AHC: Balkanize Poland
- Thread starter Crying
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Krakow survives and eventually gets all of the Austrian partition, Congress Poland somehow detaches itself from Russia, perhaps a la Finland, and western Poland is taken by one or the other.
@Crying
@Crying
Keep Poland partitioned-it is easiest way. Otherwise mid 19th century is too late to develop separate nationalities out of Polish nation.
Something could be done with Silesia-say after Versailles as compromise between Poland and Germany independent Republic of Upper Silesia is created-so both sides are equally upset.
There is also option of West/East Poland after ww2-which won't last past fall of SU.
Something could be done with Silesia-say after Versailles as compromise between Poland and Germany independent Republic of Upper Silesia is created-so both sides are equally upset.
There is also option of West/East Poland after ww2-which won't last past fall of SU.
Mazovia could be more independent if Mazovian Piasts survives-which reauires 16th century POD. After Duchy of Mazovia was incorporated to the Crown and later capital of Poland was moved to Mazovian Warsaw-no way.Polish nationalists would say it’s balkanized IOTL without Wilno and Lwów
More seriously, Prussia seems like a good start to balkanizing the country. Maybe Mazovia retains a more independent character? These are more medieval PoDs.
Creating additional Polish state (which still be different from balkanizing Polish corelands) could be done by Soviets-they IOTL created Polish autonomous regions in Ukraine and Belarus hoping that these would be seeds for future Polish SSR-eventually Stalin decided to end Polish experiment and exterminate these Poles in 1937. Say Soviet Union get border closer to Curzon Line after Polish-Bolshevik war and decide to create Polish ASSR in area with Polish majority. WW2 never happens and this ASSR survives untill Soviet collapse and somehow get independence.
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No enough non-Catholic Poles to even think that it could work. You could as well divide France along religious rites.
Well, yeah. That's why added the caveat that you'd have to change conversion patterns.
Maintain the fragmentation period and Poland will be several states that come under various "domination" of their neighbours.
This is difficult in part because Poles are very homogenous in regards to religion, culture and language. There are some possibilities:
A- Make the Silesian Polish identity stronger.
B- Make the Kashubian Polish ethnic identity stronger (another Polish subgroup with some Germanic cultural leanings)
C- Increase the number of Lutheran Poles belonging to the Masurian subgroup.
D- Create a Polish Orthodox population.
'C' could be accomplished by having Prussia not secularize rapidly. The exportation of Lutheranism becomes a state policy. Prussia then gains control over some Polish territories and creates northern Ireland style statelets favoring both Prussian colonists and local Poles who convert to Lutheranism.
'D' could be accomplished by having the Russians answer eastern rite Catholicism with western rite Orthodoxy- then exporting it to eastern Poland where there are more cultural connections with Russia.
Western rite Orthodox are auto-cephalous and need only to drop the Pope and the Filioque. They can retain all other western cultural elements including liturgical styles, artistic styles and even post schism western saints. I think option D would be pretty interesting as it would place western rite Orthodox populations in direct contact with eastern rite Catholic populations. Talk about confusing.... .
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Option A and B could work if:
-Prussia realise that Poles could not be simply germanized and instead adapts "divide and rule" tactic.
-Prussia is less anti-Catholic, thus do not antagonise Polish Silesians (mostly Catholic) and Kashubians (almost entirely Catholic.
-Prussia don't have Posen (that is not easy-Posen was troublesome for Prussia and was center of Polish nationalism, but at the same time was important for Prussia for strategical and economical reasons, hard to see Prussians not taking Posen if they have opportunity).
Option C and D really happened IOTL-Lutheran Masurians preffered to remain in Germany than to join Catholic Poland, just like Irish Protestants. And there are plenty of Orthodox Poles (around half million)-mostly descendants of polonised Belarussians. Belarussians were easy target for polonization. If Poland kept Eastern Borderlands up to this day there would be much more Orthodox Poles of Belarussian ancestry.
