What if Poland accepted the largest borders offered by the Soviets at the Treaty of Riga?

[raharris1973]

What if Poland accepted the largest borders offered by the Soviets at the Treaty of Riga? This would grant Poland Minsk and Kiev, so a frontier encompassing most of the Soviet Byelorussian SSR, touching the Dniepr at Kiev, and taking in the western quarter of the interwar Ukrainian SSR.

Here's the map:

Reasons for hesitancy included concerns it would excessive numbers of east Slavic minorities into the Polish state, and that the Soviet Russians wouldn't regard the border as permanent.

Let's say Poland overcomes these for the buffer space and bragging rights.

1st question - does this bigger Poland make a round 2 of Soviet-Polish war inevitable within ten years, during the 20s, early 30s, or middle 30s?

2nd question - Assuming it does not, and we place a butterfly net over everything, and Europe remains at external peace (internal turmoil can be another story), and Hitler and Stalin take charge as OTL, how does the more easterly oriented Poland get divided in the Molotov-Ribbentropp pact? Is the Nazi-Soviet line of division further east? If so, does a starting line further east for the Nazis significantly increase the chance of the Nazis beating the Soviets? Or at least significantly changing the war to the detriment of the Soviets by putting one or more additional major cities under Nazi occupation and slowing Soviet recovery? Does the change of the line to the east in 1921, ultimately echo down to result that the Western Allies and Soviets meet at a point further east than OTL, even if they beat the Nazis?

 

[WolfBear]

I'm not sure if the Soviets actually offered Kiev to the Poles (I know that Minsk and Zhytomyr was offered, but I'm not sure about Kiev), but if so, then Poland could finally create its desired Intermarium federation or at least Intermarium confederation in this TL. I suspect that the Nazi-Soviet partition lines will be similar in this TL if there is still an M-R Pact in this TL since the Nazi-Soviet partition lines were more-or-less based on ethnic borders. Still, with a Stalin Line located further to the east of Ukraine and Belarus, I wonder if more Ukrainian and Belarusian Jews fall into Nazi hands in 1941 relative to real life. That, and less Ukrainian and Belarusian Jews would be able to move to the Soviet interior in the 1920-1941 time period, though they would at least sometimes have the option of moving elsewhere, such as to Palestine or Latin America or South Africa or wherever.

I suspect that the post-WWII Ukrainian insurgency against the USSR might be larger in this TL since Poland would have likely indoctrinated more Ukrainians in anti-Communist education during the interwar era, which would make even more Ukrainians vehemently hostile towards Communism, especially once they are aware of all of the Communist atrocities that have been going on. I expect the final Soviet-Western partition line during the Iron Curtain to be roughly similar, though. But post-independence Ukraine (if the USSR ever actually collapses, which isn't actually guaranteed in this TL) could have a larger nationalist movement in this TL relative to real life.

 

[WolfBear]

It's worth noting that, other than in the southwest, the most Jew-heavy parts of the Ukrainian SSR before WWII were located in the western part of it. Here's the 1926 data for the Jewish percentage of the total population in the Ukrainian SSR: