Quote:
Originally Posted by Joanna Lytton-Vasey
Does Poland have anything that Brother President Vladimir actually wants? Surely Russia is already well-supplied with bread, sausages, beets, rancid milk and those weird dumpling things named after pirogues?
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Well, Poland has two parts, so called Poland A (west) and Poland B (east). Most of Poland B has been under Russian rule for 200 years, give or take (with just a short break of Polish independence in the period between the two world wars), and you are right, it's just more of the same from the Russian point of view.
However, Poland A has been first under the Prussian rule for 120+ years (closer to 1000 years for the most western bits), and then under Hitler's rule for a few years, which resulted in great railroads, awesome autobahns, and factories which even today are much more modern than anything that Russians could ever build. (The top Soviet architectural achievement was building constructions which would crumble into ruins within months). Therefore, Poland A with its WWII and pre-WWI German infrastructure is as close to European Civilization as Russians can ever
dream of achieving.