The idea is that Stalin decides that it is not in his interest to create an ethnically more heterogenous Poland by moving Poles from areas that OTL what taken from Poland and given to the Soviet Union to areas OTL taken from Germany and given to Poland. Instead he decides that the former German areas shall become part of the Soviet Union and become inhabited by (mostly Russians, but also Belorussians, Ukrainians and others) people from the Soviet Union. Some Germans and Poles might perhaps be allowed to stay there, but most of the population would come from the Soviet Union.
WI:Stalin decides that Poland shall keep its pre-WW2 borders?
- Thread starter Eivind
- Start date
Susie McCallister
Banned
Why would he deliberately create an exclave completely cut off from the rest of the Soviet Union?
I think it was inevitable that there would be some adjustment in Polish-Soviet boundaries, although Poland might have been allowed to keep Lwow. https://books.google.com/books?id=CQzWCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA33 As Stalin liked to tell Churchill and Roosevelt, you can hardly expect me to take a less favorable view of the western borders of Soviet Belorussia and Soviet Ukraine than Lord Curzon did!
Poland and the other countries became satelite states under the Soviet Union. Stalin had probably decided this already at the time when the post-war borders were decided, so this would not really be an important factor. There is of course also the possibility of giving the area to Poland as in OTL, but making the new Polish areas a lot more ethnically divided by opening them for immigration from the Soviet Union or other countries under the Soviet umbrella. This would serve to weaken the force of Polish nationalism, which would clearly be an advantage for the Soviet Union.