Polish–Soviet War

This article is about the conflict of 1919–1921. For other Russo-Polish conflicts, see Polish–Russian Wars.

Polish–Soviet War
Part of spillover of the Southern Front of the Russian Civil War and Lithuanian Wars of Independence
Top left: Renault FT tanks of the Polish 1st Tank Regiment during the Battle of Dyneburg, January 1920 Below top left: Polish and Ukrainian troops in Khreshchatyk during the Kiev Offensive, 7 May 1920 Top right: Polish Schwarzlose M.07/12 machine gun nest during the Battle of Radzymin, August 1920 Middle: Polish defences with a machine gun position near Miłosna, in the village of Janki, Battle of Warsaw, August 1920 Bottom left: Russian prisoners following the Battle of Warsaw Bottom right: Polish defences in Belarus during the Battle of the Niemen River, September 1920
Date 14 February 1919 – 18 March 1921 (2 years, 1 month and 4 days) Peace of Riga signed on 18 March 1921 Location Central and Eastern Europe Result Polish victory; Peace of Riga (See Aftermath) Territorial changes Poland took control of modern-day western Ukraine and western Belarus (Kresy in interwar Poland). Soviet forces took control of modern-day eastern Ukraine and East Belarus.
Belligerents
Russian SFSR Byelorussian SSR Polrewkom Ukrainian SSR Logistical support: Lithuania	Poland Belarusian PR Latvia Ukrainian PR Support: France United Kingdom Hungary Romania Russian Whites
Commanders and leaders
Leon Trotsky Sergey Kamenev Joseph Stalin Mikhail Tukhachevsky Semyon Budyonny August Kork Nikolai Sollogub Alexander Yegorov	Józef Piłsudski Józef Haller Franciszek Latinik T. Jordan-Rozwadowski Władysław Sikorski Leonard Skierski Edward Rydz-Śmigły Symon Petlyura
Strength
Early 1919: ~50,000 Summer 1920: 800,000–950,000	Early 1919: ~80,000 Summer 1920: 738,000–1,000,000
Casualties and losses
Estimated 67,000–70,000 killed 80,000–157,000 taken prisoner (including rear-area personnel)	About 47,000 killed 113,518 wounded 51,351 taken prisoner

The Polish–Soviet War (14 February 1919 – 18 March 1921) was fought by the Second Polish Republic and Soviet Russia in the aftermath of World War I. In newly independent (from November 1918) Poland, leading politicians of different orientations pursued the general expectation of restoring the pre-1772 (First Partition of Poland) borders. Motivated by that idea, Polish Chief of State Józef Piłsudski aimed to expand Poland's eastern frontiers (actual borders had yet to be determined) to the east and began moving troops in that direction. Such expansion was to be followed, according to Piłsudski's plans, by the establishment of Intermarium, a Polish-led federation of states in Central and Eastern Europe, meant to function as a bulwark against the re-emergence of German and Russian expansionism.

On 13 November 1918, Vladimir Lenin's Russia annulled the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and soon started slowly moving forces in the western direction, to recover and secure the lands, vacated by the German forces, that were lost by the Russian state under the treaty. The first Polish-Soviet skirmishes occurred in mid-February 1919. That year, while the Red Army was still preoccupied with the Russian Civil War, the Polish Army took most of Lithuania and Belarus. Lenin saw Poland as the bridge the Red Army had to cross to assist other communist movements and to bring about more European revolutions.

By 1919, Polish forces had taken control of much of Western Ukraine and emerged victorious from the Polish–Ukrainian War. The West Ukrainian People's Republic, led by Yevhen Petrushevych, had tried to create a Ukrainian state on territories to which both Poles and Ukrainians laid claim.

In the Russian part of Ukraine, Symon Petliura tried to defend and strengthen the Ukrainian People's Republic, but as the Bolsheviks gained the upper hand in the civil war, they started to advance westward towards the disputed Ukrainian territories, which made Petliura's forces retreat. Reduced to a small amount of territory in the west, Petliura was compelled to seek an alliance with Piłsudski, which was officially formed in April 1920.

Piłsudski's Kiev Offensive, an attempted preemptive strike, began in late April 1920 and resulted in the takeover of Kiev by the Polish and allied Ukrainian forces. The Soviet armies had not been defeated, as they avoided major confrontations and withdrew.

The Polish offensive was met by successful counterattacks by the Red Army, from 5 June on the southern Ukrainian front and from 4 July on the northern front. The Soviet operation pushed the Polish forces back westward all the way to Warsaw, the Polish capital, while the Directorate of Ukraine fled to Western Europe. Fears of Soviet troops arriving at the German borders increased the interest and involvement of the Western powers in the war. In mid-summer, the fall of Warsaw seemed certain, but in mid-August the tide had turned again after the Polish forces achieved an unexpected and decisive victory at the Battle of Warsaw. In the wake of the eastward Polish advance that followed, the Soviets sued for peace, and the war ended with a ceasefire on 18 October 1920.

The Peace of Riga, signed on 18 March 1921, divided the disputed territories between Poland and Soviet Russia. The war and the treaty negotiations determined the Soviet–Polish border for the rest of the interwar period. Poland's eastern border was established at about 200 km east of the Curzon Line, a British proposal for Poland's eastern border, previously considered by the Entente leaders. Ukraine and Belarus became divided between Poland and the Soviet Union, which established the respective Soviet republics in its parts.

Names and dates

The war is known by several names. "Polish–Soviet War" is the most common but other names include "Russo–Polish War [or Polish–Russian War] of 1919–1921" (to distinguish it from earlier Polish–Russian wars) and "Polish–Bolshevik War". This second term (or just "Bolshevik War" (Polish: Wojna bolszewicka)) is most common in Polish sources. In some Polish sources it is also referred as the "War of 1920" (Polish: Wojna 1920 roku).

There is disagreement over the dates of the war. The Encyclopædia Britannica begins its article with the date range 1919–1920 but then states, "Although there had been hostilities between the two countries during 1919, the conflict began when the Polish head of state Józef Pilsudski formed an alliance with the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petlyura (21 April 1920) and their combined forces began to overrun Ukraine, occupying Kiev on 7 May." The Polish encyclopaedia Internetowa encyklopedia PWN, as well as Western historians such as Norman Davies, consider 1919 the starting year of the war.

The ending date is given as either 1920 or 1921; this confusion stems from the fact that while the cease-fire was put into force on 18 October 1920, the official treaty ending the war was signed months later, on 18 March 1921. While the events of 1919 can be described as a border conflict, and only in early 1920 did both sides engage in all-out war, the conflicts that took place in 1920 were an inevitable escalation of fighting that began in earnest a year earlier. In the end, the events of 1920 were a logical, though unforeseen, consequence of the 1919 prelude.

Background

Main article: Causes of the Polish–Soviet War

Partitions of Poland in 1795: the coloured territories show the extent of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth just before the First Partition. The land absorbed by the Kingdom of Prussia is in blue (north-west), by the Austrian Monarchy in green (south) and by the Russian Empire in red (east).

