"Since 1654, when the tsars began steadily to extend their control over Ukraine, Ukrainians had lived in two distinct worlds: one ruled by the Russians and the other by Poles or Austrians. As a result of the Second World War, the East/West Ukrainian dichotomy finally ceased to exist, at least on the political level. The process of amalgamation—of unification of two long-separated branches of the Ukrainian people—was not only a major aspect of the post-war period, but an event of epochal significance in the history of Ukraine."
—Orest Subtelny, a Canadian historian of Ukrainian descent
A Soviet propaganda poster depicting the Red Army's advance into Western Ukraine as a liberation of the Ukrainians. The Ukrainian text reads:
"We stretched our hand to our brothers so that they could straighten their backs and throw off the despised rule of the whips that lasted for centuries."
The person thrown off the peasants' backs, shown wearing a Polish military uniform and holding the whip, could be interpreted as a caricature of Piłsudski.
Location map of the Ukrainian SSR and its boundary at the time of formation of the USSR.
The caption reads: "Eternally tying its fate with the brotherly Russian people, the Ukrainian people saved themselves from foreign enslavement, allowing the possibility of their national development."
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