Independent Belarus and Ukraine at 1939

For this to be happen, you'd need a profoundly different outcome of the Russian Civil War. For all we know, Stalin was hanged and Hitler is in jail.
 
In case of a Polish-wank, Ukraine will be independant, but Bielorussia including the eastern part (Minsk) will probably be annexed to a greater Poland. Annexing Minsk was on the political agenda of the polish party called "Endecja" of Dmowski...
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Yes, but Pilsudski was more interested in puppeting neighboring countries. (And wasn't Dmowski angry about the annexations in the east bringing East Slavs you can't get rid of into Poland).
 
For this to be happen, you'd need a profoundly different outcome of the Russian Civil War. For all we know, Stalin was hanged and Hitler is in jail.

ITTL Russia could well be fascist and Grand Admiral Kolchak is in power as ''Supreme Leader'' and vowing to regain the lost territories.

Depending on the fate of Germany Hitler is a fringe nutter or the power of the land...
 
Hitler apparently didnt originally act like he late did thgh he still was a bit 'off'. Maybe you need his mentor/sponsor to find another protege or have the non-Bolshevicks reach ceasefires with the nationalists and actually follow through with Lenins lie about supporitng independence for those who wanted it.
 
For this to be happen, you'd need a profoundly different outcome of the Russian Civil War. For all we know, Stalin was hanged and Hitler is in jail.

I agree .. Belarus had no national identity at that point.. it was simply white russia.. i mean its an area of land that like Poland, ( heck it was even controlled by for a long period of time) was passed around for a pack of smokes in a prison..

even today they would rather be apart of Mother Russia for the most part. so it would be probably be split four way between Poland, Russia and Lithuania and Ukraine (if the later two were independent.. )

actually the more i type the more i think you would need WW I to go very much the way it did and end either in a cp victory and or a very messed up russian civil war.. I cant find a logical excuse for Belarus to be independent.

Ukraine I might be able to see as they had some tangible identity but it too was closely tied to Russia up to that point. Ukraine yazik differs only slightly from Russian Yazik.. the histories of both nations are very intertwined. (not always by choice.. since russia is the 90 ton bear in the room)

But Ukraine has Ukrainian National Hero's and real identity.. Belarus has what i would call none, just a large open road for armies to use on their way east or west..
 
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Hitler apparently didnt originally act like he late did thgh he still was a bit 'off'. Maybe you need his mentor/sponsor to find another protege or have the non-Bolshevicks reach ceasefires with the nationalists and actually follow through with Lenins lie about supporitng independence for those who wanted it.

Of course, the mass of Ukrainians and Belarussian peasants did not want independence. They wanted to own the land they farmed and be rid of landlords, priests, Yid sharks, officers, and commissars the way God had intended it. They supported the nationalists when they were the side that seemed to offer this - but they also supported Makhno, and they hadn't exactly all read their Bakunin. And when Petlyura returned to Kiev a guest of the Polish landlords and officers, he wasn't terribly welcome.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Ukraine and Belarus doing anything on their own is ASB. That's why I suggested a Poland wank in the first place. Or have a CP victory, creating a nation from scratch in Belarus could have been an interesting German pet project.:rolleyes:

Seriously: The Belarus nationalists were a couple of Social Democrat politicians in Minsk, while the whole Ukrainian identity barely existed outside East Galizia (which Poland always intended to annex anyways).
 
Ukraine and Belarus doing anything on their own is ASB. That's why I suggested a Poland wank in the first place. Or have a CP victory, creating a nation from scratch in Belarus could have been an interesting German pet project.:rolleyes:

Seriously: The Belarus nationalists were a couple of Social Democrat politicians in Minsk, while the whole Ukrainian identity barely existed outside East Galizia (which Poland always intended to annex anyways).

exactly ...
 
Oh, one ought not to underestimate Ukrainian consciousness. It was pretty much entirely middle-class, but then so was Russian nationalism is the modern sense. There was an older, more visceral faith-and-soil "Russianness" (which the Ukrainians and certainly the Belarussians generally felt as well) but although the middle-class nationalism of Russia drew actively on it in its mythology they weren't the same thing. There was a strata of in Ukraine who often strongly felt themselves to be Ukrainian: village schoolmasters, journalists like Petlyura, the sort of people who'd been drafted into the Russian army as subalterns and NCOs, really.

Until it actually happened, of course, very few of these nationalists would have considered separating Ukraine from a federal Russia altogether. They wanted a government that would promote Ukrainian language and culture and be part of a Russian Empire reformed into a federation of different countries. Which is what happened, actually! :p

(I joke, but Hrushevski was welcomed back to Soviet Ukraine in the 20s and there were many like him.)

Belarus, of course, had very little middle-class that wasn't Jewish, no tradition of statehood, no universities, etcetera and the Belarussian nationalists really were just a circle of academics at the University of Petrograd. The Belarussian peasants were incredulously explaining to the authorities that they spoke only Russian in fluent Belarussian well into the 1920s.
 
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We should think about Crimea probably. Wasnt it administered as part of Russia? I keep hearing that though it is odd as Ukraine was as well... Hmm. Does anyone have maps showing the dozens of titles the Czar had and shows things more than him being King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland? Also do you guys think that the Ukrainians would be willing to allow Russians around if Ukrainians still had an ever increasing chunk of influence? Perhaps make themselves heirs to Russ? Take some White Russian (not Belorussian) land at their request? Also how many Galicians and Bukovinians were captured by the Russians? I remember a large amount of Czechs who had been sent to Siberia. Who else was with them?
 
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