The war's main territories of contention lie in what is now Ukraine and Belarus. Until the mid-13th century, they formed part of the mediaeval state of Kievan Rus'. After a period of internal wars and the 1240 Mongol invasion, the lands became objects of expansion for the Kingdom of Poland and for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the first half of the 14th century, the Grand Duchy of Kiev and land between the Dnieper, Pripyat, and Daugava (Western Dvina) rivers became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and in 1352, Poland and Lithuania divided the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia between themselves. In 1569, in accordance with the terms of the Union of Lublin between Poland and Lithuania, some of the Ukrainian lands passed to the Polish Crown. Between 1772 and 1795, many of the Eastern Slavic territories became part of the Russian Empire in the course of the Partitions of Poland. After the Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815, much of the territory of the Duchy of Warsaw was transferred into Russian control. After young Poles refused conscription to the Imperial Russian Army during an uprising in Poland in 1863, Tsar Alexander II stripped Poland of its separate constitution, forced Russian to be the only language spoken, took away vast tracts of land from Poles and incorporated Poland directly into Russia by dividing it into ten provinces, each with an appointed Russian military governor and all under the complete control of the Russian Governor-General at Warsaw.

After the First World War had ended in 1918, the map of Central and Eastern Europe changed drastically. The German Empire's defeat rendered obsolete Berlin's plans for the creation of Eastern European puppet states (Mitteleuropa), including one in Poland. The Russian Empire collapsed, which resulted in the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Russian Civil War in 1917 1922. Several small nations of the region saw a chance for real independence and seized their opportunity to gain it; Soviet Russia viewed its lost territories as rebellious provinces that were vital for its security, but did not have the resources to react swiftly. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 had not made a definitive ruling in regard to Poland's eastern border, but it issued a provisional boundary in December 1919, the Curzon Line, as an attempt to define the territories that had an "indisputably Polish ethnic majority". The conference participants did not feel competent to make a certain judgment on the competing claims.

With the success of the Greater Poland Uprising (1918–1919), Poland had re-established its sovereignty for the first time since the 1795 Third Partition of Poland. The Poles the Second Polish Republic and proceeded to carve out borders from the territories of their former partitioners. Many of the territories had long been the object of conflict between Russia and Poland.

Map of areas where Polish was used as a primary language in 1916

Re-establishment of the Polish state, March 1919

Poland was not alone in its new opportunities and troubles. With the collapse of the Russian and German occupying authorities, virtually all of Poland's newly independent neighbours began fighting over borders: Romania fought Hungary over Transylvania, Yugoslavia fought Italy over Rijeka and Poland fought Czechoslovakia over Cieszyn Silesia fought Germany over Poznań and Ukrainians over Eastern Galicia. Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians fought one another and against the Russians, who themselves were just as divided. Spreading Clcommunist influences resulted in communist revolutions in Munich (April–May 1919), in Berlin (January 1919), Budapest (March–August 1919) and Prešov in Slovakia (June–July 1919).

Winston Churchill commented sarcastically: "The war of giants has ended, the wars of the pygmies begin." All of the engagements, with the sole exception of the Polish–Soviet War, would prove to be short-lived.

The Polish–Soviet War likely happened more by accident than design, as it seems unlikely that anyone in Soviet Russia or in the new Second Republic of Poland deliberately planned a major foreign war. Poland, its territory being major battleground during the First World War, lacked political stability. It had won the difficult conflict against the West Ukrainian National Republic by July 1919 but had already become embroiled in new conflicts with Germany (the 1919-1921 Silesian uprisings) and the January 1919 border conflict with Czechoslovakia. Meanwhile, Soviet Russia focused on thwarting a counterrevolution and the 1918-1925 intervention by the Allied powers. The first clashes between Polish and Soviet forces occurred in February 1919, bit it took almost a year before both sides realised that they had become engaged in a full-scale war.

As early as late 1919, the leader of Russia's new Bolshevik government, Vladimir Lenin, inspired by the Red Army's civil-war victories over the White Russian anticommunist forces and their Western allies, began to see the future of world revolution with greater optimism. The Bolsheviks proclaimed the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat and agitated for a worldwide communist community. They had an avowed intent to link the revolution in Russia with an expected German Revolution and to assist other communist movements in Western Europe. Poland was the geographical bridge that the Red Army would have to cross for it to provide direct physical support in the West.

Lenin aimed to regain control of the territories abandoned by Russia in the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in March 1918, infiltrate the borderlands, set up Soviet governments there as well as in Poland and reach Germany, where he expected a socialist revolution to break out. He believed that Soviet Russia could not survive without the support of a socialist Germany. By the end of summer 1919, the Soviets had taken over most of Ukraine and driven the Directorate of Ukraine from Kiev. In February 1919, they also set up a Lithuanian–Belorussian Republic (Litbel). The government was very unpopular because of terror and its collection of food and goods for the army. Officially, however, the Soviet government denied charges of trying to invade Europe.

As the Polish–Soviet War progressed, particularly while Poland's Kiev Offensive was being repelled in June 1920, Soviet policymakers, including Lenin, increasingly saw the war as a real opportunity to spread the revolution westward. The historian Richard Pipes noted that before the Kiev Offensive, the Soviets had prepared for their own strike against Poland.

Before the start of the Polish–Soviet War, Polish politics were strongly influenced by Chief of State (naczelnik państwa) Józef Piłsudski. He had wanted to break up the Russian Empire and set up a Polish-led "Międzymorze Federation" of independent states: Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and other Central and East European countries that emerged from the crumbling empires after the First World War. He hoped that the new union would become a confederation and a counterweight to any potential imperialist intentions by Russia or of Germany. Piłsudski argued, "There can be no independent Poland without an independent Ukraine". However, may have been more interested in Ukraine being split from Russia than in Ukraine's welfare. He did not hesitate to use military force to expand the Polish borders to Galicia and Volhynia and crush a Ukrainian attempt at self-determination in the disputed territories east of the Southern Bug River, which contained a significant Polish minority that made up the majority of the population in cities like Lwów, umlike the countryside's Ukrainian majority. Speaking of Poland's future frontiers, Piłsudski said, "All that we can gain in the west depends on the Entente – on the extent to which it may wish to squeeze Germany". In the east, he said, "There are doors that open and close, and it depends on who forces them open and how far". In the chaos, the Polish forces set out to expand as far in the east as was as feasible. On the other hand, Poland had no intention of joining the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War or of conquering Russia itself.

Piłsudski also said:

Closed within the boundaries of the 16th century, cut off from the Black Sea and Baltic Sea, deprived of land and mineral wealth of the South and South-east, Russia could easily move into the status of second-grade power. Poland as the largest and strongest of new states, could easily establish a sphere of influence stretching from Finland to the Caucasus.

Before the war, Jan Kowalewski, a polyglot and amateur cryptologist, had managed to break the codes and ciphers of the army of the West Ukrainian People's Republic and of General Anton Denikin's White Russian forces during his service in the Polish–Ukrainian War. As a result, he was transferred in July 1919 to Warsaw, where he became the chief of the Polish General Staff's radio intelligence department. By early September he had gathered a group of mathematicians from Warsaw University and Lwów University (most notably the founders of the Polish School of Mathematics – Stanisław Leśniewski, Stefan Mazurkiewicz and Wacław Sierpiński), who succeeded in breaking Soviet Russian ciphers as well. The decoded information presented to Piłsudski showed that the Soviets' peace proposals with Poland in 1919 were fakes and that the Soviets had really prepared for a new offensive against Poland and concentrated military forces in Barysaw, near the Polish border. Piłsudski decided to ignore the Soviet proposals, sign an alliance with Symon Petliura of the Ukrainian People's Republic and prepare the Kiev Offensive. During the war, the Polish decryption of Red Army radio messages made it possible to use small Polish military forces efficiently against Soviet Russian forces and to win many individual battles, most importantly the 1920 Battle of Warsaw.

