Polish-Soviet War Totally Explained

Everything about The Polish-soviet War totally explained

The Polish-Soviet War (February 1919 – March 1921) was an armed conflict of Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine against the Second Polish Republic and the short-lived Ukrainian People's Republic, four states in post-World War I Europe. The war was the result of conflicting expansionist attempts. Poland, whose statehood had just been re-established by the Treaty of Versailles following the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, sought to secure territories which she'd lost at the time of partitions; the Soviets' aim was to control those same territories, which had been part of Imperial Russia until the turbulent events of the Great War. Both States claimed victory [orPolish-Russian War] of 1919–20/21" (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's also referred as the "War of 1920" (Polish: Wojna 1920 roku).
Other points of contention are the starting and ending dates of the war. For example, Encyclopedia Britannica begins its article with the date (1919–1920), but then says "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 (April 21, 1920) and their combined forces began to overrun Ukraine, occupying Kiev on May 7."—clearly consider 1919 as 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 ceasefire was put in force in fall 1920, the official treaty ending the war was signed months later, in March 1921.
While the events of 1919 can be described as a border conflict and only in early 1920 did both sides realize that they were in fact engaged in an all-out war, Germany's defeat rendered its plans for the creation of Eastern European puppet states (Mitteleuropa) obsolete, and Russia saw its Empire collapse followed by a descent into Revolution and Civil War. Many nations of the region saw a chance for real independence and were not prepared to relinquish the opportunity; but was unable to react swiftly. Spreading communist influences resulted in communist revolutions in Munich, Berlin, Budapest and Prešov. Winston Churchill commented: "The war of giants has ended, the wars of the pygmies begin." All of those engagements – with the sole exception of the Polish-Soviet war – would be shortlived conflicts. The Polish-Soviet war likely happened more by accident than design, as it's unlikely that anyone in Soviet Russia or in the new Second Republic of Poland would have deliberately planned a major foreign war. Poland, its territory a major frontline of the First World War, was unstable politically; it had just won the difficult conflict with the West Ukrainian National Republic and was already engaged in new conflicts with Germany (the Silesian Uprisings) and with Czechoslovakia. The attention of revolutionary Russia, meanwhile, was predominantly directed at thwarting counter-revolution and intervention by the western powers. While the first clashes between Polish and Soviet forces occurred in February 1919, it would be almost a year before both sides realised that they were engaged in a full war. Indeed, the Bolsheviks stated:
Before the start of the Polish-Soviet War Polish politics were strongly influenced by Chief of State (naczelnik państwa) Józef Piłsudski. Piłsudski wanted to break the Russian Empire and create a Polish-led "Międzymorze Federation" of independent This new union was to become a counterweight to any potential imperialist intentions on the part of Russia or Germany. Piłsudski argued that "There can be no independent Poland without an independent Ukraine", but he may have been more interested in Ukraine being split from Russia than in Ukrainians' welfare. He didn't hesitate to use military force to expand the Polish borders to Galicia and Volhynia, crushing a Ukrainian attempt at self-determination in the disputed territories east of the Western Bug river, which contained a significant Polish minority, In the chaos to the east the Polish forces set out to expand there as much as it was feasible. On the other hand, Poland had no intention of joining the western intervention in the Russian Civil War

