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Polish-Soviet War

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Military History and War

   Polish-Soviet War
   The final borders layout settled by the war.

     Date   1919–1921
   Location Central and Eastern Europe
    Result  Peace of Riga
   Combatants
   Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic Republic of Poland
   Commanders
   Mikhail Tukhachevsky
   Semyon Budyonny
   Joseph Stalin Józef Piłsudski
   Edward Rydz-Śmigły
   Strength
   950,000 combatants
   5,000,000 reserves 360,000 combatants
   738,000 reserves
   Casualties
   Unknown, dead estimated at 100,000–150,000 Unknown, dead estimated at
   60,000
   Polish-Soviet War
   Target Vistula – Bereza Kartuska – Wilno – Minsk – Daugavpils –
   Koziatyn – Kiev – Volodarka – Mironówka – Olszanica – Żywotów –
   Miedwiedówka – Dziunków – Wasylkowce – Bystrzyk – Nowochwastów –
   Berezno – Spiczyniec – Boryspol – Zazime – Puchówka – Okuniew –
   Spiczyn – Lwów – Berezina – Nasielsk – Serock – Radzymin – Zadwórze –
   Warsaw – Komarów – Niemen – Zboiska – 2nd Minsk
   Polish-Russian Wars
   Kiev Expedition – Muscovite-Lithuanian – Livonian – 1605–18 –
   Smolensk – 1654–67 – Bar Confederation – 1792 – Kościuszko Uprising –
   November Uprising – January Uprising – Polish-Soviet – 1939

   The Polish-Soviet War (February 1919 – March 1921) was an armed
   conflict between Soviet Russia and the Second Polish Republic, two
   nascent states in post-World War I Europe. The war was a result of
   conflicting expansionist attempts. Poland, whose statehood had just
   been re-established following the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th
   century, sought to secure territories which she had lost at the time of
   partitions and earlier; the Soviets aimed to control the same
   territories, which had been part of Imperial Russia until the turbulent
   events of the Great War. Both states claimed victory in the war: the
   Poles claimed a successful defense of their state, while the Soviets
   claimed a repulse of the Polish eastward invasion of Ukraine and
   Belarus, which they viewed as a part of foreign intervention in the
   Russian Civil War.

   The frontiers between Poland and Soviet Russia had not been defined in
   the Treaty of Versailles and post-war events created turmoil: the
   Russian Revolution of 1917; the crumbling of the Russian, German and
   Austrian empires; the Russian Civil War; the Central Powers' withdrawal
   from the eastern front; and the attempts of Ukraine and Belarus to
   establish their independence. Poland's Chief of State, Józef Piłsudski,
   felt the time expedient to expand Polish borders as far east as
   feasible, to be followed by the creation of a Polish-led federation (
   Międzymorze) of several states in the rest of East-Central Europe as a
   bulwark against the potential re-emergence of both German and Russian
   imperialism. Lenin, meanwhile, saw Poland as the bridge that the Red
   Army would have to cross in order to assist other communist movements
   and help conduct other European revolutions.

   By 1919, the Polish forces had taken control of much of Western
   Ukraine, with victory in the Polish-Ukrainian War; the West Ukrainian
   People's Republic had tried unsuccessfully to create a Ukrainian state
   on territories to which both Poles and the Ukrainians laid claim. At
   the same time, the Bolsheviks began to gain the upper hand in the
   Russian Civil War and advance westward towards the disputed
   territories. By the end of 1919 a clear front had formed. Border
   skirmishes escalated into open warfare following Piłsudski's major
   incursion further east into Ukraine in April 1920. He was met by a
   nearly simultaneous and initially very successful Red Army
   counterattack. The Soviet operation threw the Polish forces back
   westward all the way to the Polish capital, Warsaw. Meanwhile, western
   fears of Soviet troops arriving at the German frontiers increased the
   interest of Western powers in the war. In midsummer, the fall of Warsaw
   seemed certain but in mid-August the tide had turned again as the
   Polish forces achieved an unexpected and decisive victory at the Battle
   of Warsaw. In the wake of the Polish advance eastward, the Soviets sued
   for peace and the war ended with a ceasefire in October 1920. A formal
   peace treaty, the Peace of Riga, was signed on 18 March 1921, dividing
   the disputed territories between Poland and Soviet Russia. The war
   largely determined the Soviet-Polish border for the period between the
   World Wars.

