The Miracle at the Vistula River

Victor,

whether you see it related to your site or not; the Polish "miracle at the
Wisła" is no longer about their surviving a Red atttack, it is the Polish
stopping the Reds from conquering Europe.... in the vision of the Polish
majority.

The Polish started their expansionist war against Russia to get their
former teritories back, to restore the Great Polish Empire. Within the
Polish community, some were fervent "Germany haters, others Russia haters..

Russia!!! Not the Sowjets as the latter was hardly a known concept nor was
communism as we think about it now. The Polish may have had some ideas
abouth the jewish socialists like Róża Luksemburg who they considered to
be non-Polish [as they continued doing so, you may have the Polish
citizenship as a Jew but you will never be a Pole! [narodowość vs
obywatelstwo]).

Poland started the war, not Russia!

You started your page with Feliks Dżierżyński as if he was the auctor
intellectualis of the Miracle. You are known as a fervent commie-basher,
no problem, but this is a hell of Propaganda site! Pure KomProp!

pozdrawiam, Rein

Op Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:31:35 +0100 schreef Victor Manta
:

"Rein" wrote in message
news
Victor,

A great bit of Polish chauvinism! Pilsudski attacked the Reds wanting
to
get Lithuania, Belorus and the Ukraine back
into the Great Polish Empire! Nothing to do with saving Europe from
communism! He could have succeeded had not the
Red Army forced him backwards.

Op Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:33:58 +0100 schreef rodney iprimus.com.au
"pookiethai"@NOSPAM:

Hello Rein,
any recommended reading on this?
Thanks.

"
Rein" wrote in message
news
Rodney,

more or less the same source that Victor comes up with first!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Warsaw_(1920)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev_Offensive_(1920)

OK, let's read a bit more from the sources:

"The 1920 Kiev Offensive (or Kiev Operation), sometimes considered to
have
started the Soviet-Polish War, was an attempt by the newly re-emerged
Poland, led by Józef Pilsudski, to seize central and eastern Ukraine,
torn
in the warring among various factions, both domestic and foreign, from
Soviet control. ...
A major military operation, this campaign was conducted from April to
June
1920 by the Polish Army in alliance with the forces of the Ukrainian
People's Republic under the exiled nationalist leader Symon Petliura,
opposed by the Soviets who claimed those territories for the Ukrainian
SSR
and whose Red Army also included numerous Ukrainians in its ranks."

"The frontiers between Poland and Soviet Russia had not been defined in
the
Treaty of Versailles and post-war events created turmoil: the Russian
Revolution of 1917; the crumbling of the Russian, German and Austrian
empires; the Russian Civil War; the Central Powers' withdrawal from the
eastern front; and the attempts of Ukraine and Belarus to establish their
independence. Poland's Chief of State, Józef Pilsudski, felt the time
expedient to expand Polish borders as far east as feasible, to be
followed
by the creation of a Polish-led federation (Miedzymorze) of several
states
in the rest of East-Central Europe as a bulwark against the potential
re-emergence of both German and Russian imperialism. Lenin, meanwhile,
saw
Poland as the bridge that the Red Army would have to cross in order to
assist other communist movements and help conduct other European
revolutions."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War
I still don't see how all this contradicts anything that I've written on
my
page:
http://www.reds-on.postalstamps.biz/...at-vistula.htm

where I actually cited the same Wikipedia.

Rein's exclamation: "Nothing to do with saving Europe from communism!" is
unrelated to my page, because it doesn't come from me, and because at
Warsaw in 1920 the main problem of Poles was to saves themselves from the
communist Russia, and not to save the Europe :-)

Anyway, if Poland survived by a miracle in 1920, Ukraine and Belarus
weren't
so lucky. And on 17th of September 1939 the Soviet troops came again to
the
Poland's Eastern frontier, provoked by anybody, and then stayed for
"good"
in Poland or controlled it during about a half of a century. Just by
curiosity, doesn't this historical evolution gives reason to a certain
Pilsudski, call him chauvinist or how do you want?




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Op Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:36:50 +0100 schreef Victor Manta
:
Victor,

you want to read what you want to read, and you can say the same about me.
Poland was a major player in European history and once had its empire
stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea "międzymorze" or "between the
seas". That empire got lost by the internal corruption of the Polish elite
who did not give a damn about their peasants. They preferred to be on good
terms with the rulers of the neighbouring countries and eventually
sacrificed Poland....


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territo...nges_of_Poland

in which you may find:

"Poland, whose statehood had just been re-established by the Treaty of
Versailles following the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century,
sought to secure territories it had lost at the time of partitions."

Piłsudksi may have dreamt about the restoration of that great empire and
found the opportunity when he thought that the civil war in Russia had
made his opponents weak.

