1939 in the Soviet Union
overview of Soviet Union-related events during the year of 1939
The following lists events that happened during 1939 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Incumbents
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – Joseph Stalin
Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union – Mikhail Kalinin
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union – Vyacheslav Molotov
Events
March 10–21 — 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
May 11 — September 16 – Battles of Khalkhin Gol
August 19 — German–Soviet Credit Agreement (1939)
August 23 — Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
September 17-October 6 — Soviet invasion of Poland
September 28 — Soviet–Estonian Mutual Assistance Treaty, also amendment to the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty
October 5 — Soviet–Latvian Mutual Assistance Treaty
October 10 — Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty
November 26 — Shelling of Mainila
November 30 — Winter War
Births
January
January 4 — Igor Chislenko, Russian footballer (d. 1994)
January 6 — Valeriy Lobanovskyi, Soviet and Ukrainian football player and manager (d. 2002)
January 22 — Mikhail Moiseyev, military officer and politician (d. 2022)
January 28 — Viktor Shustikov, Russian footballer (d. 2025)
January 31 — Aleksandr Porokhovshchikov, Russian actor and film director (d. 2012)
February
February 1 — Ekaterina Maximova, Soviet and Russian ballerina (d. 2009)
February 2 — Valeri Kravchenko, volleyball player (d. 1996)
February 6 — Simon Achikgyozyan, Armenian military commander (d. 1991)
February 15 — Akbar Mirzoyev, 2nd Prime Minister of Tajikistan
February 16 — Nikolai Sevryugin, 1st Governor of Tula Oblast (d.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1939 in the Soviet Union” is overview of Soviet Union-related events during the year of 1939. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Soviet, Union and overview, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “overview of Soviet Union-related events during the year of 1939” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 4, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q12403145. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1939, 1994, 2002 and 2022.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “1939 in the Soviet Union” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.