Names and dates

   The war is referred to by several names. "Polish-Soviet War" may be the
   most common, but is potentially confusing since "Soviet" is usually
   thought of as relating to the Soviet Union, which (by contrast with "
   Soviet Russia") did not officially come into being until December 1922.
   Alternative names include "Russo-Polish War [or Polish-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 is 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."
   while the Polish Internetowa encyklopedia PWN as well as some
   historians—like Norman Davies—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
   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, the conflicts that took place in 1919 are closely
   related to the war that began in earnest a year later. In the end, the
   events of 1920 were only a logical, though unforeseen, consequence of
   the 1919 prelude.

Prelude

   Partitions of Poland, 1795. The colored territories show the greatest
   extent of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Blue (north-west) were
   taken by Kingdom of Prussia, green (south) by Austria-Hungary, and cyan
   (east) by Imperial Russia.
   Enlarge
   Partitions of Poland, 1795. The colored territories show the greatest
   extent of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Blue (north-west) were
   taken by Kingdom of Prussia, green (south) by Austria-Hungary, and cyan
   (east) by Imperial Russia.
   Rebirth of Poland, March 1919
   Enlarge
   Rebirth of Poland, March 1919

   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 ( 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;
   Russia viewed these territories as rebellious Russian provinces, vital
   for Russian security, but was unable to react swiftly.

   With the success of the Greater Poland Uprising in 1918, Poland had
   re-established its statehood for the first time since the 1795
   partition and seen the end of a 123 years of rule by three imperial
   neighbors: Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. The country, reborn as
   a Second Polish Republic, proceeded to carve out its borders from the
   territories of its former partitioners.

   Poland was not alone in its newfound opportunities and troubles.
   Virtually all of the newly independent neighbours began fighting over
   borders: Romania fought with Hungary over Transylvania, Yugoslavia with
   Italy over Rijeka, Poland with Czechoslovakia over Cieszyn/Těšín, with
   Germany over Poznań and with Ukrainians over Eastern Galicia.
   Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians fought
   against themselves 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 begin." All of those
   engagements – with the sole exception of the Polish-Soviet war – would
   be shortlived border conflicts.

   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 realised that they were engaged in a full war.
   Poland's leader Józef Piłsudski
   Enlarge
   Poland's leader Józef Piłsudski
   Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.
   Enlarge
   Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.

   In 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 in order
   to do so. The Bolshevik government claimed to support the "
   self-determination" of all the non-Russian peoples of the former
   Russian Empire, but this meant self-determination by workers and
   peasants led by native communists sent in from Moscow. Lenin’s goal was
   to infiltrate the borderlands, set up communist 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 government from Kiev. In early 1919, they also set up a "
   Lithuanian-Belorussian Republic" (Litbel), with its government in
   Vilnius, run by native communists sent by Moscow and supported by Red
   Army units. This government was very unpopular due to terror and the
   confiscation of food and goods for the army. It was not until the
   Soviet victories in the first half of 1920, however, that some of the
   Soviet leaders would see the war as the real opportunity to spread the
   revolution westwards.

   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 states comprised of Poland,
   Lithuania, Ukraine, and other Central and East European countries
   emerging out of crumbling empires after the First World War. 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 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 Western Bug river, which contained a significant Polish
   minority, mainly in cities like Lwów (Lviv), 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.

Course

   Soviet propaganda poster. Text reads: "This is how the landowner's
   ideas end."
   Enlarge
   Soviet propaganda poster. Text reads: "This is how the landowner's
   ideas end."
   Polish propaganda poster showing Polish cavalry and a Bolshevik soldier
   with a starred cap. Text reads: "Fight the Bolshevik"
   Enlarge
   Polish propaganda poster showing Polish cavalry and a Bolshevik soldier
   with a starred cap. Text reads: "Fight the Bolshevik"

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. As a result, almost all of Eastern Europe was in chaos.

