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Poland was actually an effective dictatorship under the rule of a guy named Józef Piłsudski from 1919 to 1935. When the Treaty of Versailles formed the new nation of Poland at the end of WW1, it's borders were relatively small and were poorly defined. In 1919, seeing that the Russian's were weak and divided as the Russian civil war raged on, Piłsudski launched a massive eastward invasion into the Russian empire with the intent of massively increasing the size of his new country and of creating a "border frontier" between Russia and Poland. This led to the Polish-Soviet war, which was fought from 1919 to 1921. The Poles pushed so far east at one point that they captured Minsk, Kiev, and a vast swath of territory that the Poles claimed but that we don't recognize as Polish today (the Polish government claimed that both the Ukrainian and Belarussian ethnicities were "fake", and that they were actually all Poles and needed to be included in a "Polish homeland"
. The Russians eventually pushed back as far as Warsaw, but couldn't maintain the offensive and fell back again. Finally, with the Soviet armies disintegrating as they unsuccessfully tried to fight the Poles AND each other, Russia signed the Treaty of Riga in 1921, giving Poland all of the Russian Empire land it still held.
While Russia still catches a lot of flak in western history books for invading Poland in 1939, the reality is that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact drew the new line right along the pre-1919 border and effectively just recaptured the lands they had ceded to the Poles 18 years earlier. The land that the Poles had seized, and that Russia seized back, included land that we today recognize as the nations of Ukraine and Belarus. These lands were never returned to Poland after the war because they were never really Polish to begin with.
Last edited Mon Sep 28, 2015, 08:55 PM - Edit history (2)
Unlike Italy, Spain and Britain, once you enter the North European Plain, you have no natural border till you hit the Pacific Ocean. The Silesian Mountains act as the "Border" between Poland and Germany, but those mountains to not reach the Baltic Sea, thus where the border between Poland and Germany is undefined except by political treaty. The border between Poland, Russia and Ukraine, is the Pripet marshes of Belarus and again Those Marshes do NOT reach the Black Sea, thus the North European Plain reaches into the Ukraine and from there to Russia and Siberia.
Now, Rivers UNITE people, while Mountains Separate people, Thus Italy has a defined borders in the Alps and Spain in the Pyrenees. On the other hand the German population is concentrated on Three Rivers, the Rhine, the Elbe and the Danube. France is defined as the Rhone, the Seine,
Seine and the Rhone Rivers help define France, the Vistula defines Poland, the Dnieper defines the Ukraine, and the Volga and Don Defines Russia (Both the Volga and Don are separate rivers, but come within 50 miles of each other before the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea and the Don Flows into the Black Sea. No mountain range separate the two rivers, thus it is a easy flat trip that has been made since at least the days of the Vikings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_River_(Russia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga%E2%80%93Don_Canal
In many ways the Don-Volga view as being part of Russia shows the main problem in Eastern Europe, People use rivers as highways and thus concentrate along those rivers and thus the Rivers help define the people along those rivers as one people. With the Don and Volga so close, it was easy for the people in both rivers to see each other as one people.
The other Rivers of Eastern Europe, the Elbe, the Vistula, the Dnieper are so far apart that when the people living in the area between two rivers tend to be drawn to both river communities and share characteristics with both. Thuis Germans and Poles intermix in the Silesia and along the Oder River (A very small river that is now the Border between Poland and Germany). Poles, Belarusians and Ukrainians intermix where the drainage areas of the Dnieper and Vistula intermix. and the Ukrainians and Russians intermix where the Don and Dnieper drainage area intermix. In these areas of mixed drainage areas, it is NOT unusual for a tributary of the river to the east starts out west of a tributary of a river to the west (In my home county of Cambria County PA, the North WESTERN part of the County flows to the North and then East to Chesapeake Bay, but the rest of the County, including the area directly to the EAST of the North West corner, flows Southwest, then Northwest to the Gulf of Mexico. I mention it to show that these headwaters tend to overlap and with that overlap you get people from both rivers intermixing).
Do to the nature of the headwaters of these tributaries, the people at these headwaters tend to be both and neither people of the two rivers. Given that these areas From Germany to the Pacific tend to be FLAT any line drawn between the nations concentrated along the rivers are the results of some political decision between those two people. The border is a line drawn in the sand.
