On 23 August 1939, Nazi Germany’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, signed a non-aggression treaty known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Its secret protocols divided Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Meelis Maripuu reflects on an agreement whose consequences haunted Estonia until it restored its independence in 1991.*
In the second half of the 1930s, two totalitarian regimes established themselves as major forces in European politics, each feverishly preparing to extend its power.
Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany had gained a head start over Joseph Stalin’s communist Soviet Union. By 1939, Germany had annexed Austria and seized much of Czechoslovakia. Stalin had yet to play a decisive role in international affairs, but the Soviet regime had not abandoned its plans for a worldwide communist revolution and was waiting for an opportunity to put them into practice.
By 1939, Stalin had become the decisive figure in determining how the looming European war would unfold. Germany stood on one side; Britain and France on the other. The two Western powers had pledged, through mutual-assistance agreements, to defend the independence of several smaller European states.
In the summer of 1939, attention turned to Poland, which Germany had presented with a series of territorial demands. British and French guarantees of Polish independence initially held Germany back, as Hitler was not yet prepared to risk a war on two fronts. Had the Soviet Union joined Britain and France in guaranteeing Poland, it might, in theory, have deterred Hitler from further expansion.
Poland, however, was categorically opposed to Soviet involvement. Its government feared, with good reason, that if the Red Army entered the country to defend it in the event of war, it would never leave and Poland would inevitably be Sovietised.
Since the spring of 1939, the Soviet Union had been negotiating simultaneously with Britain and France on one side and Germany on the other, seeking the most advantageous deal.
Stalin’s aim was to delay Soviet entry into the war for as long as possible while securing the most favourable terms from whichever side he ultimately chose to support. His strategic focus extended across the entire region from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea. On 21 August, after receiving confirmation of a better offer from Hitler, he abruptly broke off talks with Britain and France. Events then moved swiftly.
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union make a deal
On 23 August, Germany’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, arrived in Moscow, where he and his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, signed a non-aggression treaty known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, together with a secret additional protocol.
The treaty’s public provisions required the two countries to refrain from attacking one another and from joining any alliance or entering into any agreement directed against the other. Its secret additional protocol divided Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.
Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia, then part of Romania, fell within the Soviet sphere. Poland was to be partitioned between the two powers, while Lithuania was initially assigned to the German sphere.
That settlement was revised following the German and Soviet invasion of Poland. On 28 September, the two powers signed the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, completing the fourth partition of Poland. Under a new secret protocol, Lithuania was transferred to the Soviet sphere of influence, while Germany was assigned the Lublin region of Poland.
The agreement of 23 August enabled Hitler to invade Poland on 1 September, an event widely regarded as marking the beginning of the Second World War. Stalin, however, delayed the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland until 17 September, waiting to see how the Western powers would respond and allowing Hitler initially to appear as the war’s sole aggressor. On 22 September, German and Soviet forces held a joint military ceremony in Brest-Litovsk to mark their conquest of Poland and the transfer of the city to Soviet control.
The Soviet Union forces Estonia to accept military bases
At the same time, acting under the secret protocol, the Soviet Union forced Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to sign mutual-assistance treaties, commonly known as the “bases agreements”. These allowed it to station troops and establish military bases in all three countries.
Finland rejected similar demands. The Soviet Union responded by invading Finland, beginning the Winter War. The resulting peace settlement forced Finland to cede extensive eastern territories and lease the Hanko Peninsula on the Gulf of Finland to the Soviet Union for use as a naval base. Finland nevertheless retained its independence.
In June 1940, while much of the world’s attention was fixed on Hitler’s victory in France, the Soviet Union occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The three countries were formally annexed in August. Mass repression and the forced Sovietisation of their societies began almost immediately.
In the short term, however, the rapid annexation of territories within its allotted sphere of influence weakened the Soviet Union’s strategic position. Many of the conquered areas were economically more advanced than much of the Soviet Union, and together they were home to some 20 million people with little sympathy for Soviet rule. New defensive lines remained unfinished when Germany invaded in June 1941, leaving the Soviet Union acutely vulnerable.
In the longer term, however, Stalin prevailed. The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the war against Hitler, but the Western Allies were ultimately compelled to accept in practice both its borders as they stood in 1941 and its new sphere of influence across Central and Eastern Europe. A wave of Sovietisation soon swept across the region.
The consequences of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact endured until 1991
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact ceased to have effect on 22 June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Its secret protocol had been unlawful from the outset, and one of the parties to the agreement, Nazi Germany, ceased to exist in May 1945. The pact had enabled two totalitarian regimes bent on domination to plunge much of Europe into war and cause the deaths of tens of millions of people.
Yet the Soviet sphere of influence envisaged by the pact endured for decades. The Soviet Union emerged as one of the war’s victors, while realpolitik left other countries unable or unwilling to overturn the settlement before the USSR collapsed.
Most Western powers, however, did not recognise the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states de jure. This policy helped preserve the legal continuity of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, paving the way for the restoration of their independence in 1991.
The Soviet Union denied the existence of the secret protocols until 1989, when the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR condemned them and declared them legally unjustified and invalid from the moment they were signed. Yet one of the pact’s last tangible legacies outlived the Soviet Union itself: Soviet and, after 1991, Russian troops remained in the Baltic states and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe for several more years.
* This article was first published on 21 August 2019 and was lightly edited on 23 August 2026.
Thank you for this summary. The free West did not include this important information in their texts, teaching or media until encouraged or forced to in the wake of the information avalance of the nineties, over half a century after it happened. Yet even today the poisonous significance of Marxist-inspired mass manipulation and genocide is not fully feared or recognized, although the Chinese government still stands as a living and active engine of its suppression of human liberties. And our school systems here in America and Canada have overt influencers attempting to raise a new generation subservient to powerful corporate interests and inspired by a naive understanding of Marxist ideologies. We need to continously disseminate accurate historical information.