Editor in Chief Bill | 28 Oct 2022 8:14 a.m. PST |
Poland on Thursday dismantled four communist-era monuments to Red Army soldiers in a renewed drive to remove symbols of Moscow's post-World War II domination and to stress its condemnation of Moscow's war on neighbouring Ukraine… Military: link |
Choctaw | 28 Oct 2022 8:22 a.m. PST |
Can't blame them for that. |
Frederick | 28 Oct 2022 9:39 a.m. PST |
The old joke from Cold War era Poland The Russian tourist walks up to a statue of Stalin in a square in Warsaw and says to the old Polish lady sweeping the street, "You must be glad that Comrade Stalin liberated your country". The old Polish lady looks up and says, "Yes, we must". |
Wackmole9 | 28 Oct 2022 11:35 a.m. PST |
liberate is a fun word when used by a Power that stole a 1/3 of your country and never returned it. |
Blutarski | 28 Oct 2022 12:06 p.m. PST |
Some folks seem to believe that Poland did not exist before the Treaty of Versailles. Not true. Its unfriendly relations with neighbors Germany and Russia (in their various guises) did not start in 1939 or in 1921. Poland, as a nation state, has been around for 1,000 years as a contestant vying for domination of Central Europe. There are no "white hats" in this game. B |
Wolfhag | 28 Oct 2022 12:27 p.m. PST |
vying for domination of Central Europe Like every other country in Europe. Historically, the Poles have received the short end of invasions over the centuries. There are more Pole volunteers in Ukraine than any other country. Wolfhag |
Fitzovich | 28 Oct 2022 2:51 p.m. PST |
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14Bore | 28 Oct 2022 5:04 p.m. PST |
Poland sure has been the brunt of invasions from every side. Can't blame them for dumping any Communist memorial |
Martin Rapier | 28 Oct 2022 11:48 p.m. PST |
"liberate is a fun word when used by a Power that stole a 1/3 of your country and never returned it." Stalin did generously give them a big piece of Germany instead. Tbh, I'm surprised the Germans aren't more pissed off about that. |
robert piepenbrink | 29 Oct 2022 6:38 a.m. PST |
The old tale of the Polish peasant woman coming to the town, seeing the statue of Stalin and saying "God bless and keep our good Marshal Pilsudski!" A policeman of course corrects her: "stupid peasant! This is not Marshal Pilsudski. This is Joseph Visarionovich Stalin!" "Well who is this Stalin person, and why should he have a statue in the town square instead of our Marshal Pilsudski? What has he done for Poland?" [LONG PAUSE] "Well, he did drive out the Germans." "That's different, then. God bless and keep this Joseph Visarionovich Stalin, even though he is not our Marshal Pilsudski. Who knows? Perhaps some day with God's help, he can drive out the Russians, too." |
deadhead | 29 Oct 2022 9:02 a.m. PST |
Poor old Poland, like Belgium, is a victim of geography. In the wrong place, between nations in conflict for so many generations. The miracle is that both have survived to be independent states today. |
GildasFacit | 29 Oct 2022 9:12 a.m. PST |
When Poland was a major power they didn't do much 'sharing' but plenty of 'acquiring' – just the same as their contemporaries. When Poland did get back their independence after WW1 they started to grab whatever territories they thought they could get and keep. Nothing much has changed over many centuries, you'd have to be a really naive optimist to expect otherwise. |
GildasFacit | 29 Oct 2022 9:14 a.m. PST |
Belgium owes its existence to geography. The intent was to provide a buffer state that would reduce friction on the most fought over border in W Europe. As a state, Belgium didn't exist until someone had that bright idea. |
42flanker | 29 Oct 2022 11:42 p.m. PST |
Germany didn't exist until someone had that bright idea Or Italy come to think of it Or… I could go on. From the late-C14th to the partitions of the late C18th, the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, under various names, controlled grand swathes of the eastern European borderlands from the Baltic to the Black Sea- embracing all or portions of the states in play in the current war as well as the Baltic States and more besides |
4th Cuirassier | 01 Nov 2022 5:09 a.m. PST |
Poland, like Belgium, is a victim of geography I'd rather have Belgium's neighbours than Poland's. |
Blutarski | 01 Nov 2022 6:27 a.m. PST |
Defensible borders are indeed a great luxury. B |
Nine pound round | 02 Nov 2022 4:10 a.m. PST |
To say nothing of linguistic and ethnic homogeneity. One of the reasons why Central Europe and the Balkans have spawned so many wars was the long-standing tendency of populations to live their lives, speak their languages, and identify with their ethnicity without any particular regard for inconvenient borders. There has been nothing so productive of conflict as the ethnically homogenous nation-state with an irredentist population on the other side of some frontier. Ironically, after both world wars, the peacemakers set themselves the task of "rectifying" frontiers and "transferring" populations so that nation-states would be more homogenous- and brutal as it was, it did remove a source of dispute. One reason (and not the only one) why the Germans don't publicly worry about regaining East Prussia, for example, is that the Russians expelled the German population wholesale in 1945, and there simply aren't many people left with living memories of it. |
Mserafin | 02 Nov 2022 6:55 a.m. PST |
I think they're removing all those T-34s being used as monuments so they can sell them back to the Russians for use in Ukraine. |