Soviet citizens were stunned at the news of the NAZI invasion. The Soviet Union was a multi-national state. Stalin as a result of the Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler has significantly expanded Soviet boundaries west. And in these new territories the NKVD and Red Army had carried out a ruthless campaign to purge the population of anti- Soviet elements, meaning not only people desiring an independent state, but whole classes of people who tended to have nationalist aspirations. This was the case in the Baltics. Civilians attitudes in eastern Poland/Byelorussia were more mixed, but in the western Ukraine the Germans were seen as liberators