Course

1919

Chaos in Eastern Europe

In 1918 the German Army in the east, under the command of Max Hoffmann, began to retreat westwards. The territories abandoned by the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria) became a field of conflict among local governments created by Germany, other local governments that independently sprang up after the German retreat, and the Bolsheviks, who hoped to incorporate those areas into Soviet Russia. and engaged in a series of local skirmishes with pro-Bolshevik groups operating in the area. The newly organized Polish Army began sending the first of their units east to assist the self-defense forces, while the Soviets sent their own units west.
   In the spring of 1919, Soviet conscription produced a Red Army of 2,300,000. Few of these were sent west that year, as the majority of Red Army forces were engaged against the Russian White movement; the Western Army in February 1919 had just 46,000 men. In February 1919, the entire Polish army numbered 110,000 men; in April, 170,000, including 80,000 combatants while by September 1919, it had 540,000 men; 230,000 of these were on the Soviet front.
   By 14 February, the Poles, who had been advancing eastwards, secured positions along the line of Kobryn, Pruzhany, and the rivers Zalewianka and Neman. Around 14 February, at Mosty, the first organised Polish units made contact with the advance units of the Red Army. Bolshevik units withdrew without a shot. He viewed their advance west as a major issue but also thought that he could get a better deal for Poland from the Bolsheviks than their Russian-civil-war contenders, as the White Russians - representative of the old Russian Empire, partitioner of Poland - were willing to accept only limited independence of Poland, likely in the borders similar to that of Congress Poland, and clearly objected to Ukrainian independence, crucial for Piłsudski's Międzymorze, while the Bolsheviks did proclaim the partitions null and void. Piłsudski thus speculated that Poland will be better of with the Bolsheviks, alienated from the Western powers, than with restored Russian Empire. By his refusal to join the attack on Lenin's struggling government, ignoring the strong pressure from the Entente, Piłsudski had likely saved the Bolshevik government in Summer–Fall 1919. He later wrote that in case of a White victory, in the east Poland could only gain the "ethnic border" at best (the Curzon line). At the same time Lenin offered Poles the territories of Minsk, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, in what was described as mini "Brest"; Polish military leader Kazimierz Sosnkowski wrote that the territorial proposals of the Bolsheviks were much better than what the Poles had wanted to achieve.
   The Warsaw Treaty, an agreement with the exiled Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petlura signed on April 21, 1920, was the main Polish diplomatic success. Petlura, who formally represented the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic (by then de facto defeated by Bolsheviks), along with some Ukrainian forces, fled to Poland, where he found asylum. His control extended only to a sliver of land near the Polish border. In such conditions, there was little difficulty convincing Petlura to join an alliance with Poland, despite recent conflict between the two 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.
   Yet both of them were opposed at home. Piłsudski faced stiff opposition from Dmowski's National Democrats who opposed Ukrainian independence. Petlura, in turn, was criticized by many Ukrainian politicians for entering a pact with the Poles and giving up on Western Ukraine.
   The alliance with Petliura did result in 15,000 pro-Polish allied Ukrainian troops at the beginning of the campaign, increasing to 35,000 through recruitment and desertion from the Soviet side during the war. By the time of the Soviet counter-offensive in mid 1920 the situation had been reversed: Soviets had about 790,000 people - at least 50,000 or more than the Poles; Tukhachevsky estimated that he'd 160,000 "combat-ready" soldiers; Piłsudski estimated enemy's forces at 200,000–220,000.
   In the course of 1920, almost 800,000 Red Army personnel were sent to fight in the Polish war, of whom 402,000 Norman Davies shows the growth of Red Army forces in 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
   Bolshevik commanders in the Red Army's coming offensive would include Leon Trotsky, Mikhail Tukhachevsky (new commander of the Western Front), Aleksandr Yegorov (new commander of the Southwestern Front), the future Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin, and the founder of the Cheka (secret police), Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky.
   The Polish Army was made up of soldiers who had formerly served in the various partitioning empires, 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 POWs, 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. Logistics, nonetheless, were very bad for both armies, supported by whatever equipment was left over from World War I or could be captured. The Polish Army, for example, employed guns made in five countries, and rifles manufactured in six, each using different ammunition.
   The Soviet High Command planned a new offensive in late April/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 their own offensive before their opponents. Despite this, many Ukrainians were just as anti-Polish as anti-Bolshevik,
   Due to insufficient forces, Poland's 200-mile-long front was manned by a thin line of 120,000 troops backed by some 460 artillery pieces with no strategic reserves. This approach to holding ground harked back to Great War practice of "establishing a fortified line of defense". It had shown some merit on a Western Front saturated with troops, machine guns, and artillery. Poland's eastern front, however, was weakly manned, supported with inadequate artillery, and had almost no fortifications.
   Soviet forces moved forward at the remarkable rate of a day. Grodno in Belarus fell on 19 July; Brest-Litovsk fell on 1 August. The Polish attempted to defend the Bug River line with 4th Army and Grupa Poleska units, but were able to stop the Red Army advance for only one week. After crossing the Narew River on 2 August, the Soviet Northwest Front was only from Warsaw.

Diplomatic Front, Part 2: The political games

With the tide turning against Poland, Piłsudski's political power weakened, while his opponents', including Roman Dmowski's, rose. Piłsudski did manage to regain his influence, especially over the military, almost at the last possible 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'." Soviet communist theorist Nikolay Bukharin, writer for the newspaper Pravda, wished for the resources to carry the campaign beyond Warsaw "right up to London and Paris". General's Tukhachevsky order of the day, 2 July, 1920 read: "To the West! Over the corpse of White Poland lies the road to world-wide conflagration. March on Vilno, Minsk, Warsaw!" The Soviets were ordered to stop hostilities against Poland and the Russian Army (the White Army in Southern Russia lead by Baron Wrangel), and to accept what later was called the "Curzon line" as a temporary border with Poland, until a permanent border could be established in negotiations. Nonetheless Polish-French cooperation would continue. Eventually, on the 21 February, 1921, France and Poland entered into a formal military alliance, which became an important factor during the subsequent Soviet-Polish negotiations.

