Abstract

At the time of the agreement with the German Third Reich on Soviet aggression on Poland on September 17, 1939, the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland in Moscow was given a diplomatic note declaring that in the face of the "break-up of the Polish state", the USSR "is defending the Belarusian and Ukrainian population" in eastern Poland. This deceptive version was naively accepted by Poland’s Western Allies, who pretended that Moscow was not hostile against Poland. They explained that they did not want to enhance, but rather to overthrow the German-Soviet alliance. The highest authorities of the Republic of Poland were charged with inconsistence and did not declare a state of war between Poland and the USSR as of September 17, 1939. This was a game of slander and the author documented the will of the parties to bring such charges. In the period of the Polish People's Republic, the myth of so-called justified Soviet intervention in 1939 was perpetuated. Today, too, this issue remains not entirely clear for many politicians, historians and journalists. This text analyses the formation of this myth, showing its political ground for various propaganda and proclamations of Western states, and ambiguous attitudes of Polish politicians, especially focused on the very naïve and politically dependent General Sikorski, the Commander-in-Chief and Prime Minister, with greater responsibility than the ruling party of the Second Polish Republic for the false opinions about Polish-Soviet relations in September 1939.