# Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression treaty between [Nazi Germany](https://www.edgepedia.org/nazi-germany) and the Soviet Union, signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939 by the German foreign minister [Joachim von Ribbentrop](https://www.edgepedia.org/joachim-von-ribbentrop) and the Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov, together with a secret protocol dividing [Eastern Europe](https://www.edgepedia.org/eastern-europe) between the two states into spheres of influence.[1](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/nonagres.asp) • [2](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/addsepro.asp) It is also called the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the German-Soviet Pact, and the Hitler-Stalin Pact.[3](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-soviet-pact)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Signature | Moscow, August 23, 1939; Ribbentrop for Germany, Molotov for the USSR[1](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/nonagres.asp) |
| Public terms | No aggression, no support for any third power attacking either party, consultation on common interests; ten-year term, automatically extended five years unless denounced one year in advance[1](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/nonagres.asp) |
| Secret protocol | Baltic States (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) split at Lithuania's northern boundary; Poland divided along the Narew, Vistula, and San rivers; German disinterest recognized in Bessarabia[2](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/addsepro.asp) |
| Use in 1939 | Germany invaded Poland on September 1; the Soviet Union followed on September 17; partition completed September 29[3](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-soviet-pact) |
| Amended division | September 28, 1939 protocol shifted Lithuania into the Soviet sphere and Lublin and parts of Warsaw voivodeship into Germany's[4](https://www.sas.rochester.edu/his/sites/campus-history/History/2012-World_War_II_The_Essential_Reference.pdf) |
| End | Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, after less than two years[3](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-soviet-pact) |
| Recognition of the secret protocol | Published in the official Estonian and Lithuanian Communist press in August 1988; condemned by the Congress of People's Deputies on December 24, 1989[5](https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/u/ussr/ussr.902/ussr902full.pdf) • [6](https://www.idmc.al/en/media/files/IDMC-lest-we-forget.pdf) |
## Terms of the public treaty
The published treaty bound each government to refrain from any act of violence, aggressive action, or attack against the other, individually or jointly with other powers. If one party became the object of belligerent action by a third power, the other promised to lend that third power no support of any kind. The two governments agreed to maintain continual contact for consultation on problems affecting their common interests, and neither would join any grouping of powers directly or indirectly aimed at the other side. Disputes were to be settled by friendly exchange of opinion or, if necessary, arbitration commissions.[1](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/nonagres.asp)
The treaty ran for ten years, with automatic extension for a further five years unless either party denounced it one year before expiration. It took effect as soon as it was signed, and ratifications were to be exchanged in Berlin.[1](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/nonagres.asp)
## The secret protocol
An attached document, expressly to be treated as strictly secret, recorded the two governments' understanding of the boundary between their spheres of influence in Eastern Europe in the event of a territorial and political rearrangement.[2](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/addsepro.asp) Its three points ran as follows:
1. In the Baltic areas of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and [Lithuania](https://www.edgepedia.org/lithuania), the northern boundary of Lithuania would mark the limit between the German and Soviet spheres, with Lithuania's interest in the Vilna area recognized by both parties.[2](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/addsepro.asp)
2. In the event of a rearrangement of the Polish state, the spheres would be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narew, Vistula, and San; whether an independent Polish state should survive, and where its borders would lie, was left to further political developments, to be resolved by friendly agreement.[2](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/addsepro.asp)
3. In [Southeastern Europe](https://www.edgepedia.org/southeastern-europe) the Soviet side declared its interest in [Bessarabia](https://www.edgepedia.org/bessarabia), and the German side declared its complete political disinterestedness in those areas.[2](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/addsepro.asp)
The protocol was signed at Moscow on the same day as the public treaty, by the same two ministers.[2](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/addsepro.asp)
