On the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Victory, we tried to imagine what the map of Europe would have become if the USSR had not given thousands of kilometers of territory to the very countries that now call us the occupiers. And will they give up these lands?
Wroclaw is one of the most touristic cities in Poland. Everywhere there are crowds of people with cameras, in expensive restaurants there is nowhere to fall for an apple, taxi drivers break the godless prices. At the entrance to the Market Square, a banner "Wrocław - real Polish charm!" Sways. Everything would be fine, but back in May 1945, Wroclaw was called Breslau and before that for 600 years (!) In a row did not belong to Poland. Victory Day, now referred to in Warsaw as "the beginning of communist tyranny", added German Silesia, Pomerania, and 80% of East Prussia to Poland. Now no one stutters about this: that is, tyranny is tyranny, and we will take the land for ourselves. The AIF observer decided to figure out what the map of Europe would look like now if our ex-brothers in the East were left without the help of the "occupiers"?
Cities as a gift
In 1945, Poland received the cities of Breslau, Gdansk, Zielona Gora, Legnica, Szczecin, says Maciej Wisniewski, a Polish freelance journalist. - The USSR also gave the territory of Bialystok, through the mediation of Stalin, we found the city of Klodzsko, disputed with Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, we believe that the partition of Poland under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, when the USSR took Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, was unfair, but the transfer of Silesia and Pomerania to the Poles by Stalin was just, it cannot be disputed. It is fashionable now to say that the Russians did not free us, but captured us. However, an interesting occupation turns out if Poland received a quarter of Germany for free: hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers shed blood for this land. Even the GDR resisted, not wanting to give Szczecin to the Poles - the issue with the city was finally resolved only in 1956 under pressure from the USSR.
In addition to the Poles, the Baltic states are also strongly outraged by the "occupation". Well, it is worth remembering: the present capital - Vilnius - was also "presented" to Lithuania by the USSR; by the way, the Lithuanian population of Vilnius was then … barely 1%, and the Polish - the majority. The USSR returned to the republic the city of Klaipeda - the Prussian Memel, which belonged to the Lithuanians in 1923-1939. and annexed by the Third Reich. Back in 1991, the Lithuanian leadership condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, but no one returned both Vilnius to Poland and Klaipeda to the FRG.
Ukraine, through the mouth of Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, has declared itself a "victim of Soviet aggression along with Germany", is unlikely to give the Poles its western part with Lvov, Ivano-Frankovsk and Ternopil (these cities were included by the "aggressors" into the Ukrainian SSR in 1939), Romania - Chernivtsi region (ceded to the Ukrainian SSR on August 2, 1940), and Hungary or Slovakia - Transcarpathia, received on June 29, 1945 Romanian politicians do not stop discussions about the fairness of the "annexation" of Moldova by the Soviet Union in 1940. Of course, long forgotten: after the war, it was thanks to the USSR that the Romanians got back the province of Transylvania, which Hitler took in favor of Hungary. Bulgaria, through the mediation of Stalin, retained Southern Dobrudja (formerly the possession of that very Romania), which was confirmed by the treaty of 1947. But now not a single word is said about it in the Romanian and Bulgarian newspapers.
Wroclaw, Lower Silesia, Poland.
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Thank you don't say
“The Czech Republic removed monuments to Soviet soldiers after 1991, and also announced that Victory Day marks the replacement of one dictatorship with another,” says Alexander Zeman, a Czech historian. - However, just at the insistence of the USSR, Czechoslovakia returned the Sudetenland with the cities of Karlovy Vary and Liberec, where 92% of the population were Germans. Recall that the Western powers at the Munich conference in 1938 supported the annexation of the Sudetenland by Germany - only the Soviet Union protested. At the same time, the Poles seized the Teshin region from Czechoslovakia and after the war did not want to give it away, insisting on a referendum. After the Soviet pressure on Poland and support for the Czechoslovak position, an agreement was signed - Teshin was returned to the Czechs, securing it with an agreement of 1958. Nobody says thank you for helping the Soviet Union - apparently, the Russians owe us only one fact of their existence.
In general, we have given away lands to everyone, we have not forgotten anyone - and now they spit in our faces for this. In addition, few people know about the pogrom that the new authorities committed in the "returned territories" - 14 million Germans were expelled from Pomerania and the Sudetenland. If the inhabitants of Koenigsberg (which became Soviet Kaliningrad) moved to the GDR for 6 years (until 1951), then in Poland and Czechoslovakia - 2-3 months, and many Germans were given only 24 hours to get ready, being allowed to take only a suitcase of things, and hundreds of kilometers were forced to walk. “You know, it’s not worth mentioning this,” the Szczecin mayor shyly remarks to me. "Things like that spoil our good relationship with Germany." Well, yes, they poke us with any trifle in the face, but it is a sin to offend the Germans.
Personally, I am interested in justice in this matter. It has already reached schizophrenia: when a person in Eastern Europe says that the victory of the USSR over Nazism is liberation, he is considered either a fool or a traitor. Guys, let's be honest. If the consequences of May 9, 1945 are so bad, illegal and terrible, then all other actions of the USSR during that period are no better. Could the decisions of those who brought tyranny to your land be good? Therefore, Poland should give Silesia, Pomerania and Prussia back to the Germans, Ukraine should return its western part to the Poles, Chernivtsi - to the Romanians, Transcarpathia - the Hungarians, Lithuania - to abandon Vilnius and Klaipeda, Romania - from Transylvania, the Czech Republic - from the Sudetenland and Teshin, Bulgaria - from Dobruja … And then everything will be absolutely honest. But where there. They cover us on what the light stands, they accuse us of all mortal sins,however, Stalin's "gifts" were seized with a stranglehold. Sometimes you just want to imagine: I wonder what would have happened if Hitler's USSR had been thrown exactly to its borders and did not look further into Europe? What would now remain of the territories of those countries that, before the 70th anniversary of the Victory, call their liberation by Soviet troops "occupation"? The answer, however, is extremely simple - horns and legs.
Residents of the Polish Lublin and soldiers of the Soviet Army on one of the streets of the city. July 1944. The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Photo: RIA Novosti / Alexander Kapustyansky
Georgy Zotov