   On November 18, 1918, the Soviet Supreme Command issued orders to the
   Western Army of the Red Army to begin a westward movement that would
   follow the withdrawing German troops of Oberkommando Ostfront (
   Ober-Ost). The basic aim was to secure as much territory as possible
   with the few resources locally available.

   At the start of 1919, Polish-Soviet fighting broke out almost by
   accident and without any orders from the respective governments when
   self-organized Polish military units in Vilnius (Wilno) clashed with
   Bolshevik forces of Litbel, each trying to secure the territories for
   its own incipient government. Eventually the more organized Soviet
   forces quelled most of the resistance and drove the remaining Polish
   forces west. On January 5, 1919, the Red Army entered Minsk almost
   unopposed, thus putting an end to the short-lived Belarusian People's
   Republic. At the same time, more and more Polish self-defense units
   sprang up across western Belarus and Lithuania (such as the Lithuanian
   and Belarusian Self-Defence). 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 Russians 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, 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. A frontline slowly began to form from
   Lithuania, through Belarus to Ukraine.

First Polish-Soviet conflicts

   The first serious armed conflict of the war took place around February
   14 - February 16, near the towns of Maniewicze and Biaroza in Belarus.
   By late February the Soviet advance had come to a halt. Both Polish and
   Soviet forces had also been engaging the Ukrainian forces, and unrest
   was growing in the territories of the Baltic countries (cf. Estonian
   Liberation War, Latvian War of Liberation, Freedom wars of Lithuania).
   Central and Eastern Europe in December 1919
   Enlarge
   Central and Eastern Europe in December 1919

   In early March 1919, Polish units started an offensive, crossing the
   Neman River, taking Pinsk, and reaching the outskirts of Lida. Both the
   Russian and Polish advances began around the same time in April (Polish
   forces started a major offensive on April 16), resulting in increasing
   numbers of troops arriving in the area. That month the Bolsheviks
   captured Grodno, but soon were pushed out by a Polish counteroffensive.
   Unable to accomplish their objectives and facing strengthening
   offensives from the White forces, the Red Army withdrew from their
   positions and reorganized. Soon the Polish-Soviet War would begin in
   earnest.

   Polish forces continued a steady eastern advance. They took Lida on
   April 17 and Nowogródek on April 18, and recaptured Vilnius on April
   19, driving the Litbel government from their proclaimed capital. On
   August 8, Polish forces took Minsk and on the 28th of that month they
   deployed tanks for the first time. After heavy fighting, the town of
   Babruysk near the Berezina River was captured. By October 2, Polish
   forces reached the Daugava river and secured the region from Desna to
   Daugavpils (Dyneburg).

   Polish success continued until early 1920. Sporadic battles erupted
   between Polish forces and the Red Army, but the latter was preoccupied
   with the White counter-revolutionary forces and was steadily retreating
   on the entire western frontline, from Latvia in the north to Ukraine in
   the south. In early summer 1919, the White movement had gained the
   initiative, and its forces under the command of Anton Denikin were
   marching on Moscow. Piłsudski viewed the Bolsheviks as a lesser threat
   to Poland than their contenders, as the White Russians were not willing
   to accept Poland's independence, while the Bolsheviks did proclaim the
   Partitions of Poland null and void. 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.

Diplomatic Front, Part 1: The alliances

   Polish General Listowski (left) and exiled Ukrainian leader Symon
   Petlura (second from left) following the Petlura's alliance with the
   Poles.
   Enlarge
   Polish General Listowski (left) and exiled Ukrainian leader Symon
   Petlura (second from left) following the Petlura's alliance with the
   Poles.
   Soviet Ukraine's propaganda poster issued following the
   Petlura-Piłsudski alliance. The Ukrainian text reads: "Corrupt Petlura
   has sold Ukraine to the Polish landowners. Landowners burned and
   plundered Ukraine. Death to landowners and Petlurovites."
   Enlarge
   Soviet Ukraine's propaganda poster issued following the
   Petlura-Piłsudski alliance. The Ukrainian text reads: "Corrupt Petlura
   has sold Ukraine to the Polish landowners. Landowners burned and
   plundered Ukraine. Death to landowners and Petlurovites."

