The term Great Patriotic War (Великая Отечественная Война, Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna in Russian) is used in Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union to describe the period of World War II following the commencement of Operation Barbarossa (the Invasion of the Soviet Union) on June 22, 1941. The main reason for using this propaganda term was to downplay the fact that, in the period preceding World War II, the Soviet Union sided with the Axis Powers, signing the Nazi-Soviet pact (also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) and invading Poland and Finland and annexing Baltic countries.
