Soviet occupations were military occupations by the Soviet Union from the prelude to the aftermath of World War II and subsequent Cold War.

During World War II, the Soviet Union annexed several countries as Soviet Socialist Republics that were originally effectively ceded to it by Nazi Germany in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact's secret protocol. These included Eastern Poland (incorporated into two different SSRs),Latvia (became Latvian SSR),Estonia (became Estonian SSR),Lithuania (became Lithuanian SSR), part of eastern Finland (became Karelo-Finnish SSR) and eastern Romania (became the Moldavian SSR).

The Soviet Union, which did not recognize the sovereignty of Romania over Bessarabia since the union of 1918, issued an ultimatum on 28 June 1940 demanding the evacuation of the Romanian military and administration from the territory it contested as well as from the northern part of the Romanian province of Bukovina. Under pressure from Moscow and Berlin, the Romanian administration and armed forces retreated to avoid war. Adolf Hitler used Soviet occupation of Bessarabia as justification for German occupation of Yugoslavia and Greece and German attack on USSR.

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин; born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили; 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and later held the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. While the office of the General Secretary was officially elective and not initially regarded as the top position in the Soviet state, Stalin managed to use it to consolidate more and more power in his hands after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924 and gradually put down all opposition groups within the Communist Party. This included Leon Trotsky, a socialist theorist and the principal critic of Stalin among the early Soviet leaders, who was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929. Whereas Trotsky was an exponent of permanent revolution, it was Stalin's concept of socialism in one country that became the primary focus of Soviet politics.

Mieczysław Fogg (real name Mieczysław Fogiel) (May 30, 1901, Warsaw - September 3, 1990, Warsaw), was a very popular Polish singer of the twentieth century. His popularity started well before World War II and continued well into the 1980s. He had a characteristic way of staying very serious yet slightly emotional on stage when singing. He can be compared to French Tino Rossi in style. He had a lyric baritone voice.

Mieczysław Fogiel was born May 30, 1901 in Warsaw, then a province guberniya capital in Imperial Russia. He spent his childhood there and, after graduating from a local gymnasium in 1922, he started working as a railway worker. About that time he also joined the choir of the St. Anne's Church. There his friend, Ludwik Sempoliński, made him join the classes of music organized by Jan Łysakowski, Eugeniusz Mossakowski, Wacław Brzeziński, Ignacy Dygas and many other notable Polish musicians of the epoch. Initially a hobbyist, in 1928 he met Władysław Daniłowski Dan, who chose him as a soloist for his newly formed Dan's Choir. The choir became extremely popular the following year when Jerzy Petersburski's song Tango Milonga became an international hit. This and other tangos and romances performed by the choir in the famous Qui pro Quo theatre led Fogiel to become one of the most popular Polish singers. After 1932 Fogiel, under a new pseudonym of Fogg, toured a number of countries, including Germany, Latvia, USSR, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Austria and Italy. In the United States the group toured 31 states.