   In 1919, several unsuccessful attempts at peace negotiations were made
   by various Polish and Russian factions. In the meantime,
   Polish-Lithuanian relations worsened as Polish politicians found it
   hard to accept the Lithuanians' demands for independence and
   territories, especially on ceding the city of Vilnius (Wilno),
   Lithuania's historical capital which had a Polish ethnic majority.
   Polish negotiators made better progress with the Latvian Provisional
   Government, and in late 1919 and early 1920 Polish and Latvian forces
   were conducting joint operations against Russia.

   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 Polish military assistance in reinstalling his government in
   Kiev. Following the formal restoration of Ukrainian independence, the
   Ukrainian republic was supposed to subordinate its military and economy
   to Warsaw through joining the Polish-led " Międzymorze" federation of
   East-Central European states, as Piłsudski wanted Ukraine to be a
   buffer between Poland and Russia rather than allowing Russian
   domination up to the Polish border. A separate provision in the treaty
   prohibited both sides from concluding any international agreements
   against each other. Ethnic Poles within the Ukrainian border, and
   ethnic Ukrainians within the Polish border, were guaranteed the same
   rights within their states. Unlike their Russian counterparts, whose
   lands were to be distributed among the peasants, Polish landlords in
   Ukraine were accorded special treatment.

   For Piłsudski, this alliance gave his campaign for the Międzymorze
   federation the legitimacy of joint international effort, secured part
   of the Polish eastward border, and laid a foundation for a Polish
   dominated Ukrainian state between Russia and Poland. For Petlura, this
   was another chance to preserve the statehood and, at least, the
   theoretical independence of the Ukrainian heartlands, even while
   accepting the loss of Western Ukrainian lands to Poland.

   Yet both of them were opposed at home. Piłsudski faced stiff opposition
   from Dmowski's National Democrats who opposed Ukrainian independence.
   Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the highly respected first president of the
   Ukrainian People's Republic, also condemned the alliance with Poland
   and Petlura's claim to have acted on the behalf of the UPR. In general,
   many Ukrainians viewed a union with Poles with great suspicion,
   especially in the view of historically difficult relationships between
   the nations, and the alliance received an especially dire reception
   from Galicia Ukrainians who viewed it as their betrayal; their
   attempted state, the West Ukrainian People's Republic, had been
   defeated by July 1919 and was now to be incorporated into Poland. The
   Western Ukrainian political leader, Yevhen Petrushevych, who expressed
   fierce opposition to the alliance, left for exile in Vienna. The
   remainder of the Ukrainian Galician Army, the Western Ukrainian state's
   defence force, still counted 5,000 able fighters though devastated by a
   typhoid epidemic, and joined the Reds on 2 February, 1920 as the
   transformed Red Ukrainian Galician Army. Later, the Galician forces
   would turn against the Reds and join Petliura's forces when sent
   against them, resulting in mass arrests and disbandment of the Red
   Galician Army. The alliance with Petliura resulted in 15,000 allied
   Ukrainian troops at the beginning of the campaign, increasing to 35,000
   through recruitment and desertion from the Soviet side.

1920

Opposing forces

   By early 1920, the Soviet forces had been very successful against the
   White armies. They defeated Denikin and signed peace treaties with
   Latvia and Estonia. The Polish front became their most important war
   theatre and the majority of Soviet resources and forces were diverted
   to it. In January 1920, the Red Army began concentrating a
   700,000-strong force near the Berezina River and on Belarus. In the
   course of 1920, almost 800,000 Red Army personnel were sent to fight in
   the Polish war, of whom 402,000 went to the Western front and 355,000
   to the armies of the South-West front in Galicia. The Soviets had many
   military depots at their disposal, left by withdrawing German armies in
   1918-19, and modern French armaments captured in great numbers from the
   White Russians and the Allied expeditionary forces in the Russian Civil
   War. Still, they suffered a shortage of arms; both the Red Army and the
   Polish forces were grossly underequipped by the Western standards.

