Why Did Polish Manipulate The Soviet Union

Anyone intelligent enough to pose a threat. So obviously, the only way to remove this threat was to ship of any single person that was educated or in the military, or related to any of these people, shipped off, into the unknown. The Nazis did something almost similar. Instead of deporting the enemy to Siberia, they exterminated them in death camps. Even though the Soviets and the Nazis were enemies, they had practises in place that were too close to be safe. They were enemies, but they were as bad as each other, you couldn’t pick one of the other. “We’re dealing with two devils who both want to rule hell”. Through the use of a metaphor , the author has stated this fact. It makes us, as readers, realise just how bad the situation is. Stalin and Hitler are both powerful men, but instead of trying to help their people in a way that made sense and influence the world positively, they were acting as if huge populations of people were just toys to play with. In the book, Sepetys writes, ”…Dividing countries like children dividing toys. Poland for you. Lithuania for me.” Even the characters, who are backing Hilter see

In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, U.S. president George H. W. Bramble through his secretary of state James Baker guaranteed Soviet chief Mikhail Gorbachev that in return for Soviet participation on German reunification, the Cold War time NATO union would not extend "one inch" eastwards towards Russia. Bread cook told Gorbachev: "Look, on the off chance that you expel your 300,000 troops from east Germany and permit unification of Germany in NATO, NATO won't grow one inch toward the east. In the next year, the USSR authoritatively disintegrated itself. Its own particular protective military partnership usually known as the Warsaw Pact had effectively closed down. The Cold War was over.

Next, in order for the USSR to create a buffer zone in the Eastern European countries to protect the nation from the West, the Soviet Union organized the Warsaw Pact with Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. The Warsaw Pact was established in order to eliminate any potential threats to the Soviet Union. In order to seal borders and prevent the escape of East German residents, Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, decided to build the Berlin Wall, a concrete wall that was enforced with barbed wire, minefields, and machine gun towers that completely divided two sides, USSR with communism in the East, the United States holding power in the West (Glencoe 853). The USSR sent military forces to control the occupied

The Polish-Soviet War, while not the most popular of historic conflicts, is most definitely significant in many ways. Taking place between 1919 and 1921, this dispute between Poland and Soviet-Russia was due to each territories’ desire to seize the country of Ukraine.

Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution: Solidarity and the Struggle against Communism in Poland, social scientist Jack M Bloom’s 2013 book, argues that the formation and history of Solidarność provides useful information on social processes in historical events and how those influence historical understanding. Like Ost, Bloom comes at his subject with an interest in social movements, but relies primarily on interviews to examine the social side of Solidarność’s formation. These subjects are not a random selection; Bloom purposefully interviewed activists, journalists, and military members among others. Unsurprisingly, this social science approach still discusses the political side of the movement, but Bloom focuses more on the people involved in Solidarność as opposed to the policies of the state. While Bloom’s analysis is more social and less historical, he touches on the topic of Solidarność’s ideological formation, a highly debated issue. Bloom states that some historians, like Ost, argue that workers formed the union on their own while others believe Polish intellectual activists from the 1970s dominated the formation. Bloom argues that the formation of Solidarność was actually through a combined effort of both workers and intellectuals. This challenges Ost’s assumption that the Polish trade union was forced to become political solely as a response to communist Poland. Interestingly, Bloom is the first author to give attention to Anna Walentynowicz, one of

In his work Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of Communist Establishment Stephen Kotkin (with the aid of Jan T. Gross) closely examines the existence and downfall of the ‘uncivil societies’ and explains how social mobilisation was able to occur under these regimes without any social organisation. His view goes against popular opinion in the sense that the Communist regimes themselves were the cause of their own downfall, the ordinary citizen did play a role, however, the significance of that is given too much significance. He highlights this through three case studies: GDR, Romania and Poland.

