Curzon Line

The Curzon Line was a proposed boundary between Poland and Soviet Russia, named for British foreign secretary Lord Curzon. It later became a basis for Poland’s eastern border after World War II.

Polish–Soviet War: A 1919–1921 war between Poland and Soviet Russia over territory and political influence in Eastern Europe. The war’s changing front lines shaped the boundary proposals associated with Curzon.
Curzon Line A: A version of the Curzon Line that assigned Lwów to Poland. This variant differed over the fate of Lwów, a major contested city.
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact: The 1939 nonaggression agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, accompanied by a secret division of spheres of influence. Its secret protocol placed eastern Poland in the Soviet sphere, beyond the line’s earlier diplomatic role.
Second Polish Republic: The Polish state that existed from 1918 until the German and Soviet invasions of 1939. Its eastern border extended substantially beyond the Curzon Line after the Treaty of Riga.
Treaty of Versailles: The 1919 peace treaty that formally ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. Postwar border-making created the diplomatic setting for defining Poland’s eastern frontier.
Curzon Line B: A version of the Curzon Line that placed Lwów outside Poland. This variant shifted the frontier west of Lwów.
Soviet invasion of Poland: The Soviet Union’s invasion of eastern Poland on 17 September 1939, following Germany’s attack from the west. The invasion brought much of the territory east of the line under Soviet control.
Oder–Neisse line: The postwar boundary separating Poland from Germany, drawn chiefly along the Oder and Neisse rivers. It was Poland’s new western frontier, unlike the Curzon Line’s role in defining the eastern one.
Lord Curzon: George Nathaniel Curzon was a British statesman who served as foreign secretary from 1919 to 1924. His name became attached to the British proposal for an armistice boundary.
Ethnolinguistic boundary: A boundary drawn to separate populations according to language or ethnic identity. Proponents presented the line as broadly reflecting the distribution of Polish and non-Polish populations.

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