   Bolshevik commanders in the Red Army's coming offensive would include
   Mikhail Tukhachevsky (new commander of the Western Front), Leon
   Trotsky, the future Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin, and the future 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 were very bad, supported by whatever equipment was left over
   from World War I or could be captured. The Polish Army 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. The plan for
   Operation Kiev was to beat the Red Army on Poland's southern flank and
   install a Polish-friendly Petlura government in Ukraine.

The tide turns: Operation Kiev

   Polish Kiev Offensive at its height. June 1920
   Enlarge
   Polish Kiev Offensive at its height. June 1920
   Polish Breguet 14 operating from Kiev airfield
   Enlarge
   Polish Breguet 14 operating from Kiev airfield
   A Polish cavalry charge at the Battle of Wołodarka, May 29, 1920, slows
   the Russian offensive. (Painting by Mikołaj Wisznicki, 1935.)
   Enlarge
   A Polish cavalry charge at the Battle of Wołodarka, May 29, 1920, slows
   the Russian offensive. (Painting by Mikołaj Wisznicki, 1935.)

   Until April, the Polish forces had been slowly but steadily advancing
   eastward. The new Latvian government requested and obtained Polish help
   in capturing Daugavpils. The city fell after heavy fighting in January
   and was handed over to the Latvians, who viewed the Poles as
   liberators. By March, Polish forces had driven a wedge between Soviet
   forces to the north (Byelorussia) and south (Ukraine).

   On April 24, Poland began its main offensive, Operation Kiev. Its goal
   was the creation of independent Ukraine that would become part of
   Piłsudski's project of a " Międzymorze" Federation.

   On April 26, in his "Call to the People of Ukraine", Piłsudski assured
   that "the Polish army would only stay as long as necessary until a
   legal Ukrainian government took control over its own territory".
   Despite this, many Ukrainians were just as anti-Polish as
   anti-Bolshevik, and resented the Polish advance, which many viewed as
   just a new variety of occupation considering previous defeat in the
   Polish-Ukrainian War. Thus, Ukrainians also actively fought the Polish
   invasion in Ukrainian formations of the Red Army. Some scholars stress
   the effects of Soviet propaganda in encouraging negative Ukrainian
   sentiment towards the Polish operation and Polish-Ukrainian history in
   general.

   The Polish 3rd Army easily won border clashes with the Red Army in
   Ukraine but the Reds withdrew with minimal losses. The combined
   Polish-Ukrainian forces entered an abandoned Kiev on May 7,
   encountering only token resistance.

   The Polish military thrust was met with Red Army counterattacks on 29
   May. Polish forces in the area, preparing for an offensive towards
   Žlobin, managed to push the Soviets back, but were unable to start
   their own planned offensive. In the north, Polish forces had fared much
   worse. The Polish 1st Army was defeated and forced to retreat, pursued
   by the Russian 15th Army which recaptured territories between the
   Western Dvina and Berezina rivers. Polish forces attempted to take
   advantage of the exposed flanks of the attackers but the enveloping
   forces failed to stop the Soviet advance. At the end of May, the front
   had stabilised near the small river Auta, and Soviet forces began
   preparing for the next push.

   On May 24 1920, the Polish forces in the south were engaged for the
   first time by Semyon Budionny's famous 1st Cavalry Army (Konarmia).
   Repeated attacks by Budionny's Cossack cavalry broke the
   Polish-Ukrainian front on June 5. The Soviets then deployed mobile
   cavalry units to disrupt the Polish rearguard, targeting communications
   and logistics. By June 10, Polish armies were in retreat along the
   entire front. On June 13, the Polish army, along with the Petlura's
   Ukrainian troops, abandoned Kiev to the Red Army.

