Poland A and Ukraine B. Compare how far Poland has advanced.

Likewise, makes me sick to think about some of the things done by Poles in the past towards Ukrainians.

Neither side is blameless - but we must move on.

Poles weren't as brutal as Ukrainians in the past. my friends dad told me a story from her family , they put a 2 years old girl into boiling water in front of her parents and later cut the people into pieces with a saw in front of the rest of their children

then they cut pregnant woman's belly and stuffed it with stones and threw her into the river.

Polish people are to be blamed too. they did many bad things to Ukrainians as well but they weren't as brutal as Ukrainians.Ukrainians didn't want to just kill people they wanted them to suffer as much as possible before death.

anyway,it's the past.lets make peace.i see more friends in Ukrainians then in some of the western nations and i believe the nowadays Ukrainians would never do it again.neither would Poles do it to Ukrainians

well, they were - but it is long forgotten (only written records survived) past (17th century, Cossack uprisings)

Poland has to make an apologies for every little thing. What about Ukrainians? Instead of that they glorify Bandera and people who were commiting such heinous crimes as ddd mentioned. They are building their national identity on the suffering of Poles.

delphiandomine would you tell to a person whose relativies were killed by Ukrainian nationalists straight into face that this is the lesson for Poles ?!

You are bashing many nationalistic types on this forum. Why not an Ukrainian nationalist who dared to call the horrible atrocities a lesson!?

Ukrainians generally don't glorify Bandera - and a pretty large percentage of them hate him. But even his supporters tend to see him in a historical context - and it doesn't affect day-to-day-relations with Poles. Of course, a fringe loony faction supports everything he did - but they're a minority and not worth talking about.

The thing that most Poles tend to forget is just what Bandera was doing was pretty much an act of desperation - they already had been crushed repeatedly throughout history (far more than Poland ever was) - they had been betrayed by the Poles and subsequently oppressed - really, they were desperate. It doesn't excuse the sheer brutality of Bandera's mob, but in such a situation, can you really blame them? Their only hope was to get rid of all the Poles by any means necessary - and don't forget, Poles were also killing Ukrainians in Wolyn too in revenge.


I'd tell them that it was a direct consequence of centuries of oppression towards the Ukrainian minority. I'd also point at events such as the Lwów pogrom as to why Ukrainians ended up resulting to total brutality in order to try and win freedom. For instance - look at the destruction of the Orthodox churches in Wolyn.

But it's history - although the truth should be told, both sides should be working together to present a common view from both sides.

At least me personally, I look at it not from a "right" and "wrong" view - but rather at why these things happened. The events in Ukraine were an absolute tragedy for everyone - it's still amazing to think about what L'viv would have been today if WW2 never happened, isn't it?

the only 'however' here springing to mind is they could not win any freedom by killing this or that amount of Poles - the leadership of OUN knew that the tides of war have turned by the time of the massacres - meaning the Ukraine would end up exactly in the same spot as in October 1939 (i.e. under the Soviet boot) - perhaps Ukrainian masses did not know that - also after the war most Poles left Ukraine in so called 'repatriations' - perhaps this is not what the leadership of the Ukrainian nationalist movement could have predicted but nevertheless is very ironic


I am not familiar with the subject - could you provide some sources - I am a bit lazy and a bit concerned the search on my own would take plenty of time

The biggest tragedy of Ukraine is that it is governed by Ukrainians.It would have better luck if governed by Russians or Poles or even Austrians.

Many think that Poland was the only or major target of OUN or UPA. No, it wasn't. Today, when I honor UPA soldiers I even don't think of Poles. For me and many others UPA = anti-Soviet resistance.


This is what UPA is for the Ukrainians: people who fought for our independance, for the Ukrainians who were killed in Holodomor. Polish casualties were a consequence of the interwar repressions mostly on the Wolyn population whose lands was taken by Polish osadniks, kids were deprived of education and any perspectives, family members died in prisons, homes destroyed by the war...

What each side should remember instead of arguing about UPA and AK, AL and who killed whom and how brutal it was (fairytales of the Soviets), this is what it was basically about:


Something to think about.


Gumishu, could you elaborate on that one?


I understand that you might be angry with the way Greece pulls the whole EU down with its lazy politics and economy and that maybe it would be better off under the boot of some other country, but give a bit of credit to yourself.

Instantly a headache.

Didn't we reach the consensus about Austrian rule over Slavs on PF? (Torq, for you I will add one wink here, wink! ;))

Had to grin about that one too....maybe Greece would be better off under german rule?

I have no doubt about it :)

To explain quickly, in Lwów in 1918 - there was some sort of mass lawlessness that resulted in the death of something like 250 Ukrainians and a smaller number of Jews. It's a small event in the context of the dying days of WWI and the subsequent trouble Poland had - but still significant -

(worth pointing out by the way - I tend to use the name commonly in use at the time when talking about history - hence Lwów for times before WW2 and L'viv nowadays -seems fair, I think? Although in Poland, I end up using Lwów to Poles anyway...)


Yep - it was pretty much senseless on their part as a military tactic - it just screams of a desperate need to do something, even though it was completely illogical (no matter how bad Poland was, the Russians were far worse).

Of course, nowadays, they have the benefit of a truly Ukrainian territory - but who would have predicted that the Soviet Union would have broken up in such a way?

Likely in some ways.But it would be intolerable.

But for Ukrainians to live under polish or russian rule is tolerable because....?

get back on topic, please.

we don't need to know about silky ribbons. WTF.

