Flippanarchy

Hey, thanks for the good faith response, it's good being able to discuss such things, thanks for taking the time. I think we have a few disagreements, and I honestly think that some of them stem from the fact that the Soviet Union and communism in general have been so vilified in western countries (in which I happen to live and where I guess you do too) that a lot of the assessments and claims in your comment are historically tenuous. Let me explain.

It seems that our disagreement stems from a different understanding of the nature of the Soviet Union and the meaning of the word "imperialism". To me, imperialism isn't simply "get more land", that's expansionism. Imperialism is linked to colonialism and requires the exploitation of people in the colonial regions (known as periphery) for the extraction of wealth and resources towards the occupier state/s (imperial core). As explained before in my post, I don't think that the occupation of Poland falls under the definition of imperialism, because it wasn't carried out with the purpose of subjugation and economic exploitation.

We can really get into details about this if you want, I have a few good sources such as "Is the Red Flag Flying" by Albert Szymanski which goes into details in the economic relations between USSR and eastern-block countries, and Robert C. Allen's "Farm to Factory" which explains the nature and evolution of the Soviet economy over its history. In these works, it's kind of really proven that the USSR never really extracted resources or labour from the rest of countries of the Eastern Block, but rather backwards: the Union traded with Eastern Block countries using international prices of goods, and majorly exported raw goods and non-manufactured, low value-added goods; and imported manufactured, high value-added goods: the USSR was subjecting ITSELF to the short end of unequal exchange (look up that concept if you don't know what I mean by it, it's interesting and useful in understanding economic exploitation of poor countries by rich ones). This amounts to a subsidizing of the other countries at the expense of Soviet citizen man-hours, very different from the claims of the USSR "looting natural resources and wealth" that you made in your comment. I honestly think this is simply wrong and mostly still upheld as a consequence of made-up anticommunist propaganda from the cold-war era, but if you're really interested on it I already pointed you to two sources that discuss this in detail, of course I'd be open to seeing other sources making the opposite claim, but I suspect those sources will simply be vibes-based and stemming from the western world, as it so often happens with anticommunist discourse. I have yet to see actual data supporting the claim of "Soviets extracting wealth from Poland" other than a brief period of war reparations after WW2 which ended in the 50s.

Historical records indicate that Soviets were almost as brutal occupiers as the Nazis

I'm sorry, but this is extremely untrue. Bringing up the isolated Katyn massacre, which left around 20k deaths (mostly military and bourgeoisie) and isn't even really confirmed to have been carried out by the Soviets (though of course western historians hold that claim), and comparing it to Nazi genocide and deliberate extermination campaigns that left literal tens of millions of deaths as a consequence of racial supremacy beliefs, is a deeply unfair comparison and seems to me very minimizing of the dangers and the scope of historical facts like the Holocaust or the Hungerplan. The fact that people died during the occupation of eastern European territories has more to do with the class-struggle nature of these occupations than with any claims of imperialism. These oppressions against landowners, former military and politicians, capitalist owners, etc. had happened all over the Soviet Union internally as a consequence of Socialist revolution and class war. To you, some tens of thousands of deaths probably seem unjustifiable. To me, the life expectancy of peasants being kept at 28 years by wealthy landowners is a much more deadly and violent form of oppression that, running the numbers, really murders many more individuals than the campaigns of land collectivization. Yes, people die in revolutions, but many more are saved by the improvements in living standards and by the lack of exploitation of the Global South that communist countries of the Eastern Block did. Poland in the 1930s was a rabidly nationalist and capitalist country, which had unpromptedly invaded free countries just shy of 2 decades ago in the Polish-Ukrainian war.

I don’t see any evidence this was the Soviets having a moral objection to Nazi’s, this looks like pure self-interest/self-preservation.

I think you would be wrong to say that there's no evidence of the Soviets having moral objections to Nazism. Stalin, as early as 1924, was well aware of the core understandings of fascism and crtiticised it heavily in public speeches, and fascism was widely criticised and featured in Soviet propaganda as an enemy of the working class. Furthermore, I happen to be a Spaniard. The Spanish Civil War started in 1936 when the Fascists in the country organised a (failed) coup against a broad leftist coalition in the then Republic of Spain, which divided the country in two and started the war. The West collectively decided to pursue a non-intervention policy while they saw the Nazis bombing the republicans. The only country in the world to offer weapons, tanks, artillery and aviation to the Republicans in their anti-fascist struggle was the Soviet Union. Remember: this is 1936, and this is literally as far from the USSR as you can get in Europe. Was this done also out of self-preservation and not as a standing against Fascism? Comparing the patently antifascist actions of the Soviet Union all over the 1930s to the milquetoast or complacent response of western powers, I think it's safe to say that, at the time, the Soviet Union was the most antifascist country in Europe.

The other most popular Imperialist self-justification, besides being a “liberator”, is self defense

While what you're saying is kinda true, I think it's more a justification that all states use, regardless of being imperialist in nature or not. Then again, that's why I brough quotes from Churchill, from Roosevelt, and from Neville Chamberlain. If this is purely a Soviet fabrication and machination with imperialist goals, why did the rest of Europe agree with it at the time?

Furthermore, my point wasn't exclusively "it was in self-defense", it's more about the difference in economic, industrial and military power between the Soviet Union and western European nations. As you know, nations such as France, the UK, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy or Spain, developed massively over the 18th, 19th and 20th century through the exploitation of their colonies in Africa, South America and Asia. It is the main reason why these nations industrialized so early and so potently (less so Italy and Spain). Nazi Germany was an industrial behemoth with almost 2 centuries of industrial development behind its back. The Soviet Union was the heir state of a primitive, feudal backwater Russian Empire. It was heavily unindustrialized with around 85% of the population in 1917 being peasants, and the country had been thoroughly destroyed in WW1 as a consequence as well as in the Russian Civil War when 17 nations including UK, France or the USA invaded the Bolsheviks and supported the Tsarists because of anticommunist principles. The country didn't recover its pre-war levels until 1929, moment when they started to rapidly industrialize through the first 5-year plans. By 1939 and Molotov-Ribbentrop, the Soviets had around 10 years of wildly fast but still insufficient industrial development, and they simply were NOT READY to start a one-to-one war against the nazis. 27 MILLION Soviet citizens eventually died in the war against Nazism, if that's not proof enough that they DESPERATELY needed time to industrialize and prepare for war, I don't know what is.

“What alternative was there to Nazi occupation of Eastern Poland?” - leak the Secret Protocols and Hitler’s attack plans to the West

So, essentially, after the British, French and Polish had systematically rejected mutual-defense agreements with the Soviets because they wanted to see them crushed by Nazism, the right thing to do by the USSR was to unilaterally join a war against Nazi Germany when the entire West had turned its back on it? Literally, the Soviets did every fucking effort possible to reach a mutual defense agreement, and the west's response was to blindside the Soviet Union in the Munich Agreements (called Munich Betrayal in Czech btw) and to allow the Nazis to invade Czechoslovakia (with whom the West had a mutual-defense agreement and the Soviets promised to honour if the Western countries did as well). Is this really serious geopolitical analysis, or just goodism applied to difficult international times?Again: I'm not the one saying this, it's the very Western politicians like Churchill or like Chamberlain saying this!

Finally, I'll finish my comment with the following statement and a followup question: The Soviet Union NEVER performed labour or wealth extraction in the Global South. It did not import cheap raw materials, and it did not export high value-added goods. If it was an imperialist power like the rest: why did the Soviet Union, being the second largest industrial power, not abuse these mechanisms to enrich itself?