A very good article on the Polish-Soviet War from this website:
The Russian Revolution
Excerpt:
VIII. The Polish-Soviet War, 1919-1920.
The nature of this war and the significance of its outcome were not
understood in the West at the time, and are still little known today.
The war was more national than ideological. Its roots went back to the
old Polish-Russian struggle over the borderlands, i.e. Lithuania,
Belorussia, and the Ukraine, which now took on a new significance. The
war led to the Red Army's only conclusive defeat, which meant that not
only Poland and the Baltic states, but perhaps also Hungary and
Czechoslovakia, were saved from Soviet domination at this time.
1. The Background of the War: Key Factors.
(a) The old Polish-Russian rivalry over the borderlands, the Partitions
of Poland, and Polish revolts against Russian rule in the 19th century,
have been outlined earlier (see ch. I, appendix I). This history made
the Poles see Russia both as an oppressor and, in 1919-20, as the key
threat to their independence. The Bolsheviks, for their part, proclaimed
the principle of self-determination - but in fact followed a policy of
uniting the former Russian western provinces with Soviet Russia. To this
end, they established communist governments and tried to take over the
territories in question. The Poles saw this as resurgent Russian
imperialism.
(b) The Polish Head of State and Commander-in-Chief,
Jozef Pilsudski
(1867-1935), did not trust any kind of Russia, "White" or "Red." He had
hated his Russian school in Vilnius, Lithuania - then known by its
Russian name: Vilna (Polish: Wilno), which was then a predominantly
Polish and Jewish city. His Russian teachers had belittled Polish
history and achievements. Both here and in Russian Poland, as also in
all their western territories, the Russian authorities implemented a
repressive policy of Russification.
As a very young man,
Pilsudski
had spent five years in Siberian exile (1887-92). His brother had been
implicated in a plot to assassinate Tsar Alexander III, so he was
arrested and deported. In Siberia, he became a socialist but concluded
that most Russian socialists were also imperialists, i.e. that they
planned to establish a democratic, socialist Russia which would include
the non-Russian peoples of the empire. (See ch. I. , Socialist Parties
in the Russian Empire).This is how he interpreted the Russian socialist
principle of national self-determination and, as we know, he was right.
In 1892, he joined the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), which was founded
that year in Paris, and then worked actively as a writer and printer of
underground papers -- also as a smuggler of same --, for an independent,
socialist Poland. He was arested by the Russians in 1900, but feigned
mental illness and escaped from a hospital in St. Petersburg. In the
period 1908-14, he trained young Polish students as future officers in "
Riflemen's Associations," a type of ROTC organization in Austrian
Poland (Galicia), tolerated by the Austrian government in return for
military intelligence on the Russian army. According to one account,
Pilsudski
foresaw not only the coming of World War I, but also its outcome.
According to the memoirs of S.R. leader Victor Chernov, Pilsudski told
him in early 1914, that in the coming world war the Central Powers would
first defeat Russia, and then be defeated themselves by France, Great
Britain and probably the United States. ( V.Chernorv, Pered Burei,
Before the Storm, NewYork, 1953, pp. 295-306),
When the world war broke out in 1914, Pilsudski saw it as an opportunity
to create a Polish army, so he formed Polish Legions, which fought
initially on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary against Russia.
However, after the Russian Revolution of March 1917, he refused to work
any longer with the Germans, who, in any case, would not define the
frontiers and status of a future Poland. Therefore, he and some of his
men refused to take the oath of allegiance to a future Polish King and
to brotherhood in arms with the Germans. In July 1917 he was arrested
and imprisoned in Germany for over a year. When the Germans released him
in early November 1918, he returned home as a national hero. He then
became Head of the Polish State (pending the election of a President),
and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish army.
