Prelude
The war's main area of contention is in present-day Ukraine and Belarus and was, until the middle of the 14th century, part of the medieval state of Kievan Rus'. After a period of internecine wars and the Mongolian invasion of 1240, they became objects of expansion for Poland and Lithuania. In the first half of the 14th century, Kiev and land between the Dnieper, Pripyat, and Dvina rivers became part of Lithuania, and in 1352 the Galicia-Volyn principality was split between Poland and Lithuania. In 1569, according to the Union of Lublin between Poland and Lithuania, some of the Ukrainian lands passed to the Polish crown. Between 1772–1795, much of the Eastern Slavic territories became part of Russia. After the Congress of Vienna in 1814–1815, much of the territory of the Duchy of Warsaw (Poland) was transferred to Russian control.
In the aftermath of World War I, the map of Central and Eastern Europe had drastically changed. Germany's defeat rendered its plans for the creation of Eastern European puppet states, including one in Poland, (Mitteleuropa) obsolete, and the Russian Empire collapsed, resulting in a revolution and a civil war. Many small nations of the region saw a chance for real independence and seized the opportunity to gain it; Russia viewed these territories as rebellious provinces, vital for its security, but was unable to react swiftly. While the Paris Peace Conference had not made a definitive ruling in regard to the Poland's eastern border, 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 participants did not feel competent to make a certain judgement on the competing claims.
With the success of the Greater Poland Uprising in 1918, Poland had re-established its statehood for the first time since the 1795 partition. Formed as the Second Polish Republic, it proceeded to carve out its borders from the territories of its former partitioners. These territories had long been the object of conflict between Russia and Poland.
Poland was not alone in its new found opportunities and troubles. With the collapse of Russian and German occupying authorities, virtually all of the newly independent neighbors began fighting over borders: Romania fought with Hungary over Transylvania, Yugoslavia with Italy over Rijeka, Poland with Czechoslovakia over Cieszyn Silesia, with Germany over Poznań and with Ukrainians over Eastern Galicia. Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians fought against each other and against the Russians, who were just as divided. 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 began." All of these engagements–with the sole exception of the Polish–Soviet war–would be short-lived.
The Polish–Soviet war likely happened more by accident than design, as it is 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 realized that they were engaged in a full war.
As early as late 1919 the leader of Russia's new Communist government, Vladimir Lenin, was inspired by the Red Army's civil-war victories over White Russian anti-communist forces and their Western allies, and began to see the future of the revolution with greater optimism. The Bolsheviks proclaimed the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and agitated for a worldwide Communist community. Their avowed intent was to link the revolution in Russia with an expected revolution in Germany and to assist other Communist movements in Western Europe; Poland was the geographical bridge that the Red Army would have to cross to do so. Lenin aimed to regain control of the territories ceded by Russia in the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, to 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 managed to take over most of Ukraine, driving the Ukrainian Directorate from Kiev. In early 1919, they also set up a Lithuanian-Belorussian Republic (Litbel). This government was very unpopular due to terror and the collection of food and goods for the army.
Officially, however, the Soviet Government denied charges of trying to invade Europe.
| “ | But our enemies and yours deceive you when they say that the Russian Soviet Government wishes to plant communism in Polish soil with the bayonets of Russian Red Army men. A communist order is possible only where the vast majority of the working people are penetrated with the idea of creating it by their own strength. Only then can it be solid; for only then can communist policy strike deep roots in a country. The communists of Russia are at present striving only to defend their own soil, their own constructive work; they are not striving, and cannot strive, to plant communism by force in other countries." | ” |
As the war progressed, particularly around the time the Polish Kiev Offensive of 1920 had been repelled, the Soviet leaders, including Lenin, increasingly saw the war as the real opportunity to spread the revolution westwards. Historian Richard Pipes noted that before the Kiev Offensive, Soviets had been preparing 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. Piłsudski wanted to break up the Russian Empire and create a Polish-led "Międzymorze Federation" of independent states: Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and other Central and East European countries emerging out of crumbling empires after the First World War. This new union became 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 did not 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 Southern Bug River, which contained a significant Polish minority, forming majority in cities like Lwów, but a Ukrainian majority in the countryside. 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," while in the east, "There are doors that open and close, and it depends on who forces them open and how far." 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 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 Southeast, 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 Polish–Soviet war, Jan Kowalewski, a polyglot and amateur cryptologist, managed to break the codes and ciphers of the army of the West Ukrainian People's Republic and General Anton Denikin's White Russian forces during his service in the Polish–Ukrainian War. As a result, in July 1919 he was transferred to Warsaw, where he became 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, founders of the Polish School of Mathematics—Stanisław Leśniewski, Stefan Mazurkiewicz and Wacław Sierpiński), who were also able to break Russian ciphers. Decoded information presented to Pilsudski showed that Soviet peace proposals with Poland in 1919 were false and in reality they had prepared for a new offensive against Poland and concentrated military forces in Barysaw near the Polish border. Pilsudski decided to ignore Soviet proposals, sign an alliance with Symon Petliura and prepared the Kiev Offensive. During the war, decryption of Red Army radio messages made it possible to use small Polish military forces efficiently against the Russians and win many individual battles, the most important being the 1920 Battle of Warsaw.
Read more about this topic: Polish-Soviet War
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