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And the reason Stalin sided with Hitler in the beginning, is that Hitler let Stalin have half of Poland, whereas Britain and France wouldn't.

The reason that Stalin sided with Hitler initially was that he was facing protests in Ukraine in particular that threatened his regime. Ukrainian peasants were marching to the Polish border to demand that Poland invade and free them from Stalin's rule. Poland was a relatively prosperous country compared to the USSR, where parents were eating their dead children to keep from starving to death when Stalin raided their food stores. So, Stalin sided with Hitler, who wanted to push all of the Slavs across the Urals for German lebensraum.

There are interesting parallels to Putin's actions. As corrupt as it is, Ukraine was arguably more prosperous and free than Russia. Putin was threatened by having a rival. Stalin also used the ethnic/linguistic argument to justify annexing Polish territory. Just as there are Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine who don't want to be in Russia, there were those who spoke Ukrainian, Carpo-Rusyn, or a related dialect of language who did not want to leave Poland and join the USSR. History is repeating itself in Ukraine.