Pilsudski's distrust of the Bolsheviks was confirmed by the policy of
the Polish Communist Party (Polish acronym KPRP, then KPP), which
emerged in December 1918 out of the former left-wing of the PPS
(Socialist Party) and the SDKPiL (see ch. 1, "Socialist Parties in the
Russian Empire"). The Polish Communist Party followed the Bolshevik
lead, calling for the overthrow of "bourgeois-landlord Poland" and for
friendship with the Soviet peoples. It was declared illegal for
advocating the forcible overthrow of the Polish government. At the same
time, Pilsudski saw
Soviet expansion into the borderlands as a resurgence of Russian imperialism, and thus a threat to Polish independence.
(c) Despite Western agreement that the
German army
stay in the former Russian territories so as to stem a Bolshevik
advance westward, the demoralized Germans began to flow back home after
the armistice of November 11, 1918. At the same time, the Red Army moved
into the Baltic states and Belorussia. A communist-led
Lithuanian-Belorussian (Litbel) Republic was set up in January 1919,
with its capital in Vilna (see note 4 b).
(d) Pilsudski believed that the borderlands should be federated with
Poland. Polish troops moved into Belorussia [now Belarus] and clashed
with Red Army units at Bereza Kartuska in February 1919. In April, they
marched into Vilnius, and overthrew the government of the Litbel
Republic. The predominantly Polish population of the city welcomed the
Polish troops with great enthusiasm and Pilsudski declared he wished the
people to decide the fate of their land. However, the Lithuanians - who
formed about 2% of the city's population - claimed Vilna as their
capital because it had been the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
before its union with Poland in 1386.
(e) After these events, there was calm on the Polish-Soviet front until
late April 1920. The French and British governments tried to persuade
Pilsudski to help Denikin against the Bolsheviks. They proposed that the
Poles take and hold the borderlands "in trust" for the Russian general.
Pilsudski refused, for he knew Denikin wanted to restore the former
Russian empire. He also believed it was in Poland's interest for the
"Whites" and "Reds" exhaust themselves in the civil war.
At this time,
Poland
had many other problems to contend with. She had been devastated by
war, for the German-Austrian and Russian fronts had passed back and
forth across the country; there was was also hunger and disease. The
Poles were fighting the Ukrainians of former East Galicia (now western
Ukraine), who had seized the preponderantly Polish city of L'viv
(Polish: Lwow; Russian: Lvov, German: Lemberg) in November 1918 and
proclaimed a Ukrainian Republic. As in the case of Vilnius, so in L'viv,
the Ukranians claimed the city because it had been the capital of the
medieval Ukrainian state of Halich, before it was annexed to Poland in
the mid 1300s. . In late 1918, the Polish population fought hard to
regain the city and it was finally taken by Polish troops, which then
fought a war with the west Ukrainian army... The Western powers
reluctantly sanctioned a Polish advance east of the Zbrucz River in
spring 1919, on the grounds that this would weaken the Bolsheviks. Thus,
the Poles took over all of East Galicia. The French government
supported Polish claims to this land (where they had an interest in the
oil fields), but British Prime Minister David Lloyd George strongly
opposed them and favored its annexation by Russia, "White" or "Red." We
should note that this territory had never belonged to Russia, but was
claimed and invaded by the Russians in World War I; it was also claimed
by the first Provisional Govenment in spring 1917.
In spring 1920, Poland's situation was complicated by the fact that it
was awaiting a plebiscite in the economically important region of Upper
Silesia (coal and steel), which had a predominantly Polish-speaking
population east of the Oder River, but which the Germans insisted they
must keep. The area was the scene of bitter fighting between Germans and
Poles, while a small Allied military force tried to keep order.
Finally, after a plebiscite held in March 1921, whose results were
contested, the League of Nations divided the region between Germany and
Poland, giving the industrial core to the Poles on the basis of Polish
preponderance in the communal (village) - but not the urban - vote..
This award was passionately resented by the Germans who had secured a
majority in the plebiscite - but a majority provided by German
"outvoters," that is, voters born but not resident in the plebiscite
district. They had simply come in to vote, then returned home to
Germany. A large part of the Polish vote came from workers who had
immigrated to the region from Austrian Galicia, but were resident there
before 1914, so they had the right to vote. Finally, the workers whose
families had lived for centuries in Upper Silesia, had their own dialect
-- a mix of Polish and German -- and were in favor of an autonomous
Upper Silesia.
