The author wishes to acknowledge the support of the Hoover Institution (Discretionary Grant Program, Department of State, Soviet-Eastern European Research and Training Act of 1983, Public Law 98-164, Title VIII, 97 Stat. 1047-50) in funding the research presented in this paper.

1. I use the word propaganda to mean actions whose goal is to influence the minds and behaviors of people, as suggested by Peter Kenez in The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917-1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 5. Kenez points out that the difference between propaganda and information in the press is that in the first case, journalists do not search for knowledge but rather for the most effective ways to convey the fruits of ideological analysis to the masses.

2. See Jeffrey Brooks, “Public and Private Values in the Soviet Press, 1921 -1928,” Slavic Review 48 (Spring 1989): 16-35. For 1939 to 1941, I have studied in detail Pravda, hvestiia, Literaturnaia gazeta, Krasnaia zvezda, Komsomol'skaia pravda, Partiinoe stroitel'stvo, Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, Finansovaia gazeta. For 1937 to 1939, 1 studied these periodicals and Ogonek and Lenigradskaia pravda intermittently. I also perused Volkischer Beobachter and other Nazi periodicals.

3. Ulam, Adam, The New Face of Soviet Totalitarianism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 138 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Gross, Jan T., Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Laqueur, Walter, Russia and Germany (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1965 Google Scholar; Heller, Mikhail and Nekrich, Aleksandr, Utopia in Power (New York: Summit, 1986 Google Scholar. Hannah Arendt was the first to apply the totalitarian model to the Soviet experience, whereas the historicist model has generally been used by Marxists and post-Hegelians. For a discussion of these two models, see John Armstrong, “Comments on Professor Dallin's ‘Bias and Blunders in American Studies on the USSR, '” Slavic Review 32 (Fall 1973): 577-587. For objections to the blindness of researchers to the problems of nationalism in the Soviet Union, see Motyl, Alexander J., “‘Sovietology in One Country’ or Comparative Nationality Studies?” Slavic Review 48 (Spring 1989): 83–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Karl W. Deutsch views nationality as a “community of communication” in Nationalism apd Social Communication (New York: John Wiley, 1953), 143. Salo W. Baron stresses religion as a cohesiveness factor in Modern Nationalism and Religion, 2nd ed. (Freeport, N.Y., Books for Libraries Press, 1971), 56f.

5. Dallin, Alexander, “Soviet Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics: A Framework for Analysis,” in The Conduct of Soviet Foreign Policy, ed. Hoffmann, Erik P. and Fleron, Frederic J. Jr., (New York: Aldine-Atherton, 1971), 36–49 Google Scholar. Cohen, Stephen F., Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History since 1917 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 65–66, 155–156 Google Scholar. See also Kennan, George, Russia and the West (New York: Mentor, 1960 Google Scholar; Moore, Barrington Jr., Terror and Progress USSR: Some Sources of Change and Stability in the Soviet Dictatorship (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where the discussion of problems related to Soviet nationalities is limited to a consideration of the formation of cliques among intellectuals of various ethnic backgrounds; and Lane, David, Politics andSociety in the USSR, 2nd ed. (New York: New York University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

6. Fainsod, Merle, How Russia Is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 363 Google Scholar.

7. Moore in Terror and Progress argues that these policies were an extension of previous periods; see also Jonathan Haslam, The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe, 1933-39 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984). Haslam maintains, however, that in the 1930s the Soviets believed that Poland had more political clout than it in fact possessed, and that this belief was partly a result of historical perceptions (162). In contrast, Jan T. Gross (Revolution from Abroad, 8) maintains that after the Munich agreement, the Soviets began to “reorient their foreign policy to find accomodation with Nazi Germany.” Walter Laqueur points out in Russia and Germany, 254, that “the initiative for a rapprochement in spring 1939 almost certainly came from the Russians.”

8. Downgraded in 1956 to an autonomous republic within the Russian republic.

9. The “legal” texts justifying these annexations can be found in “Zakony, priniatye Verkhovnym Sovetom SSSR,” Partiinoe stroitel'stvo, no. 14 (July 1940): 39-41.

10. “Vneshniaia politika Sovetskogo Soiuza,” Sovetskoe gosudarstvo ipravo, 8-9 (1940): 4.

11. hvestiia, 11 January 1940, on changing the Kirghiz alphabet from Arabic to Cyrillic; Pravda, 29 March 1940, on changing the Tatar alphabet from Latin to Cyrillic.

