Poland goes to war to stop the Holodomor

so I'm reading "Bloodlands" by Timothy Snyder, he talked about how during the Holodomor, he says that Polish Ethnic Ukrainians pushed their government to invade the Ukraine to stop the mass starvation, Ukrainians he says were hopeful that Poland would attack to save them, so what if they had?
 
The Holodomor isn't a concrete enough idea to go to war and if Poland did, it would be viewed as an aggressive action. The Holodomor is a controversial and sketchy event as it is that has been widely misconstrued on both sides. I don't seriously think Poland has good enough case to make war over something that was Ukrainians instigated themselves to a degree.
 

loughery111

Banned
The Holodomor isn't a concrete enough idea to go to war and if Poland did, it would be viewed as an aggressive action. The Holodomor is a controversial and sketchy event as it is that has been widely misconstrued on both sides. I don't seriously think Poland has good enough case to make war over something that was Ukrainians instigated themselves to a degree.

The Ukrainians instigated an agricultural policy deliberately designed to create food shortages, kill some of them, and drive the rest into the cities, thus shattering the local political opposition and industrializing the region at the point of a gun? And one that was so poorly conducted that rather than driving them into the cities, it so decisively shattered their ability to grow food and so quickly took what little was grown, that they starved to death by the millions? Explain that, please.
 
so I'm reading "Bloodlands" by Timothy Snyder, he talked about how during the Holodomor, he says that Polish Ethnic Ukrainians pushed their government to invade the Ukraine to stop the mass starvation, Ukrainians he says were hopeful that Poland would attack to save them, so what if they had?

"Holodomor" was not some Holocaust-like decision to kill off Ukrainian farmers. It was partly a decision to enforce quotas no matter what, partly a matter of bad harvest, and partly a decision by the farmers themselves to destroy their food rather than hand it over, in the hope that this gives them a better bargaining position.
 
Gosh, apologists for communist atrocities are lovely this time of year.

Contentless posts are also a barrel of laugh.

Onyway, the sympathies of this book Bloodlands are from what I have heard of it pretty clear, and if the author is keen to present the various countries and nations of eastern europe as victims of Germany and Russia than the idea of their victimising one-another isn't convenient. Leaving aside the large gulf between Ukrainians in Galicia and in Soviet Ukraine (two nations speaking one language, really) the Poles and the Ukrainians in the Second Polish Republic were not getting along very well.

"Holodomor" was not some Holocaust-like decision to kill off Ukrainian farmers. It was partly a decision to enforce quotas no matter what, partly a matter of bad harvest, and partly a decision by the farmers themselves to destroy their food rather than hand it over, in the hope that this gives them a better bargaining position.

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loughery111

Banned
Contentless posts are also a barrel of laugh.

Onyway, the sympathies of this book Bloodlands are from what I have heard of it pretty clear, and if the author is keen to present the various countries and nations of eastern europe as victims of Germany and Russia than the idea of their victimising one-another isn't convenient. Leaving aside the large gulf between Ukrainians in Galicia and in Soviet Ukraine (two nations speaking one language, really) the Poles and the Ukrainians in the Second Polish Republic were not getting along very well.



I am IBC and I endorse this product and/or service.

Yes, but the fact that they were at one another's throats much of the time hardly invalidates the idea that Eastern Europe was then victimized by the Germans and Russians in rapid succession. Personally, I think a better analogy would be "murdered by the Germans, and the corpse raped by the Russians," but that's just me...
 
The Ukrainians instigated an agricultural policy deliberately designed to create food shortages, kill some of them, and drive the rest into the cities, thus shattering the local political opposition and industrializing the region at the point of a gun? And one that was so poorly conducted that rather than driving them into the cities, it so decisively shattered their ability to grow food and so quickly took what little was grown, that they starved to death by the millions? Explain that, please.

1) While he meant something different, yes, Ukrainians were involved in the policies that led to the Holodomor. Just who are "the Ukrainians"? I take it they don't include Ukrainians working for the Soviet government? But the idea of people being divided by more things than our chosen category, in this case nationality, is of course complicated history and as we have seen many times in the past nobody wants complicated history. :rolleyes:

After all, Russians starved. Kazakhs starved - on a proportionately larger and more social destructive scale than the Ukrainians, too, and the sedentary inhabitants of Kazakhstan, Russian and Ukrainian alike, were the ones who benefitted.

