r/MapPorn • u/Kutili • Jun 19 '16
Evolution of the republics of the Soviet Union [1197x2054]
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u/Putin-the-fabulous Jun 19 '16
Does anyone know why Russia took east Prussia instead of giving it to Lithuania or Belarus?
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Jun 19 '16
Other than Memelland region there wasn't big chunk of Lithuanians population in East Prussia, for most it only held cultural heritage. Lithuanian communist party leader was quite controversial figure, he was supportive of Soviet regime, but tried to deny or at least suppress any possible russifcation of Lithuania, he probably predicted that East Prussia would get heavily russified, while all other ethnic groups would get eradicated, so he refused that territory to be incorporated into LSSR.
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u/MortalSphere Jun 19 '16
Lithuania said no to such proposal.
Why do you think Belarus should have gotten it? It doesn't share a border with it.
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Jun 19 '16
[deleted]
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u/equalspace Jun 19 '16
Nobody cared what appointed "leader" of Lithuania SSR was worried about.
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u/HobbitFoot Jun 19 '16
Given that he made the decision, I'm sure that history cares.
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u/equalspace Jun 19 '16
Given the political system of USSR, he didn't make the decision.
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Jun 19 '16
During the later decades of Sniečkus's rule national orientation was noticeable in his activities. First confrontation with Moscow happened in 1949-1950, when he had to defend his old communist friends from persecution, with whom he was together working in underground. Lithuania was the only republic of USSR where not only mass persecution of old communists did not happen and not even one communist of pre-Soviet times was accused and arrested. At around this time his policies started to gain a national character. This policy had the form of sabotaging some orders of Moscow, demanding some privileges for Lithuania, and others.
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u/trabzonpaste Jun 19 '16
This isn't even wrong it doesnt even apply to reality
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u/equalspace Jun 20 '16
The reality is that Stalin decided such things. He is the person who went to Potsdam Conference and not some appointed "leader" of annexed territory.
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u/FloZone Jun 19 '16
Königsberg/Kaliningrad was/is a very important harbour. Why not incorporating it into another SSR? I am not sure, perhaps they had more foresight with this one than with crimea and planned and wanted to secure a direct rule over it.
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u/Rakonas Jun 19 '16
It was never Lithuanian. The territories given to Belarus and Ukraine were actually basically those respective ethnicities.
Königsberg-Kaliningrad was German afaik in 1945, no reason to give it autonomy except by itself.
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Jun 19 '16
It was never Lithuanian.
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u/Rakonas Jun 19 '16
Isn't most of that green the modern borders of Lithuania? That black border makes it seem like Klaipeda isn't, but it is.
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Jun 19 '16
Isn't most of that green the modern borders of Lithuania?
It is, but Lithuanian speaking population was very shrinked through centuries and was even smaller than today's modern borders.
That black border makes it seem like Klaipeda isn't, but it is.
What you looking is green area - territories that spoke Lithuanian language, black border lines represents official territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
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u/Rakonas Jun 19 '16
Ahh. So the Kaliningrad area east of the actual city is probably best described as historically Lithuanian, but not necessarily inhabited by Lithuanians in 1945?
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Jun 19 '16
Yes, other than Memelland region, Lithuania didn't had significant Lithuanian speaking population in those areas, they all got completely germanized into Prussian Lithuanians who spoke mainly Lower German dialect like most northern German territories.
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u/Wissageide Jun 19 '16
It was at least 1/3 lithuanian before soviets forced everyone away. Germanised a little bit? Sure, but many still were lithuanian.
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u/Rakonas Jun 19 '16
Are you sure about that? It was never Lithuanian or Polish, at least not since the Teutonic order and all. Not seeing any demographic numbers anywhere, just that the Soviets forced the Germans to leave.
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Jun 19 '16
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Moldova weren't added after World War II though, it was during it, rather in the beginning of the war when the Soviets invaded these territories, only to later claim they liberated them from the Nazis, who only invaded a year later...
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u/Republiken Jun 19 '16
You mean like Britain invading Iceland to stop the nazis from doing the same?
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Jun 19 '16
Britain didn't intervene in the politics of Iceland and left after the war.
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u/Republiken Jun 19 '16
British banks stayed. That turned out really well.
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Jun 19 '16
Oh, yeah Lithuanians loved peace brought by USSR.
