sid guttridge wrote:
Really? The Poles were attempting to create a multi-ethnic state at the very time that the multi-ethnic states of which Poles had been an unwilling part before WWI were breaking up and nation states like Poland were reasserting themselves?
This time Torquez was right. Pilsudski and his supporters really wants to create chain of independent states east from Poland (including some lands that was in Polish teritory after 1921). But when bolsheviks won civil war in Russia and in front of strong polititian oposition in country this conception failed.
If what you say is true, Poland was, in effect, building an old style empire. Was this why, between the wars, the divisions raised in Eastern Poland were packed with ethnic Polish conscripts from Western Poland - as a potential occupation force?
That is your idea Sid? wrong idea.
Germans thought that Ukrainians, Byelorussians or Lithuanians would desert across front line to Germans. But those soldiers was brave defenders of Poland.
Was it also why the KOP border guard in the East was not allowed to accept non-Poles - to prevent fraternisation across the border?
That is your idea Sid? wrong idea. Today Grenzschutze between Germany and Poland is in 90% from people from west Germany. Poles who lived in Western Poland are working on eastern border.
You ask why the Lithuanians and other ethnic groups should be allowed to form their own states? Simple: Because they wanted to. This was also the principle that saw an independent Poland resurrected after WWI. If self determination was good enough for the Poles, why shouldn't it be good enough for Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, etc.?
I Agree. all those nations should be independent in 1919. Question: Was Possible independent Ukraine or Byelorussia in 1919-1922? I think: nope.
Poles also wants to be independent from 1772 to 1919 but believe me, will and determination was not enough. Poles in difference of Ukrainians and especially Byelarussians since 1870 has created background for independence: finances, industry, schools, lawmakers, oficers korps, diplomats, culture, sciene, state clerks etc. We need 50 years to rebuild skeleton of modern country. Poles just wait for war beetwen German and Russian empire.
Curzon proposed ethnic border for Poles, what he proposed for Ukrainians and Belorussians?