“After the cessation of Ukrainization, came a wave of repression, hundreds of thousands of people were sent to labour camps in Siberia. “In 1932, the communist party began requiring writers to follow the theory Socialist Realism. Many Ukrainian writers who did not adhere to the official style were imprisoned or executed, particularly during Stalin’s purges of the 1930s.”

. The Soviet Union of Socialist Republics managed to gain control of the various territories in the periphery through accommodation of national difference. This was drastically different from the Tsar’s approach, which basically oppressed these various national groups, asserting them as second-class Russian citizens. The Bolsheviks took an affirmative-action approach in order to get the republics on their side as Civil War ravaged through Soviet territories. These affirmative-action policies extended to recognition of the secular Jewish identity as the Bolsheviks declared antisemitism as an ideological crime. This also helped the Bolsheviks gain control of peripheral republics with significant Jewish populations. They sent in Communist officials,

Ethnic groups, and following World War II, the various states within the Soviet sphere of influence refused to assimilate and give up their own identities. The Soviets failed in large part to three factors. One, they did not understand nationalism. Russia had not experienced it and lacked knowledge and thus also understanding of how to undermine the development of nationalism. Two, the Soviets did not stop developing a clearly Russian centered identity based on language and Russian tradition. Finally, when the walls start caving in, such as they began to in the mid-1970s in the Soviet Union, it becomes harder and harder to fully control culture and identity. It was a tasking job to try and force millions of people to assimilate and become endeared

The Prussian or western Poland took destroying the culture to an extreme. The Germans “felt themselves superior in every way to the Poles” (Corona 42). They felt that they were above the Polish people and tried to force the German way on them. Both Russian and Prussian parts of Poland made sure there was no pride or identity of Polish in schools. If a Polish child was caught speaking in Polish they would be expelled from the school immediately. In addition, cities were renamed in order to reflect the new cultures. Warszawa became Warsaw and Poznań became

To quell dissent within the State, the government created a fictitious enemy, the “Polish Military Organization,” and spread lies that they called true. Thus, many Communist Party bureaucrats and national minorities faced execution in great numbers. The re-writing of facts ultimately justified their actions. Many who oppose the Trump Administration believe that a continuance of this behavior could lead the United States down the path of oppressive regimes like that of Nazi Germany. The fact that this is precisely what the Germans did when they began their campaign against the Jews only bolsters this belief. (Hansen)

The polish workers in 1980 with constant support of Catholic Church an Polish People fought the then existing regime with non-armed means and formed ‘Solidarity’( the independent trade movement).The church and Pope played a major role in mobilising and inspiring people to join and continue the revolt non-violently. Usage of symbols, monuments and influential personalities was wide spread and was used as a counter-attack on censorship.

Russian-Polish relations evolved extremely difficult through the centuries. Radical changes did not happen even after the October Revolution when Soviet Russia welcomed the proclamation of Polish independence. In the 20-30-ies. these relations were unstable , touching the old prejudices and stereotypes.

As Bolshevik victories in the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922 established the Bolshevik position more securely, Soviet Russia started a push towards world revolution, which formed part of the communist ideology to transform the whole world into socialist states. (Tukhachevsky: There can be no doubt that if we had been victorious on the Vistula (i.e. in Poland), the revolutionary fires would have reached the entire continent.[22]). Looking toward Western Europe, the Bolsheviks encountered the newly reborn independent — and expansionist-minded — state of Poland. Conflicts began in what became known as the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921. After the Polish Army achieved initial successes, the Bolsheviks pushed the Polish forces back into central

Entering into World War II, Germany once again sought to create a unified East Central Europe, this time as an extension of the Nazi New European Order. Once again Germany was defeated, catalyzing East Central Europe into a new period, one that was governed by the Soviet Union. It was during this time that East Central Europe ceased to “exist” in the geopolitical sense. There would be no talk of an ‘East Central Europe’ until several decades had passed and the world saw the fall of the Soviet Union falling the Cold War. Stalin himself had some plausible geopolitical arguments about the region. East Central Europe throughout time has been used a corridor against Russia. As such, Stalin sought to