Photo of Belarus and Russian Border, prior to the recent dispute between Russia and the Ukraine, this was the most common picture of the border between Russia and Ukraine:
My point is ANY border between Russia, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine is arbitrary and capricious and thus the result of POLITICS. The border is like the border between Indiana and Ohio, a line drawn to have a border, but was NEVER intended to be anything more then a line drawn in the sand (i.e if Politics leads to a redrawing of the border, then redrawn the border).
If you read the history of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union was formed it was suppose to be made up of various Republics. Stalin was given the job of drawing up the borders of these Soviet Republics (about 1924). Stalin wanted the Ukraine to have a large as Russian Population as possible so Stalin set the border of the Ukraine its EAST, to include some of the tributaries to the Don River and with it more Russian Speakers. (Stalin was drawing the line and he wanted the Ukraine to be as Russian as possible). After WWII, Stalin took over the Ukrainian speaking parts of Poland and gave them to the Ukraine. Then Khrushchev gave the Crimea the Ukraine in 1954 (While the area already had a Russia Speaking Majority and tied in with the Soviet and later Russian Navies)
Sorry, Russia "Natural" Borders are the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Carpathian Mountains, the Caucasus Mountains, the various "foothills" of the Himalayas (including the Mountains of Iran and China) and then the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. These "Natural Borders" are also the "Natural" Borders of Germany, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia, the actual borders between these people (and how each relate to each other, including how independent each will be of each other) will be the product of Politics.
Russia is the single largest population between Germany and the Pacific. Poland is #3, Ukraine is #2. thus these three and Belarus (#5 in population) argue over their borders and their relationship to each other all the time. In population the area of the Europoean Plain and the Russian and Siberian Steeps are Uzbekistan is #4, Kazakhstan is #6, Tajikistan is #7. Kyrgyzstan id #8, Turkmenistan is #9, Mongolia is #10, Lithuanian is #11, Latvia is #12. Estonia is #13 (If you include Germany in the European plain, all but Russia drops a number for Germany would be #2 in population NOT the Ukraine).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population
Hungary, Austria and Romania are all south of the Carpathian mountains and thus NOT part of the European Plain, This Map includes Beligum, the Netherlands and Luxembourgh as while as Northern and Western France in the Term "European Plain" but I tend to exclude anything in or to the West of the Rhine Valley:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Plain
The Russian Steppes, through this map includes the Plains of Hungary in the Russian Steepes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Steppe
Notice the two tend to merge into each other. The actual border between the two is undefined for the German Plain or European Plain "has to end in Europe", while the Russian/ Eurasian plain "has to end" before it hits Germany. Thus the two overlap and the overlap is just ignored for it is easier to handle them as two different plains instead of one huge plain.
Also note the Eurasian Plain tends to include the Hungary Plain, which is separated from the rest of the Eurasians Plain by the Carpathian Mountains, while the European Plain excludes the Hungary plain. A lot of where you draw the line occurs even in Geography in regards to that huge plain.
Side note: One of the reason for handling the German/European Plain differ from the Russian/Eurasian plain goes back to the time before Germany, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine went under the plow.
In the days of Ancient Rome, the use of the heavy iron plows were restricted to Asia Minor (Asiatic Turkey today). The rest of the Mediterranean, Persian and Arab World used what is called Mediterranean farming techniques which included the use of a wooden plows. These methods are NOT usable in any area where you have any freeze of the soil during winter. To turn soil over after a cold winter requires an iron plow, the heavy iron plow.
Anyway, the European Plain was considered to far north and the wrong soil for Ancient Roman Farming Techniques, thus ended up as pasture land for herders (With some farming, but very limited in nature, i.e. what one could do with a spade). This was also true of the Russian/Eurasian Steppes. The German plain is small compared to the Russian Steppes, thus in France, Germany and Poland, if you were defeated in battle the Rivers and seas were to close to run to far, so your best option was to retreat to your camp and make a last stand (This is what Attila the Hun did after his defeat in the Battle of Charlon).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Catalaunian_Plains
On the other hand as you enter Poland, the land between rivers expand greatly and the option of just running away become doable. Thus in the history of the Steppes, you do not see people retreating to their camps, but running completely away. The exact change over between these two retreat policy is unclear, earlier and later Huns then Attila tended to just runaway but then they were fighting in the present day Ukraine and Russia not Germany.
Thus why The Eurasian Steppes and European Plains are NOT viewed as the same may be to how historians wrote about how the people in both areas fought when defeated. In simple term a historical division based on how history was written down NOT about any thing really different between these two "plains".
