Would eastern and western Ukraine be better off going their separate ways?

[ag]

Russia putting troops into Ukraine is very, very, very unlikely, unless the streets are in open revolt and they are 'invited' to enter. Which, with Yanukovich now out of office, is unlikely to happen (and was never likely in the first place).

Ukraine will sort itself out eventually.

They are beginning a mass issue of passports to Ukrainians, at least in Crimea - might be more broadly (today´s news reports from Crimea, where the statement to that effect has been made by some visiting Russian MP´s). There is that slight issue that Ukrainian law, if I recall it right, considers acquisition of another nationality as grounds for losing the Ukrainian (for the very obvious reason of expecting something exactly like that). So, we are soon going to have a territory with a lot of Russian citizens in residence. Anybody saying Osetia-Abkhazia?

They will be "invited". They even will have a president (Yanukovich) to do the inviting.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Possibly, just possibly there will be some trouble in the Crimea, but unless the Ukrainians try to do something stupid like trying to expel the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol, I doubt Putin will orchestrate trouble.

[Mr. Morden]

Western Ukraine should join Poland, then they can create a Polish-Ukrainian commonwealth, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea!

It would be the Polo-Ukrainian Federation.  Citizens would be called Polkrainians.

[PiMp DaDdy FitzGerald]

It may prove to be a smart move to force Russia to go into the Ukraine so as to sucker them into another Afghanistan and further weaken their power.

[Beezer]

Yes, what could possibly go wrong?

[eric82oslo]

I think absolutely Ukraine should be split. Right now, as a state, Ukraine functions even worse than Belgium, and that in itself is quite darn impressive to put it mildly (a country which didn't have a functioning government for 15 months). The Western part is almost entirely inhabited by Ukrainians, while great parts of the east has a sizeable Russian majority. Enough said. Unless they want a political and governing paralysis which could last for decades and which would make the current US political stalemate seem very bland in comparison. There's nothing wrong with regions within a country going their separate ways. Czech Republic and Slovakia managed their separation perfectly. I'd strongly support the independence of Scotland, Catalonia, Flanders/Wallonia & Northern Ireland as well if the local populations of those regions should want to go their separate ways, just like I support full recognition for the nation states of Kosovo and Palestine.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

For those arguing in favour of the split can you please look at this map...



And explain to me what would have been - on the basis of the map - an appropriate way of splitting that country into coherent units in 1913?

And then once that is done, try and think of a mechanism of how such a split could have come about in a realistic alternative history.

[muon2]

For those arguing in favour of the split can you please look at this map...



And explain to me what would have been - on the basis of the map - an appropriate way of splitting that country into coherent units in 1913?

And then once that is done, try and think of a mechanism of how such a split could have come about in a realistic alternative history.

If I disregard the number of German enclaves in A-H outside of Austria proper or adjacent to Germany, the linguistic groups are pretty well segregated. One problem was that the US backed off of its original promise through Wilson's 14 Points that "The people of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development." The note by Secretary of State Lansing in Oct 1918 superseded the 14 Points and essentially led to the recognition of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia to help allied groups fighting the Central powers. Without that, and just the 14 Points one can imagine a timeline where the US does not support the Corfu Declaration and allows Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to each seek their own independence, while the Czechs and Slovaks could go their own separate ways in the north. Galicia (Western Ukraine) would be given the autonomy to either become independent or unite with the east, rather than mandate their consolidation into Poland.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

I know Gully's question was rhetorical, but:



Red=Germany
Blue=Czechia
Brown=Slovakia
Purple=Poland
Yellow=Ukraine
Orange=Romania
Green=Hungary
Lime Green=Italy
Beige=Yugoslavia

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Ummm no... Look at Lviv, Brasov or Cluj for example and remember those were the largest cities in their respective regions. Across Eastern Europe of the period the ethnic makeup of cities could often be quite different to the agricultural regions surrounding them. Another problem of dividing up these territories into 'rational' borders.