12. “The story of Soviet foreign policy from 1917 through World War II is one of success unparallelled in the history of diplomacy,” Adam Ulam, New Face of Soviet Totalitarianism, 130.

13. Only a portion of Finland was incorporated into the Soviet Union following the Soviet-Finnish War. ‘ 14. Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), 72, 369 ft.

15. This hostility is indicated by the smallness of the communist parties in eastern Central Europe between the two world wars, and the weak showing of communist sympathizers in the pre-World War II elections. See ibid., 63, 65, 174, 229.

16. The problem of distinguishing between the Russian and non-Russian components of the Soviet state is complicated, and many researchers, including Peter Kenez, do not sufficiently emphasize the fact that about one-third of the Soviet population did not speak Russian well enough to be influenced by Russian language publications. This segment of society was approached by newspapers in other languages that took their clues from the Russian-language press. See the discussion of Czerwony Sztandar in Gross, Revolution from Abroad, xx, 66, 75, 85, 189, 191, 217. For a discussion of the nationality problem in the 1930s, see Adam Ulam, “Russian Nationalism,” in The Domestic Context of Soviet Foreign Policy, ed. Seweryn Bialer (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1981), 3-17.

17. Kenez, Birth of the Propaganda State, 224. The development of the system of local agitators is discussed on 51 -69. Kenez also demonstrates the vital role of the press in the Bolsheviks’ rise to power; it is illuminating that the first issue of Pravda, which appeared on 5 March 1917 in a printing of 100, 000, was distributed free (31). Jeffrey Brooks also gives statistics for the newspapers aimed at workers and peasants in the 1920s. Brooks, “Public and Private Values,” 18-19.

18. D. Smirnov, “Pechat'—moguchee orudie v bor'be za kommunizm,” Partiinoe stroitel'stvo, no. 9 (May 1939): 39.

19. “O rukovodstve partiinoi pechat'iu,” Partiinoe stroitel'stvo, no. 9 (May 1940): 7. “Glavnoe v propagande—ee kachestvo, ee ideinyi uroven',” Partiinoe stroitel'stvo, no. 21 (November 1940): 3-7; “Partiinaia informatsiia v gazete,” Partiinoe stroitel'stvo, no. 22 (November 1940): 77ff. Partiinoe stroitel'stvo was a biweekly of the Central Committee of the VKP(b). In the mid-1970s, I. V. Kurilov and V. V. Shinkarenko confirmed the long-lasting Soviet recognition of the press as an instrument of party policy in Planirovanie informatsii vpresse (Moscow: My si', 1976). To introduce an interpretation into public consciousness, say the authors, articles “deriving from the same major thought which eventually … begins to appear attractive, which attracts attention and is memorized” must be published over several weeks (48). Four-week periods are said to be the most effective (94). During such campaigns, the desired interpretation should appear in a variety of forms: as straightforward reporting, as testimonials, and as theoretical articles. A point of view is strengthened by examples: hence the importance of the testimonials of people who directly participated in an event. Also see R. V. Martanus, Nauchnoe rukovodstvo i upravlenie sotsialisticheskim obshchestvom and V. G. Afanas'ev, Nauchnoe upravlenie obshchestvom.

20. Kenez, Birth of the Propaganda State, 32.

21. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 197-198.

22. la. Viktorov, “Mezhdunarodnyi obzor,” Partiinoe stroitel'stvo, 1 January 1939, 62.

23. Over the centuries, Russians have allied with Germany at the expense of Poland, Lithuania, Belonissia, and Ukraine. The possibility of another such alliance could hardly have been ruled out in Soviet longterm planning.

24. “Einvernehmen zwischen Berlin und Moskau iiber Polen,” Volkischer Beobachter, northern edition, 19 September 1939.

