Editing Curzon Line (section)

==World War II==
{{Main|Invasion of Poland|Soviet invasion of Poland}}
The terms of the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact]] of August 1939 provided for the partition of Poland along the line of the [[San (river)|San]], [[Vistula]] and [[Narew]] rivers which did not go along the Curzon Line but reached far beyond it and awarded the Soviet Union with territories of Lublin and near Warsaw. In September, after the military defeat of Poland, the Soviet Union annexed all territories east of the Curzon Line plus Białystok and Eastern Galicia. The territories east of this line were incorporated into the [[Byelorussian SSR]] and [[Ukrainian SSR]] after falsified referendums{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}} and hundreds of thousands of Poles and a lesser number of Jews were deported eastwards into the Soviet Union. In July 1941 these territories were seized by [[Nazi Germany]] in the course of the [[Operation Barbarossa|invasion of the Soviet Union]]. During the German occupation most of the Jewish population was deported or killed by the Germans.

In 1944, the Soviet armed forces recaptured eastern Poland from the Germans. The Soviets unilaterally declared a new frontier between the Soviet Union and Poland (approximately the same as the Curzon Line). The [[Polish government-in-exile]] in London bitterly opposed this, insisting on the "Riga line". At the [[Tehran Conference|Tehran]] and [[Yalta Conference|Yalta conferences]] between [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] and the western Allies, the allied leaders [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] and Churchill asked Stalin to reconsider, particularly over Lwów, but he refused. During the negotiations at Yalta, Stalin posed the question "Do you want me to tell the Russian people that I am less Russian than Lord Curzon?"<ref name="Plokhy2010">{{cite book|author=Serhii Plokhy|title=Yalta: The Price of Peace|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0wOKfjnXdAUC&pg=PT190|access-date=3 February 2011|date=4 February 2010|publisher=Penguin|isbn=978-0-670-02141-3|pages=190}}</ref> The altered Curzon Line thus became the permanent eastern border of Poland and was recognised by the western Allies in July 1945. The border was later adjusted several times, the biggest revision [[1951 Polish–Soviet territorial exchange|being in 1951]].

When the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, the Curzon Line became Poland's eastern border with Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.