ROOTS OF THE WAR
With Russia in the throes of civil war and Germany defeated in WWI, the time was right for Poland to embark on a campaign of territorial expansion
For well over a century, the Polish national consciousness had existed in a political netherworld. Their country was partitioned three times in the 18th century by powerful neighbours Germany, Russia and Austria, the people of Poland had been subjugated, and their culture almost eradicated. However, the upheaval of World War I and the internal strife that beset Soviet Russia offered an opportunity for lasting redress.
The champion of the Second Polish Republic and its nationalist supporters, Marshal
Jozef Pilsudski, pursued a policy of territorial expansion that he hoped would ensure the preservation of the republic, bring ethnic
Poles together, and even encompass lands in Belorussia, Ukraine and the Baltic States. Pilsudski, a moderate Socialist, had fought for the Central Powers against Russia during World War I, and indeed on 6 November 1916, Germany and Austria-hungary had proclaimed the Kingdom of Poland, a puppet state with limited autonomy.
Within months, however, Russia concluded a separate peace with Germany and abandoned its World War I allies. Subsequently, in
October 1918, just days before the end of the war, Poland’s regency council declared full independence. The defeat of Germany led to political debate at Versailles, and already in the summer of 1918, US President Woodrow Wilson had conceived his Fourteen Points for lasting peace, one of which proposed an independent Poland.
The Poles established a parliamentary government and chose Pilsudski as head of state. The new leader soon implemented a plan to occupy eastern territory, reestablishing the frontier of the old Polish nation at the expense of the Soviets and incorporating parts of Lithuania, Ukraine and Belorussia in an eastern European confederation under Polish primacy.
In February 1919, Pilsudski ordered the Polish Army to head north and east. The Soviets, he believed, were preoccupied with defeating their White Russian adversaries, and the bulk of the Red Army would necessarily focus on this struggle. Meanwhile, many Western observers labelled Pilsudski’s bold move as outright aggression or opportunistic imperialism. Britain condemned the military thrust, and warned that Pilsudski could expect no assistance in the endeavour.
The Polish advance met little organised resistance, and by the end of 1919, the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius was in Pilsudski’s hands, while great swaths of Ukrainian Galicia and Belorussia were occupied. In December, British Foreign Minister Lord George Nathaniel Curzon suggested that the Poles cease their advance at the “Curzon Line”, which essentially marked the limits of Polish ethnicity. The proposal was rejected, as Pilsudski had already pushed further eastward – beyond the proposed limit.
Meanwhile, Pilsudski engaged in negotiations with the Bolsheviks and the White Russians, sounding their willingness to settle the issue with an acceptable eastern boundary. However, as time passed, it became clear that the Bolshevik Red Army would prevail against the White forces. Pilsudski prepared another offensive. He brokered an alliance with Ukrainian forces under Ataman Semyon Pelyura, a pragmatist willing to cede some territory to the Poles in exchange for a post-war independent Ukraine.
As Pilsudski received reports of large numbers of Red Army troops moving to oppose further Polish encroachment, on 25 April
1920 he ordered the Polish Army to advance deeper into Ukraine. Success was immediate. Within days, the Ukrainian capital of Kiev had fallen. Hailed a hero at home, Pilsudski was nevertheless moving closer to a major reversal and near catastrophe.
Seriously overextended supply lines left the Polish Army vulnerable to flanking counterattacks. Executing a plan conceived by Commissar Leon Trotsky, Red Army forces under Generals Semyon Budenny in the south and Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the north sent the Poles reeling toward their homeland.
Driven by the ideological zeal of the Bolshevik leader, Lenin, the Russians threatened to take Warsaw and stir the well-organised Communist party in Germany to action. The extension of Communism into Central Europe was a threat to stability that alarmed the Western governments, spurring their diplomatic intervention and the dispatch of military advisors and war material to Pilsudski.
Far from finished, the ever-resourceful Pilsudski armed the peasants in the countryside along with the citizenry of Warsaw. He marshalled his forces, some of who were veterans of World War I, and launched a decisive counterstroke, inflicting a severe defeat on the Red Army in the Battle of Warsaw.
The Poles chased the Russians eastward, and negotiations were undertaken to establish a permanent frontier. The Treaty of Riga, signed on 18 March 1921, gave Poland some territory it had lost with the century-old partitions and granted the nation sovereignty over additional lands.