## Negotiations, spring and summer 1939
The road to the pact ran through the collapse of parallel diplomacy. On April 17, 1939 the Soviet ambassador to Germany, Merekalov, called on the German State Secretary Ernst Weizsäcker, a meeting that became the subject of later dispute about whether it signaled Soviet interest in better relations.[7](https://www.lituanus.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2-The-Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact-and-the-Baltic-States_-An-Introduction-and-Interpretation.pdf) The dismissal of [Maxim Litvinov](https://www.edgepedia.org/maxim-litvinov) as Commissar for Foreign Affairs and his replacement by Stalin's confidant Molotov on May 3, 1939 underlined the importance Moscow attached to the negotiations then underway.[7](https://www.lituanus.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2-The-Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact-and-the-Baltic-States_-An-Introduction-and-Interpretation.pdf) A string of Soviet-German contacts in late June and mid-July convinced both parties that, in addition to ongoing economic discussions, meaningful negotiations toward a political agreement were feasible; on August 3 Ribbentrop sent a cable to the German ambassador Schulenburg stating that no issue stretching from the Baltic to the [Black Sea](https://www.edgepedia.org/black-sea) was beyond resolution between the Reich and the Soviet Union.[7](https://www.lituanus.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2-The-Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact-and-the-Baltic-States_-An-Introduction-and-Interpretation.pdf)
The speed of the endgame surprised the world. Early on August 22, 1939, an announcement in the Soviet press stated that Ribbentrop would arrive in Moscow the next day to sign a non-aggression pact; in the Kremlin he held several conversations with Stalin and Molotov before the documents were signed.[8](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/germany-hitler-and-world-war-ii/nazisoviet-pacts-of-1939-a-half-century-later/46C31705DE4744EDD4C135EC4C9C5374) For Hitler the pact removed the prospect of a two-front war and Soviet interference in the east, and it was hastily concluded so that it would stand before his planned invasion of Poland.[9](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/invasion-poland-september-1939)
## The pact in operation, 1939–1941
**Poland partitioned.** With the pact in effect, Germany attacked Poland on [September 1, 1939](https://www.edgepedia.org/september-1-1939) without fear of Soviet intervention. Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, and on September 17 the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. On September 29, 1939 the two powers partitioned Poland between them, Germany taking western and most of central Poland and annexing the western provinces to the Reich, while the Soviet Union occupied and annexed the rest.[3](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-soviet-pact) The signatories amended the secret protocol so that Lithuania and the city of Vilnius fell within the Soviet sphere, and adjusted the Polish boundary accordingly.[3](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-soviet-pact) • [4](https://www.sas.rochester.edu/his/sites/campus-history/History/2012-World_War_II_The_Essential_Reference.pdf) The German and Soviet armies staged a joint parade at Brest-on-the-Bug on September 22 when the city was handed over to the Soviets.[10](https://www.muzeum1939.pl/aktualnosci/sojusz-dla-wojny-podpisanie-paktu-ribbentrop-molotow-23-sierpnia-1939-r--10769)
**The Soviet sphere absorbed.** The pact enabled the Soviet Union to move against the territories assigned to it. On November 30, 1939 the Soviets attacked Finland, and after a four-month war annexed Finnish territory along the Soviet border near Leningrad. In the summer of 1940 the Soviet Union occupied and incorporated the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and seized the Romanian provinces of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia.[3](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-soviet-pact)
**The end.** Hitler treated the pact as a tactical and temporary maneuver and never intended to uphold it for ten years; his plan was to subdue Poland, defeat France and Great Britain, and then attack the Soviet Union to create [Lebensraum](https://www.edgepedia.org/lebensraum), living space, in the seized territories. Hitler ordered preparations for war against the Soviet Union in July 1940 and signed Directive 21, code-named [Operation Barbarossa](https://www.edgepedia.org/operation-barbarossa), on December 18, 1940. German forces invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, ending a pact that had lasted less than two years.[3](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-soviet-pact)
## Secrecy, denial, and commemoration
The secret protocol's existence was long denied. Soviet authorities denied the existence of the protocol that planned the division of territories such as Poland between Germany and the USSR, and in 1948 Stalin personally answered an American publication of German Foreign Office documents with the brief book *Falsifiers of History*.[11](https://time.com/5832549/world-war-ii-memory/) Publication came from below: in August 1988, as the pact's anniversary approached, the authorities in Estonia and Lithuania published the pact and its secret protocols in the official communist press, followed somewhat later in Latvia.[5](https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/u/ussr/ussr.902/ussr902full.pdf) A decade earlier, on August 23, 1979, 45 Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian activists, in the Baltic Appeal, had demanded public disclosure of the secret protocols and the restoration of Baltic independence.[12](https://www.gov.pl/attachment/cc4bd2d7-2769-4349-9e9c-6c8633b7ce63) On the pact's fiftieth anniversary, August 23, 1989, about 2 million Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian citizens joined hands in the [Baltic Way](https://www.edgepedia.org/baltic-way), a human chain from Tallinn to Vilnius, to commemorate the victims of totalitarian regimes and demand independence.[12](https://www.gov.pl/attachment/cc4bd2d7-2769-4349-9e9c-6c8633b7ce63) On December 24, 1989 the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR condemned the signing of the pact and other agreements with Nazi Germany.[6](https://www.idmc.al/en/media/files/IDMC-lest-we-forget.pdf)
