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?
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?