(f) Meanwhile, the situation in Russia had been clarified. By December
1919, Denikin and Yudenich had been defeatedby the Bolsheviks, who were
clearly winning the civil war. But they still had to fight retreating
White armies in southern Russia, now led by his successor, General
Wrangel. Therefore, in order to safeguard his rear in the west, Lenin
decided to offer peace to Poland, which he wrongly saw as a puppet of
the Entence powers, the supporters of the "Whites" in Russia.
However, exploratory Polish-Soviet talks broke down and Pilsudski did
not take up Soviet peace offers in December 1919 and January 1920. When
he did agree to negotiations, he specified they be held in the
Belorussian town of Borisov (about 50 miles northeast of Minsk, on the
railway line to Smolensk). He did so both because he wanted to end
Soviet troop movements there, as well as deprive the Bolsheviks of the
opportunity of making propaganda for themselves, as they could have done
in cities easily accessible to Western reporters such as Riga or
London.. When the Soviets refused, Pilsudski broke off the talks. He
suspected rightly that the Soviets only wanted a breather to finish off
the "Whites" in southern Russia, after which they would try to take
Poland.
We should also note that in December 1919, the French and British had
proposed that Polish administration go up to a line approximating the
eastern border of Congress Poland (1815-1830), i.e. to the northern Bug
River (pronounced: Boog).. They did not want the Poles to go further
east into the predominantly Belorussian and Ukrainian- populated
territories, which were claimed as part of Russia by both "Whites" and
"Reds." The line proposed by the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris on
December 8, 1919, had two variations in the south-east: one left Lviv
and the adjoining oil fields on the Polish side, and while the other
line left them on the Russian side. This line was to surface again in
July 1920. Pilsudski countered this proposal with his own: to hold
plebiscites in the former Polish lands east of the Bug River under the
supervision of the League of Nations. He said this would allow the
inhabitants to choose either independence or federation with Poland.
London and Paris, however, ignored this proposal.
Contrary to the view prevalent in the West and in Russia , Pilsudski did
not want to annex the eastern territories held by Poland before the
first partition of 1772.In fact , since the late 1890s he had advocated a
Polish-Belorussian-Ukrainian-Lithuanian federation, designed to weaken
Russia and thus provide security for Poland. His political rival, the
leader of the National Democratic Party, Roman Dmowski [1863-1939],
opposed federation. However, not even he demanded the eastern lands held
by Poland in 1772, but those belonging to her in 1793-95, i.e. between
the Second and Third Partitions. Finally, all Poles, except the
communists, demanded the then predominantly Polish cities of L'viv and
Vilnius for Poland.
2. The Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920.
The following factors brought about the oubreak of the war:
(a) As noted earlier, the first battle had taken place at Bereza
Kartuska, Belorussia, in February 1919 and in April of that year
Pilsudski had driven the Bolsheviks out of Vilnius. However, he did not
support the Whites against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War, as
the western powers had wished. By late 1919, it was clear the Bolsheviks
were winning that war and they proposed peace negotiations to Poland.
The Polish rejection of the Bolshevik offers (December 1919 and January
1920) to open peace negotiations, and then the breakdown of talks over
Borisov -- where Pilsudski wanted them to take place -- strengthened the
Soviet government's fear that the Poles were planning to attack Soviet
Russia, abetted in this by France and Britain. (In fact, these two
powers wanted to prevent the Poles from moving east of the Bug line).
Therefore Bolsheviks decided to mount an offensive against Poland in
early spring 1920, and began massing troops in the former provinces of
western Russia.