String of Soviet victories

   Polish fighters of the 7th Kościuszko Squadron
   Enlarge
   Polish fighters of the 7th Kościuszko Squadron
   Soviet offensive successes. Early August 1920
   Enlarge
   Soviet offensive successes. Early August 1920
   Polish propaganda poster. Text reads: "To Arms! Save the Fatherland!
   Remember well our future fate."
   Enlarge
   Polish propaganda poster. Text reads: "To Arms! Save the Fatherland!
   Remember well our future fate."

   The commander of the Polish 3rd Army in Ukraine, General Edward
   Rydz-Śmigły, decided to break through the Soviet line toward the
   northwest. Polish forces in Ukraine managed to withdraw relatively
   unscathed, but were unable to support the northern front and reinforce
   the defenses at the Auta River for the decisive battle that was soon to
   take place there.

   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.

   Against the Polish line the Red Army gathered their Northwest Front led
   by the young General Mikhail Tukhachevski. Their numbers exceeded
   108,000 infantry and 11,000 cavalry, supported by 722 artillery pieces
   and 2,913 machine guns. The Russians at some crucial places outnumbered
   the Poles four-to-one.

   Tukhachevski launched his offensive on July 4, along the Smolensk-
   Brest-Litovsk axis, crossing the Auta and Berezina rivers. The northern
   3rd Cavalry Corps, led by Gayk Bzhishkyan (Gay Dmitrievich Gay,
   Gaj-Chan), were to envelope Polish forces from the north, moving near
   the Lithuanian and Prussian border (both of these belonging to nations
   hostile to Poland). The 4th, 15th, and 3rd Armies were to push
   decisively west, supported from the south by the 16th Army and Grupa
   Mozyrska. For three days the outcome of the battle hung in the balance,
   but the Russians' numerical superiority proved decisive and by July 7
   Polish forces were in full retreat along the entire front. However, due
   to the stubborn defense by Polish units, Tukhachevsky's plan to break
   through the front and push the defenders southwest into the Pinsk
   Marshes failed.

   Polish resistance was offered again on a line of "German trenches", a
   heavily fortified line of World War I field fortifications that
   presented a unique opportunity to stem the Russian offensive. However,
   the Polish troops were insufficient in number. Soviet forces selected a
   weakly defended part of the front and broke through. Gej-Chan and
   Lithuanian forces captured Wilno on 14 July, forcing the Poles to
   retreat again. In Galicia to the south, General Semyon Budyonny's
   cavalry advanced far into the Polish rear, capturing Brodno and
   approaching Lwów and Zamość. In early July, it became clear to the
   Poles that the Russians' objectives were not limited to pushing their
   borders westwards. Poland's very independence was at stake.

   Russian forces moved forward at the remarkable rate of 20 miles 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 Russian Northwest
   Front was only 60 miles from Warsaw. The Brest-Litovsk fortress which
   was to be the headquarters of the planned Polish counteroffensive fell
   to the 16th Army in the first attack. The Russian Southwest Front had
   pushed Polish forces out of Ukraine and was closing on Zamość and Lwów,
   the largest city in southeastern Poland and an important industrial
   centre, defended by the Polish 6th Army. The way to the Polish capital
   lay open. Polish Galicia's Lviv (Lwów) was soon besieged, and five
   Russian armies approached Warsaw. Polish politicians tried to secure
   peace with Moscow on any conditions but the Bolsheviks refused.

   Polish forces in Galicia near Lviv launched a successful
   counteroffensive to slow the Soviets down which stopped the retreat of
   Polish forces on the southern front. However, the worsening situation
   near the Polish capital of Warsaw prevented the Poles from continuing
   that southern counteroffensive and pushing east. After the Soviets
   captured Brest, the Polish offensive in the south was halted and all
   available forces moved north to take part in the coming battle for
   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.

   Meawhile, the Soviet leadership's confidence soared. 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'." Soviet communist theorist Nicholas
   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!" and "onward to Berlin
   over the corpse of Poland!"

