# Molotov and Ribbentrop sign the non-aggression treaty in Moscow Date: 1939 ## The fact On 23 August 1939 in Moscow, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop signed a non-aggression treaty between Germany and the USSR. A secret protocol, later published, assigned spheres in Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and Bessarabia. Stalin hosted the signing. Later speeches, the cult, and measured deaths are not mixed into this Fact. ## Context Anglo-French-Soviet talks had failed. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September; the Red Army entered eastern Poland on 17 September — a later Fact. The 1941 German invasion ended the pact as a security bet. Shared responsibility with the Politburo, Sovnarkom, NKVD, front commands, and later the State Defence Committee is part of the record. Sharing is not a reason to drop [Stalin](/people/joseph-stalin)’s signature or chairmanship, and it is not a reason to treat every local killing as a personal handwriting sample. ## Evidence and sources Avalon publishes the treaty text. USHMM and the Wilson Center publish the secret protocol. The 1989 Soviet commission and later Russian publications confirmed the protocol’s existence. Where later commissions publish death or deportee estimates, those estimates are attributed to the commission, not invented as a Factrail original count. ## Significance Initiating [territorial-revisionism](/drivers/territorial-revisionism) and later forced-displacement paths. Direct contribution, shared with [Hitler](/people/adolf-hitler)’s government. High confidence on the text. The attached driver is territorial-revisionism. A decree does not harvest grain, a pact does not fire a rifle, and a conference protocol does not occupy a city by itself. Implementation, if dated, is a later Fact. Mixed welfare effects are separate paths. ## What is established and what is not Established: the 23 August 1939 treaty and secret protocol. Not established: that the pact was the only available Soviet option, or that it caused the Holocaust, which is a German instrument cluster. What would change the picture: a contradictory original protocol with a different date or signatory; a demonstrated forgery of the cited order; or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of war, weather, or unauthorized local action. The documentary limit is the same for every Stalin instrument in this dossier. Central files can show that an order was issued; they cannot, by themselves, reconstruct every raion’s implementation. Memoir and literary evidence (Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov, Grossman) is used here only as independent texture, never as the sole causal source. Soviet published statistics of the 1930s are treated as official claims with known incentives to over-report industrial output and under-report famine. Post-1956 party revelations, the 1991–92 archival openings, the 2010 Russian [State Duma](/organizations/state-duma) statement on Katyn, Ukrainian Holodomor statutes, and USHMM/Wilson Center document publications are later independent or successor-state records. They do not convert this Fact into a personality score. They do not cancel the original instrument. Readers who want the welfare path should open the named driver, then the indicator that driver already reaches, rather than treating the portrait as the mechanism. The documentary limit is the same for every Stalin instrument in this dossier. Central files can show that an order was issued; they cannot, by themselves, reconstruct every raion’s implementation. Memoir and literary evidence (Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov, Grossman) is used here only as independent texture, never as the sole causal source. Soviet published statistics of the 1930s are treated as official claims with known incentives to over-report industrial output and under-report famine. Post-1956 party revelations, the 1991–92 archival openings, the 2010 Russian State Duma statement on Katyn, Ukrainian Holodomor statutes, and USHMM/Wilson Center document publications are later independent or successor-state records. They do not convert this Fact into a personality score. They do not cancel the original instrument. Readers who want the welfare path should open the named driver, then the indicator that driver already reaches, rather than treating the portrait as the mechanism. ## People - Joseph Stalin: https://factrail.ai/people/joseph-stalin ## Drivers - Territorial Revisionism: https://factrail.ai/drivers/territorial-revisionism ## Sources - https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1939-1941/german-soviet-pact - https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/nonagres.asp ## Methodology https://factrail.ai/methodology Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/su-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-1939