WI: Communist Revolution in Poland before WWII?

What it says on the tin folks. Would it be possible to have a successful communist revolution in Poland between the two world wars? If so, when would this be most likely to happen? If the Nazis still come to power in Germany, would the fact that the Poles are now a bunch of dirty reds keep Britain and France from protecting them once Hitler goes for Danzig? Perhaps most importantly, how would the USSR respond, assuming they were not directly involved in bringing the revolution about in the fist place?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, or you could just tell me it's ASB and we'll call it a day:D.
 

Markus

Banned
The Polish People´s Army had chaplains, didn´t they?

Considering what I know about the Soviet-Polish war and post-WW2 Poland, a successful communist revolution looks most unlikely to me.
 
Considering what I know about the Soviet-Polish war and post-WW2 Poland, a successful communist revolution looks most unlikely to me.

That seems reasonable. However, you don't think a Trotskyist Soviet Union, or at least one that doesn't fall under Stalin, might be able to export Revolution at a later date?
 

Markus

Banned
That seems reasonable. However, you don't think a Trotskyist Soviet Union, or at least one that doesn't fall under Stalin, might be able to export Revolution at a later date?

To Germany maybe. We did have a large left, albeit disunited but Poland? How strong were the Communists there in the inter-war years?
 
To Germany maybe. We did have a large left, albeit disunited but Poland? How strong were the Communists there in the inter-war years?

Not very; they made headway among the Belorussians and Ukrainians, but not among the majority of Poles. (Among their problems: They advocated for the return of the Danzig Corridor and Upper Silesia to Germany, because the Comintern placed a higher priority on winning over German workers).

I think you could see Poland break out in a low-scale civil war, but beyond that?
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Not very; they made headway among the Belorussians and Ukrainians, but not among the majority of Poles. (Among their problems: They advocated for the return of the Danzig Corridor and Upper Silesia to Germany, because the Comintern placed a higher priority on winning over German workers).

I think you could see Poland break out in a low-scale civil war, but beyond that?
And for the Ukrainians and Belorussians in Eastern Poland Communism was more a nationalist issue, the wish to join the Ukrainian and Belorussian SSRs of the USSR, not really start a Polish revolution.
 
To Germany maybe. We did have a large left, albeit disunited but Poland? How strong were the Communists there in the inter-war years?

Largely discredited after the Polish-Soviet War. If you wish for a Communist Poland, you'd have to have Pilsudski remain further-left, with a dream of restoring the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a Socialist Paradise, and then you'd have to keep Russia in a Civil War if you want this Red Poland to be separate from the USSR or not reconquered by the Russian Empire. Your course of events would be that in 1917-18, the Polish communists (stronger ITTL for whatever reason) rise up against the Germans as the Germans are getting whipped on the Western Front and the Russians fall into civil war. Red Poland emerges, and is a far lesser power than Pilsudski's Poland IOTL because Red Poland will not have any support from the west, and will probably degenerate into civil war between this Communist Pilsudski and the French-backed Blue Army.
 
Maybe giving them a decade of an highly incompetent and horribly violent rightist dictatorship (lets say Pilsudki just has brain cancer and turns insane) would create a short window during which the majority of the people would be at leats neutral toward a communist takeover.
 
Maybe giving them a decade of an highly incompetent and horribly violent rightist dictatorship (lets say Pilsudki just has brain cancer and turns insane) would create a short window during which the majority of the people would be at leats neutral toward a communist takeover.

Well I would say they had an incompetent and rightist dictatorship in OTL after Pilsudski's death...

And of course there were plenty of Ukranian right-wing nationalists as well as communists.

I have suggested in the past a Polish Civil War being a not improbable scenario in the late 1930s and early 1940s if the international tensions are less severe, but I know other posters have disagreed that anyone would be that stupid, because that would end 30 minutes later with a Soviet-German invasion.
 
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