Belarus declares national holiday marking Soviet invasion of Poland

Belarus has declared a new national holiday on 17 September, marking the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s invasion and occupation of Poland at the start of the Second World War, following its secret agreement with Nazi Germany to divide the country between them.

The move follows a series of rhetorical attacks by President Alexander Lukashenko against Poland, whose government has supported the Belarusian democratic opposition. It is also the latest escalation in a dispute over wartime history between Poland and its eastern neighbours.

The new Day of National Unity “symbolises restoration of historical justice and reunification of the Belarusian nation that was forcibly divided in 1921 in line with the Treaty of Riga”, said Lukashenko’s office, quoted by state news agency BelTA.

“The establishment of [this holiday] highlights the continuity of generations, the stability and self-sufficiency of the Belarusian nation and statehood,” continued the press release. “Belarusian people unanimously support the strategy towards a strong sovereign and prospering country.”

BelTA added that “the reunification of the Belarusian nation in 1939 helped the country prevail in the Great Patriotic War [World War Two], take its rightful place in the international community, and become one of the founding member states of the United Nations”.

The Treaty of Riga, which ended the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-21, established the eastern border of the newly independent Polish state. Around 3% of interwar Poland’s population were ethnic Belarusians, and its territory included parts of what is today Belarus.

On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union, without a declaration of war, invaded and then occupied the eastern half of Poland. The move came 16 days after Nazi Germany had invaded from the west, with the two totalitarian powers dividing up Poland between them under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

The Soviets at the time presented their invasion as a way to protect “brothers and sisters in western Ukraine and western Belarus”. That is a narrative that Russia perpetuates to this day. In 2015, the Kremlin’s ambassador to Poland claimed the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland was simply an act of self-defence.

The following year, Russia’s Supreme Court upheld a sentence against a blogger who had reposted a text saying that the Soviets and Nazis “closely collaborated” in the “joint invasion of Poland”. He was responsible for “circulating false information”, found the court, and therefore guilty of “rehabilitating Nazism”.

Tensions over this history have been reignited in recent times. In late 2019, Russian president Vladimir Putin made a series of revisionist claims about the war, including blaming Poland for the Nazi German invasion and saying that the Soviet occupation saved lives. Poland accused him of reviving “Stalinist propaganda”.

After Poland began last year to openly support the Belarusian democratic opposition, Lukashenko accused Warsaw of seeking to reclaim former Polish territory from Belarus. No Polish officials have ever expressed such an aim.

Earlier this year, a number of leading figures from Belarus’s large ethnic Polish minority were detained. They have been accused by Belarusian prosecutors of “rehabilitating Nazism and justifying the genocide of the Belarusian nation”.

The claims relate to events honouring the so-called “cursed soldiers” (żołnierze wyklęci), partisans who resisted the introduction of communism in Poland after World War Two. Some of the fighters were involved in war crimes against non-Polish ethnic groups, including Belarusians.

Commenting earlier this year on the proposal to create a Day of National Unity on 17 September, Belarusian political scientist Valer Karbalevich told Polskie Radio that “for Belarusian society this date is full of contradictions and is controversial”.

“On the one hand, eastern and western Belarus united…[which] is seen as a plus,” he noted. “On the other hand, this merger took place as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, which gives rise to serious controversy and conflicting opinions.”

“Yes, the Belarusian territories were united in one state,” Alyaksandr Fridman, a researcher at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University told Belsat, a Polish-based broadcaster aimed at Belarus.

“But as a result of these events, the Stalinist dictatorship extended to western Belarus, and repression affected a large part of the local population,” added Fridman. “Thus, Belarusian Unity Day on September 17…will become a real triumph of neo-Stalinism.”

Main image credit: Mil.ru/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY 4.0)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.