   By order of the Soviet Communist Party, a Polish puppet government, the
   Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee (Polish: Tymczasowy Komitet
   Rewolucyjny Polski, TKRP), had been formed on 28 July in Białystok to
   organise administration of the Polish territories captured by the Red
   Army. The TKRP had very little support from the Polish population and
   recruited its supporters mostly from the ranks of Jews. In addition,
   political intrigues between Soviet commanders grew in the face of their
   increasingly certain victory. Eventually the lack of cooperation
   between the top commanders would cost them dearly in the decisive
   battle of Warsaw.
   American volunteer pilots, Merian C. Cooper and Cedric Fauntleroy,
   fought in the Kościuszko Squadron of the Polish Air Force.
   Enlarge
   American volunteer pilots, Merian C. Cooper and Cedric Fauntleroy,
   fought in the Kościuszko Squadron of the Polish Air Force.
   General Józef Haller (touching the flag) and his Blue Army.
   Enlarge
   General Józef Haller (touching the flag) and his Blue Army.

   Western public opinion was strongly pro-Soviet. Britain's Prime
   Minister, David Lloyd George, who wanted to negotiate a favourable
   trade agreement with the Bolsheviks pressed Poland to make peace on
   Soviet terms and refused any assistance to Poland which would alienate
   the Whites in the Russian Civil War. In July 1920, Britain announced it
   would send huge quantities of World War I surplus military supplies to
   Poland, but a threatened general strike by the Trades Union Congress,
   who objected to British support of "White Poland", ensured that none of
   the weapons destined for Poland left British ports. David Lloyd George
   had never been enthusiastic about supporting the Poles, and had been
   pressured by his more right-wing Cabinet members such as Lord Curzon
   and Winston Churchill into offering the supplies. On the 11 July, 1920,
   the government of Great Britain issued a de facto ultimatum to the
   Soviets. 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. In case of Soviet refusal, the British
   threatened to assist Poland with all the means available, which, in
   reality, were limited by the internal political situation in the United
   Kingdom. On the 17 July, the Bolsheviks refused and made a
   counter-offer to negotiate a peace treaty directly with Poland. The
   British responded by threatening to cut off the on-going trade
   negotiations if the Soviets conducted further offensives against
   Poland. These threats were ignored.

   The threatened general strike was a convenient excuse for Lloyd George
   to back out of his commitments. On August 6, 1920, the British Labour
   Party published a pamphlet stating that British workers would never
   take part in the war as Poland's allies, and labour unions blocked
   supplies to the British expeditionary force assisting Russian Whites in
   Arkhangelsk. French Socialists, in their newspaper L'Humanité,
   declared: "Not a man, not a sou, not a shell for reactionary and
   capitalist Poland. Long live the Russian Revolution! Long live the
   Workmen's International!" Poland also suffered setbacks due to sabotage
   and delays in deliveries of war supplies, when workers in Austria,
   Czechoslovakia and Germany refused to transit such materials to Poland.

   Lithuania's stance was mostly anti-Polish and the country had joined
   the Soviet side in July 1919. The decision was dictated by a desire to
   incorporate the city of Wilno (in Lithuanian, Vilnius) and nearby areas
   into Lithuania and, to a lesser extent, Soviet diplomatic pressure,
   backed by the threat of the Red Army stationed on Lithuania's borders.

   Polish allies were few. France, continuing her policy of countering
   Bolshevism now that the Whites in Russia proper had been almost
   completely defeated, sent a 400-strong advisory group to Poland's aid
   in 1919. It was mostly comprised of French officers, although it also
   included a few British advisers led by Lieutenant General Sir Adrian
   Carton De Wiart. The French effort was vital to improving the
   organization and logistics of the Polish Army, which, until 1919, had
   used diverse manuals, organizational structures, and equipment mostly
   drawn from the armies of Poland's former partitioners. The French
   officers included a future President of France, Charles de Gaulle;
   during the war he won Poland's highest military decoration, the Virtuti
   Militari. In addition to the Allied advisors, France also facilitated
   the transit to Poland from France of the " Blue Army" in 1919: troops
   mostly of Polish origin, plus some international volunteers, formerly
   under French command in World War I. The army was commanded by the
   Polish general, Józef Haller. Hungary offered to send a 30,000 cavalry
   corps to Poland's aid, but the Czechoslovakian government refused to
   allow them through; some trains with weapon supplies from Hungary did,
   however, arrive in Poland.