(b) Polish and French military intelligence noted the growing Red Army
troop concentrations; therefore Pilsudski assumed they would attack
Poland. Indeed, Soviet documents show that the details of the Red Army's
deployment against Poland were fixed on March 10 1920, at a meeting in
Smolensk between General W. M. Gitis, the Commander of the Western
Front, and Sergei S. Kamenev, the Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army.
The Soviet military plan was to launch an offensive in April in the
direction of Vilnius and Lida in Lithuania. At the same time, Polish
troops were to be engaged in the region of the Polesie Marshes in
Belorussia to prevent them from interfering with the Soviet offensive,
or from mounting a diversion in the south. Another Soviet offensive
toward the southwest was to be launched after the transfer of the 1st
Cavalry Army from the Caucasus. Thus, the Red Army was to attack Poland
in late April from two directions. However, it was preempted by a Polish
drive into Ukraine. (8)
(c) Pilsudski's reaction to intelligence about the Bolshevik military
build-up was a decision to attack the Red Army before it was ready to
attack him. *In keeping with his long range plans, he also signed an
alliance treaty and a military convention with the head of the East
Ukrainian government, General Semyon V. Petlyura (1877-1926). These
agreements were signed in late April 1920. The alliance treaty envisaged
the creation of an independent Ukraine, which would be allied with
Poland. In return for Polish help to establish it, Petlyura agreed to
give up claims to the predominantly Ukrainian-speaking territories of
East Galicia and Volhynia, which were to form part of Poland. Each
government was committed to respect the rights of the minorities in its
country. (There was a sizable Polish minority in central Ukraine, mostly
landowners and part of the middle class in the cities, mainly Kiev).
Petlyura's troops were to march with the Poles, but the latter were to
evacuate the Ukraine after the establishment of an independent Ukrainian
government. The Ukrainian politicians of East Galicia repudiated this
treaty because they insisted on it being part of independent Ukraine.
* Polish military intelligence had broken Soviet military codes sometime in 1919, and the Soviet were not aware of this.
(d) Pilsudski and Petlyura set off at the head of the Polish and
Ukrainian troops on April 24, 1920. Pilsudski's goal was not to annex
the Ukraine, but to smash the Red Army before it could attack Poland.
When the Polish and Ukrainian troops entered Kiev on May 7th, Petlyura
proclaimed an independent Ukraine and announced that Polish troops would
withdraw as soon as a Ukrainian government was established. Pilsudski
made a proclamation to the same effect.
Contrary to official Soviet history, France and Britain had no part in
the Polish offensive. In fact, they reacted with shock and dismay. Prime
Minister David Lloyd George was furious because Pilsudski's attack
threatened his plans for extensive British trade with Bolshevik Russia.
Indeed, British-Soviet trade negotiations were then proceeding in
London. The French favored an independent Ukraine, but were principally
interested in the Poles fighting the Bolsheviks in order to relieve
General Wrangel, whom France recognized as the Supreme Ruler of Russia
in August 1920. and who was then fighting in the Crimea. They also
warned the Poles against taking "Russian" land. Thus, Pilsudski's
advance was not part of a Western "crusade" against Bolshevik Russia,
but a Polish initiative that was roundly condemned in Britain and only
partly supported by France.
(e) After the Polish and Ukranian troops entered Kiev on May 7, 1920, a
Ukrainian government was set up there under Petlyura, but the Red Army
counter-attacked in June, driving back the Polish and Petlyura troops.
By early July, the Poles and their Ukrainian Allies were in full retreat
and Warsaw was threatened. On July 2nd, the Commander of the northern
Red Army group, General Mikhail N. Tukhachevsky (1893-1937), issued an
Order of the Day in which he told his troops: "Over the dead body of
White Poland shines the road to worldwide conflagration." (9)
(f) On July 6-11th, an Allied conference was in session a Spa, Belgium,
discussing German war reparations. The Polish government sent a
delegation there to ask for help. Faced with the likelihood of a Soviet
victory, the French and British prime ministers heaped abuse on the
Poles and could not agree on what to do. The French wanted to help
Pilsudski, but said they could not send troops. British Prime Minister
Lloyd George wanted to get a Polish-Soviet armistice so the Red Army
would not roll into Germany and he could conclude a trade treaty with
the Soviets.