The tide turns: Miracle at the Vistula

On August 10, 1920, Soviet Cossack units under the command of Gay Dimitrievich Gay crossed the Vistula river, planning to take Warsaw from the west while the main attack came from the east. On August 13, an initial Soviet attack was repulsed. The Polish 1st Army resisted a direct assault on Warsaw as well as stopping the assault at Radzymin. and Tukhachevsky was actually falling into a trap set by Piłsudski and his Chief of Staff, Tadeusz Rozwadowski. Stalin, seeking a personal triumph, was focused on capturing Lwów—far to the southeast of Warsaw—which was besieged by Bolshevik forces but still resisted their assaults.
The advance of Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army toward Lwów was halted, first at the battle of Brody (July 29–August 2),

Conclusion

Soon after the Battle of Warsaw the Bolsheviks sued for peace. The Poles, exhausted, constantly pressured by the Western governments and the League of Nations, and with its army controlling the majority of the disputed territories, were willing to negotiate. The Soviets made two offers: one on 21 September and the other on 28 September. The Polish delegation made a counteroffer on 2 October. On the 5th, the Soviets offered amendments to the Polish offer which Poland accepted. The armistice between Poland on one side and Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Russia on the other was signed on 12 October and went into effect on 18 October.

Aftermath

According to the British historian A.J.P. Taylor, the Polish-Soviet War "largely determined the course of European history for the next twenty years or more. […] Unavowedly and almost unconsciously, Soviet leaders abandoned the cause of international revolution." It would be twenty years before the Bolsheviks would send their armies abroad to 'make revolution'. According to American sociologist Alexander Gella "the Polish victory had gained twenty years of independence not only for Poland, but at least for an entire central part of Europe.
   After the peace negotiations Poland didn't maintain all the territories it had controlled at the end of hostilities. Due to their losses in and after the Battle of Warsaw, the Soviets offered the Polish peace delegation substantial territorial concessions in the contested borderland areas, closely resembling the border between the Russian Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before the first partition of 1772. Polish resources were exhausted, however, and Polish public opinion was opposed to a prolongation of the war. his opponents didn't hesitate to scrap the treaty. National Democrats wanted only the territory that they viewed as 'ethnically or historically Polish' or possible to polonize. Despite the Red Army's crushing defeat at Warsaw and the willingness of Soviet chief negotiator Adolf Joffe to concede almost all disputed territory, The treaty, which Piłsudski called an act of cowardice,
   The war and its aftermath also resulted in other controversies, such as situation of prisoners of war of both sides, treatment of the civilian population and behaviour of some commanders like Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz or Vadim Yakovlev. The Polish military successes in the autumn of 1920 allowed Poland to capture the Wilno (Vilnius) region, where a Polish-dominated Governance Committee of Central Lithuania (Komisja Rządząca Litwy Środkowej) was formed. A plebiscite was conducted, and the Wilno Sejm voted on February 20, 1922, for incorporation into Poland. This worsened Polish-Lithuanian relations for decades to come. Another controversy concerned the pogroms of Jews, which has caused the United States to send a commission lead by Henry Morgenthau, Sr. to investigage the matter. Military strategy in the Polish-Soviet War influenced Charles de Gaulle, then an instructor with the Polish Army who fought in several of the battles. He and Władysław Sikorski were the only military officers who, based on their experiences of this war, correctly predicted how the next one would be fought. Although they failed in the interbellum to convince their respective militaries to heed those lessons, early in World War II they rose to command of their armed forces in exile. The Polish-Soviet War also influenced Polish military doctrine, which for the next 20 years would place emphasis on the mobility of elite cavalry units. The Western Allies, despite having alliance treaties with Poland and despite Polish contribution also ceded Poland to the Soviet sphere of influence. This is known as the Western Betrayal.
   Until 1989, while communists held power in a People's Republic of Poland, the Polish-Soviet War was omitted or minimized in Polish and other Soviet bloc countries' history books, or was presented as foreign intervention during the Russian Civil War to fit in with communist ideology.

List of battles

For a chronological list of important battles of the Polish-Soviet War, see List of battles of the Polish-Soviet War.

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