2) One has to remember, when it comes to political opposition, that in a totalitarian state disobeying or even disagreeing is opposition. Ideas of some sort of armed conspiracy orchestrated by Pilsudski were made up, drawing on the busy Stalinist mythology of vast conspiracies against the socialist motherland.

3) Millions of Ukrainians did end up in cities, in Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union. And by the way, during the various clearances and related tribulations of the early industrial period, groups of Britons as big as half a million were given that same choice to abandon their way of life or starve (this is out of a much smaller population). Industrialisation may be progress but it's horrible.
 
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Yes, but the fact that they were at one another's throats much of the time hardly invalidates the idea that Eastern Europe was then victimized by the Germans and Russians in rapid succession.

No, it merely provides some useful insight into which bits of history this author is going to lay emphasis upon: we all have our biases. I know I do.

Personally, I think a better analogy would be "murdered by the Germans, and the corpse raped by the Russians," but that's just me...

And now I know you do! :p
 

loughery111

Banned
1) While he meant something different, yes, Ukrainians were involved in the policies that led to the Holodomor. Just who are "the Ukrainians"? I take it they don't include Ukrainians working for the Soviet government? The idea of people being divided by more things than our chosen category, in this case nationality, is of course complicated history and as we have seen many times in the past nobody wants complicated history. :rolleyes:

After all, Russians starved.

2) One has to remember, when it comes to political opposition, that in a totalitarian state disobeying or even disagreeing is opposition. Ideas of some sort of armed conspiracy orchestrated by Pilsudski were made up, drawing on the busy Stalinist mythology of vast conspiracies against the socialist motherland.

3) Millions of Ukrainians did end up in cities, in Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union. And by the way, during the various clearances and related tribulations of the early industrial period, groups of Britons as big as half a million were given that same choice to abandon their way of life or starve (this is out of a much smaller population). Industrialisation may be progress but it's horrible.

1. Yes, he did mean something different, and it was to that which I objected. Not to what you've just said, which is after all quite true.

2. I said political opposition, not a word about being armed. Doesn't mean that the whole affair wasn't designed to shatter them because they spoke out. Hell, to my mind, that makes it worse than if it were designed as a vast overkill of an attempt to suppress armed revolt. At least then there'd have been some violence provoking it...

3. It's somewhat difficult to compare the British period of industrialization to the Soviet. For instance, the British managed the transition well enough that they didn't kill 20 million people in the process. They also didn't set out with the dual purpose of killing the opposition from while forcing the rest of the countryside into the cities; Enclosure was pretty much just a case of the rich running the politics of the day, and there happening to be a beneficial side effect to all of this labor turning up in need of food. Lastly, the British policies were employed in an effort to increase agricultural output, and they did so. They were not attempting to shatter the local agricultural base; it merely changed hands.
 

loughery111

Banned
No, it merely provides some useful insight into which bits of history this author is going to lay emphasis upon: we all have our biases. I know I do.



And now I know you do! :p

Of course I have biases. And I acknowledge that the author does as well. In this case, everyone's right... The Eastern Europeans spent a lot of time squabbling and killing one another, then the Germans came and killed a hell of a lot more of them, and lastly the Russians kicked the Germans out, raped a significant fraction of the local womanhood, killed some more people, and stripped the countryside of anything that so much as looked like food or agricultural machinery. Oh and oppressed the hell out of the whole area with the aid of local Quislings, for the next 45 years.
 
2. I said political opposition, not a word about being armed. Doesn't mean that the whole affair wasn't designed to shatter them because they spoke out. Hell, to my mind, that makes it worse than if it were designed as a vast overkill of an attempt to suppress armed revolt. At least then there'd have been some violence provoking it...

Who spoke out? What did they say? Why did they only say it if they lived in the grain-suitable region between Ukraine and Kazakhstan?

Kulaks do not generally write letters to the newspapers. The purges of Ukrainian smenovekhovtsi and intellectuals generally were years later. Ukrainianisation was actually going on during the Holodomor.