The date remains a focus of memory politics. August 23 is observed in Europe as a remembrance day for the victims of [Stalinism](https://www.edgepedia.org/stalinism) and Nazism, linked to the pact's signature.[13](https://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/article/81-years-end-second-world-war-important-know) In Russia, official treatments shifted from denial to justification: [Vladimir Putin](https://www.edgepedia.org/vladimir-putin) said in 2015 that the Soviet Union, realizing it was left to face Hitler's Germany alone, had acted to avoid direct confrontation, and in 2019 Russian officials denied responsibility for the agreement and its consequences while presenting Poland, the Baltic States, and the West as instigators of the war.[11](https://time.com/5832549/world-war-ii-memory/) • [6](https://www.idmc.al/en/media/files/IDMC-lest-we-forget.pdf)
## Historiography
Interpretation of Stalin's motives has divided scholars. Gabriel Gorodetsky, professor emeritus of Russian and Eastern European history at Tel Aviv University, has challenged the view that Stalin, motivated by greed for territory, threw his lot in with Germany; examining Allied archives and Soviet sources, he argues that Soviet foreign policy was realpolitik dominated by an awareness of Soviet weakness, and that Stalin regarded strict neutrality, rather than commitment to Germany, as the crowning success of his diplomacy.[14](https://www.jstor.org/stable/20170697) Polish scholarship describes the pact as in effect an alliance for war that planned the fourth partition of Poland, while other traditions have emphasized the pact's formal character as a non-aggression treaty; the historiography of the pact, in Russian, German, and Polish writing, remains an active field of comparative study.[10](https://www.muzeum1939.pl/aktualnosci/sojusz-dla-wojny-podpisanie-paktu-ribbentrop-molotow-23-sierpnia-1939-r--10769) • [15](https://czasopisma.ipn.gov.pl/index.php/pis/article/view/2354)
## References
1. [Treaty of Nonaggression Between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/nonagres.asp)
2. [Secret Additional Protocol, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/addsepro.asp)
3. [German-Soviet Pact, Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-soviet-pact)
4. [Secret supplementary protocol of 28 September 1939, in World War II: The Essential Reference Guide (2012)](https://www.sas.rochester.edu/his/sites/campus-history/History/2012-World_War_II_The_Essential_Reference.pdf)
5. [Human Rights Watch, USSR report on Baltic independence movements (1990)](https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/u/ussr/ussr.902/ussr902full.pdf)
6. [Lest We Forget: remembrance resolution text, IDMC](https://www.idmc.al/en/media/files/IDMC-lest-we-forget.pdf)
7. [The Baltic Question in German-Soviet Negotiations, Lituanus](https://www.lituanus.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2-The-Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact-and-the-Baltic-States_-An-Introduction-and-Interpretation.pdf)
8. [The Nazi-Soviet pacts of 1939: A half century later, in Germany, Hitler, and World War II, Cambridge University Press](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/germany-hitler-and-world-war-ii/nazisoviet-pacts-of-1939-a-half-century-later/46C31705DE4744EDD4C135EC4C9C5374)
9. [The Invasion of Poland, The National WWII Museum](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/invasion-poland-september-1939)
10. [Sojusz dla wojny: podpisanie paktu Ribbentrop-Mołotow 23 sierpnia 1939 r., Muzeum II Wojny Światowej w Gdańsku](https://www.muzeum1939.pl/aktualnosci/sojusz-dla-wojny-podpisanie-paktu-ribbentrop-molotow-23-sierpnia-1939-r--10769)
11. [World War II in Europe Ended 75 Years Ago, TIME](https://time.com/5832549/world-war-ii-memory/)
12. [Joint statement of prime ministers on the 80th anniversary of the pact, Government of Poland](https://www.gov.pl/attachment/cc4bd2d7-2769-4349-9e9c-6c8633b7ce63)
13. [81 Years Since the End of the Second World War, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia](https://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/article/81-years-end-second-world-war-important-know)
14. [Gabriel Gorodetsky, The Impact of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact on the Course of Soviet Foreign Policy, Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 31:1 (1990)](https://www.jstor.org/stable/20170697)
15. [Pakt Hitler-Stalin (Pakt Ribbentrop-Mołotow), Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość](https://czasopisma.ipn.gov.pl/index.php/pis/article/view/2354)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › History and archaeology › European history › Western Europe › Western Europe in the world wars and between them (1914 to 1945) › Politics and diplomacy 1914 to 1945 › Diplomacy and international relations*
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