And that map doesn't show historic claims - Pressburg (Aka Bratislava) being the historical capital of Hungary, Prague being a majority German city until, what, the middle of the nineteenth Century. Given that that was a map representing 1913, that represents the same amount of time in passing as between now and the era of Second World War and Stalinism.

(Also note that this map doesn't even bother to distinguish between Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks, who all after all spoke effectively the same language)

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Ah, you may not realize this but you are engaging in that classic American historiographical trope of arguing that all the world's problems might have been different had only AMERICA taken the right course.

Of course, that's nonsense as is this argument. America had no way of enforcing Central European land boundaries - the boundaries that were 'fixed' by post-war treaties were often ad hoc justifications for land grabs that had already taken place (How else can you explain Transylvania?). As for allowing Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia to go their separate ways - you do realize that was contradictory to Serbian war aims from the beginning of 1914 - you know, the country that started the war. Across what became Yugoslavia guerilla warfare was fought in support of 'Greater Serbia'. Where those borders lay - or how 'Serbs' could genuinely be identified (and Serbia's government at the time identified Croats as 'Crypto-Serbs' or Serbs that didn't know they were Serbs) - remember they all spoke the same language in effect - was hardly clear. Your scenario would have led to a much great bloodbath probably ending with British and French intervention to lord knows what effect. (But probably with Italy annexing large parts of what's now the Slovenian and Croatian Coast)

Hell, the borders of Bosnia are still in contention now despite the breaking apart of Yugoslavia into 'coherent' and 'rational' boundaries based on nationality.

Btw, on that note: What nationality would define Macedonians as being? What about in 1911 (when all that region was part of the Ottoman Empire)? What about Albanians - are they one or two peoples; their 'dialects' are often unintelligible to each other...

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A solution which would have satisfied no-one - like the post-war treaties. And for someone supporting the breakup of countries, you seem keen on 'Yugoslavia'.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

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A solution which would have satisfied no-one - like the post-war treaties. And for someone supporting the breakup of countries, you seem keen on 'Yugoslavia'.

I never said that Ukraine should split up (and Yugoslavia was, at least objectively, a better deal than the breakup, at least as it happened). Those just seemed like the least bad borders (other than a few tweaks I could make now that I look at it again) that could be carved out of the Habsburg Empire.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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A solution which would have satisfied no-one - like the post-war treaties. And for someone supporting the breakup of countries, you seem keen on 'Yugoslavia'.

I never said that Ukraine should split up (and Yugoslavia was, at least objectively, a better deal than the breakup, at least as it happened). Those just seemed like the least bad borders (other than a few tweaks I could make now that I look at it again) that could be carved out of the Habsburg Empire.

You are making the error of assuming that it seems 'rational' for a cartographic point of view (as seen in Lancaster, PA!) is necessarily the best solution on the ground.

(least bad = rational and coherent !)

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

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A solution which would have satisfied no-one - like the post-war treaties. And for someone supporting the breakup of countries, you seem keen on 'Yugoslavia'.

I never said that Ukraine should split up (and Yugoslavia was, at least objectively, a better deal than the breakup, at least as it happened). Those just seemed like the least bad borders (other than a few tweaks I could make now that I look at it again) that could be carved out of the Habsburg Empire.

You are making the error of assuming that it seems 'rational' for a cartographic point of view (as seen in Lancaster, PA!) is necessarily the best solution on the ground.

(least bad = rational and coherent !)

Oh, I'm fully aware that my proposed map would go down just as poorly as the actual postwar border changes did, but I tried.

[palandio]

[provocation]
Red = Germany after the Treaty of Munich 1938
Blue = Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Brown = Slovak clero-fascist puppet state
Purple = Generalgouvernement
Yellow = ceded to Soviets due to Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement, later annexed into Generalgouvernement
Orange = Romania
Green = Greater Hungary during WWII
Lime Green = Italy
Beige = Ustasha state
Grey = well, that doesn't fit, it's little Slovenia, which in reality was split up between Red and Lime Green...
[/provocation]

Altogether I think that preserving a democratized "Greater Danubia" in which no nation dominates wouldn't have been the worst solution.

