However, in newly annexed portions of western Ukraine there was little to no loyalty towards the Soviet Union; the region had only been part of the U.S.S.R since its seizure by the Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939. Although the Ukrainian SSR did give the people a degree of national and cultural autonomy anti-soviet sentiment still existed. From 1931-1933 millions of Ukrainians starved to death in the Holodomor, a deliberate attempt at extermination orchestrated by the soviet government[5] and from 1937-38 thousand members of intelligentsia were exiled, sentenced to Gulag labor camps or executed, due to accusations of collaborating with Nazi Germany.