War

Five stages in Polish–Soviet War

1919

Main article: Polish–Soviet War in 1919

First Polish–Soviet conflicts

The first serious armed conflict of the war took place around 14 February to 16 February near the towns of Manevychi and Biaroza, Belarus. By late February, the Soviet westward advance had come to a halt. The Polish and the Soviet forces had also been engaging the Ukrainian forces, and active fighting was going on in the territories of the Baltic countries during the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Wars of Independence).

Polish propaganda poster showing Polish cavalry and a Bolshevik soldier with the caption: "Beat the Bolshevik"

In early March 1919, Polish units started an offensive, crossed the Neman River, took Pinsk, and reached the outskirts of Lida. Both the Soviet and Polish advances began around the same time in April (the Polish forces started a major offensive on 16 April), and increasing numbers of troops arrived in the area. That month, the Red Army had captured Grodno but was soon pushed out by a Polish counteroffensive. Unable to accomplish its objectives and facing strengthening offensives from the White forces, the Red Army withdrew from its positions and reorganised. Polish forces continued a steady eastern advance, took Lida on 17 April and Nowogródek on 18 April and recaptured Vilnius on 19 April, which drove the Litbel Government from its proclaimed capital.

On 8 August, Polish forces took Minsk, and on 28 August they deployed tanks for the first time. After heavy fighting, the town of Babruysk, near the Berezina River, was captured. By 2 October, Polish forces reached the Daugava River and secured the region from the Desna River to Daugavpils (Dyneburg).

Polish success continued until early 1920. Sporadic battles erupted between Polish forces and the Red Army, but the latter was preoccupied with the White counterrevolutionary forces and steadily retreated on the entire western frontline from Latvia in the north to Ukraine in the south. In early summer 1919, the White movement had gained the initiative, and its forces, under the command of Anton Denikin, were marching on Moscow. Piłsudski was aware that the Soviets were not friends of independent Poland and considered war with Soviet Russia inevitable. He viewed that its westward advance as a major issue but thought that he could get a better deal for Poland from the Bolsheviks than the White Russians]], who represented the old Russian Empire, which had partitioned Poland, and were willing to accept only a limited independence of Poland, likely woth borders similar to that of Congress Poland, and they clearly opposed Ukrainian independence, which was crucial for Piłsudski's Międzymorze. On the other hand, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the partitions to be null and void. Piłsudski thus speculated that Poland would be better off with the Bolsheviks, who were alienated from the Western powers, than with the restored Russian Empire.

By his refusal to join the attack on Lenin's struggling government, he ignored strong pressure from the Triple Entente and possibly saved the Bolshevik government in summer to fall 1919 although a full-scale attack by the Poles to support Denikin would not have been possible. Piłsudski later wrote that a White victory would gain for Poland in the east only the "ethnic border" at best, the Curzon line. Meanwhile, Lenin offered Poles the territories of Minsk, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi in what was described as a miniature version of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Polish military leader Kazimierz Sosnkowski wrote that the territorial proposals of the Bolsheviks were much better than what the Poles had wanted to achieve.

Central and Eastern Europe in December 1919

Beginning of diplomatic front

In 1919, several unsuccessful attempts at peace negotiations were made by various Polish and Russian factions. In the meantime, Polish–Lithuanian relations worsened, as Polish politicians found it hard to accept the Lithuanians' demands for certain territories, especially the city of Vilnius, which had a Polish ethnic majority but was regarded by Lithuanians as their historical capital. Polish negotiators made better progress with the Latvian Provisional Government, and in late 1919 and early 1920, Polish and Latvian forces were conducting joint operations, including the Battle of Daugavpils, against Soviet Russia.

Polish General Antoni Listowski (left) and Ukrainian leader Symon Petlura, allied with Poland

The Treaty of Warsaw, an agreement with the exiled Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petlura, was signed on 21 April 1920 and the main Polish diplomatic success. Petlura, who formally represented the Government of the Ukrainian People's Republic, which had been de facto defeated by the Bolsheviks, fled along with some Ukrainian forces to Poland, where he found political asylum. His control extended only to a sliver of land near the Polish border. In such conditions, Poland had little difficulty in convincing Petlura to join an alliance despite the recent conflict between both nations that had been settled in favour of Poland.

By concluding an agreement with Piłsudski, Petlura accepted the Polish territorial gains in Western Ukraine and the future Polish–Ukrainian border along the Zbruch River. In exchange, he was promised independence for Ukraine and Polish military assistance in reinstalling his government in Kiev.

For Piłsudski, the alliance gave his campaign for the Międzymorze federation the legitimacy of joint international effort, secured part of the Polish eastward border and laid a foundation for a Polish-dominated Ukrainian state between Russia and Poland. For Petlura, it was the final chance to preserve the statehood and at least the theoretical independence of the Ukrainian heartlands, despite the acceptance the loss of West Ukrainian lands to Poland.

However, both leaders were opposed at home. Piłsudski faced stiff opposition from Roman Dmowski's National Democrats, who opposed Ukrainian independence. Petlura, in turn, was criticised by many Ukrainian politicians for entering a pact with the Poles and for abandoning Western Ukraine.

The alliance with Petlura gave Poland 15,000 allied Ukrainian troops at the beginning of the campaign That increaswd to 35,000 by recruitment and Soviet deserters during the war. That would in eventually provide insufficient support for the alliance's aspirations.

1920

Main article: Polish–Soviet War in 1920

Opposing forces

Norman Davies notes that estimating strength of the opposing sides is difficult, and even generals often had incomplete reports of their own forces.

Red Army

By early 1920, the Red Army had been very successful against the White movement. They defeated Denikin and signed peace treaties with Latvia and Estonia. The Polish front became their most important war theatere and had the most Soviet resources and forces diverted to it. In January 1920, the Red Army began concentrating a 700,000-strong force near the Berezina River and in Belarus.

When the Poles had launched their Kiev offensive, the south-western Front had about 82,847 Soviet soldiers, including 28,568 front-line troops. The Poles had some numerical superiority, which was estimated from 12,000 to 52,000 personnel. During the Soviet counter-offensive in mid-1920, the situation had been reversed: the Soviets numbered about 790,000, at least 50,000 more than the Poles. Mikhail Tukhachevsky estimated that he had 160,000 "combat ready" soldiers, and Piłsudski estimated his enemy's forces at 200,000–220,000.

Mikhail Kalinin and Leon Trotsky greet the Red Army troops.

In 1920, Red Army personnel numbered 402,000 on the western front and 355,000 for the south-western front in Galicia. Grigoriy Krivosheev gives similar numbers, with 382,071 personnel for the western front and 282,507 personnel for the south-western Front between July and August.

Norman Davies shows the growth of Red Army forces on the Polish Front in early 1920:

1 January 1920 – 4 infantry divisions, 1 cavalry brigade

1 February 1920 – 5 infantry divisions, 5 cavalry brigades

1 March 1920 – 8 infantry divisions, 4 cavalry brigades

1 April 1920 – 14 infantry divisions, 3 cavalry brigades

15 April 1920 – 16 infantry divisions, 3 cavalry brigades

25 April 1920 – 20 infantry divisions, 5 cavalry brigades

Among the commanders leading the Red Army in the coming offensive were Leon Trotsky, Tukhachevsky (the new commander of the western front), Alexander Ilyich Yegorov (the new commander of the south-western front) and the future Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin.

