From another POV: those two week later Poland as a state didn't exist, the former Polish government was in exile, and USSR took back territories that Poland took from USSR in the 1919-1921 Polish-Soviet war.
2nd Polish republic was established after WW1, so there was no Polish ground. The border was supposed to be Curzon line (exactly that line, that USSR took back in 1939), but the Poles were gunning for more, hence the 1919-1921 war.
If you consider Polish ground whatever was high mark of Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, then good luck with that. It was empire building in the making, they overstretched and didn't make it. It is no Polish ground exactly in the same sense, that Balkan is not Turkish either.
> 2nd Polish republic was established after WW1, so there was no Polish ground
Versailes declaration (FR, UK, IT), with support of Polish statehood - June 1918 /
End of WW1 - November, 1918 /
2nd Polish Republic established - November, 1918 /
Start of Polish-Sovet war - February, 1919
Polish statehood is not the same as the polish territory at a convenient point of time.
After Versailles, the Poland was established on the territory of Germany, Austro-Hungarian empire and Russian empire. However, the Russian empire part was supposed to be up to the Curzon line.
Instead, the Poles went opportunistic far behind it. What they gained in the war (because Soviets were weak at the time), they lost in the war 20 years later (table has turned, they were weak at the time).
Not that they didn't similar things elsewhere; they had to annex parts of Czechoslovakia too (1919-1920).
Sorry, I don't have sympathy when a conqueror loses whatever they conquered.
- The territorial gains of Poland in 1919-1920 materialized, because it won a war started by the Soviet Union
- Curzon line was proposed/described only in 1920
- Those lands (that you described as conquered and re-conquered) weren't Russian etnically, more like Belarusian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Ruthenian
- (edit) The secret pact (Germany-USSR) didn't say Soviet union will recover the territorial gains from 1920-1921, but that it will occupy Eastern Poland (east of Vistula River), making it effectively partition of Poland, so no Curzon line here too.
PS: Please reply if you'd like, and EOT for me. This whole centithread started because I wanted to display that the current Russian historiography is heavily biased (way more than other "western" countries) towards minimizing its own misdeeds, and portraying them as innocent, normal or justified.
> Piłsudski also said:
Closed within the boundaries of the 16th century, cut off from the Black Sea and Baltic Sea, deprived of land and mineral wealth of the South and South-east, Russia could easily move into the status of second-grade power. Poland as the largest and strongest of new states, could easily establish a sphere of influence stretching from Finland to the Caucasus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish–Soviet_War
I can't see Poland in good light here - same imperial attitude, same old flows in ethnic politics. Same as Russia.
As for the pact
> The terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 provided for the partition of Poland along the line of the San, Vistula and Narew rivers which did not go along Curzon Line but reached far beyond it and awarded the Soviet Union with territories of Lublin and near Warsaw.
PS: I've replied only because I wanted to display that the comment is heavily biased (way more than other "western" countries) towards minimizing its own misdeeds, and portraying them as innocent, normal or justified.
Didn't "Weak" Poland survive longer fighting a two-front war than France did in its single-front war? And for the remainder of the war, escaped Poles fought for Britain and other allies.
> USSR took back territories that Poland took from USSR in the 1919-1921 Polish-Soviet war
Essentially, Poland was occupying these territories between 1921 and 1939. Also, Poland had a dictatorship (quite typical in Europe at that time) and they were highly aggressive with respect to their neighbors: Polish-Ukrainian War (1918–19), Polish-Lithuanian War (1920, culminating in Żeligowski's Mutiny), Polish-Czechoslovak border conflicts (beginning in 1918).
It had authoritarianism (with many democratic elements in place) since 1926 (way way more liberal than that of Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany). Before that it was fully democratic (though, chaotic).
As for the conflicts you'd decribed, some of them were conflicts without clear aggressor (e.g. Polish-Czechoslovak conflicts of 1918) typical of those times, some were misdeeds of Polish state (annexation of Vilnus and Czechoslovakian Zaolzie in 1938).
This is an absolutely non valid POV. The Polish government still existed back on the 17th of September when the USSR invaded, and Russia and Poland has signed a treaty of non-aggression that was renewed for 10 years in 1934 and was still claimed to be valid by both parties back in 1938.
There's no way you can deny that the USSR invaded a state of Poland that still existed and was still fighting against aggressors right when Russia troops passed the frontier.
Note that your comment is actually pure propaganda from Staline's himself (this is exactly what the USSR claimed when they invaded Poland, and they presented themselves as liberators and protectors instead of invaders). Of course, you should know better than to trust the communist propaganda.
#/media/File:Republic_of_Poland_in_mid_November_1918.PNG){kind=link}
PS: In 1919, it was USSR who fought the war on Polish ground, and lost. I don't think you'll find too much material to play moral high ground here.