Speaking only of Germans and German-speakers I think that (after WWI) a unified Germany+Austria would also have been a good solution. Putting the whole of Bohemia and Moravia into one land was a good idea from a geographical and economic point of view. Add to this some Slovaks, Hungarians, Rusyns and Poles to balance Czech overweight and you get exactly Czechoslovakia. They would only have needed a slightly more conciliatory approach from both Czechs and Germans, and they were on a good way actually, until...

On topic: I don't think that splitting up Ukraine would be a good idea. Many oblasts have large minorities of people that have a different "national identity" from the majority. You can't separate them, only try to find a middle ground between different orientations. Crimea is maybe another topic, but it has autonomy and Sevastopol is leased to Russia, so the status quo might be the least worst option.

[muon2]

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Ah, you may not realize this but you are engaging in that classic American historiographical trope of arguing that all the world's problems might have been different had only AMERICA taken the right course.

Of course, that's nonsense as is this argument. America had no way of enforcing Central European land boundaries - the boundaries that were 'fixed' by post-war treaties were often ad hoc justifications for land grabs that had already taken place (How else can you explain Transylvania?). As for allowing Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia to go their separate ways - you do realize that was contradictory to Serbian war aims from the beginning of 1914 - you know, the country that started the war. Across what became Yugoslavia guerilla warfare was fought in support of 'Greater Serbia'. Where those borders lay - or how 'Serbs' could genuinely be identified (and Serbia's government at the time identified Croats as 'Crypto-Serbs' or Serbs that didn't know they were Serbs) - remember they all spoke the same language in effect - was hardly clear. Your scenario would have led to a much great bloodbath probably ending with British and French intervention to lord knows what effect. (But probably with Italy annexing large parts of what's now the Slovenian and Croatian Coast)

Well the previous post had asked to envision a timeline whereby a hypothetical split other than RL happened. I used memories of my 1970's education and the given map to flesh out just such a scenario. Since my education was from the US during the Cold War, perhaps you can forgive me some biases. Perhaps my recollection is faulty from those biases, but I was led to believe that the US had a larger role in dealing with A-H than the other Allies whose aims were more strongly directed at Germany in the aftermath of the war, and Russia which was most engaged in the eastern theater was in the midst of its own internal upheavals. And yes, I know that Serbia's desire for a greater land was a big factor historically, but I wanted Wilson's optimism to overshadow it for this alternate reality.

How would you have dealt with A-H upon the conclusion of WWI? Would you contend that the historical result was best?

[Franknburger]

For all those enjoying to draw new borders, here another case: Schleswig, the northern part of which was returned to Denmark after WW I. To enhance the fun, you get several maps:


1838 linguistic map (large PDF here). Blue=German, Red=Danish, Yellow=Frisian, Light Greeen: German prevailing, Dark Purple: Danish prevailing, Dark Green: German as church language.


1867 election map (Constitutional Assembly of the North German Federation) for the Danish Party.


Danish mother tongue as per the 1905 census


Outcome of the 1920 plebiscite (a masterpiece in gerrymandering, btw., conveniently ignoring county borders). I have seen other, smaller maps showing the northernmost tip of the island of Sylt voting >75% Danish.


.. and how the Danish (blue) and German (red) governments felt the results should be interpreted.

Frisian independence wasn't a ballot option, btw.

Edit: Any further discussion on the Schleswig-Holstein issue should be continued here:
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=188333.0
I have removed my respective follow-up from this thread.

[Nhoj]

Macedonians are of course somewhat serbish bulgarians.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ummm no... Look at Lviv, Brasov or Cluj for example and remember those were the largest cities in their respective regions.

...and then you remember that a) these linguistic boundaries will often have been more complex (and often to the point of making a mockery of the word 'boundary') at a local or even regional level, and that b) a very large ethnic group in the area at the time is not included on the map (Jews). And that there were other ethnic groups not denoted either (Roma, of course, but also Rusyns and so on).