Polish forces

Further information: Polish-Soviet War Polish order of battle

The Polish Army was made up of soldiers who had served in the various partitioning empires and was supported by some international volunteers, such as the Kościuszko Squadron. Boris Savinkov was at the head of an army of 20,000 to 30,000 largely-Russian prisoners-of-war and was accompanied by Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius. The Polish forces grew from approximately 100,000 in 1918 to over 500,000 in early 1920. In August 1920, the Polish Army had reached a total strength of 737,767 soldiers, half of whom were on the frontline. Soviet losses allowed rough numerical parity between the two armies, and during the Battle of Warsaw, the Poles may have even gained a slight advantage in numbers and logistics. One of the major formations on the Polish side was the First Polish Army.

Logistics and plans

Logistics were very bad for both armies and were supported by whatever equipment was left over from the First World War or could be captured. The Polish Army, for example, used guns made in five countries and rifles manufactured in six, each of which used different ammunition. The Soviets had many military depots at their disposal that were left by withdrawing German armies in 1918–1919 and modern French armaments that were captured in great numbers from the White Russians and the Allied expeditionary forces during the Russian Civil War. Still, they suffered a shortage of arms, and both the Red Army and the Polish forces were grossly underequipped by Western standards.

The Soviet High Command planned a new offensive in late April to May. Since March 1919, Polish intelligence was aware that the Soviets had prepared for a new offensive, and the Polish High Command decided to launch its own offensive before their opponents did so. The plan for Operation Kiev was to beat the Red Army on Poland's southern flank and to install the pro-Polish Petlura government in Ukraine.

Kiev Offensive

Main article: Kiev Offensive (1920)

Polish Kiev Offensive at its height, June 1920

Until April, the Polish forces had been slowly but steadily advancing eastward. The new Latvian Government requested and obtained Polish help in capturing Daugavpils. The city fell after heavy fighting at the Battle of Daugavpils in January and was handed over to the Latvians. By March, the Polish forces had driven a wedge between Soviet forces to the north (Belorussia) and south (Ukraine).

On 24 April, Poland began its main offensive, Operation Kiev. Its stated goal was the creation of an independent Ukraine, which would become part of Piłsudski's project of Międzymorze. Polish forces were assisted by 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers under Petlura, who represented the Ukrainian People's Republic.

On 26 April, in his "Call to the People of Ukraine", Piłsudski told his audience that "the Polish Army would only stay as long as necessary until a legal Ukrainian government took control over its own territory". However, many Ukrainians were just as anti-Polish as anticommunist and resented the Polish advance.

Vladimir Lenin, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Soviet Russian, delivers a speech to motivate troops to fight in the Polish–Soviet War on May 5, 1920.

The Polish 3rd Army easily won border clashes with the Red Army in Ukraine, but the Reds withdrew with minimal losses. The combined Polish–Ukrainian forces entered an abandoned Kiev on 7 May and encountered only token resistance.

This Polish military thrust was met with Red Army counterattacks on 29 May. Polish forces in the area prepared for an offensive towards Zhlobin and managed to hold their ground but could not start their own planned offensive. In the north, Polish forces had fared much worse. The Polish 1st Army was defeated and forced to retreat whyle or was pursued by the Russian 15th Army, which recaptured territories between the Western Dvina and the Berezina Rivers. Polish forces attempted to take advantage of the exposed flanks of the attackers, but the enveloping forces failed to stop the Soviet advance. In late May, the front had stabilised near the small Auta River, and Soviet forces began preparing for the next push.

Polish troops in Kiev

On 24 May 1920, the Polish forces in the south were engaged for the first time by Semjon Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army (Konarmia). Repeated attacks by Budyonny's Cossack cavalry broke the Polish–Ukrainian front on 5 June. The Soviets deployed mobile cavalry units to disrupt the Polish rearguard and target communications and logistics. By 10 June, the Polish armies were in retreat along the entire front. On 13 June, the Polish, along with Petlura's Ukrainian troops, abandoned Kiev to the Red Army.

String of Soviet victories

On 9 May 1920, the Soviet newspaper Pravda printed its article "Go West!" (Russian: На Запад!, Na Zapad!): "Through the corpse of White Poland lies the way to World Inferno. On bayonets, we will carry happiness and peace to working humanity". On 30 May 1920, General Aleksei Brusilov, the last tsarist commander-in-chief, published in Pravda an appeal, "To All Former Officers, Wherever They Might Be", and encouraged them to forgive past grievances and to join the Red Army. Brusilov considered it as a patriotic duty of all Russian officers to join hands with the Bolshevik government, which he thought to be defending Russia against foreign invaders. Lenin also discerned the appeal of Russian nationalism. The Central Committee thus appealed to the "respected citizens of Russia" to defend the Soviet republic against a Polish usurpation. The Soviet Russia's counteroffensive was indeed boosted by Brusilov's engagement, 14,000 officers and over 100,000 deserters enlisted in or returned to the Red Army and thousands of civilian volunteers contributed to the effort.

The commander of the Polish 3rd Army in Ukraine, General Edward Rydz-Śmigły, decided to break through the Soviet line toward the north-west. Polish forces in Ukraine managed to withdraw relatively unscathed but could not support the northern front and reinforce the defences at the Auta River for the decisive battle, which would soon take place there.

Polish Breguet 14 operating from Kiev airfield

Insufficient forces caused Poland's 320 km (200 mi) front to be manned by a thin line of 120,000 troops, backed by some 460 artillery pieces with no strategic reserves. That approach to holding ground harked back to the First World War practice of "establishing a fortified line of defense". It had shown some merit on the western front, which was saturated with troops, machine guns and artillery. Poland's eastern front, however, was weakly manned and supported with inadequate artillery, and it had almost no fortifications.

Soviet offensive successes, early August 1920

Against the Polish line, the Red Army gathered its north-western front led by the young General Mikhail Tukhachevsky. Its numbers exceeded 108,000 infantry and 11,000 cavalry, supported by 722 artillery pieces and 2,913 machine guns. The Soviets at some crucial places outnumbered the Poles four times.

Tukhachevsky launched his offensive on 4 July along the Smolensk–Brest-Litovsk axis and crossed the Auta and the Berezina Rivers. The northern 3rd Cavalry Corps, led by Gayk Bzhishkyan (Gay Dmitrievich Gay, Gaj-Chan), would envelop Polish forces from the north and move near the Lithuanian and Prussian border (both belonging to nations hostile to Poland). The 4th, 15th and 3rd Armies were to push west supported from the south by the 16th Army and Mozyr Group. For three days, the outcome of the battle hung in the balance, but the Soviet numerical superiority proved decisive, and by 7 July, Polish forces were in full retreat along the entire front. However, the stubborn defence by Polish units made Tukhachevsky's plan fail; he had wanted to break through the front and push the defenders south-west, into the Pinsk Marshes.

American volunteer pilots, Merian C. Cooper and Cedric Fauntleroy, fought in the Kościuszko Squadron of the Polish Air Force.

