User talk:Richardshusr/Post-WWII Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe

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[edit] Fresh start

OK, now we have an article with an encyclopedic scope in front of us and the soapbox thankfully out of the way, how about finding the name that would best reflect its scope. Maybe the Soviet post-WWII geopolitical expansion in Eastern Europe. Richard, what do you think? --Irpen 00:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I get your point but the proposed title is too long. How about Soviet expansionism in Eastern Europe? I would wager that there is some linkage between the pre-WWII expansionism and the post-WWII expansionism. After all, the Soviet-Finnish War and the partition of Poland in 1939 are examples of pre-WWII expansionism. This is perhaps POV but I don't think the SU occupied Eastern Europe just as an accidental development of conquering Germany. I think the defeat of Germany gave them the opportunity to do something that they always wanted to do.

In fact, if the Soviets had reached the Rhine before the Allies, all of Germany would have been Communist instead of just half. And if the Allies hadn't withdrawn their troops from eastern Germany, more of Germany would have been free and democratic for the last half of the 20th century. But such is history.

--Richard 00:38, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't quite agree with your premise but I agree with your conclusion. As far as "they always wanted to do" this is not entirely correct, at least they "wanted" Eastern Europe no more than any country "wants" to get something if it can but there was no aggressive foreign policy doctrine in Russia since at least mid-1920 until the immediate pre-WWII developments.

Once the Soviets abandoned the concept of the World Revolution and embraced the concepts of peaceful coexistence (in early 1920s) their primary concern was the preservation of the status quo, that is to manage to create and sustain the communist regime in the capitalist (and largely anti-Communist environment). The last major European conflict for the Soviets before the interwar peace was the war with Poland and that war was not for the territory. In fact Lenin who desperately needed a stability at the borders, as the Bolsheviks had enough to worry in the internal civil war, had offered Pilsudski a larger chunk of Ukraine and Belarus than the final interwar borders drawn by the Peace of Riga. Pilsudski, however, was not satisfied with absorption of Western Ukraine into Poland and wanted to cleave the rest of Ukraine from the Soviets and create a Polish-dominated megastate. So, he invaded further eastward towards the Dnieper Ukraine. That invasion was a disaster and following the string of victories all the way into Poland the Bolsheviks got the smell of subjugating Poland as well. As we know, it was the Soviet's turn to experience a disaster and the war ended pretty much with the pre-Polish invasion status-quo.

Since that time, there are no indication of the Soviets plotting a westward geopolitical expansion all the way until the expansionism of Germany created a Europe-wide turmoil and Soviets, like everyone in Europe (Poland, Hungary, Germany) tried to exploit instability to solve the long standing territorial issues to their advantage and annexed Baltics, W. UA/BE, Bessarabia and Bukovina. The further developments of the WWII brought victorious Soviets the opportunity to project their influence further westwards through getting an entire Eastern Europe into their political orbit. So, the pre- and post-war expansions can be studied together as they are part of the same process, the mid-20th century turmoil in started by expansionist Germany and ended with the Soviets as the greatest winner. With Digwuren's random additions of Afghanistan and other whatnots being out of the way, we can make this article even featured one day. --Irpen 02:59, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• You know maybe I got suckered into adding Mongolia by someone pushing a point, but at the time the article wasn't limited just to Eastern Europe. And it's discouraging to hear questions and edits made in good faith disparaged as random or useless whatnots. Canuckle 03:47, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I wrote anything that gored your ox. I don't think your edits were "random or useless". They were just inappropriate in an article titled "Post-WWII Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe". Moreover, I do think the concept of "Soviet expansionism" is an encyclopedic topic. The problem is that everyone seems to be wrapped up in adding details or fighting over titles instead of actually writing contextual information to help the reader understand how the disparate pieces fit together and what the overarching concepts are.

In the Soviet occupations article, we need to understand better why the Soviets expanded into Eastern Europe, Mongolia, the Kuril islands and Afghanistan. The reason that I prefer the title Soviet expansionism is that it would allow us to expand the scope to include instances where the Soviets did not actually occupy a country but attempted to expand at another country's expense. I am thinking of the Soviet experience in Iran and Turkey during the Truman administration.

--Richard 04:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Well thanks for the apology. No hard feelings. I was actually responding to the last line of Irpen's comment. I do have to say that 'the Mongolia doesn't fit in E.Europe' is beside the point as Mongolia was added when the articel was about the much broader topic of Soviet occupation. Only later did the head-spinning title fight begin. Sounds to me like expansionism and occupation are different enough that they may require separate articles. Canuckle 21:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name

The name should be changed to "... of Central and Eastern Europe" or something like that.

A note to Bornholm: whether the stay of Soviet trops could be called occupation (on the same level as others in this article) is a question - they generally allowed local authorities to exercise all of their powers. An introduction for an overview article is on [1]. Pavel Vozenilek 01:28, 17 September 2007 (UTC)