Talk:Polish-Russian War

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Although I know on my own experience how difficult it is to argue with dozens Polish editors, who always vote for each other, nevertheless here go my comments:

  • The term is also sometimes applied to the Polish defense against Soviet Union and Germany during the Polish Defensive War
    • Applied by whom, sorry? This is absolutely incorrect, because there was no Russian state in 1939. The country was run by two Georgians and a bunch of Jews, who had to take the national interests of Belarus and Ukraine into account. --Ghirlandajo 17:09, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Ghirlandajo, first of all, I believe your arguments would be much easier to follow if you spared us the preamble. Really, it's nice that you started to use talk pages and there's no need to offend other people or create conflicts when there are none.
As to your arguments, I believe you got it all wrong. This page is not to decide whether certain conflicts were indeed wars between two states, namely Poland and Russia, without any other parties involved. IMO such pages are to list either the conflicts that could be described as a Ruso-Polish War or the conflicts that indeed are at times called as such in sources. Take a look at Battle of Warsaw, which perfectly explains what I am talking about. So, in other words, whether there was an independent state of Russia in 1939 is quite irrelevant as the war is indeed at times called as such - though mostly by Polish authors. And yes, the country used to be called Soviet Russia eventhough it was in fact USSR.
As to the conflicts that are ommitted - be bold and add them, I clearly mentioned in the edit history that this list is by no means complete. I merely created a stub out of my head, add more if you feel they fit.
As to the wars of 1605-1618 - indeed, we might call them a war since there was an armed conflict. We might also call them an intervention, invasion, conflict, struggle, or any other name.
As to the Smolensk War - indeed we could shorten the name, though personally I see no need to.
The War of the Polish Succession was indeed quite a complicated case, but there was pretty much Pol-Rus fighting involved so I decided to list it here.
As to the War in Defence of the Constitution - I doubt it has a name of its own in modern Russian. The name indeed reflects the Polish perspective, but alternatively we could call it War Against the Constitution if you prefer the Russian side. Or perhaps create a redirect? Halibutt 00:43, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Using Google Books I cannot find the term Russo-Polish War used for the 1939 conflict. Nonetheless the question is should we list all Polish-Russian cofnlicts here, or only wars? If only wars, then for example Uprisings must go, too. Also, is this the right name for the dismabig? Google books search:

Russian-Polish War 10 books
Polish-Russian War 10 books
Russo-Polish War 10 books
Polish-Russo War none
Polish-Muscovite War 2 books

Russian is a more popular adjective to Russo, so the correct order and term should be Russian-Polish War.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:17, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

You should've searched for Polono-Russian War instead of Polish-Russo War :). It sounds similar to Wojna Polska-Radziecko in Polish...
As to Ghirlandajo's commenting out of my addition of the war of 1939 to the list - I personally do not use the term (as I prefer the Polish Defensive War myself), but it is used in at least one serious source: Ryszard Szawłowski (Karol Liszewski), Wojna polsko-sowiecka 1939, Warszawa 1995 (1988), who uses the term of Polish-Russian war as a replacement for the Polish-Soviet War. So no, contrary to what Ghirlandajo suggests, it's not only "Polish prop booklets nobody but me reads". Halibutt 02:39, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Ok, I'm not going to join the revert war just because someone wants it. On the other hand a word of explanation on why do we ignore this source would be nice. And no, Ghirlandajo's "No Polish booklets" comment is not an explanation for me. Halibutt 20:18, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
"Polish-Soviet"/Soviet-Polish would be OK. Still, Polish September Campaign clearly states that there was not any "war" on the Soviet front: it was just annexation. Of course, this is hair splitting, but the term "war" normally assumes notable mutual hostilities. Otherwise other terms are used: e.g., "invasion", to stress the one-sided character of the event. Finally, this is an English language wikipedia; I am not aware of significant English usage of the term in application to 1939, and there is no reason to propagate incorrect terminology. mikka (t) 20:59, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for noting that, I'll fix the article to mention the Polish-Russian hostilities as well (as there were plenty of them, not in such scale as against the Germans, but still pretty much fighting). It was definitely not as one-sided as commie propaganda tried to portray it. Even in Poland during the 45 years of communism there was barely a mention of the battles against the Soviets, as the USSR was to be peacefully defending the peoples of Poland against the Nazis... In reality, despite Rydz-Śmigły's orders, there were some 50 major and minor battles between the Soviets and Poles in 1939. The biggest was Władysław Anders' attempt to break through at Władypol, I believe. There were also some 40 clashes of the KOP and later the SGO Polesie under Orlik-Rueckemann. The latter also took part in two major battles at Szack and Wytyczno.
Also, it is to be noted that the Russian wiki article is named Советско-польская война 1939 года. Halibutt 11:58, 9 December 2005 (UTC)