Polish resistance was offered again on a line of "German trenches", a line of heavy First World War field fortifications, which presented an opportunity to stem the Red Army offensive, but there were too few Polish troops. Soviet forces found a weakly-defended part of the front and broke through. Gay and Lithuanian forces captured Vilnius on 14 July, which forced the Poles into retreat again. In Galicia, to the south, General Budyonny's cavalry advanced far into the Polish rear and captured Brody and approaching Lwów and Zamość. In early July, it became clear to the Poles that the Soviets' objectives were not limited to pushing their borders westward but that Poland's very independence was at stake.

See also: Galician Soviet Socialist Republic

Soviet forces moved forward at the remarkable rate of 32 kilometres (20 mi) a day. Grodno, Belarus l, fell on 19 July, and Brest-Litovsk fell on 1 August. The Polish attempted to defend the Bug River line with 4th Army and Grupa Poleska units but delayed the Red Army advance for only one week. After crossing the Narew River on 2 August, the north-western front was only 97 kilometres (60 mi) from Warsaw. The Brest-Litovsk fortress, which became the headquarters of the planned Polish counteroffensive, fell to the 16th Army in the first attack. The south-western front pushed the Polish forces out of Ukraine. Stalin had disobeyed his orders and ordered his forces to close on Zamość and Lwów. The latter was the largest city in southeastern Poland and an important industrial centre that was garrisoned by the Polish 6th Army. The city was soon esieged. That created a hole in the lines of the Red Army but also opened the way to the Polish capital. Five Soviet armies approached Warsaw.

Polish fighters of the 7th Kościuszko Squadron

Polish forces in Galicia near Lwów launched a successful counteroffensive to slow down the Red Army advance. That stopped the retreat of Polish forces on the southern front, but the worsening situation near the Polish capital prevented the Poles from continuing that southern counteroffensive and pushing east. Forces were mustered to take part in the coming Battle of Warsaw.

New diplomatic front

With the tide turning against Poland, Piłsudski's political power weakened, and that of his opponents, including Dmowski, rose. Piłsudski managed to regain his influence, especially over the military, almost at the last moment, as the Soviet forces were approaching Warsaw. The Polish political scene had begun to unravel in panic, with the government of Leopold Skulski resigning in early June.

Meanwhile, the Soviet leadership's confidence soared. In a telegram, Lenin exclaimed, "We must direct all our attention to preparing and strengthening the Western Front. A new slogan must be announced: 'Prepare for war against Poland'". The Soviet communist theorist Nikolay Bukharin, who wrote for the newspaper Pravda, wished for the resources to carry the campaign beyond Warsaw "right up to London and Paris". Tukhachevsky's order of the day on 2 July 1920 read: "To the West! Over the corpse of White Poland lies the road to worldwide conflagration. March on Vilno, Minsk, Warsaw!" and "onward to Berlin over the corpse of Poland!"

The increasing hope of certain victory, however, gave rise to political intrigues among Soviet commanders.

General Józef Haller (touching the flag) and his Blue Army

On orders of the Soviet Communist Party, a Polish puppet government, the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee (Polish: Tymczasowy Komitet Rewolucyjny Polski, TKRP), had been formed on 28 July in Białystok to organise the administration of the Polish territories captured by the Red Army. The TKRP had very little support from ethnic Poles and recruited its supporters mostly from the ranks of minorities, primarily Jews. At the height of the Polish–Soviet conflict, Jews had been subject to anti-Semitic violence by Polish forces, who considered Jews a potential threat and often accused Jews of masterminding Bolshevism. During the Battle of Warsaw, the Polish Government interned Jewish volunteers and sent Jewish volunteer officers to an internment camp.

In early July 1920, Polish Prime Minister Władysław Grabski travelled to the Spa Conference in Belgium to request assistance. The Allied representatives were largely unamenable to Polish demands. Grabski signed an agreement containing several terms: Polish forces would withdraw to the Curzon Line, which the Allies had published in December 1919, delineating Poland's ethnographic frontier; it would participate in a subsequent peace conference; and the questions of sovereignty over Vilnius, Eastern Galicia, Cieszyn Silesia and Danzig would be remanded to the Allies. Vague promises of Allied support were made in exchange.

Bolshevik propaganda poster of the Polish-Soviet War (1920)

On 11 July 1920, the British gvernment sent a telegram to the Soviets that was signed by Curzon and has been described as a de facto ultimatum. It requested the Soviets to halt their offensive at the Curzon line and to accept it as a temporary border with Poland until a permanent border could be established in negotiations. In case of Soviet refusal, the British threatened to assist Poland with all means available, but they were really limited by the British internal political situation. On 17 July, the Bolsheviks refused and made a counteroffer to negotiate a peace treaty directly with Poland. The British government responded by threatening to cut off the ongoing trade negotiations if the Soviets conducted further offensives against Poland. The threats were ignored by the Soviets.

On 6 August 1920, the British Labour Party published a pamphlet stating that the workers would and should never take part in the war as Poland's allies, and labour unions blocked supplies to the expeditionary force assisting Russian Whites in Arkhangelsk. The French Socialist Party, in its newspaper L'Humanité, declared: "Not a man, not a sou, not a shell for reactionary and Capitalist Poland. Long live the Russian Revolution! Long live the Workmen's International!" Poland also suffered setbacks by sabotage and delays in deliveries of war supplies when Czechoslovak and German workers refused to transit such materials to Poland. On 6 August the Polish government issued an "Appeal to the World", which disputed charges of Polish imperialism and stressed Poland's belief in self-determination and the dangers of a Bolshevik invasion of Europe.

Poland's neighbour Lithuania had been engaged in serious disputes with Poland over the city of Vilnius and the borderlands surrounding Sejny and Suwałki. Also, a 1919 Polish attempt to take control over the entire nation by a coup had disrupted their relationship. The Soviet and the Lithuanian governments signed the Soviet-Lithuanian Treaty of 1920 on 12 July which recognised Vilnius as part of Lithuania. The treaty contained a secret clause that allowed Soviet forces unrestricted movement in Soviet-recognised Lithuania during any Soviet war with Poland. That clause would lead to questions regarding the issue of Lithuanian neutrality during the ongoing Polish–Soviet War. The Lithuanians also provided the Soviets with logistical support.

Despite Lithuanian support, the Soviets did not transfer Vilnius to the Lithuanians until just before the city was recaptured by the Polish forces in late August, bit until then, the Soviets encouraged their own communist government, Litbel, and planned a communist coup in Lithuania. The simmering conflict between both countries culminated in the Polish–Lithuanian War in August 1920.

Polish allies were few. France continued its policy of countering Bolshevism, now that the Whites in Russia proper had been almost completely defeated, and sent a 400-strong advisory group to Poland's aid in 1919. It consisted mostly of French officers, but it also included a few British advisers, led by Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton De Wiart. The French officers included future French President, Charles de Gaulle. During the war, he won Poland's highest military decoration, the Virtuti Militari. In addition to the Allied advisors, France facilitated the transit to Poland from France of the "Blue Army" in 1919. The troops were mostly of Polish origin but included international volunteers who had been under French command during the First World War. The army was commanded by Polish General Józef Haller. Hungary offered to send a 30,000 cavalry corps to Poland's aid, but the Czechoslovak government refused to allow them through since there was a demilitarised zone on the borders after the Czechoslovak–Hungarian War, which had ended only a few months earlier. Some trains with weapon supplies from Hungary, however, arrived in Poland.

Soviet delegates arrive for armistice negotiations before the Battle of Warsaw, August 1920.

In mid-1920, the Allied Mission was expanded by some advisers and became the Interallied Mission to Poland. They included the French diplomat Jean Jules Jusserand; Maxime Weygand, chief of staff to Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the Supreme Commander of the victorious Entente; and the British diplomat Lord Edgar Vincent D'Abernon. The newest members of the mission achieved little, but indeed, the crucial Battle of Warsaw had been fought and won by the Poles before the mission had returned and made its report. Nonetheless for many years, a myth persisted that it was the timely arrival of Allied forces that had saved Poland, which Weygand occupied the central role.

Nonetheless, Polish-French co-operation continued, and French weaponry including infantry armament, artillery and Renault FT tanks were shipped to Poland to reinforce its military. Eventually, on 21 February 1921, France and Poland agreed to a formal military alliance, which became an important factor during the later Soviet–Polish negotiations.

Battle of Warsaw

Main article: Battle of Warsaw (1920)

Polish propaganda poster. Text reads: "To Arms! Save the Fatherland! Remember well our future fate."

In early August, Polish and Soviet delegations met at Baranavichy and exchanged notes, but their talks came to nothing.

On 10 August 1920, Soviet Cossack units, under the command of Gayk Bzhishkyan crossed the Vistula River. They planned to take Warsaw from the west while the main attack came from the east. On 13 August, an initial Soviet attack was repelled. The Polish 1st Army resisted a direct assault on Warsaw and stopped the assault at Radzymin.

The Soviet western front commander, Tukhachevsky, felt certain that all was going according to his plan. However, Polish military intelligence had decrypted the Red Army's radio messages, and Tukhachevsky actually fell into a trap set by Piłsudski and his chief of staff, Tadeusz Rozwadowski. The Soviet advance across the Vistula River in the north moved into an operational vacuum, as there were no sizable Polish forces in the area. On the other hand, south of Warsaw, where the fate of the war was about to be decided, Tukhachevsky had left only token forces to guard the vital link between the Soviet north-western and the south-western fronts. Another factor that influenced the outcome of the war was the effective neutralisation of Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army, which was much feared by Piłsudski and other Polish commanders, in the battles around Lwów. At Tukhachevsky's insistence, the Soviet High Command had ordered the 1st Cavalry Army to march north toward Warsaw and Lublin. However, Budyonny disobeyed the order because of a grudge between Tukhachevsky and Alexander Ilyich Yegorov, the commander of the south-western front.

Joseph Stalin, the chief political commissar of the south-western Front, was engaged at Lwów, about 320 km (200 mi) from Warsaw. The absence of his forces at the battle has been the subject of dispute. A perception arose that his absence was caused by his desire to achieve "military glory" at Lwów. Telegrams concerning the transfer of forces were exchanged. Leon Trotsky interpreted Stalin's actions as insubordination, and Richard Pipes asserts that Stalin "almost certainly acted on Lenin's orders" in not moving the forces to Warsaw. Commander-in-Chief Sergey Kamenev allowed such insubordination, issued conflicting and confusing orders and did not act with the decisiveness of a commander-in-chief, which contributed greatly to the problems and defeat the Russian forces suffered at this critical junction of the war.

Polish soldiers display captured Soviet standards after the Battle of Warsaw.

The Polish 5th Army, under General Władysław Sikorski counterattacked, on 14 August from the area of the Modlin fortress and crossed the Wkra River. It faced the combined forces of the Soviet 3rd and 15th Armies, which were numerically and materially superior. the Soviet advance toward Warsaw and Modlin had been halted in one day and soon turned into a retreat. Sikorski's 5th Army pushed the exhausted Soviet formations away from Warsaw in a lightning operation. Polish forces advanced at a speed of 30 km a day and soon destroyed any Soviet hope of completing the enveloping manoeuvre in the north. By 16 August, the Polish counteroffensive had been fully joined by Marshal Piłsudski's "Reserve Army". Precisely executing his plan, the Polish force, advancing from Warsaw (Colonel Wrzaliński's group) and the south (the Polish 3rd and 4 Armies), found a huge gap between the Soviet fronts and exploited the weakness of the Soviet "Mozyr Group", which was supposed to protect the weak link between the Soviet fronts. The Poles continued their northward offensive with two armies following and destroying the surprised enemy. The Poles reached the rear of Tukhachevsky's forces, most of which were encircled by 18 August. It was only that day thst Tukhachevsky, at his headquarters in Minsk, 480 km (300 mi) east of Warsaw, became fully aware of the size of the Soviet defeat and ordered the remnants of his forces to retreat and regroup. He hoped to straighten his front line, halt the Polish attack and regain the initiative, but the orders arrived too late or not at all.

The Soviet armies in the centre of the front fell into chaos. Tukhachevsky ordered a general retreat toward the Bug River but had lost contact with most of his forces near Warsaw, and all of the Bolshevik plans had been thrown into disarray by communication failures.

Bolshevik armies retreated in a disorganised fashion, and entire divisions panicking and disintegrating. The Red Army's defeat was so great and unexpected that at the instigation of Piłsudski's detractors, the Battle of Warsaw has been often referred to in Poland as the "Miracle at the Vistula". Previously-unknown documents from Polish Central Military Archive proved in 2004 that the successful breaking of Red Army radio communications ciphers by Polish cryptographers played a great role in the victory (see Jan Kowalewski).

Austin-Putilovets "Poznańczyk" near Bobruysk, Polish–Soviet War 1920

Semyon Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army's advance toward Lwów was halted at the Battle of Brody (29 July – 2 August) and on 17 August at the Battle of Zadwórze in which a small Polish force sacrificed itself to prevent Soviet cavalry from seizing Lwów and stopping vital Polish reinforcements from moving toward Warsaw. Moving through weakly-defended areas, Budyonny's cavalry reached the city of Zamość on 29 August and attempted to take it at the Battle of Zamość, but he soon faced an increasing number of Polish units, which had been diverted from the successful Warsaw counteroffensive. On 31 August, Budyonny's cavalry finally broke off its siege of Lwów and attempted to come to the aid of Soviet forces retreating from Warsaw. The Soviet forces were intercepted and defeated by Polish cavalry at the Battle of Komarów, near Zamość, one of the largest cavalry battles since 1813 and one of the last cavalry battles in history. Although Budyonny's army managed to avoid encirclement, it suffered heavy losses, and its morale plummeted. The remains of Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army retreated towards Volodymyr-Volynskyi on 6 September and were defeated shortly thereafter at the Battle of Hrubieszów.

Tukhachevsky managed to reorganise the eastward-retreating forces, and in September, he established a new defensive line running from the Polish–Lithuanian border to the north to the area of Polesie, with the central point in the city of Grodno, Belarus. The Polish Army broke the line at the Battle of the Niemen River. Polish forces crossed the Niemen River and outflanked the Bolshevik forces, which were forced to retreat again. Polish forces continued to advance eastward on all fronts and repeated their successes from the previous year. After the early October Battle of the Szczara River, the Polish Army had reached the Ternopil–Dubno–Minsk–Drissa line.

