When Did the Soviet Union Fail?
- Thread starter Zardnaar
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Zardnaar
Deity
That's the when.
Some republics would have left or wanted to leave regardless (Baltic states, Ukraine?).
Iirc for 4 days Kazakhstan was the entire USSR.
EnglishEdward
Deity
The allies did not hand Poland back to the Soviets after WW2.
The red army had already occupied Poland in 1944.
The allies merely declined to start WW3 over Poland.
Zardnaar
Deity
Churchill wanted to Yanks said hell no.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Poland invaded the Soviet republics and annexed large parts of Ukraine and Belarus. While that may be consistent with some revanchist definitions of "Poland", it's hard to frame it as a war of liberation.
(Poland also invaded the smaller, weaker nations of Czechoslovakia and Lithuania in the same time period, and fought an undeclared partisan war against Germany in Silesia. Poland was an expansionist territorial power seeking to establish itself as sole hegemon over the old Hapsburg-Romanov-Hohenzollern borderlands, it was not the plucky, oppressed nation of the Kościuszko Uprising.)
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They will explain you that it was Soviets who attacked Poland. Reds didn't have enough enemies and were bored in the middle of civil war.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
The Red Army was only fighting the White Army, the Japanese, the British, the Americans, the Germans, the Austrians, the Black Army, the Green Army, the Left-SRs, the Cossacks, the Lithuanians, the Latvians, the Estonians, the Ukrainians, the Finns, the Czechoslovakians, the Mongolians, the Chinese, the Armenians, the Turks, the Khazaks, the Turkestanis, and the reincarnation of Ghengis Khan; it would just have been poor sportsmanship if they didn't let the Poles join in.
warpus
In pork I trust
That's some revisionist history right there. Poland was being invaded by the Soviets, they got as far as Warsaw. If they were not stopped they would have continued on to who knows where.
Yes, Poland was a dictatorship at the time, left in a not so great state after ww1. A country reborn from the ashes. Surely you don't expect a woke democracy after 150 years of being suppressed and not even being on the maps of Europe.
There were all sorts of mini wars and invasions happening at around the same time. I don't know what any of that has to do with what I initially said. You seem quite biased there
A different way of saying the same thing. The allies were fondling Stalin's balls, refusing to even allow Poles to march in the victory parade in London or acknowledge any of their contributions in the war. at all. until after the Soviet Union fell
Not something Poland will easily forget
That's some revisionist history right there. The Red Army invaded Poland after defeating Pilsudski's Kiev Offensive.
warpus
In pork I trust
They would have done so regardless.
All this whataboutism is making my head spin.
All this whataboutism is making my head spin.
Still it was hardly a case of poor defenceless Poland.
Poland was making a grab for lands that although once ruled by Poland had a largely non-Polish population and certainly didn't want to be ruled from Poland.
Ajidica
High Quality Person
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Poland and the Soviet Union started out the conflict by skirmishing over mutually claimed areas of Eastern Europe and it escalated from there. It isn't revisionist to point out that Poland was engaged in attempts to secure as much territory as they could from the ruins of the Russian, German, and Austrian Empire; and that brought them into conflict with the Soviet Union who were doing the same thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Polish–Soviet_War
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
My objection was to the framing of the Polish-Soviet War as a repulsing of Soviet aggression upon rightful Polish territory. The Poles started the war by invading Belarussia, and ended it by occupying large parts of Belarussia and Ukraine; this is only "kicking [the Soviets'] butts out of Poland" if we take the 1921 borders as constituting the natural extent of "Poland", which would surely have come as a shock to all the Belarussians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians who populated the territory in question.
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warpus
In pork I trust
This sounds like a reasonable unbiased assessment.
One thing worth mentioning is that Poland was also still feeling the loss of many territories lost during the partitions. There were some aspirations to regain some of those lands as a result.
I guess we can argue about the technicalities of this all day, so I won't go any further, as you're already well aware of my position. In the end it seems like a detraction from the initial point I was making, and an "aside"
We're supposed to be talking about the downfall of the Soviet Union after all, and not the details surrounding an unrelated country
Rightful Polish lands?
Kinda dependsRightful Polish lands?
Ajidica
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Partition was over a century earlier with those involved and their children dead and gone.
Not everyone forgets.
