German troops march into Poland following the start of hostilities on September 1, 1939. (AFP/Getty Images)
"On 17th September, 1939, the army of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) commenced hostilities within the territory of the Republic of Poland, without formal declaration of war, violating Poland's sovereignty and breaking international law. The basis for the Red Army's invasion was the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, signed on 23rd August, 1939, by representatives of the USSR and Nazi Germany," reads the resolution.
While Nazi Germany's blitzkrieg invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, also without formal declaration of war, has never been contested by the German government as an act of aggression that initiated World War II, Russia has never officially admitted that the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland two weeks and two days after the German one was a parallel act of aggression in complicity with Nazi forces. The Russians maintain instead that it was "liberating" and "protecting" the local populace from the Germans.
Although historians generally agree that the Soviet Red Army invaded Poland on 17th September 1939, shielded from Nazi hostility by a non-aggression pact, opinions vary widely as to Soviet Russia's true motives. The Russian authorities officially maintain to this day that their invasion was necessary to buffer Russia from a future Nazi invasion, which Soviet military intelligence of the time predicted would ensue sooner or later, and furthermore, to protect ethnic Russians and Belorussians living in eastern Poland. They also claim the non-aggression pact was a way of buying time in order to marshal the military might necessary to mitigate the Nazis' eastward expansion.
Poland's government does not see things this way. They claim that Russia's invasion was a hostile act perpetrated in order to re-occupy Polish territory. Prior to the First World War, Russia had occupied approximately 82 percent of Polish territory for 123 years as an imperial foreign power.
"Poland fell victim to two tyrannical regimes: Nazism and communism. The invasion by the Red Army opened yet another, tragic chapter in the history of Poland and all of Central and Eastern Europe," the resolution reads. It continues, "long is the list of atrocities and disasters which touched the eastern regions of Poland and Polish citizens there residing. Included among them is the war crime of executing over 20,000 defenseless Polish officers being held as prisoners of war, forced expulsion and resettlement of hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens and their internment in inhumane conditions in concentration camps and prisons as well as their being forced to perform slave labor."
After the end of World War II, the Soviets remained as an occupying force in Poland and imposed an oppressive communist regime that locked Poland into their sphere of influence behind the now infamous Iron Curtain for 44 years.
It is only now, 20 years after Poland finally cast off the yoke of communism, that the Polish authorities have managed to muster the political will to resolutely proclaim that the crimes perpetrated by Soviet Russia's communist regime were war crimes, bearing the markings of genocide.