Therefore, British proposed an armistice line, known as the Curzon Line,
after George Nathaniel Curzon (Marquess of Kedleston, 1859-1925), who
was then Foreign Secretary. This line was, in fact, based on the
demarcation line between Polish and Russian administrations proposed by
the Allies in Paris on December 8 1919. In July 1920, the British
proposed the armistice line to be between the existing Polish and Red
armies, and the Polish delegation agreed. This would have left Lviv on
the Polish side. The British proposal for Moscow, drawn up at Spa,
however, was a line generally following the ethnic boundary between
preponderantly Polish territories in the west, and the preponderantly
Belorussian and Ukrainian lands in the east. Originally, the line left
East Galicia on the Polish side, but this was changed to Soviet
advantage in the Foreign Office, London. Thus, East Galicia, together
with the then preponderantly Polish city of L'viv and the adjoining oil
fields, were put on the Soviet side of the line. (This was one of the
variants of the line proposed in Paris on December 8, 1919).
Furthermore, seeking a Soviet-Polish peace, the Allies sent an
"Ambassadors' Mission" to advise the Polish government. The French also
sent General Maxime Weygand to take over the command of the Polish
armies. Finally, the Allies promised to help Poland, but only if the
Soviets crossed the armistice line into ethnic Poland.
(g) However, the Bolsheviks rejected the Curzon Line, saying they were
willing to offer the Poles much more land if they accepted other Soviet
terms. The real reason for this rejection was quite different. Russian
documents published for the first time in 1992 show that the Bolshevik
leaders rejected the Curzon Line and carried on the war against Poland
because they believed they had already won the war against the Entente
Powers. Therefore, as Lenin put it, they wanted to "taste with bayonets
whether the Socialist revolution of the proletariat had not ripened in
Poland." Furthermore, they believed that the whole Versailles settlement
would collapse with the fall of Poland, and hoped that revolutions
would break out in Germany and Italy. (10)
A Polish Provisional Revolutionary Committee (Polrevkom), made up of
Polish communists from Moscow, was set up in Smolensk on July 24th. It
moved on to Minsk, then Vilnius and finally Bialystok on July 30th.
Here, it issued a manifesto nationalizing factories, forests, and lands,
but declaring peasant holdings to be inviolable. The Polrevkom was, in
effect, an embryo communist government for Poland. It did not gain any
popularity and was seen by all Poles, except communists, as an agent of
the Bolshevik government in Moscow.
(h) When Polish-Soviet talks began in Minsk, in early August, the Soviet
delegation demanded that Poland abolish its army in favor of a
"workers' militia;" abolish all arms production; and agree to Red Army
passage through Polish lands any time the Soviet government demanded it.
Acceptance of these terms would have made Poland a state subject to
Moscow. Nevertheless, Lloyd George advised the Polish government to
accept these terms; he was, after all, negotiating a trade treaty with
the Soviets and did not want the Red Army to drive on to Germany.
However, the Poles refused and the French supported them, because they
hoped Poland would fight on, thus helping the hard-pressed General
Wrangel.
On August 11th, Lenin telegraphed
Joseph Stalin,
who was then the Political Commissar attached to Semyon M. Budyenny's
1st Cavalry Army, transferred here from the Crimea and now marching on
L'viv. He told Stalin that the British government had knuckled under
fearing a general strike, and that Lloyd George was advising the Poles
to accept Soviet armistice terms. Lenin called this a great diplomatic
victory for the Soviets. Indeed, Lloyd George opposed the Poles, and
even encouraged the Labour Party and the London dockworkers who opposed
sending aid to Poland. (The dockworkers refused to load war supplies on
ships departing for Poland). On the same day, August 11, 1920, Lenin
telegraphed the chairman of the Soviet delegation conducting the talks
with the Poles in Minsk, telling him to take the great Soviet diplomatic
victory successfully into account. He was to include Warsaw in the
peace terms (perhaps to be annexed to Soviet Russia ?) and to "guarantee
the rest." (10a) Thus, Lenin seemed to envisage a Soviet Poland.