A recent pictorial update from the Ukraine from wyborcza:

Somebody shooting at somebody, somebody holding pictures stating that bin laden is alive, some bare breasted women celebrating Victory Day etc.

Seems like right old mess.

the following defence of Ukraine in no way affects my argument that Lwow should never have been stolen from Poland ;-)

its unfair to compare UKR with PL, when you became free in 1989 you had a strong tradition of Independence, a clearly defined sense of nationhood and a free market tradition a mere 50 years previous, which you could build on much like the Baltic states & the Czech Rep.

Ukraine has no such traditions Ukrainians have had to build everything from scratch, thats without even considering the interference from Russia and the Large Russian Population "planted" in the East who oppose every move towards a western future. Ukranian political culture is not fully developed so we can expect more stupid stuff like giving honours to Bandera. but if you compare Ukraine to Kazakhstan, Belarus or Azerbaijan it starts to look positively democratic!

My Country has been guilty of lecturing Ukraine instead of helping them, Poland seems to have got things about right.

I think the best future for the Ukraine would be to ditch the Eastern provinces where Russians are the majority and Become a state with a Ukranian Majority able to chart a European future.

basically, we should give Ukraine time to develop while offering support and encouragement and giving them enough aid to become independant of Russia

Not entirely I read an article that according to a recent poll Ukrainians like us the most, even more than Belorussians and Russians.

That difference is nothing new, it existed before 1989 as well. I wouldn't say that Poland advanced much, advanced some. Why?
Having more potential, being a separated country after all to a degree.
Poles can achieve much if not for oppressive governments and even then.

I was going to say that. For a Soviet citizen grey communist Poland was already a western country.

What wer the relative Incomes per Head before the Collapse of the The Iron Curtain? I think you find that Poland was already a much richer country than Ukraine before the the collapse of Communism.

Do you know anything about Ukrainian economics?

The "Russian" east is the wealthy part. Western Ukraine is crushingly poor, and the language issue also complicates things. In Kyiv, despite being majority Ukrainian, the language of the streets is Russian, not Ukrainian. Western Ukraine is also home to the most nationalistic elements, so that would also hinder growth. Dividing Ukraine is simply a non starter for so many reasons.

Also worth pointing out that many ethnic Russians do not associate themselves with Russia.

maybe they don't think of themselves as Russian but they vote for Moscows Puppet and set back Ukraines development.
i'm partly going by what my mate in Kremenchuk (Central UKR) tells me.

The anti Polish thing is worrying but hopefully just a phase, i think a lot of the elite realise that Poland is their best ally for a European future

if you google Uzghorod, the 1st hit you get is a you tube video put up by a moronic woman who makes anti Polish comments

btw
I seem to have mortally offended a Ukranian member of my radio hobby group by accidentally mentioning Grodno, Brzesc, Lvov etc :D haha i swear it wasn't deliberate!

they need to melt down the Bandera statues and put up Petlura instead!

Merged:

Poland vs. Ukraine development

How would you explain the differences in development between Poland and Ukraine?

Shouldn't that be a proper research with money and staff. They could gather data and run some introductory thesis.

It would be different areas like:

laws,
transparency, corruption level, organized crime, society structure, private ownership structure, agriculture and so on, just from the top of my head. Like Ukrainian historically has been feeding better half of Europe and even in Imperial Russia produced abundance of food. Now I think food prices are higher or the same in the Ukraine than Poland and are oft inferior quality.

Just from the top of my head. However is not a question that can be answered on PF or any other interest forum.

AS I said that should be sorted out by a proper research. You just need to put aside some money for that. Not to look for an answer on a cheap and on your own.

My hypothesis:

Poland divided between Russian, Prussian and Austrian influences during the partitions and independent (to a greater or lesser degree) for longer and Roman Catholic.

Ukraine under direct Russian-Soviet-Russian control and only independent since 1990 or so and Eastern Orthodox.

All the other differences stem directly from those different founding principles, it's the same reason that areas of Poland under Russian control during the partitions (except for the capital) tend to lag behind the rest of the country in terms of socio-economic development - Russian influence is basically never benign.

None of you smarties chose to say anything about the hundreds of billions of EU development funds that Poland received and Ukraine did not. I think a majority of Ukrainians would indicate that as the proximate reason behind the current disparity.

Well cause ignoramus morons put it down to some money. Those money are a big deal for some Ukrainian or western European peasants but in the scale of a country and international economy those money are peanuts. Anyhow if those money were to be given to Ukraine 90% would be gone into private accounts of oligarchs. !0 % would stolen by local bosses.How much money are pumped into some African countries and it all ends up in the hand of very few.

Countries that are enormously rich in ore and oil. Yet general populace has no part in a prosperity.

It's a factor in as much as Poland qualified for EU membership (which has requirements about governmental transparency) back in 2004 and Ukraine is nowhere close to that because of the all-pervasive corruption which the choice of individual Ukrainians...

That's because Poland reformed when Ukraine didn't, in the 1990's. Ukraine was ahead of Poland in 1990, it had quite a few advantages that Poland didn't, and they blew it. For instance, Poland lost the COMECON markets and didn't have the benefit of a common language with a huge trading partner next door. Ukraine was more urbanised than Poland, exports were higher, yet Ukraine now is a basketcase compared to Poland.

Most observer seem to agree that the main cause was Ukrainian unwillingness to make painful reforms while Poland did just that. Even when they did make reforms, they ended up being used and abused anyway.