25. For nearly half a century, Soviet historians spoke of Soviet aggression against Poland as “the freeing of western Ukraine and western Belorussia from the Polish yoke” ; see F. G. Zuev et al., Istoriia Pol'shi (Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1958), 456-457. The war with Finland was said to have been caused by the Finnish “provocateurs” and the annexations of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina were described as the “return” of these territories to the Soviet Union. Kim, M. P., ed., Istoriia SSSR: Epokha sotsializma (Moscow, 1958), 534–542 Google Scholar. Major General Petr Grigorenko's Memoirs show that such views have been unquestioningly accepted even by critics of the Soviet system. Grigorenko devotes one page of his five hundred-page volume to the Soviet-Finish War and the annexation of Finnish territory and says nothing of Soviet aggression against the Baltic countries and Romania. See Memoirs, trans. Thomas P. Whitney (New York: Norton, 1982), esp. 92. Some popular English-language histories of Russia reflect a similar point of view. Vernadsky's, George A History of Russia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1961)Google Scholar describes Soviet aggression against Poland as “rectification of the western frontier.” According to Vernadsky, the annexation of the Baltic republics was a result of “diplomatic moves.” He described the aggression against Romania in the following way: “an ultimatum was delivered to the Romanian Government, and upon its expiration Soviet troops occupied Bessarabia and northern Bukovina” (420 and 423). Similarly, Riasanovsky's, Nicholas V. A History of Russia, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 516–517 Google Scholar, asserts that the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact was one of “strict neutrality” and tries to defend the Bolsheviks by saying that they “hated” the Nazis and had “no illusions” as to the merits of the agreement. Yet the Soviet press of the period showed no foresight as to the eventual realignment of alliances in World War II. Riasanovsky says that Hitler “attacked Poland” whereas the Red Army merely “occupied eastern Poland.” Likewise, he says that the Soviet Union “utilized its agreement with Germany to obtain from Rumania, by means of an ultimatum, the disputed region of Bessarabia as well as northern Bukovina” (emphasis added). Similar opinions are expressed in Edward Acton's Russia (London: Longman, 1986), 245-247, a book based almost entirely on secondary sources. In St. Petersburg and Moscow: Tsarist and Soviet Foreign Policy, 1814-1974 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974), 351-352, Barbara Jelavich devotes one paragraph to the secret agreements of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Jelavich's book displays a typical lack of recognition of the role of nationalities in Eastern Europe under Soviet domination. A lengthy search (unaided by the appropriately lengthy index) in the 700-page-long Russia and the Soviet Union: A Modern History by W. B. Walsh (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968), 505-506, yielded two pages about the pact and no mention of the nationalities involved. Among other popular histories of Russia, Billington's, James The Icon and the Axe (New York: Knopf, 1966 Google Scholar concentrates on cultural matters and has not corrected these omissions. Shirer's, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 513–544 Google Scholar), devotes more attention to the pact and to the ways it affected the nationalities in the Soviet Union than any history of Russia that I know.

26. Gross, Revolution from Abroad, 35, 56-57.

27. Recently, Russian nationalists in the Soviet Union and abroad have raised the issue of damages to Russian culture caused by the Soviets. Some of these complaints deserve attention, but all should be viewed within the context of events presented in this paper. For a classic example of such complaints, see Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, The Mortal Danger: How Misconceptions about Russia Imperil America (New York: Harper and Row, 1980 Google Scholar and Valentin Rasputin's recent complaints about “Russophobia” in, for instance, an interview in Svet v Obrazech [Prague] 45, no. 32 (1989): 15. As the humiliated signatories of the 1920 Treaty of Riga, the Soviets had good reasons to change into eager partners of the Nazis in this fourth partition of Poland.

28. Compare the use of pan in Fedor Dostoevskii's Brat'ia Karamazovy; also see Michat Heller, “Polskije pany,” Kultura, no. 421 (October 1982). In Revolution from Abroad Gross says that pan stands between master and mister (24).

29. Ewa M. Thompson, “Russian Writers and the Soviet Invasion of Poland in 1939,” in The Search for Self-Definition in Russian Literature (Houston: Rice University Press, 1991), 158-166.

30. V. Molotov, “O vneshnei politike Sovetskogo Soiuza,” Sovetskoe gosudarstvo ipravo 5 (1939): 6.

31. For corroboration of this conclusion, see Gross, Revolution from Abroad, 29, 32-33.

32. The Hoover Institution Archives contain depositions of about 30, 000 Poles who lived to tell about these deportations. The deported, many of them children, describe their travel in cattle wagons, often without food or drink for days and then, at the centers of forced labor, starvation that killed a large number within months.

33. Pravda, 17 September and 4 October 1939.

34. Pravda, 2 October 1939. In western Belorussia and western Ukraine, Poles lived primarily in cities, whereas the Belorussian and Ukrainian majorities lived in the countryside. In Lvov, Tarnow, Biarystok, Novgorod, and Vilnius provinces Poles were the majority and Ukrainians and Belorussians made up from 20 percent to 45 percent of the population. In Stanislav, Volhynia, and Polesie provinces, Poles were a minority, with Ukrainians and Belorussians making up to 55 percent to 65 percent of the population. Aleksander Gieysztor et al. History of Poland (Warsaw: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1968), 685, 714-716.

