Poland’s lower house of parliament has issued a resolution condemning the Soviet invasion of Poland at the start of WW II.

The unanimously passed resolution recalls that the entry of Red Army forces on 17 September 1939 had been an act of “undeclared war infringing Poland’s territorial sovereignty in breach of international law”.

The lower house resolution stresses that the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact signed by the Third Reich and the Soviet Union served as the basis for what has been termed the “4 partition of Poland”, making it a victim of two totalitarian systems - Nazi and communist regimes.

The document  - agreed after prolonged and sometimes angry debate among political parties - also takes note of the Stalinist policies of ethnic cleansing which led to the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of people of various nationalities, including Soviet citizens, in gulags.

Heated discussion over the past few days concerned the description of the 1940 Katyn massacre of Polish POWs by the Soviet NKVD, which some members of parliament, particularly those from the Law and Justice opposition, insisted on being described as “genocide”.    

The compromise text refers to Katyn as exhibiting the “characteristics of genocide”. (ss/pg)