Had Ukrainia ever been an independent nation before?? Or White Russia???
So what country - east of Poland - could Piłsudski have attacked???
Indirectly????

Piłsudski wasn't the only Pole trying to restore the Great Polish Empire!
Lucjan Żeligowski recaptured Wilno for the Poles! And what had Lithuania
- then an independent country - to do with the Red Threat???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucjan_%C5%BBeligowski


Poland did everything to annoy its neighbours - Lithuania see above and
Czechoslowakia (Cieszyn area a.o.):

"As Czechoslovakia was being dissolved Zaolzie, the Czech half of Cieszyn,
was annexed by Poland in 1938 following the Munich Agreement and the First
Vienna Award. At noon on 30 September, Poland gave an ultimatum to the
Czechoslovak government. It demanded the immediate evacuation of Czech
troops and police from Zaolzie and gave Prague time until noon the
following day. At 11:45 a.m. on 1 October the Czech foreign ministry
called the Polish ambassador in Prague and told him that Poland could have
what it wanted. The Germans were delighted with this outcome. They were
happy to give up the Zaolzie provincial rail centre to Poland; it was a
small sacrifice indeed. It spread the blame of the dissolution of
Czechoslovakia, made Poland a seeming accomplice in the process and
confused the issue as well as political expectations. Poland was accused
of being an accomplice of Nazi Germany – a charge that Warsaw was hard put
to deny.[58]

The dismemberment of Czechoslovakia

Poland also seized more land from northern Spisz and northern Orawa such
as the territories around Suchá Hora and Hladovka, around Javorina, and in
addition the territory around Lesnica in the Pieniny Mountains, a small
territory around Skalité and some other very small border regions (they
officially received the territories on 1 November 1938. After seizing the
land special Polish military groups began to carry out assimilation of the
population. Polish was introduced as the only official language and the
Slovak Intelligence were displaced from the territories.[59] and would
continue doing so for a long time...."

found in the same Wiki about the territorial changes...


And you haven't explained yet why Feliks Dżierżyński is heading your
Miracle page!

groetjes, Rein


OK, the time came to summarize and to draw conclusions.

I've published on my Communism on Stamps site a philatelic page about the
Miracle on the Vistula:
http://www.reds-on.postalstamps.biz/...at-vistula.htm

On it I (or more precisely Wikipedia speak about the desperate Polish
defense against an enemy who penetrated Poland till its capital and that
was
ready to finish with the Polish state. By "Miracle" the things turned
differently, and Poland could preserve its newly got independency, for a
short period though, between 1920 and 1939. Then Poland was for 5 years
partially occupied by the same enemy, and after that totally
occupied/controlled for another 45 years (1944-1989) by it.

A Polish statesman named Pilsudsky understood very well the permanent
danger
for its country, that was represented by the German and the Soviet
imperialism, and he tried "the creation of a Polish-led federation
(Miedzymorze) of several states in the rest of East-Central Europe as a
bulwark against the potential re-emergence of both German and Russian
imperialism." I'm citing here again Wikipedia, the source explicitly
given
by Rein as his source too.

When reading these sources, I could not find confirmations of Rein's
assertion: "Pilsudski attacked the Reds wanting to get Lithuania,
Belorus
and the Ukraine back into the Great Polish Empire!". Just to mention that
this empire ended over 100 years before the events that we are
discussing.

I couldn't find confirmation of the idea that Poland directly attacked
the
Russian territory either. I'm mentioning again that the neighbors of
Poland
were Ukraine and Belarus, and that they were struggling at that time for
their own independence (from Russia), with help from different allies,
in a
situation in which the frontiers weren't established by an international
treaty.

My page is not related to such Rein's red herrings ("a deliberate
attempt to
divert a process of enquiry by changing the subject" - Wikipedia; has
nothing to do with the reds as "... the vision of the Polish majority"
(established how and qualified by whom?), but only to what really
happened
in 1920. I'm not concerned in our context with another Rein's red herring
either, the ethnicity and citizenship of Rosa Luxemburg.

I nowhere expressed or implied on my page the strange idea that the
chekist
no. 1 named Dzerzhinsky "was the auctor intellectualis of the Miracle".

Finally, it is interesting to notice what found Rein (a great
connoisseur in
stamps technicalities but obviously not in the history of communism or in
intellectual discussions) as a mean to justify his assertions, the ones
that
his own sources don't confirm. Actually nothing better than the old,
worn-up
and intellectually dishonest ad hominem argumentum: "You are known as a
fervent commie-basher, ...". Even if this statement would be true (and it
isn't, but I wont discuss it, because my person isn't the subject of this
thread, and it should be of none!), Rein, like anyone else on a
discussion
group, has to demonstrate that his particular assertions are correct.