Napoleonrules
Banned
Too many are being anachronistic in their view of the solidarity (no pun intended) of Polish nationalism in the past compared to today. After WWII instead of Wilson's interference and a "punish Germany" outlook, you can see an independent Congress Poland borders, an independent Galicia, and later an independent Silesia. The Polish corridor was not as Polish as many on AH.com seem to think, there's a difference between raw numbers, and those numbers broken down on a map where they actually were majority (eg- Blacks are only 13% of the US population, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of places where they are the majority; same goes for Germans in the Polish corridor and in this case they are a lot more than 13% of the total, and geographically they are a majority over a lot more of the landscape than the raw number for a "Polish majority" region would make you think). The thing is- it's a lot easier to divide Poland than you think and not as easy to keep it solid as the aberration that is in OTL, look at Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and the fact that Bulgaria and Macedonia and Romania and Moldava are all separated, not to mention how many German nations there are, the fact that there is only one Poland is the unlikely one given it's division among its larger neighbors. Modern-day Poland itself is hugely almost ASB, in fact if someone in 1910 had wrote a history where Poland ends up with OTL 2017 borders they'd have been declared ASB and the German government might have banned the book that mentioned it! "A Poland that goes to the Oder/Niesse in the west?! Absurd! Ethnic cleansing of German lands!" The eastern border is realistic though (the Curzon Line), despite propaganda that the USSR "took Polish lands" they weren't Polish, they were White Russian (Belorussian) and some Lithuanian lands. So let's get a little knowledge of real-life OTL Poland before making some grandiose proclamations that the Polish are "one of the most homogenous peoples" (which they aren't by any longshot, we aren't talking Inuit or Japanese peoples, we're talking about one of the most heavily invaded regions with a long history of German and Swedish immigration especially among nobility and academics, a large Jewish population prior to the Holocaust, and a division among three major empires).
@Napoleonrules -Poland could be divided like it was during partitions between Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany/Prussia but not between independent Polish states. What would keep independent Congress Poland from joining with independent Galizia?
Napoleonrules
Banned
What keeps Moldova and Romania apart? Macedonia and Bulgaria? Slovakia and Czechia? Croatia and Serbia? Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, and Liechtenstein? Andorra and (if it happens) and independent Catalonia? Monaco and France? San Marino and Italy? Finland and Estonia? Russia and Ukraine? Jordan and (if Israel said yes) Palestine? North Korea and South Korea? PRC and RoC? Indonesia and Malaysia? Malaysia and Singapore? Thailand and Laos?
For most of those countries simply having been part of different empires has been enough, for others it is the ruling elites would lose power to a unified nation, for others it's a perceived difference more than objectively they have (languages are dialects with armies, just because two nations have different "languages" in OTL doesn't mean in an ATL where the "languages" are still spoken the same in those two regions that they won't be classified as dialects, and vice versa; ie- we have more than one Polish language in an ATL). Poland can be no different than Czechoslovakia with the right POD. It isn't that hard for Galicians to not want to be under Warsaw given that there will be plenty of opportunity for outside and internal pressure to stay independent.
Poland could be divided between various independent nations (Mazovians, Cuiavians etc.) but not with mid 19th century POD OP mentioned. Poles are not some new nation that emerged/re-emerged during 19th century, Poland never lost entire elite and did not need to create new ones at the time of nationalism. There was never any Galizian/"Congresspolish"/"Posenian" nationalism-there was (and is) some support for existence of separate Silesian nation (still not prevailing-and Silesia was separated from rest of Poland for six hunderts years, not for mere century like Warsaw and Cracow ) but nothing comparable in Polish corelands.
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Or, depending on the strength of Poland, there would be many more eastern Rite Catholics. Belarusans went from Orthodox to Eastern Rite Catholic to Orthodox as the influence of Poland and Russia waxed and waned.
As a side note, Russia never created a western Rite version of Orthodoxy. Rather, the only acceptable version of Orthodoxy was liturgically totally eastern with all eastern saints overseen by Bishops from Russia proper. In contrast, Eastern rite Catholicsm permits fully eastern liturgies, eastern saints, local bishops etc.
Even amongst relatively friendly populations such as Ruthenians, Russia ham fistedly insisted that returnees to orthodoxy not only become Orthodox in theology (doable) but then insisted that bishops be imported from Russia (less doable) and then pressured the returnees to become culturally Russian (even less doable). As a result, re-conversions to Orthodox by eastern rite Catholic Ruthenians slowed, then stopped.
Maybe Prussia could do a two pronged approach: Silesians and Kashubians need only to adopt German cultural influences (which a certain number were included to do. Local Catholicism is not suppressed. Meanwhile, Prussia initiates a conversion campaign designed to boost the number of Lutheran Poles in territories adjacent to Prussia from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands.
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The majority, if not all of the examples you listed are artificial 20th century creations. Hell, there used to be plenty more in the past - East and West Germany, North and South Yemen come to mind.
Of course, nothing says Poland cannot be artificially divided at the whim of greater powers, but much like OTL examples required a lot of lucky factors and coincidences - Moldova only exists as a country because of the USSR and Korea is only divided because of the Cold War - so would this scenario.
Russia treated Eastern Rite Catholics as traitors of Orthodox faith and presecuted them fiercely. After toleration act from 1905 when apostasy from Russian Orthodoxy became legal many former Eastern Rite Catholics forced previously to convert to Orthodoxy converted back to Catholicism, this time to Latin rite (Eastern rite was still banned) and then quickly polonize.