Causes of the Polish-Soviet War
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Main article: Polish-Soviet War
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The situation
In 1918, with the end of the First World War, the map of Central and Eastern Europe had drastically changed. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 3, 1918), by which Russia had lost to Imperial Germany all the European lands that Russia had seized in the previous two centuries, was repudiated by the Bolshevik government in November 1918, following armistice, the surrender of Germany and her allies, and the end of World War I. Germany, however, had not been keen to see Russia grow strong again and--exploiting her control of those territories, had quickly granted limited independence as buffer states to Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. As Germany's defeat rendered her plans for the creation of those Mitteleuropa puppet states obsolete, and as Russia sank into the depths of the Russian Civil War, the newly emergent countries saw a chance for real independence and were not prepared to easily relinquish this rare gift of fate. At the same time, Russia saw these territories as rebellious Russian provinces but was unable to react swiftly, as it was weakened and in the process of transforming herself into the Soviet Union through the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War that had begun in 1917.
Meanwhile, with the success of the Greater Poland Uprising in 1918, Poland had regained her independence lost in 1795 with the Third Partition of Poland. After 123 years' of Poland's rule by her three imperial neighbors, the Second Polish Republic was proclaimed and the reborn country proceeded to carve out its borders from the territories of her former partitioners, Russia, Germany and Austro-Hungary. The Western Powers, in delineating the new European borders after the Treaty of Versailles, had done so in a way unfavorable to Poland. Germany had decided to retain many of her eastern gains to recompense herself for expected losses in the west. Poland's western borders cut her off from the coal-basin and industrial regions of Silesia, leading to the Silesian Uprisings of 1919-1921. The eastern Curzon line left millions of Poles, living east of the Western Bug River, stranded inside Russia's borders.
Poland, however, was not alone in her troubles. Soon, virtually all of the newly independent neighbours begun fighting over borders. Romania fought with Hungary over Transylvania. Yugoslavia with Italy over Rijeka. Poland with Czechoslovakia over Cieszyn, with Ukrainians over Eastern Galicia and with Germany over Poznan. Spreading communist influences have added to this mix, resulting in small communists revolutions in Monachium, Berlin, Budapest and Koszyce. Winston Churchill commented on this situation: War of giants has ended, war of dwarfs have begun. He was mostly correct. All but one of those engagements would be shortlived border conflict. All but the Polish-Soviet war.
The Polish-Soviet war, like majority of the other conflicts in Eastern Europe of that time, was more of an accident then any planned design. In the chaos prevailing in the first months of 1919, it was unlikely that anyone in Bolshevik 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 already engaged in various border conflicts with Germany (Greatpoland Uprising and the Silesian Uprisings) and Czechoslovakia (border conflicts between Poland and Czechoslovakia). Polish government was just beginning to organise and had little if any control over varius border ares. Six currencies affected by various (and rising rapidly) inflation rates were in circulation. Economy was in shambles, some areas were experiencing food shortages, crime was high and a threat of an armed coup d'etat by some factions was serious. The situation in Russia was similar. The attention and policies of revolutionary Russia were predominantly directed at dealing with counter-revolution and with the intervention by the western powers. Bolshevik Russia had barely survived its second winter of blockade and mass starvation and was in the middle of a bloody civil war. Lenin could claim control over only part of central Russia, encircled on all sides by powerful internal and external enemies who denied the Bolsheviks access to the outside world. Even had the Bolshevik leaders wanted to attack their western neighbors, they would have been physically incapable of doing so. While first clashes between Polish and Soviet forces accured in February 1919, it would be almost a year before both sides would fully realise that they are engaged in a full-out war.
Piłsudski's motives
Polish politics was under the strong influence of the statesman Józef Piłsudski, who envisioned a federation (the "Federation of Międzymorze"), a Polish-led confederation comprising Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and other Central and East European countries now emerging out of the crumbling empires after the First World War. The new union would have had borders similar to those of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 15th–18th centuries; and it was to be a counterweight to, and restraint upon, any imperialist intentions of Russia or Germany. To this end, Polish forces set out to secure vast territories in the east. However Piłsudski's federation plan was opposed by another influential Polish politician, Roman Dmowski, who favoured creating a larger, national Polish state.
