History / Give back Lwow to Poland and Kaliningrad to Germany - is it possible? [198]

Thank you irishlodz I was thinking exactly what you said whilst I was reading this thread. Many comparisons can be made between pre-war Lwow/Lviv and Breslau/Wroclaw for example, but the ethnic situations were quite different.The Curzon Line (Polands current eastern border) corresponds quite well to the Ethnic situation at the time, apart from the area around Hrodna (Grodno)- Vilnius (Wilna).

Lwow was indeed a Polish/Jewish island. Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad) and Breslau (Wroclaw) on the other hand were German cities surrounded by ethnic German territory. And by German I mean the language and culture.

So if you disregard the fact that these territorial changes are very unlikely in the first place, it seems more likely that Russia will abandon the historically not Russian (nor Polish, as a matter of fact, Northern East Prussia was never settled by Poles and user: Crow's comment on p2 is wrong- East Prussia was settled by the 'Old Prussians' before the Germans, a baltic people like the Lithuanians so not slavic) Kaliningrad Oblast and return it to Germany rather than Ukraine ceding Lviv, which had a significant Ukranian population around it even before WWII.

History / Give back Lwow to Poland and Kaliningrad to Germany - is it possible? [198]

Please note that I did not deny that Lwow had a mostly Polish population, I said


, emphasis on 'Around'. I did not say IN Lwow, I meant the countryside. This gave Ukraine a legitimate but obviously disputable claim, even before World War II. I'm not trying to say who has a better historical claim, because I don't really know myself (and the creators of Polands boundaries seemed unsure too, there was a line called Curzon B, which included Lviv in Poland but wasn't used), I'm just saying that because Ukraine has a valid historical claim to the area and currently has the area makes any territorial changes very very unlikely- answering the initial question of this thread...

It is correct to say that many towns in western Ukraine did have large Polish populations, this is a common pattern for the type of settlement undertaken by Poles, and by Germans and Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe. You'll find it was a similar situation with Germans in the Greater Poland (Posen/Poznan) area.

History / Give back Lwow to Poland and Kaliningrad to Germany - is it possible? [198]


I shouldn't even reply to anyone who refers to "tribals". And I won't anymore.


Yes.


They lived in the territory and made up a large percentage of the population, and were there before the Poles... claim established.


You'll find that if you examine the history the German settlers in Poland were also invited and that basically all medieval Polish towns either introduced the German Town Law that came with them or were founded with it, such as the Magdeburg or Luebeck laws (In Poland in the form of Neumarkt, Kulm or Danzig laws, for example). This had a significant positive influence on the development of Poland.The partitions came long after that.

And the Kievan Rus was a respectable state much like Poland.

History / Give back Lwow to Poland and Kaliningrad to Germany - is it possible? [198]


We'll I'm just going to say it: The Polish people did not exist before 1919, they magically appeared out of the hidden annals of history, since they could not possibly have existed since Poland did not exist... (!)

Ethnicity has no connection to the existence of a Nation State. There were German and Greek people before the German Empire or the Kingdom of Greece were founded in the 19th century, for example. Nationalism- the idea of having a state based on ethnicity and language- is a very modern one and did not exist about 250 years ago. 'Nationality' (or 'ethnicity') is a modern concept that is often back-dated to apply to people that did did not actually have a national consciousness.

Obviously there were Ukrainians and their ancestors before the modern Ukrainian nation state was founded.

History / Give back Lwow to Poland and Kaliningrad to Germany - is it possible? [198]


I'm sorry my sarcasm was missed. I shouldn't have even tried.

History / Give back Lwow to Poland and Kaliningrad to Germany - is it possible? [198]


Amen, my friend. Amen.