Seriously though, all of these russophobic eastern european countries are like: "Russia took our lands".
First of all, it was not Russia but USSR who took your lands; second, USSR did not give these lands to Russia (even in the form of RSFSR) but to other russophobic eastern european countries.
You are grown-ups now. Sort it out between yourselves.
Russia is officially the successor state of the USSR. So legally yes, the USSR is Russia in so far as anyone cares for the purposes of assigning blame.
I don't really want to get involved in this argument, but I think this is a situation where there's just a little bit of missing historical background that might help you two understand one another. What the upstream commenter is referring to is the fact that the land that was historically eastern Poland isn't part of Russia now -- it's part of Ukraine and Belarus. Sure, the USSR (of which Russia is the successor state) is what performed that land transfer, but the land was not transferred to what is now Russia.
> the land that was historically eastern Poland isn't part of Russia now -- it's part of Ukraine and Belarus
The Belarussian / Polish border today is almost exactly the border between Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. So "historically eastern Poland" is not right there. Some like to think of the whole Commonwelth as Poland, which really dominated there. But in this case whole Belarus and Ukraine are "eastern Poland".
That's what poles tried to restore when got chance to recreate their state after WWI, as I understand. The full commonwealth. But only got to the borders we know as the pre-1939 Poland.
BTW, Ukraine is mostly the part of the GDL annexed by the Kingdom of Poland during the Union of Lublin. The todays Belarus / Ukraine border goes by this line.
They (USSR was Russian-lead) were literally allied with Nazi-Germany and agreed to split Europe with them. They executed 20000+ Polish people in Katyn alone.
USSR was actually much worse than Nazi Germany. They had much more time to do bad things.
And even if we only account WWII timeline, people in territories between Germany and USSR preferred to be conquered by Germans, purely because their soldiers were more disciplined than the ones from USSR (which were just peasants, frequently even without boots, equipped with weapons).
Are you a Jew that was there during the start of WW2?
Russians (USSR, potato-potato) at that time were exterminating most of people that had any kind of education - because those were potential "traitors".
Most Jews were intelligence class, which was considered enemy of the "working class".
Imagine you are a Jew. Would you prefer to stay in the Soviet occupation zone and try your luck, or would you choose the Nazi zone (because what can go wrong, isn't it in the EU).
Indeed, many of eastern european countries used the period of Nazi occupation to get rid of as many jews and gypsies as possible. I'm not going to point fingers but you should double-check your history.
> Indeed, many of eastern european countries used the period of Nazi occupation to get rid of as many jews and gypsies as possible. I'm not going to point fingers but you should double-check your history.
Not countries, but stupid people. There a lot of those that envy others.
Same happened in Soviet occupation but for different reasons. Either way EE was f**ed. Check why there were so many Jews in Eastern Europe when comparing to Western (they found save place here because they weren't so much persecuted like in the West).
Which is tragic considering that the Nazis did not see any future for those people other than dead or slaves.
Somehow people forget that the Nazis wanted to kill or enslave all Slavs[1] within their "lebensraum" territories.
[1] They also considered Estonians and Finns as "Mongoloids" and as such subhuman although both were elevated to "Aryan" status following the winter war.
Nazis wanted to enslave Slavs, not kill them. USSR wanted to kill anyone that had above elementary school education - basically killing the head. Which was much better end strategy, because there wouldn't be anyone to revolt.
If you focus only on the non-jewish civilian population of Poland, then I guess you could argue Soviet was worse... But in any larger context, Nazi-Germany were much, much worse.
By larger context you mean what?
Choosing between Jew or Polish population?
Or maybe lets see what happened in Ukraine which was under USSR occupation before the WW2 - Holodomor which resulted in up to 3 - 5.5 million people dead, which is close to Holocaust numbers.
When Soviet army marched everyone hid their daughters and wifes, to this day our grandparents tell stories how they were in the basements, or escaped to the west just not to be taken by Soviet soldiers.
On the other hand some parts of Poland were consider by Nazis as their land and they didn't rape or kill citizens, but they had obligatory conscription of capable man - many of them tried to hide and died if they were found.
I am 100% in agreement with you about the atrocities commited by the Soviet Union, which clearly spills over on how they act today (still raping, torturing, executing civilians etc - and it seems acceptable and encouraged in their military culture).
I would just argue that Nazi-germany's industrial-scale extermination of jews, homosexuals, handicapped etc is still worse. Anyway - it is arguing semantics and definitions. :)
With regards to eastern territories, Poland may reclaim some of those right now if it is insistent :)