Editing Curzon Line (section)

{{Short description|Historical demarcation of territories of Poland and the Soviet Union}}
{{Other uses|Curzon (disambiguation){{!}}Curzon}}
{{More footnotes needed|date=November 2021}}
{{Infobox
 | title     = Curzon Line
 | subheader = Historical [[demarcation line]] of World War II
 | image     = [[File:Curzon line en.svg|330px]]
 | caption   = ''Lighter blue line'': Curzon Line "B" as proposed in 1919. <br>''Darker blue line'': "Curzon" Line "A" as drawn by [[Lewis Namier]] in 1919. <br>''Pink areas'': [[Recovered Territories|Pre–World War II provinces]] of [[Germany]] transferred to Poland after the war. <br>''Grey area'': [[Kresy|Pre–World War II Polish territory east of the Curzon Line]] annexed by the Soviet Union after the war.
}}

The '''Curzon Line''' was a proposed [[demarcation line]] between the [[Second Polish Republic]] and the [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic|Soviet Union]], two new states emerging after [[World War I]]. Based on a suggestion by Herbert James Paton, it was first proposed in 1919 by [[George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston|Lord Curzon]], the British [[Foreign Secretary (United Kingdom)|Foreign Secretary]], to the [[Supreme War Council]] as a diplomatic basis for a future border agreement.<ref name="Sarah Meiklejohn Terry 1983 121">{{cite book |author=Sarah Meiklejohn Terry |title=Poland's Place in Europe: General Sikorski and the Origin of the Oder-Neisse Line, 1939-1943 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zOL_AwAAQBAJ&q=%22polish-soviet+boundary+since+1945%22&pg=PA121 |year=1983 |publisher=Princeton University Press |page=121|isbn=9781400857173 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Eberhardt|first=Piotr|year=2012|title=The Curzon line as the eastern boundary of Poland. The origins and the political background|url=https://www.geographiapolonica.pl/article/item/7563.html|journal=Geographia Polonica|volume=85|issue=1|pages=5–21|doi=10.7163/GPol.2012.1.1}}</ref><ref name=leslie>{{cite book |author=R. F. Leslie, Antony Polonsky |title=The History of Poland Since 1863 |year=1983 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0tYVKUsnw9IC&q=Pilsudski+coup+1919+lithuania&pg=PA135|isbn=978-0-521-27501-9}}</ref>

The line became a major geopolitical factor during World War II, when the [[Soviet Union|USSR]] [[Soviet invasion of Poland|invaded eastern Poland]], resulting in the split of Poland's territory between the USSR and [[Nazi Germany]] roughly along the Curzon Line in accordance with final rounds of secret negotiations surrounding the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact]]. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, [[Operation Barbarossa]], the Allies did not agree that Poland's future eastern border should be changed from the pre-war status quo in 1939 until the [[Tehran Conference]]. Churchill's position changed after the Soviet victory at the [[Battle of Kursk]].<ref>Rees, Laurence (2009). ''World War Two Behind Closed Doors'', BBC Books, pp. 122, 220</ref>

Following a private agreement at the Tehran Conference, confirmed at the 1945 [[Yalta Conference]], the Allied leaders [[Franklin Roosevelt]], [[Winston Churchill]], and Stalin issued a statement affirming the use of the Curzon Line, with some five-to-eight-kilometre variations, as the eastern border between Poland and the Soviet Union.<ref>{{cite web|title=Modern History Sourcebook: The Yalta Conference, Feb. 1945|url=http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1945yalta.html|publisher=[[Fordham University]]|access-date=2010-02-05}}</ref> When Churchill proposed to annex parts of [[Eastern Galicia]], including the city of [[Lviv]], to Poland's territory (following Line B), Stalin argued that the Soviet Union could not demand less territory for itself than the British Government had reconfirmed previously several times. The Allied arrangement involved compensation for this loss via the incorporation of formerly German areas (the so-called [[Recovered Territories]]) into Poland. As a result, the current border between [[Poland]] and the countries of [[Belarus]] and [[Ukraine]] is an approximation of the Curzon Line.
{{Territorial evolution of Poland}}