Was this part of the negotiations over how to divide and take Poland? It amazes me how few people know the possible real start of WW2 was when Stalin and Hitler decided to invade from both sides and steal Poland. It has always amazed me the extents Russians will go to defend these actions.
Sending political prisoners to Nazi Germany started in 1937, so it precedes the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
You might be curious to know about the Curzon Line, if you don't already. In 1919 British Foreign Secretary George Curzon proposed this boundary between Poland and the Soviets that followed the line of ethnic majority. After he did that though the Poles ended up defeating the Soviets in a war and took over vast swaths of territory that was majority Belarussian and Ukrainian. That was basically the land the Soviets took back in 1939. There was one part that was ethnically majority Polish, around Bialystok, and that was given back to Poland in 1945. The subsequent borders, which we have to this day, are along the Curzon Line.
Obviously Joseph Stalin was as evil as it gets for working alongside Hitler and for, you know, killing millions of innocent people. I'm just clarifying something regarding the land borders.
I thought I heard something like that once. That area of Poland was Polands for 20 yrs. Was Russia not large enough? My favorite part of the whole ordeal was 2 wks after the Nazis invaded and took their half of Poland, Stalin sent his people in for his half of Poland saying "they are there to maintain order". (even though he had already made the deal with Hitler to take that land.)
It wasn't annexed into Russia. The people in those regions were majority Belarusian and Ukrainian and in 1939 the land was annexed into Belarus and Ukraine, which are separate countries from Russia.
They were still part of the larger Soviet Union though. Ukraine was sort of like a vassal state at that stage. Russia/Soviet Union still certainly benefited from acquiring that land.
People can disagree, but I personally aspire that this sub would have the accuracy not to use the terms Russia and Soviet Union interchangeably. It's a common metonym, I get it, but in a history sub where you're talking about complex things like border changes, get it right.
I don't disagree with that at all. The Soviet Union was essentially under Russia control but, as you said, there is far more land in the Soviet Union than just Russia.
The Soviet Union was essentially under Russia control
Sort of, I guess? Let's unpack what that means.
Of the three prominent leaders at the beginning of the Soviet Union, Lenin was the only Russian. Trotsky was a Ukrainian Jew and Stalin was from Georgia. These people really, genuinely believed in not having an ethnically dominated empire, that was one of their critiques of the Russian Empire.
It was all under the control of Moscow, I'd agree with that. The Soviet Union was very centralized and obviously Ukraine and Belarus were not independent countries or anything close to it. I would say all of the constituent "Republics" were under the control of Moscow and that includes Russia being under the control of Moscow.
I meant Russia as in the country and the governing people of that country not Russians in an ethnic sense.
I guess I can see the point of your last sentence but I think it's a fairly different scenario for a country to be under the control of a foreign country than, in this case, a country being under the control of it's capital city.
That's why I mentioned Trotsky and Stalin. They were the governing people in Moscow, but not of that country.
Stalin goes to Moscow and rules over Georgia from there, does that mean Georgia was then under Russian control?
I guess I can see the point of your last sentence but I think it's a fairly different scenario for a country to be under the control of a foreign country than, in this case, a country being under the control of it's capital city.
I think in this case there really isn't much of a difference. You have an autocratic one-party state that centralizes everything under itself. If you were a resident of a Russian city outside of Moscow you would be in the same unprivileged and powerless situation as someone who was a resident of Minsk.
This is always an issue. When you say "the Soviets" or say "the Russians". Everyone knows what you mean. We all know there is a difference but the words often get used interchangeably. The Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union then. I think Latvia and Estonia were too. (but not Finland!)
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u/cheeeetoes 19d ago
Was this part of the negotiations over how to divide and take Poland? It amazes me how few people know the possible real start of WW2 was when Stalin and Hitler decided to invade from both sides and steal Poland. It has always amazed me the extents Russians will go to defend these actions.