Poland overtakes Russia

What if the Polish ethnic area had been larger, extending into OTL Eastern Ukraine and Belarus? I mean not just as a dominant ruling class but as the ethnic majority. I'm thinking of a Polish-speaking area extending at least to the eastern borders of Volhynia and Podolia.

This is the Slavic 'urheimat' and the Slavs differentiated late enough into the nations that exist today, so I don't think there must be great PODs, merely a slightly different organisation of tribes in the Early Middle Ages.

What I'm trying to do is to set up Poland to evolve as the dominant Eastern European power instead of Russia. A greater Polish core might make greater expansion possible in the East(I'm thinking all of the Ukraine, Belarus, Baltic+ a wide strip of Russian lands right up to the gates of Moscow) and might give enough power to the ATL 17th-18th century Polish state to maintain its borders and even to deny Russians access to the Baltic.

Consequently no partitions and no Russian involvment in Central&Western European affairs.

What do you think?
 
so you think that instead of the Rus, the poles would form a big slavic empire ? i think that could be possible, if you have a more powerful polish state, they could try to grab land in the east like the Russians did OTL.
 
You could probably just organize the Polish government very differently in the 14th-17th centuries and wind up with Polish dominance. They *were* the dominant Slavic power for a long time, after all.
 
You could probably just organize the Polish government very differently in the 14th-17th centuries and wind up with Polish dominance. They *were* the dominant Slavic power for a long time, after all.

Or maybe have a disunited Russia of competing principalities which could then be conquered or at least dominated?
 
that wouldnt solve anything with such a decentralised government which Poland had, especially in later days.. no mention to that infamous noble parliament
 
I don't think a change in the migrations period would do much, and I don't think it's necessary because differences between the tribes in the area weren't all that great up to founding of first states and christianization. What made the Polish tribes on the right bank of the Vistula really different from Ruthenian tribes in the Bug valley was belonging to Poland / Kievan Rus, which meant Western / Eastern Christianity, Latin / Greek culture, respectively. If the areas you describe - Volhynia and Podolia (more isn't possible), were initially converted to Catholicism, then you're good to go. It can be either an autochtonous state formed in the upper Dniester valley, or a proto-Polish state - but it's most likely too far away for the OTL one, based in what is now Greater Poland. It would have to be Krakow, which we know was a center of an early Slavic proto-state, and most likely already Catholic.
 
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth may evolve into continental version of Great Britain (think Poles as English, Lithuanians as Scottish, Ruthenians varying from Welsh to Irish) with many local, but one imperial identity. Polish language would be lingua franca replacing Baltic and East Slavic languages in the East (Polish was on the way to do it in OTL, if not the partitions...)
 
Why not have the Prussians and Silesian Piasts remain allies so that the Silesian Piasts rule Poland then later Poland forms a personal union with both Lithuania-Polotsk and Prussia but not Pomerania.
 
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