In September 1939, the Red Army marched into eastern Poland, in June 1940, into Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. In order to integrate the occupied tenitories into the Soviet Union as quickly and completely as possible, the Soviet political, social, economic, and cultural system was imposed on these lands step by step until 1941. Sham elections were to give the annexations a veneer of democratic
... [Show full abstract] legitimacy; terror and mass deportations were to nip any popular resistance in the bud and eliminate "dangerous elements" so as to stabilize the new order. In fact, the Soviets were destroying existing social bonds and aggravating existing national and social conflicts.