It is also imperative to undestand that Poland had never any intention of joining the Western intervention in the Russian Civil War or conquering Russia, as it has done once in the 17th century during the Dimitriads. On the contrary, after the White Russians refused to recongise Polish independence, Polish forces acting on orders from Piłsudski delayed or stopped their offensives several times, reliving pressure from Bolshevic forces and thus substantialy contributing to White Russian defeat.
Lenin's motives
This began to change in late 1919, however, when Vladimir Lenin, leader of Russia's new communist government, succumbed to a buoyant optimism, inspired by the Red Army's civil-war victories over White Russian anticommunist forces and their western allies on Russian territory. The Bolsheviks acted on a conviction that historical processes would soon lead to rule of the proletariat in all nations, and that the withering away of national states would eventually bring about a worldwide communist community. Lenin felt increasingly confident that the Revolution would survive and would soon sweep triumphant over Europe and the rest of the world. The main impetus to the coming war with Poland lay in the Bolsheviks’ avowed intent to link their Revolution in Russia with an expected revolution in Germany. Lenin saw Poland as the bridge that the Red Army would have to cross in order to link the two revolutions and to assist other communist movements in Western Europe. This course was explicit in early Bolshevik ideology, and was necessary if the Soviet experiment in Russia was to be brought into line with Marxist doctrine. It was not, however, until the Soviet successes in mid-1920 that this idea became for a short time dominant in Bolshevik policies.
Germany in 1918-1920 seethed with social discontent and political chaos. In the eighteen months since the Kaiser's abdication, it had seen a communist revolution, two provincial soviet republics (e.g. the Bavarian Soviet Republic), three reactionary putsches, at least four general strikes, and five chancellors. In July 1920 the Weimar Constitution had been in force for only twelve months, and the humiliating Peace of Versailles for only six. The central government was beset by separatism, by close scrutiny from the Allied powers, and by constant war in the streets between the Spartacist League's and Communist Party of Germany armed workers’ detachments and the right-wing Freikorps. The westward advance of the Red Army threatened to destroy the Versailles system and thus, whatever the other consequences, to free Germany from the humiliating restraints placed upon her. Many Germans thought that another revolutionary rising was a necessary prelude to Germany’s escape from the grip of the victorious western Entente. As Lenin himself remarked, "That was the time when everyone in Germany, including the blackest reactionaries and monarchists, declared that the Bolsheviks would be their salvation."
In April 1920 Lenin would complete writing The Infantile Disease of "Leftism" in Communism, meant to guide the Revolution through the few remaining months before its final stages. As his mood became expansive, he became overconfident, even messianic, and was less and less likely to resist a drift toward more serious war with Poland. According to a theory prevalent among Lenin's adherents, the Revolution in Russia would perish unless joined to revolutions in Lithuania, Poland and, most essentially, Germany. The debate in Russia was not as to whether the Polish bridge should be crossed, but how and when. Lenin formulated a new doctrine of "revolution from outside." The Soviet offensive into Poland would be an opportunity "to probe Europe with the bayonets of the Red Army." It would be the Soviet Union's first penetration into Europe proper, the first attempt to export the Bolshevik Revolution by force. 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."1.
The political purpose of the Red Army's advance was not to conquer Europe directly. The Red Army of 1920 could hardly be sent with 36 divisions to do what the Tsarist army of 1914-17 had failed to achieve with 150. Its purpose was to provoke social change and revolution. When the main Soviet offensive began in April 1920, the Red Army's commanders and soldiers were told, and probably believed, that if only they could reach Warsaw and defeat Poland, the "oppressed masses of the proletariat" would rise almost worldwide and begin the final struggle to create a "workers' paradise." In the words of General Tukhachevski: "To the West! Over the corpse of White Poland lies the road to world-wide conflagration. March on Vilno, Minsk, Warsaw!".2
Notes
- Lincoln, Red Victory: a History of the Russian Civil War.
- Mikhail Tukhachevski, order of the day, July 2, 1920.
References
See Polish-Soviet War#References
