AHC: Finlandised Poland

I think that PPR would be at best 3rd force in country politics (after SL and SN), but more likely 5th only (after PPS and SP too). After all, SL, SP and obviously PPS, were strongly on the left by that time. Even SN was supporting nationalisation of heavy industry post-war.
Even if they were only the 5th force, that'd still make them far more influential than they'd ever been before.

Also I doubt SN would initially be that powerful - AFAIK their organisation was wrecked during the war to a far worse degree than most other parties. Any 1946/7 free election will probably produce a PSL/PPS government.
 
I meant to post what follows here many hours ago, but somehow got mixed up and posted it over here instead!

However, I find it works in that thread just as well (or not) as in this one, so I am leaving it there and also adding it here:

With alternate leadership of the USSR between Lenin's death and the conclusion of the war to crush the Third Reich, I'd like to think circumstances might leave Soviet leaders open to making a settlement treaty with the Western Allies and sticking to it. Surely the Russians know that the Poles are going to be a pain to keep down under their thumb. If they can have plausible guarantees in good faith from the W-Allies that no forces will be mustered against them on their borders, perhaps they can largely dispense with hostile occupation, not only of Poland but other nations.

With such a scrupulous ATL leadership switched into OTL, I don't doubt Hitler would behave as he did OTL and this USSR faces another Barbarossa. An eventually triumphant Red Army steamrollering back west will of necessity have to occupy some zones anyway; Germany itself can hardly be trusted for instance, especially not if the Allies rip off territories to reward other neighboring nations like Poland and expel the Germans from these grants into a reduced Germany or fragmented set of small German states. I'd think maybe a workable procedure would be if all powers in the Alliance retain rights to small scattered bases in all liberated territories, and the right of inspectors to rove around and investigate without any check on them. With Eastern European states hosting small bases of the Western powers, and the western states having token Soviet bases scattered there too, maintaining armaments at low levels in the entire swath of intervening territory shouldn't be too hard.

Even if it were Stalin accepting and keeping these conditions, I don't believe it would mean that one fine day in the 1950s or early '60s, he or one of his successors would come sweeping in vast hordes like Mongols out of the USSR near-unopposed. The other two Great Powers never occupied by Hitler would have the same rights to arm as the USSR does, and if they aren't satisfied the Russians are keeping their force levels within reason they can can escalate themselves. The Communists OTL tended to be cautious and dilatory about starting invasions and if the West doesn't move on them, I don't think they'll move on the West.

If this Utopian plan of mine could work, Poland would be better off than Findlandized. She'd just be restricted from developing a big military or offering to host one, but otherwise free to be as reactionary as she likes.

I even wonder if Stalin himself could be persuaded to take such a deal. Probably not because he insisted on complete control wherever he could get it , and would worry about the subversive effect on his own Russians of sharing countries with contingents of western troops, in the matrix of nation free to express its opinions, if only nonviolently. Too many Soviet citizens might hear and learn the wrong things, or get dangerous ideas...
 
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