3. It's somewhat difficult to compare the British period of industrialization to the Soviet. For instance, the British managed the transition well enough that they didn't kill 20 million people in the process.

We had the Empire, which meant a) that the highlanders could go to Canada and b) that we could outsource starving millions to Ireland and India.

The idea that Britain was as bad as the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century is silly, but industrialisation is bad all by itself.

They also didn't set out with the dual purpose of killing the opposition from while forcing the rest of the countryside into the cities; Enclosure was pretty much just a case of the rich running the politics of the day, and there happening to be a beneficial side effect to all of this labor turning up in need of food.

I dispute the thesis that the Holodomor was meant to kill the opposition: Stalin had a much more efficient device for that, the NKVD. As for driving people into cities, what else can you call the Poor Law?

Lastly, the British policies were employed in an effort to increase agricultural output, and they did so. They were not attempting to shatter the local agricultural base; it merely changed hands.

Did it? Those driven out were landless or dwarf-tenants.

Anyway, tell the highlanders that their social base wasn't shattered.
 
Of course I have biases. And I acknowledge that the author does as well. In this case, everyone's right... The Eastern Europeans spent a lot of time squabbling and killing one another, then the Germans came and killed a hell of a lot more of them, and lastly the Russians kicked the Germans out, raped a significant fraction of the local womanhood,

Frightened, angry, drunk, nervously exhausted conscripts who have witnessed horrible things are not plaster saints; news at ten. The Germans raped plenty of people. You teach a lot of people to de-humanise an enemy, send them to a foreign land, give them a dangerous cocktail of life-and-death power and mortal danger...

killed some more people, and stripped the countryside of anything that so much as looked like food or agricultural machinery. Oh and oppressed the hell out of the whole area with the aid of local Quislings, for the next 45 years.

If the Soviets had taken all the food after the war, people would have starved. Actually there were soup-kitchens after the Battle of Berlin.

I say Soviet, not Russian. The idea that Soviet Ukraine is of a piece with Poland or Romania is my central objection to this "bloodlands" idea.
 
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so I'm reading "Bloodlands" by Timothy Snyder, he talked about how during the Holodomor, he says that Polish Ethnic Ukrainians pushed their government to invade the Ukraine to stop the mass starvation, Ukrainians he says were hopeful that Poland would attack to save them, so what if they had?

Polish Ethnic Ukrainians apparently got along famously with Ukrainian Ukrainians, and whatever motivations they had to invide Pilsudski and co. back into the country were probably entirely noble; and the mass starvation that was a lot less well publicised then than now somehow got attantion on an international scale to the point of humanitarian intervention.

I'm sorry but this entire thesis makes no sense given the events of the interwar period. Call me an apologist for whatever you want, but it makes no sense except in the context of late-20th c., diaspora-driven national mythology construction for these "Bloodlands".

And to answer your actual question: Poland couldn't do well in that war in the 1930s. See what Grimm said.
 
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Poland invading USSR on its own? Impossible. Piłsudski (or any other leader with even a minimial dose of sanity) would not have done it, because Poland was simply too weak to start such a war with any hope of winning it.
 
The years 1932-1933 were the zenith of economical crisis in Poland. The internal affairs in Poland also were hot at that time - Piłsudski have just begun to imprison and make trials of opposition in country. So he was happy to have peaceful borders. Besides he had no formal cassus belli. So the non-aggression pact which was signed on July 25, 1932 was logical and I can't see why anybody in Polish government would want to do the opposite.
 

King Thomas

Banned
If Poland invades it may do well at first but the USSR will sooner or later win the war and occupy Poland and the rest of the world won't intervene as Poland started the war in the first place.
 
If Poland invades it may do well at first but the USSR will sooner or later win the war and occupy Poland and the rest of the world won't intervene as Poland started the war in the first place.

Well, they might mind if the USSR gets as far as Warsaw: nobody wanted the USSR next door to Germany in the early 30s. But the Poles are definitely going to lose all their non-ethnic-Polish territories in the east: whether there is a Polish Soviet puppet or not depends on how much of a fuss the West makes, the USSR was in no shape at the time to take on the UK or France in eastern Europe.

But, as observed earlier, the odds that the Poles would do something so silly are infintessimal.

Bruce
 
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