--
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Victor,

I still can not follow you why Feliks should open your page??! If it were
just to show there were USSR related stamps issued in Poland and that
would happpily stop soon, may be I will get it? But what intrigues me is
why Poland did not wait another 5 year They did issue a stamp to
commemorate that event though! So Felix Feliks .....

Tuchaczewski is an obvious choice for your page and you may have to look
for Weygand or Haller but definitely Charles de Gaulle ought to be on your
page!!!! And what about George Curzon??? Poland never accepted the Curzon
line ....

groetjes, Rein


Op Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:52:28 +0100 schreef Victor Manta
:

VM:
OK, the time came to summarize and to draw conclusions.

I've published on my Communism on Stamps site a philatelic page about
the
Miracle on the Vistula:
http://www.reds-on.postalstamps.biz/...at-vistula.htm

A Polish statesman named Pilsudsky understood very well the permanent
danger
for its country, that was represented by the German and the Soviet
imperialism, and he tried "the creation of a Polish-led federation
(Miedzymorze) of several states in the rest of East-Central Europe as
a
bulwark against the potential re-emergence of both German and Russian
imperialism." I'm citing here again Wikipedia, the source explicitly
given by Rein as his source too.

When reading these sources, I could not find confirmations of Rein's
assertion: "Pilsudski attacked the Reds wanting to get Lithuania,
Belorus
and the Ukraine back into the Great Polish Empire!". Just to mention
that
this empire ended over 100 years before the events that we are
discussing.

I couldn't find confirmation of the idea that Poland directly attacked
the
Russian territory either. I'm mentioning again that the neighbors of
Poland
were Ukraine and Belarus, and that they were struggling at that time
for
their own independence (from Russia), with help from different allies,
in a
situation in which the frontiers weren't established by an
international
treaty.

I nowhere expressed or implied on my page the strange idea that the
chekist
no. 1 named Dzerzhinsky "was the auctor intellectualis of the Miracle".


"Rein" wrote in message
news
Op Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:36:50 +0100 schreef Victor Manta
:
snip for brevity, and parts of my previous posting too

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territo...nges_of_Poland

in which you may find:

"Poland, whose statehood had just been re-established by the Treaty of
Versailles following the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century,
sought to secure territories it had lost at the time of partitions."

Pilsudksi may have dreamt about the restoration of that great empire and
found the opportunity when he thought that the civil war in Russia had
made his opponents weak.

Had Ukrainia ever been an independent nation before?? Or White Russia???
So what country - east of Poland - could Pilsudski have attacked???
Indirectly????

snip Lucjan Zeligowski
snip Czechoslowakia (Cieszyn area a.o.):
snip territorial changes...

And you haven't explained yet why Feliks Dzierzynski is heading your
Miracle page!

We both agree with Wikipedia that the new, independent Poland tried after
1917 to secure its borders.

I notice that you have expressed more cautiously your previous assertion
about Pilsudski's intentions. You speak now about his dreams, still
without
citing sources. I cannot read dreams, and even less those of dead persons
:-), and anyway I'm trying to stick to facts. I continue to believe,
after
having read (and cited) the sources, that he wanted to secure the Polish
borders against the Russian and German imperialisms. No doubts that the
later events (1939 ++) have proved him right!

The history of Ukraine, especially the chapters related to its over the
centuries struggles for liberty, are complex but nevertheless very
interesting. Not to underestimate is its anthem: "Ukraine's glory has not
perished, nor her freedom" (that I sung, in Ukrainian of course, when I
was
a schoolboy).
A good start is he http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine

The fact that Ukraine is a free and independent country today (as big
parts
of it were in the distant past) is not a result of some modern evolutions
but it is based on a long history of desires and fights for become
independent of Russia. May I assure you that as well the Russians as the
Ukrainians know, as they knew for a long time, where starts Ukraine and
where ends "mother" Russia.

About how was treated Ukraine shortly after it became part of the USSR is
described on my philatelic page:
http://www.reds-on.postalstamps.biz/...kr-famines.htm
You may treat is as "...this is a hell of Propaganda site! Pure KomProp!"
but this won't change the described facts.

In what concerns the presence of the Polish and the Soviet Dzerzhinsky's
stamps on my page:
http://www.reds-on.postalstamps.biz/...at-vistula.htm

I have thought that this sentence from my page explains it: "The times
fortunately changed in 1989, when Poland liberated itself from the
imposed
"protection" of its powerful neighbor; its stamps changed accordingly."
Maybe you have overlooked it. If it isn't the case, explain me please
what
is still unclear and I will then try to improve the wording.




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