The Soviet Union invaded Poland on this day in 1939. In 1917, the Russian Provisional Government recognized the independent Polish state. In 1919, Polish troops took over Vilno (Vilnius) from the Bolsheviks. In September of the same year, Polish officers attempted a butchered coup d’état in the Lithuanian capital of Kaunas. In December of the same year, the British foreign minister Curzon proposed a demarcation line between the two countries. The following year, Soviet Russia recognized the independent Lithuanian state with Vilnius as its capital. During the Russo-Polish war of 1920, the Bolsheviks took over Vilnius, but the Poles pushed them back and re-occupied it. In 1925, the former dioceses of the Russian Church in Poland proclaimed autocephaly, which had been bestowed upon them by the Ecumenical Throne, but the Russian Church did not recognize it. Vilnius became embroiled in this canonical controversy. The Church in Lithuania remained within the Russian Church headed by Metropolitan Elevferii (Bogoiavlenskii), who had been consecrated Bishop of Kovno (Kaunas) in 1911. After the Soviets shut down the Zhurnal Moskvoskoi Patriarkhii (Journal of Moscow Patriarchate), his diocesan publication Golos Litovskoi Tserkvi (The Voice of the Lithuanian Church) was the only publication where Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodskii) could publish his official documents. Metropolitan Elevferii defended Metropolitan Sergii’s canonical rights in his correspondence with Patriarch Varnava (Rosić) of Serbia and Russian émigré bishops. When, as a result of the Soviet occupation, Vilnus returned to Lithuania, Metropolitan Elevferii proposed reconsecrating all the churches in the city. Feodosii (Feodosiev), the former Archbishop of the Polish Church who had been consecrated before the Revolution, was received back into the Russian Church through repentance. Source Letopis tserkovnykh sobytii Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi nachinaia s 1917 goda [Letopis’ of Church Events in the History of the Orthodox Church Beginning with 1917]. Part III. 1939-1949. Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad. Relevant Link Professor Mikhail V. Zyzykin, Autocephaly and Principles of its Application with Reference to the Church of Poland, Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad. | 
