Who cares what happened to the Polish state. The Polish state didn't give a damn about extinguishing the Czechoslovak state (which you steadfastly ignore, conveniently enough). The Soviets simply corrected an injustice while the Poles got their comeuppance. Recovering Vilnius and western Belarus wasn't TERRITORIAL EXPANSION, no matter how much you use caps.

"Bialystok and Przemsyl "

Areas promptly restored to Poland after the war. What a curious form of annexation.

Tendmote, do all of your opinions have to be vetted for sufficient amounts of popularity before you hold them? Or can't you let the information take you where it takes you, regardless of how many of your colleagues agree with you?

"Areas promptly restored to Poland after the war. What a curious form of annexation."

Yeah, because when the Soviet Union annexed the areas in 1939 it knew that it would be invaded by Germany a few years later and then cede the areas back to a reconstituted Polish satellite state after the war. You're so full of shit it's amazing.


"The Soviets simply corrected an injustice while the Poles got their comeuppance."

You're really a bad person. The Holocaust as "comeuppance." Disgusting.

@Putin33 What vetting are you taking about? I'm just pointing out the surprise attack and infinite regress in your arguments. Every questionable and unorthodox assumption is built upon another questionable and unorthodox assumption, ad infinitum. The "information" by itself comes with a dubious twist, and takes the discussion farther and farther away from anything with any real value.

If there is any *commonly shared* assumption underlying any of your arguments, please point it out. Otherwise it's just leading back to Putin33's axioms, which don't necessarily underly the reality the rest of us live in.

"Yeah, because when the Soviet Union annexed the areas in 1939 it knew that it would be invaded by Germany a few years later and then cede the areas back to a reconstituted Polish satellite state after the war"

Poland was lucky. Russia was far more generous with them than Poland ever was with the Lithuanians, Ukrainians, or Belarussians. And Russia had no way of knowing, in 1944, when they promised to restore these areas to Poland, that they'd have a friendly government in Warsaw a couple of years later.

"You're really a bad person. The Holocaust as "comeuppance." Disgusting."

You're a really bad person. The areas you mention as "territorial annexations", e.g. Bialystok, was heavily Jewish. And the Jewish residents welcomed the Red Army as liberators. The Poles were co-conspirators in the Holocaust and perpetrators of pogroms, not victims.

So now you're a Holocaust denier? No place is too low to stoop for you if it means defending communism.

"Or can't you let the information take you where it takes you, regardless of how many of your colleagues agree with you?"

Oh! I guess you're implying that you let the "information take you". OK, fine. But if the information is open to interpretation, and all you're doing is reinforcing your own interpretation at every level, it isn't the "information" doing the "taking". It's zealotry putting it's stamp on perception. Taking stock of what other people think is actually a good way of checking how far into your own ax-grinding you've wandered.

"So now you're a Holocaust denier?"

Wow. You routinely distort what I say and concoct absurd strawmen, but this takes the cake. Your only defense for being a poor reader of history and a terrible polemicist for your point of view is to simply lie like this.

"Taking stock of what other people think is actually a good way of checking how far into your own ax-grinding you've wandered."

Or it's a crutch to use instead of critical and independent thinking. When the going gets tough, all I see written is constant appeals to popularity, which last I checked was still a fallacious form of reasoning.

@Putin33 I'm not making an argumentum ad populum because I'm not saying any particular statement is true or false because it's popular. I'm saying your view of history, through the lens of your zealotry, is the reason that no one accepts your reality as a starting point from which your arguments follow. The lack of popularity is the symptom, not the cause. Crazy ideas are often unpopular.

You've changed every assumption to suit your ideology, and argued forward from there.

"The Poles were co-conspirators in the Holocaust and perpetrators of pogroms, not victims."

The Poles were victims of the Holocaust. To say otherwise is Holocaust denial. You're a Holocaust denier.

Man, every time one of your premises conflicts with someone else's assumptions, you go recursive another level and introduce a dependency on some other premise. These discussions go *very* far afield. Is that any way to discuss ideas? If you can never operate with another person’s assumptions, then you’re just not reasoning about the same thing. You might as well be living in different worlds; it might as well be fiction.

If you can’t agree on basic truths with people, and hide this behind a tremendous capacity to stack arguments until you know something that the other person doesn’t, or the other person gets exhausted, then what are you really doing? It’s not trafficking in ideas, it’s not persuasion, it isn’t anything.

You're really embarrassing yourself here. The historiography of the period is replete with examples of Polish people going about their daily lives just outside of, for example, the periment of Majdanek or Belzec or Treblinka. At best, they did nothing about it and at worst, like for example in the case of Jedwabne, they carried out the massacres themselves.

*perimeter

"If you can never operate with another person’s assumptions, then you’re just not reasoning about the same thing. You might as well be living in different worlds; it might as well be fiction. "

But you're not willing to subject your own assumptions to any kind of scrutiny or criticism. You're unwilling to offer new information and simply repeat statements as if they are self-evidently true. You go into a discussion ahead of time believing that anything I say is crazy and no matter what information is exchanged, you repeat that mantra over and over again, knowing that doing so will gain you popular appeal.