(i) However Pilsudski upset Lenin's plans by bold military action. He
moved some troops from the Warsaw perimeter south to Deblin, in order to
build up a major striking force. He then launched an attack on August
13th toward the northeast, expecting to clash with Tukhachevsky's main
force -- which had, in fact, outflanked Warsaw and was heading for
Danzig (Polish: Gdansk), while detaching some troops to attack Warsaw.
Tukhachevsky
wanted to cut off French arms supplies sent by sea to Danzig and take
Warsaw in a flanking movement from the north-west. Indeed, the Danzig
dockworkers refused to unload the supplies, while the British High
Commissioner of the League of Nations in the Free City of Danzig, Sir
Reginald Tower, followed Lloyd George's orders to forbid the unloading
of the ships -- as Lloyd George had promised the Soviet delegates in
London.
Tukhachevsky's men actually found a copy of Pilsudski's plan on the body of a dead Polish officer, but
Tukhachevsky
decided this was a "blind;" at least that is what he wrote later in a
lecture on the war. The Polish troops defeated Tukhachevsky's rearguard
and separated it from the main body of his army. By August 25th,
Pilsudski had won the Battle of Warsaw (sometimes called the Battle of
the Vistula). The Poles took about a 100,000 prisoners. Tukhachevsky
retreated to Lithuania, where he was beaten again at the Battle of the
Neman River in September. While Pilsudski pursued Tukhachevsky part of
the Polish army moved south, cutting the communications between the
Soviet armies in the center and the south. There, Budyonny and Stalin
disregarded orders to abandon their march on L'viv until August 12th.
The lst Cavalry Army then retreated, narrowly escaping encirclement and
defeat by the Poles.
The Polish victory came as a great surprise to everyone. In the West,
people generally believed that General Weygand had saved the day.
Although he denied it at the time, this legend had a very long innings
and occasionally still appears in Western history books. In reality,
Weygand had advised Pilsudski to abandon Warsaw, but hold the Vistula
line. Pilsudski refused because he had another plan. Weygand offered his
services in carrying it out and this offer was accepted.
A number of French officers served with the Polish army as advisers and
instructors. Among them was Charles De Gaulle (1890-1970), then a
captain. (In World War II, he was to be the leader of the "Free French,"
and later President of France). The French also sold the Poles arms and
ammunition, though at least part of these supplies (sent through the
Free City of Danzig) were rusty arms collected on French battlefields.
The Red Army slightly outnumbered the Poles (each side had about 200,000
men), but it was exhausted by the long drive west. Both sides made
great use of cavalry because they lacked tanks. (Although the Poles had a
few French tanks, they kept on breaking down). There were a few
airplanes on each side. On the Polish side, there were flyers from the
American Lafayette Squadron, who had fought in France and volunteered to
help Poland. They formed the backbone of the Polish "Kosciuszko
Squadron" (named after Thaddeus Kosciuszko, 1746-1817, who had served
under George Washington in the War of Independence and led the Polish
revolt against Russia in 1794).
But planes and tanks played a marginal role. In fact, the Polish-Soviet
War in 1920 was the last cavalry war in Europe. Aside from lack of
modern equipment, both Pilsudski and Tukhachevsky had a low opinion of
tanks; they believed that while tanks broke down, horses always got
through. (This opinion was also shared by Western military men until
1940.) Nevertheless, the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 had a significant
impact on some military thinkers. The German General Heinz Guderian
(1888-1954) studied it as a war of swift movement, i.e., a "Blitzkrieg,"
or "lightning war." He concluded that future wars would not be static
like World War I, but would be fought and won quickly. However, they
would be fought not by cavalry, but by a combination of tanks, planes
and troops, with armored and tank divisions playing a key role. The
German General Staff developed plans for this type of war after Hitler
came to power in 1933 and applied them during World War II, 1939-45. In
the USSR, Tukhachevsky also developed a new doctrine of mobile warfare,
but he was executed in Stalin's purges in 1937. (See ch. 3).
