Staged Revolution
Soviet Rule in Poland and the Baltic States 1939-1941
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
In September 1939, the Red Army marched into eastern Poland, in June 1940, into Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. In order to integrate the occupied territories into the Soviet Union as quickly and completely as possible, the Soviet political, social, economic, and cultural system was imposed on these lands step by step until 1941. Sham elections were to give the annexations a veneer of democratic legitimacy; terror and mass deportations were to nip any popular resistance in the bud and eliminate “dangerous elements” so as to stabilize the new order. In fact, the Soviets were destroying existing social bonds and aggravating existing national and social conflicts.
(Osteuropa 5-6/2013, pp. 151–174)