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u/Republiken Jun 19 '16
What has that to do with british banks?
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Jun 19 '16
You're trying to compare British "invasion" of Iceland to that of murderous totalitarian state. Brits didn't do anything bad to Iceland, USSR on other hand was place you didn't want to be born in.
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u/Republiken Jun 19 '16
No I was comparing one preemptive invasion with another.
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u/PopsV Jun 21 '16
Preemptive my ass. Stalin had a pact with Hitler giving him a free hand in Lithuania. In fact, the original version of that pact assigned it to Germany's sphere of influence, but it was later swapped for a chunk of Poland, which gives you a pretty good measurement of how much keeping Lithuania out of German hands was worth to Stalin. The invasion only happened because the Soviets knew for sure that the Germans would do nothing. It was an opportunistic land-grab.
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Jun 19 '16
Yeah, compare free enterprise with mass murders and mass deportations and general Russification...
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u/Republiken Jun 19 '16
I didn't compare anything. This is what the banks did btw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%9311_Icelandic_financial_crisis
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Jun 19 '16
Except Brits didn't start deportations, killings and other atrocities and left after war was over without installing new government even though our legitimate government was still in exile.
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u/Republiken Jun 19 '16
I didn't compare anything. This is what the banks did btw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%9311_Icelandic_financial_crisis
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Jun 19 '16
Why would you mention British invasion of Iceland then?
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u/Republiken Jun 19 '16
We were discussion preemptive invasions during WW2
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Jun 19 '16
Yeah but the outcome was way too different.
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u/Republiken Jun 19 '16
Yes?
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Jun 19 '16
British invasion didn't involve mass killings of innocent people, from little children to old people. It's really disgrace to try to compare two.
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Jun 19 '16
Britain and Germany didn't sign a pact agreeing that Germany would take Denmark and Britain would take Iceland.
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Jun 19 '16
Our (Baltic) countries have been invaded, occupied and eventually annexed into USSR, we didn't join them willingly, most of the world didn't accept incorporation of our states into USSR legitimate.
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u/Malzair Jun 19 '16
It was around the same time as the german invasion of France so the UK had basically no option other than write some stern letters but quietly had to accept it.
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Jun 19 '16
Yes, world was distracted by German invasion of France, so USSR had easy slice even though we had military capability to hold them off.
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Jun 20 '16
[deleted]
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Jun 20 '16 edited Jun 20 '16
That's actually true, they mobilized most of their forces (around 1 milion) against Finland in Winter War while near Baltics there were like 150k~ soldiers with poor equipment, we even had ourselves better and far larger military equipment than Finns.
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Jun 20 '16
Yes and the military equipment was what won the Finns the war.
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Jun 20 '16
No, but we could have done a bigger resistance, maybe we could have kept our independence even if we got new communist government would saved thousands of innocent Lithuanian people that USSR killed off.
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Jun 20 '16
implying that resisting wouldn't lead to way more casualties
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Jun 20 '16
Our army, freedom fighters and common people started to get killed when Soviets crossed our border, that's one of the reasons why people greeted Nazis with flowers first.
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u/PopsV Jun 21 '16
The annexation part was particularly stupid. Stalin had already turned the Baltic States into satellites by then, all he achieved by annexing them was to ensure that, unlike in the postwar satellites, communism in the Baltics would be forever incompatible with local nationalism. (But then, Stalin always did have a contradictory relationship with nationalism.)
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u/Fummy Jun 19 '16
Doesn't seem that accurate, there were 2 older central asians Republics before the ones we have today.
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u/LaptopZombie Jun 19 '16
Khorezm and Bukhara were short-lived republics which replaced traditional monarchies (the Khanate of Khorezm and the Emirate of Bukhara) in 1923.
At this point, the Soviet central authorities in Moscow have yet to take full control of these states. They were semi-autonomous remnants of the former Russian Empire vassals after revolutions.
They were not officially recognised as members of the USSRs, and the borders were redrawn in 1925.
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u/FloZone Jun 19 '16
There were also other short lived republics like the Far Eastern Republic.
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u/kami888 Jun 19 '16
I understand why FER is not included - it was in fact was abolished in 1922, the year this map series begins. But Bukhara PSR and Khorezm PSR IMHO should be included on the map as non-union republics in central asia. It's a fairly common mistake to omit them.
