army were engaged in an armed struggle against the communists (in the early 1940s, the UIA, supported by local Ukrainian peasants, participated in the Ethnic cleansing operations). As a result of the skirmishes between the UIA and Soviet units, the Soviets deported 600,000 people from these territories and in the process 170,000 of the local population were killed in the fighting (See also Operation Vistula).
Read more about this topic: Territories Of Poland Annexed By The Soviet Union
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