In the south, Petliura's Ukrainian forces defeated the Bolshevik 14th Army and, on 18 September, took control of the left bank of the Zbruch River. During the next month, they moved east to the line Yaruha on the Dniester–Sharhorod–Bar–Lityn.

Conclusion

Polish volunteers from Lwów serving in the army's 2nd Death's Squadron around 1920

Soon after the Battle of Warsaw, the Bolsheviks sued for peace. The Poles were exhausted and constantly pressured by the Western governments and the League of Nations, and its army controlled the majority of the disputed territories. The Poles were willing to negotiate, and te Soviets made an offer on 21 September and another on 28 September. The Polish delegation made a counteroffer on 2 October. On 5 October, the Soviets offered amendments to the Polish offer, which Poland accepted.

The Preliminary Treaty of Peace and Armistice Conditions between Poland on one side and Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Russia on the other was signed on 12 October, and the armistice went into effect on 18 October. Ratifications were exchanged at Liepāja on 2 November. Long negotiations of the final peace treaty ensued.

Meanwhile, Petliura's Ukrainian forces, which now numbered 23,000 soldiers and controlled territories immediately to the east of Poland, planned an offensive in Ukraine for 11 November but were attacked by the Bolsheviks on 10 November. By 21 November, after several battles, they were driven into Polish-controlled territory.

Aftermath

Despite the final retreat of Soviet forces and the annihilation of three field armies, historians do not universally agree on the question of victory. The Poles claimed a successful defence of their state, but the Soviets claimed a repulse of the Polish eastward invasion of Ukraine and Belarus, which they viewed as a part of the foreign intervention in the Russian Civil War. Some British and American military historians argue that the Soviet failure to destroy the Polish Army decisively ended Soviet ambitions for international revolution.

With the end of the Polish–Soviet War and the defeat of General Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel in 1920, the Red Army could divert its regular troops into the Tambov region of central Russia to crush the anti-Bolshevik peasant uprising.

Polish anti-communist poster showing Leon Trotsky. The large caption reads "Bolshevik freedom". The sall caption on the right-hand-side reads: "The Bolsheviks promised: We'll give you peace. We'll give you freedom. We'll give you land, work and bread. Despicably they cheated. They started a war With Poland. Instead of freedom they brought the fist. Instead of land, confiscation. Instead of work, misery Instead of bread, famine".

Peace negotiations

Main article: Peace of Riga

Their losses during and after the Battle of Warsaw made the Soviets offer the Polish peace delegation substantial territorial concessions in the contested borderland areas, which closely resembling the border between the Russian Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth before the First Partition of Poland in 1772. Polish resources were exhausted, however, and Polish public opinion opposed a prolongation of the war. The Polish government was also pressured by the League of Nations, and the negotiations were controlled by Dmowski's National Democrats.

The National Democrats cared little for Piłsudski's vision of establishing Międzymorze. He might have controlled the military, but Parliament (Sejm) was controlled by Dmowski. Piłsudski's support lay in the territories in the East, which were controlled by the Bolsheviks during the elections, but the National Democrats' electoral support lay in central and western Poland.

The National Democrats wanted only the territory that they viewed as "ethnically or historically Polish" or could be polonised. Despite the Red Army's crushing defeat at Warsaw and the willingness of the chief Soviet negotiator, Adolf Joffe, to concede almost all of the disputed territory, the National Democrats' ideology allowed the Soviets to regain certain territories.

That postwar situation proved a death blow to the Międzymorze project. The National Democrats also had few concerns about the fate of their Ukrainian ally, Petliura, and cared little that their political opponent, Piłsudski, who felt that he was honour-bound by his treaty obligations. Thus, they did not hesitate to scrap the Warsaw Treaty between Poland and the Directorate of Ukraine.

The Peace of Riga was signed on 18 March 1921 and divided the disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between Poland and the Soviet Union.

Ukraine

The peace treaty, which Piłsudski called an "act of cowardice", violated the terms of Poland's military alliance with the Directorate of Ukraine, which had explicitly prohibited a separate peace. Ukrainian allies of Poland were interned by the Polish authorities. The internment worsened relations between Poland and its Ukrainian minority: those who supported Petliura were angered by the betrayal of their Polish ally, anger that would grow by the assimilationist policies of nationalist interwar Poland towards its minorities.

Belarus

The treaty partitioned Belarus and gave a portion of its territory to Poland and the other portion to the Soviets. Though the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was not dissolved, its policies were determined by Moscow. In response, Belarusian activists held a Congress of Representatives in Prague in the fall of 1921 to discuss the treaty. Vera Maslovskaya was sent as the delegate of the Białystok area, and at the congress, she proposed a resolution to fight for unification. She sought independence of all Belarusian lands and denounced the partition. Though the convention did not adopt a proposal instituting armed conflict, it passed Maslovskaya's proposal, which led to immediate retaliation from the Polish authorities. They infiltrated the underground network fighting for unification and arrested the participants. Maslovskaya was arrested in 1922 and tried in 1923, along with 45 other participants, including a sister and brother of Maslovskaya and several teachers and professionals, but most were peasants. Maslovskaya accepted all responsibility for the underground organisation, but specifically stated that she was guilty of no crime, having acted only to protect the interests of Belarus against foreign occupiers in a political and not military action. Unable to prove that the leaders had participated in armed rebellion, the court found them guilty of political crimes and sentenced the participants to six years in prison.

Vilnius

The Polish military successes in the autumn of 1920 allowed Poland to capture the Vilnius region, where a Polish-dominated Governance Committee of Central Lithuania (Komisja Rządząca Litwy Środkowej) was formed. A plebiscite was conducted, and the Vilnius Sejm voted for incorporation into Poland on 20 February 1922. That worsened Polish–Lithuanian relations for decades to come. Despite the loss of territory for Lithuania, Alfred E. Senn argues that it was only the Polish victory against the Soviets in the Polish–Soviet War that derailed the Soviet plans for westward expansion and gave Lithuania the period of interwar independence.

War crimes and other controversies

Further information: Controversies of the Polish–Soviet War

The war and its aftermath also resulted in other controversies, such as the situation of prisoners of war of both sides, treatment of the civilian population and the behaviour of some commanders like Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz or Vadim Yakovlev. Another controversy concerned the pogroms of Jews, which caused the United States to send a commission, led by Henry Morgenthau, to investigate the matter.

Developments in military strategy

Graves of Polish soldiers killed during the Battle of Warsaw of 1920, Powązki Military Cemetery, Warsaw

The Polish–Soviet War influenced Polish military doctrine, which for the next 20 years emphasised the mobility of elite cavalry units. It also influenced Charles de Gaulle, who was an instructor with the Polish Army who fought in several of the battles. He and Władysław Sikorski were the only notable military officers who, based on their experiences during the war, correctly predicted the importance of maneuver and mechanization in the next war. Although they failed in the interbellum to convince their respective militaries to heed those lessons, during the start of the Second World War, they rose to command of their armed forces in exile.

Legacy

In 1943, during the course of the Second World War, the subject of Poland's eastern borders was reopened and was discussed at the Tehran Conference. Winston Churchill argued in favour of the 1920 Curzon Line, rather than the Treaty of Riga's borders, and an agreement among the Allies to that effect was reached at the Yalta Conference in 1945. The Western Allies, despite having alliance treaties with Poland and despite Polish contribution, also left Poland within the Soviet sphere of influence but allowed Poland to be compensated with the bulk of the former eastern territories of Germany. That became known as the Western betrayal.