Ultimately, the Polish victory over the Red Army was due both to
Pilsudski's daring leadership and to the wholehearted support of the
Polish people. Masses of young men volunteered for the army, including
peasants, who wanted an independent Poland in which they could farm
their own land. The Polish victory secured Polish independence from
Soviet Russia, at least for a while. It also cancelled German hopes for
the renewal of a German-Russian alliance and thus a new partition of
Poland. Finally, it saved the Baltic states from Soviet domination, and
perhaps Hungary and Czechoslovakia as well.
4. The Peace of Riga, March 18, 1921.
Peace talks began in Riga (Latvia), and led to a preliminary peace on
October 12, 1920. Lenin was very anxious for peace because of peasant
revolts in Russia against "war communism."
The final peace treaty was signed on March 18, 1921, and is known as the
"Peace of Riga." It established the Polish-Soviet frontie as it existed
until September 17, 1939, when the Red Army seized eastern Poland as
part of Stalin's bargain with Hitler.
The Peace of Riga was a compromise. For the time being, Lenin gave up
the aim of establishing a Polish Soviet Republic, as well as the idea of
exporting the revolution to Central and Western Europe. He now
concentrated on rebuilding Russia. To this end adopted the New Economic
Policy (NEP), which was a mix of capitalism and socialism (see ch. 3).
However, the Bolsheviks never gave up the goal of including the Baltic
States, Belorussia, Volhynia and East Galicia (western Ukraine) in the
Soviet Union, nor the long-term goal of establishing Soviet control over
Poland. (The USSR would attain these goals and more in 1945).
Pilsudski gave up the idea of an independent Ukraine allied with Poland,
and of a Polish-Belorussian-Lithuanian federation. He did gain western
Belorussia, Volhynia and East Galicia (western Ukraine) for Poland.
Furthermore, Polish forces occupied Vilnius in late October 1920. When
Pilsudski failed to obtain Lithuanian agreement to set up a Central
Lithuanian state withVilnius as part of a Polish-Lithuanian federation, a
plebiscite was held which led to the city's incorporation in Poland.
This was never accepted by Lithuania whose constitution named Vilnius as
the capital of the Lithuanian Republic. (However, in March 1938, normal
Polish-Lithuanian relations were established).
It is important to note that the inclusion in Poland of territories east
of the Curzon Line was not only opposed by the Soviets, but also was
never approved by Britain and by some politicians in France. There was
thus a widespread opinion in the West that the Poles had antagonized the
Russians by taking territories to which Russia had more right than
Poland. In fact, the people who should have been asked to express their
opinion, i.e. the Belorussians and the Ukrainians, did not have a voice
in the matter. Therefore, their lands were divided between Poland and
the Soviet Union. While most of those peoples left in Poland, especially
the Ukrainians of East Galicia, resented Polish rule, they saw their
brothers in the USSR suffer grievously under Stalin's forced
collectivization in the 1930s (see ch. 3). After this, those remaining
in Poland came to see their lot as much better than that of their
kinsmen in the USSR.
Finally, while the Poles formed a minority in eastern Poland, it was a
sizable one, amounting to about one-third of the whole population of
some 12,500,000. Furthermore, in certain areas the Poles had a majority,
e.g. in the cities of Lwow (L'viv) and Wilno (Vilnius) and the
surrounding regions. Also, most Poles believed that the possession of
the eastern territories was vital for Poland's security from the designs
of the Soviet Union. The Soviets, for their part, always saw them as
vital to their security. These facts should be borne in mind because the
question of the Polish-Soviet frontier was to play an important role in
the diplomacy of World War II (11). [See ch. 5].
Edited by Domen - 12-May-2013 at 14:33