It is, indeed, exhausting, to run up against petty grandstanding whenever you tire of a discussion.

And anyway, to return to my point... Russia's neighbors fear it with good reason, and if they aren't substantial enough to fend for themselves, it is natural for them to look to NATO to help them assert themselves. The "encirclement" is something that Russia brought upon itself, which in no way cuts Russia off from Europe economically. Russia is in fact trying to establish it's own separate economic sphere, by not allowing Ukraine to maintain it's trade agreements with both Russia and Europe, which exacerbates of all this division in Ukraine.

"But you're not willing to subject your own assumptions to any kind of scrutiny or criticism. "

Nor you.

"You're unwilling to offer new information and simply repeat statements as if they are self-evidently true."

You offer skewed interpretations of historical events. I mean, Danzig as the *justification and cause* of the Nazi/Soviet invasion? The thing is, you have a tremendous number of these little conversation grenades, for some reason, and you wear down your opponents by attrition.

"You go into a discussion ahead of time believing that anything I say is crazy "

That's not true, though in almost no time you do say something crazy.

It is, indeed, exhausting, to run up against the nonstop introduction of tangents and diversions when arguing with a zealot.

" by not allowing Ukraine to maintain it's trade agreements with both Russia and Europe"

It wasn't Russia who imposed conditions on Ukraine. It was the EU. The EU commissioner was the one who said Ukraine could not be in a customs union with Russia and a free trade agreement with the EU. But your partisan blinders make you immune to any kind of actual information on the topic.

"to run up against the nonstop introduction of tangents and diversions when arguing with a zealot."

Oh, the irony here is rich.

"I mean, Danzig as the *justification and cause* of the Nazi/Soviet invasion?"

Yes, what would you say was the justification and cause? In the early 1930s, Poland had warm relations with Germany, signed a friendship treaty with them despite being aligned with France. Then relations soured, in March/April 1939, over the issue of Danzig. If not Danzig, what then caused the problem?

The problem was caused by a political genius psychopath taking power in Germany.

Ah, OK, the EU regulations are the cause of the customs union incompatibility. Well, Ukraine's decision then. If Ukraine goes with Europe, however, Russia will find itself actually closer to Europe economically, bordering it directly. How does keeping Ukraine out of Europe keep Russia from being isolated from Europe?

I love how in one breath you blamed Russia's non-existent "conditions" for causing the division but you have nothing to say about the EU's conditions for causing the division, or the fact that high ranking EU diplomats actually went to Ukraine to join ranks with the protesters. The Europeans are never to blame. It's always Russia.

"How does keeping Ukraine out of Europe keep Russia from being isolated from Europe?"

For the second & last time, Russia is not trying to *keep Ukraine out of Europe*. It imposed no such conditions on Ukraine for joining the customs union. The EU's association agreement, by contrast, is replete with all sorts of political conditions on Ukraine, like playing nice with the Orangists.

Wait a minute, you actually buy the Nazi's excuse for invading Poland? The Nazi's didn't even believe it themselves, they wanted their lebensraum. Do you ever consider that people with authority often (usually) lie?

At any rate, this is another case of you changing the premises to suit your argument. “In an imaginary world where Hitler’s justifications for invasions all have merit, …” [Putin33’s argument to follow]

"The problem was caused by a political genius psychopath taking power in Germany."

And why did that "psychopath" have nice relations with Poland for 6 years? And why must you repeatedly invoke mental illness in your arguments?

@Putin33 What is your opinion of Hitler?

I think he was a perfidious coward.

I think he had a good quote that sums up the last 2 pages of this thread:
"History is decided by the victors."

Honestly, I think it's impressive that Putin has done enough actual independent research into this area to find an explanation that doesn't fit the explanation we were given in the Western world. But he is a relic of the past that contradicts the Western view of history and is best ignored or forgotten, lest we begin to question the great nations we have become so proud of.

Wait...lol...you are impressed that Putin scrounged the pages of Pravda and found an explanation that does everything possible to cast the US in a horrible light? As he does with *every* topic?

Good lord, giving someone credit for parrotting the opposition is ridiculous. Do you give other credit for parrotting Fox News or CNN or Huffington Post? Because Putin is simply a proganda machine --- every dribbling line of vomit that he spews on to the pages of this forum are so insanely biased it ceased to be amusing or even mildly interesting long, long ago.

And of course...everything we spew - ALL OF US - is based upon the biased crap that we are fed by whatever our particular source of information may be.

SOME of us realize that everything we read...EVERYTHING...is biased, and we acknowledge that we are therefore just tools....ALL OF US.

Putin, on the other hand, actually thinks he is a superior intellect....and that makes him one of the most dangerous fools around here...if not to others, than sure as hell to himself.

MIGHT MAKES RIGHT.....said is days ago.

True, perhaps I should read the pages of Pravda to see if it matches to a degree that TC matched Fox News. If so, he is impressive for a totally different reason; finding a parroting an archaic and long dead propaganda source.