Until 1989, communists held power in the People's Republic of Poland, and the Polish–Soviet War was omitted or minimised in Polish and other Soviet bloc countries' history books or was presented as a foreign intervention during the Russian Civil War.

Polish Lieutenant Józef Kowalski was the last living veteran of the war. He was awarded the Order of Polonia Restituta on his 110th birthday by the president of Poland. He died on 7 December 2013 at the age of 113.

List of battles

Main article: List of battles of the Polish–Soviet War

See also

• Biuro Szyfrów
• Polish-Ukrainian War
• Soviet invasion of Poland
• Germany–Soviet Union relations, 1918–1941

Further reading

• Dąbrowski, Stanisław. "The Peace Treaty of Riga." The Polish Review (1960) 5#1: 3-34. Online
• Babel', Isaak Emmanuilovich (2003). Babel, Nathalie; Constantine, Peter (translator) (eds.). Red Cavalry [Конармия]. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-32423-5. Retrieved 29 October 2010.
• Davies, Norman Richard (2003) [1972]. White Eagle, Red Star: the Polish-Soviet War, 1919–20 (New ed.). New York: Pimlico / Random House Inc. ISBN 978-0-7126-0694-3.
• Fiddick, Thomas C., "The 'Miracle of the Vistula': Soviet Policy versus Red Army Strategy", The Journal of Modern History, vol. 45, no. 4 (Dec. 1973), pp. 626–643.
• Fiddick, Thomas C. Russia's Retreat from Poland, 1920, Macmillan Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0-333-51940-0
• Materski, Wojciech. "The Second Polish Republic in Soviet Foreign Policy (1918–1939)." Polish Review 45.3 (2000): 331–345. online
• Ponichtera, Robert M. and David R. Stone, "The Russo-Polish War", The Military History of the Soviet Union New York, Palgrave, 2002, ISBN 978-0-312-29398-7.
• Wandycz, Piotr, "General Weygand and the Battle of Warsaw", Journal of Central European Affairs, 1960.
• Watt, Richard M., Bitter Glory: Poland and Its Fate, 1918–1939, New York, Hippocrene Books, 1998, ISBN 978-0-7818-0673-2.
• Zamoyski, Adam. 0-00-722552-0 Warsaw 1920: Lenin's Failed Conquest of Europe. Harper Collins, 2008. ISBN 978-0-00-722552-1

Non-English

Polish

• Cisek, Janusz (1990). Sąsiedzi wobec wojny 1920 roku. Wybór dokumentów. (transl. Neighbors Attitude Towards the War of 1920. A collection of documents.). London: Polish Cultural Foundation Ltd. ISBN 978-0-85065-212-3.
• Czubiński, Antoni, Walka o granice wschodnie Polski w latach 1918–1921 (Fighting for eastern borders of Poland in 1918–1921), Instytut Śląski w Opolu, Opole, 1993
• Drozdzowski, Marian Marek (ed.), Międzynarodowe aspekty wojny polsko-bolszewickiej, 1919–1920. Antologia tekstów historycznych (International aspects of the Polish-Bolshevik War, 1919–1920. Anthology of historical texts.), Instytut Historii PAN, 1996, ISBN 978-83-86417-21-6
• Golegiewski, Grzegorz, Obrona Płocka przed bolszewikami, 18–19 sierpnia 1920 r. (Defence of Płock from the Bolsheviks, 18–19 August 1920), NOVUM, 2004, ISBN 978-83-89416-43-8
• Kawalec Tadeusz, Historia IV-ej Dywizji Strzelców Generała Żeligowskiego w zarysie (History of 4th Rifleman Division of General Żeligowki in brief), Gryf, 1993, OCLC 32178695.
• Konieczny, Bronisław, Moje życie w mundurze. Czasy narodzin i upadku II RP (My life in the uniform. Times of the birth and fall of the Second Polish Republic), Księgarnia Akademicka, 2005 ISBN 978-83-7188-693-5
• Kopański, Tomasz Jan, 16 (39-a) Eskadra Wywiadowcza 1919–1920 (16th (39th) Scouting Escadrille 1919–1920), Wojskowy Instytut Historyczny, 1994, ISBN 978-83-901733-5-1
• Kukiel, Marian, Moja wojaczka na Ukrainie. Wiosna 1920 (My fighting in Ukraine. Spring 1920), Wojskowy Instytut Historyczny, 1995, ISBN 978-83-85621-74-4
• Łukowski, Grzegorz, Walka Rzeczpospolitej o kresy północno-wschodnie, 1918–1920. Polityka i dzialania militarne. (Rzeczpospolita's fight for the northeastern borderlands, 1918–1920. Politics and military actions.), Wydawnictwo Naukowe Universytetu Adama Mickiewicza, Poznań, 1994, ISBN 978-83-232-0614-9
• Pruszyński, Mieczysław, Dramat Piłsudskiego: Wojna 1920 (The drama of Piłsudski: War of 1920), Polska Oficyna Wydawnicza BGW, 1995, ISBN 978-83-7066-560-9
• Odziemkowski, Janusz, Leksykon Wojny Polsko-Rosyjskiej 1919–1920 (Lexicon of Polish-Russian War 1919–1920), Rytm, 2004, ISBN 978-83-7399-096-8
• Rozstworowski, Stanisław (ed.), Listy z wojny polsko-bolszewickiej (Letters from the Polish-Bolshevik War), Adiutor, 1995, ISBN 978-83-86100-11-8
• Sikorski, Władysław (1991) [1928]. Nad Wisłą i Wkrą. Studium do polsko–radzieckiej wojny 1920 roku (transl. At Vistula and Wkra: Study of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920) (latest ed.). Warsaw: Agencja Omnipress. ISBN 978-83-85028-15-4.
• Szczepański, Janusz (1995). Wojna 1920 na Mazowszu i Podlasiu (transl. War of 1920 in Mazovia and Podolia). Wyższa Szkoła Humanistyczna / Gryf. ISBN 978-83-86643-30-1.

Russian

• Мельтюхов, Михаил Иванович (Mikhail Meltyukhov) (2001). Советско-польские войны. Военно-политическое противостояние 1918–1939 гг. (Soviet-Polish Wars. Political and Military standoff of 1918–1939). Moscow: Вече (Veche). ISBN 978-5-699-07637-6. Retrieved 29 October 2010. (in Russian).

External links

• Centek, Jarosław: Polish-Soviet War 1920–1921 , in: 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
• The Bolsheviks and the "Export of Revolution": The Russo-Polish War
• Bibliography of the Polish-Soviet War by Anna M. Cienciala, University of Kansas
• Russo-Polish War 1919–20 at Onwar.com
• Maps of the Polish-Bolshevik War: Campaign Maps (Battle of Warsaw) by Robert Tarwacki at the Wayback Machine (archived 27 October 2009)
• A Knock on the Door – chapter three of Wesley Adamczyk's memoirs of the Polish-Soviet war, When God Looked.
• Sławomir Majman, War and Propaganda, Warsaw Voice, 23 August 1998
• The Russo-Polish War, 1919–1920: A Bibliography of Materials in English by John A. Drobnicki. Originally Published in the Polish Review, XLII, no. 1 (Mar. 1997), 95–104
• 73,055 names of Polish mortal casualties