On August 23, 1939, the governments of Germany and the USSR signed the Non-Aggression Pact - the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact. This international agreement actually opened the way for the unfolding of the bloodiest tragedy of the 20th century. Germany protected itself from a war on two fronts, as the Soviet Union guaranteed neutrality in the conflict of the Third Reich with Poland and in the event of a possible entry into the war of the Western powers. The document contained a secret protocol according to which Hitler and Stalin divided the countries of Northern and Eastern Europe into “spheres of influence”. Thus, Germany's sphere of interest included most of Poland and Lithuania, the USSR “received” Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Bessarabia and the eastern part of Poland.
The contract, designed for 10 years, was signed in Moscow by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany J. Ribbentrop and the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the USSR V. Molotov in the presence of J. Stalin and the German Ambassador V. Schulenburg. The official part of the meeting ended with a buffet, which was opened by J. Stalin's toast: “I know how much the German people love the Führer. That's why I want to drink to his health”.
A week later, on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II. On September 16, Warsaw was surrounded by Nazi troops. The next day, under the pretext of “taking under their protection the lives and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus”, the Red Army crossed the Polish border from the east, after which the German command ordered its troops to stop on the line Bialystok-Brest-Volodymyr-Lviv-Skole. On September 22, 1939, a joint parade of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army took place (the so-called “victory parade”) in Brest, the latter was transferred by Germany to the jurisdiction of the USSR. On September 28, 1939, in Moscow, J. Ribbentrop and V. Molotov signed the Treaty of Friendship and Border, which erased Poland from the map of Europe. After him, the greater part of Western Ukraine went to the USSR (except for the Kholm region, Podlyashchy, Nadsyan and Lemkiv region), and its border moved westward by 250–350 km.
Additional negotiations also adjusted the "spheres of influence" of the USSR and Germany. Thus, as compensation for the occupied Lublin Voivodeship and the eastern part of Warsaw Voivodeship occupied by German troops, which, according to the Pact, were part of the USSR's zone of interests, it was envisaged that “special measures on Lithuanian territory” would be held in the future. This opened the way for the Soviet Union to annex first Lithuania, carried out on June 15, 1940, and the next day – Latvia and Estonia.
The treaty, along with other Soviet-German agreements, actually became invalid on June 22, 1941, after the German attack on the USSR. To this day, from September 1939 to June 1941, the Soviet Union remained an ally of the Third Reich, supplying it with raw materials, materials and information necessary for waging war in Europe.
In the USSR, during almost the entire postwar period, the existence of a secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was categorically denied. In December 1989, its German copy was published, which was kept on archival photofilms of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany, and its authenticity was officially declared on the basis of graphological, phototechnical and lexical examinations. The original Soviet copy of the secret protocol to the Non-Aggression Treaty was kept in the personal safe of Y. Stalin, then in the archive of the Central Committee of the CPSU, from 1987 – in the archive of President M. Gorbachev, and after the collapse of the USSR – in the archive of President of the Russian Federation B. Yeltsin. After the declassification of the archive, the document was “found” on October 30, 1992 by the deputy chief of the Main Political Department, Colonel-General D. Volkogonov, and issued. The scientific publication took place in the journal “New and Modern History”, No. 1 for 1993. The documents were officially published in 1992 in the publication of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation “Documents of the Foreign Policy of the USSR. 1939. Vol. XXII”. P. 630–632.
Dilfuza Hlushchenko