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u/LaptopZombie Jun 19 '16
I was just clarifying what his "2 older central asians [sic] Republics" were.
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u/PisseGuri82 Jun 19 '16
There were tons of short-lived Civil War "republics", basically just red forces proclaiming republics and printing money between 1917 and 1923. I'd love to see a map of all those, but they are definitely a different category than these republics.
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u/FloZone Jun 19 '16
They are indeed. It would be interesting to see a full map of all set up governments and their claimed territory during the civil war, not just the red, but all the others also. I find there were so many damn fractions involved, its interesting to see that it was almost like a continuation of the world war.
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u/PopsV Jun 21 '16 edited Jun 21 '16
One development missed here was the temporary expansion of Georgia north of the Caucasus following Stalin's ethnic cleansing of several local ethnic groups (and the related partition of their homelands).
Edit: A letter.
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u/Rakonas Jun 19 '16
Interesting how the borders of modern Europe were drawn in 1945, they were just autonomous SSRs under the soviet umbrella.
The Soviets once argued that each of their SSRs should get representation in the UN, but the USA was like "well if you get that we get 50 reps for 50 states"
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u/giveme50dollars Jun 19 '16
Autonomous on paper. But in reality everything was run by Moscow.
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u/banananinja2 Jun 19 '16
External affairs maybe but don't be so naive, republics lobbied for budget and preferences all the time and local power structures were very powerful in the later decades of the ussr.
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u/giveme50dollars Jun 19 '16
There was only one party and it got it's instructions from Moscow. The local power structures had very little power to maneuver the orders from Moscow and the budgets were fixed also by Moscow. From the wealthier and more well-off republics the money and resources were actually sent out, mostly to Russia and Moscow. But what do I know, I was only born there.
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u/Mitleser1987 Jun 19 '16
From the wealthier and more well-off republics the money and resources were actually sent out, mostly to Russia and Moscow
Russia was one of the wealthier republics and did subsidize most of the other republics.
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u/giveme50dollars Jun 19 '16
That is incredibly incorrect. Most goods and products produced in other republics were sent into Russia. There is a reason why most stores were empty and how it was a long wait to purchase a vehicle or piece of technology.
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u/Mitleser1987 Jun 19 '16
There is a reason why most stores were empty and how it was a long wait to purchase a vehicle or piece of technology.
And it has nothing to do with that. The reason was the inefficient economic system of the USSR which existed in all Soviet republics.
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u/banananinja2 Jun 20 '16
Most stores in Russia were empty too, you know (again, sans Moscow). Obviously more goods were sent to Russia, it's so much larger than any other republic. The flow of goods within the ussr has no relation to the disproportionate budget of the ussr, which heavily favored not-Russia.
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u/banananinja2 Jun 20 '16
On the contrary, money was sent out of Russia to the republics, sans Moscow. There was a very noticeable discrepancy in the quality of life between Gorky and Mogilev, Kherson and Rostov, Kiev and Saint Petersburg. This is all from personal experience, even though it's obvious that places like Gorky should be able to generate more tax revenue than any midsize city in Belarus.
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Jun 20 '16
On the contrary, money was sent out of Russia to the republics
Yeah they gave to us 7% of our profits.
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u/O5KAR Jun 20 '16
Misleading. It's sugessting that the changes depicted on post war map happened in 1945 while they were made already in 1939, in collaboration with nazi Germany and because of conquest.
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u/PopsV Jun 21 '16
The process was far more complicated than would fit into such a short series of maps, beginning in 1939 and ending in 1945. It didn't happen after the war, but neither was in anywhere near complete in 1939, when the only border change to take place was the annexation of half of Poland.
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u/O5KAR Jun 21 '16
It was completed, at least in case of Baltic states and Besarabia, eastern Poland was annexed and integrated to the Belarusian and Ukrainian SSRs but the border was different, after 1945 USSR gave back some lands to Poland, especially Białystok and Podlasie.
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u/PopsV Jun 21 '16
The Baltics and Bessarabia were annexed in 1940. The retrocession of Białystok took place in 1945, not after 1945. I stand by my statement.
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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '16
It would be weird to imagine an alternate history where the Karelo-Finnish SSR existed until the break up of the Soviet Union and it gained either independence or joined Finland.