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Let's take the city marked on the map as 'Lviv' as a totally unrandom example. Majority Polish (so Lwów), but Jews, not Ukrainians, were the second largest group - over a quarter of the population - (so Lemberg over Lviv).

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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I was keeping things simple.

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I was going to mention Jews but I was unsure of the numbers. I knew though that their urban density was even more so further east in cities such as Odessa... which, of course, is in the modern Ukraine and is now totally Slavified (that's one Ethnic community... why can't these Slavs get along?). Thank god, I suppose, those boundaries are now in the shape of rationally organized communities or something....

Macedonians are of course somewhat serbish bulgarians.

Or are they somewhat Bulgarianish Serbs?

[Franknburger]

[

Macedonians are of course somewhat serbish bulgarians.

Or are they somewhat Bulgarianish Serbs?

Depends which one you are talking about (bonus map in the link!).

[PiMp DaDdy FitzGerald]

Macedonians are of course somewhat serbish bulgarians.

Or are they somewhat Bulgarianish Serbs?

That depends upon which consul is asking.
Another question: are they Slavic Greeks?

[Franknburger]

Macedonians are of course somewhat serbish bulgarians.

Or are they somewhat Bulgarianish Serbs?

That depends upon which consul is asking.
Another question: are they Slavic Greeks?

The answer is simple. Just take a look at this 1892 map:

[PiMp DaDdy FitzGerald]

Macedonians are of course somewhat serbish bulgarians.

Or are they somewhat Bulgarianish Serbs?

That depends upon which consul is asking.
Another question: are they Slavic Greeks?

The answer is simple. Just take a look at this 1892 map:

There are two problems with that map: the lack of accurate official data and the fluidity of ethnicity.
For the first: the closest thing that we have for Macedonia in that time period is the Ottoman census. The problem is that the Ottomans only took religion and what patriarchate the person belonged to into account. That leads to there being no distinction between Greek Orthodox Albanians and Greek Orthodox Greeks, for instance. That is compounded by the fact that the Censuses were often biased towards Muslims and the fact that Macedonia was notorious for its corrupt and lawless government.
That leaves us with guessing ethnicity based upon surveys. In addition to the fact that western cartographers often had their own pet ethnicity, such as the greeks or the serbs, ethnicity was an incredibly fluid concept in Macedonia. Hence my consul statement above. Beyond that, there was no standard dialect for Serbian or Albanian or Bulgarian, there was a gradual and generally undefined border between all of those languages.
Finally, what constituted a Greek? You had quite a bit of Muslims, such as the Muslim Greek and Pomaks, and to say that there was debate on weather they where really "Greek" or "Bulgarian" or whatever would  be an understatement.
Based on that, I have to disagree that it is a simple question.

[Indy Texas]

I know Gully's question was rhetorical, but:



Red=Germany
Blue=Czechia
Brown=Slovakia
Purple=Poland
Yellow=Ukraine
Orange=Romania
Green=Hungary
Lime Green=Italy
Beige=Yugoslavia

I would also call the Czech state "Bohemia and Moravia" since Czechia sounds rather awkward and could be confused with Chechnya.

I'd also give all the orange area to Romania and create a little ethnic Hungarian state east of Romania and call it Carpathia.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

I know Gully's question was rhetorical, but:



Red=Germany
Blue=Czechia
Brown=Slovakia
Purple=Poland
Yellow=Ukraine
Orange=Romania
Green=Hungary
Lime Green=Italy
Beige=Yugoslavia

I would also call the Czech state "Bohemia and Moravia" since Czechia sounds rather awkward and could be confused with Chechnya.

I'd also give all the orange area to Romania and create a little ethnic Hungarian state east of Romania and call it Carpathia.

That would be an enclave within Romania, not to the east of it. I'm not sure the people of Carpathia would be entirely comfortable with that.