35. Pravda, 11 October and 4 December 1939.

36. Under the second Polish republic, the Biafystok province was inhabited by 1, 004, 370 Polish gentiles, 162, 912 Polish Jews, and 119, 392 Belorussians. The city of Biatystok was inhabited by 39, 602 Jews, 35, 832 Polish gentiles, and 1, 358 people of other backgrounds. See Teresa Toranska, Them: Stalin's Polish Puppets (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 209.

37. Gross. Revolution from Abroad, 35.

38. See Simon, Gerhard, Nationalismus und Nationalitdtenpolitik in der Sowjetunion (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1986), 171–179.Google Scholar For a comprehensive survey see Carrere-d'Encausse, Helene, Decline of an Empire (New York: Newsweek Books, 1982), 165–188 Google Scholar, and Confiscated Power (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 297-302.

39. Sovetskaia iustitsiia 7 (1940), 23. Subbotin assumed that Russian and Belorussian were interchangeable.

40. Gross refers to hundreds of testimonials about violence against Poles. In the Hoover Institution Archives, I have seen several hundred documents and testimonials of survivors indicating that the press propaganda against Poles had the desired effects. A few of the documents from the Wtadystaw Anders Collection and Poland Ambasada (USSR) Collection appeared in English translation in the Sarmatian Review 9, no. 1. One letter from a seventeen-year-old boy, Marian Kundzicz, who had been deported to the Udmurt Autonomous Republic and forced to work at a job destructive to health, said “some of the Russian boys were assigned to work as locksmiths and lathe operators, but they did not want to take me because I am a Pole. I work twelve hours a day in the water.” Another document published in that issue is a collective testimonial that says “the Soviet authorities … considered everything Polish as hostile.”

41. Gross, Jan T. and Grudziriska-Gross, Irena, “W czterdziestym nas matko na Sybir zeslali. …” (London: Aneks, 1983 Google Scholar; Siedlecki, Julian, Losy Polakow w ZSSR w latach 1939-1986, 2nd ed. (London: Gryf, 1988), 33–41, 246-255Google Scholar; Heller, Michat Polska w oczach Moskwy (Paris: Institut Litteraire, 1984), 163 Google Scholar. Bruno Bettelheim wrote of that period: “Russia … made a deliberate and concentrated effort to destroy the existing fabric of Polish society and replace it with an alien one.” Bruno Bettelheim, foreword, Gross, Irena Grudzinska and Gross, Jan Tomasz, eds. War through Children's Eyes (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1985), xiv.Google Scholar

42. Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo. May 1939, 8. For a Finnish perception of the Soviet-Finnish war see Hjalmar J. Procope, Finland Reveals Her Secret Documents: On Soviet Policy March 1940-June 1941 (New York: Funk, 1941).

43. Pravda, 16 June 1940; Izvestiia, 2 July 1940.

44. Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, November 1940, 59ff.; Hjalmar J. Procope, Finland Reveals.

45. Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, no. 3 (1940), 11.

46. V. Gudkov, “Kul'tura vozrozhdennoi strany,” Pravda, 16 June 1940; “Antisovetskaia belofinskaia fal'shivka,” Izvestiia, 18 September 1941; Partiinoe stroitei stvo, no. 10, May 1940: 20-21.

47. Pravda, 14 January 1940; Izvestiia, 2 July 1940.

48. Komsomol'skaia pravda, 20 October 1940. See P. Fedoseev, “Sotsializm i patriotizm,” Kommunist, no. 9 (June 1953): 13; S. Iakubovskaia, “Obrazovanie i rastsvet sotsialisticheskikh natsii v SSSR,” Kommunist, no. 9 (June 1953): 42-45; Sotsialisticheskie natsii SSSR (Moscow: Adademiia Nauk, Institute of Philosophy, 1955), 142.

49. “The liberation of Soviet Lithuania has begun,” Pravda, 10 July 1944; “The dawn of freedom over the Soviet Baltic republics,” Pravda, 21 July 1944.

50. hvestiia, 29 June 1940; Pravda, 1 September 1940.

51. The point of view in these articles is strikingly similar to that voiced in Riasanovsky's book in regard to Soviet acquisitions of Romanian territory. See fn. 25.

52. hvestiia, 25 July 1940.

53. Sovetskoe gosudarstvo ipravo, no. 3 (1941): 85.