   In mid-1920, the Allied Mission was expanded by some advisers (becoming
   the Interallied Mission to Poland). They included: French diplomat,
   Jean Jules Jusserand; Maxime Weygand, chief of staff to Marshal
   Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Commander of the victorious Entente; and
   British diplomat, Lord Edgar Vincent D'Abernon. The newest members of
   the mission achieved little; indeed, the crucial Battle of Warsaw was
   fought and won by the Poles before the mission could return and make
   its report. Nonetheless for many years, a myth persisted that it was
   the timely arrival of Allied forces that had saved Poland, a myth in
   which Weygand occupied the central role. 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

   Polish defenses at Miłosna, near Warsaw, August 1920.
   Enlarge
   Polish defenses at Miłosna, near Warsaw, August 1920.
   Polish soldiers displaying captured Soviet battle flags after the
   Battle of Warsaw.
   Enlarge
   Polish soldiers displaying captured Soviet battle flags after the
   Battle of Warsaw.

   On August 10, 1920, Russian 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 Russian attack was repulsed. The Polish 1st Army resisted a
   direct assault on Warsaw as well as stopping the assault at Radzymin.

   The Soviet commander-in-chief, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, felt certain that
   all was going according to his plan. However, Polish military
   intelligence had decrypted the Red Army's radio messages, and
   Tukhachevsky was actually falling into a trap set by Piłsudski and his
   Chief of Staff, Tadeusz Rozwadowski. The Russian advance across the
   Vistula River in the north was moving into an operational vacuum, as
   there were no sizable Polish forces in the area. On the other hand,
   south of Warsaw, where the fate of the war was about to be decided,
   Tukhachevski had left only token forces to guard the vital link between
   the Russian northwest and southwest fronts. Another factor that
   influenced the outcome of the war was the effective neutralization of
   Budionny's 1st Cavalry Army, much feared by Piłsudski and other Polish
   commanders, in the battles around Lwów. The Soviet High Command, at
   Tukhachevski's insistence, had ordered the 1st Cavalry Army to march
   north toward Warsaw and Lublin, but Budionny disobeyed the order due to
   a grudge between Tukhachevski and Yegorov, commander of the southwest
   front. Additionally, the political games of Joseph Stalin, chief
   political commissar of the Southwest Front, decisively influenced the
   disobedience of Yegorov and Budionny. 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 Polish 5th Army under General Władysław Sikorski counterattacked on
   August 14 from the area of the Modlin fortress, crossing the Wkra
   River. It faced the combined forces of the numerically and materially
   superior Soviet 3rd and 15th Armies. In one day the Soviet advance
   toward Warsaw and Modlin had been halted and soon turned into retreat.
   Sikorski's 5th Army pushed the exhausted Soviet formations away from
   Warsaw in a lightning operation. Polish forces advanced at a speed of
   thirty kilometers a day, soon destroying any Soviet hopes for
   completing their enveloping manoeuvre in the north. By August 16, the
   Polish counteroffensive had been fully joined by Marshal Piłsudski's
   "Reserve Army." Precisely executing his plan, the Polish force,
   advancing from the south, found a huge gap between the Russian fronts
   and exploited the weakness of the Soviet "Mozyr Group" that was
   supposed to protect the weak link between the Soviet fronts. The Poles
   continued their northward offensive with two armies following and
   destroying the surprised enemy. They reached the rear of Tukhachevski's
   forces, the majority of which were encircled by August 18. Only that
   same day did Tukhachevski, at his Minsk headquarters 300 miles east of
   Warsaw, become fully aware of the proportions of the Soviet defeat and
   ordered the remnants of his forces to retreat and regroup. He hoped to
   straighten his front line, halt the Polish attack, and regain the
   initiative, but the orders either arrived too late or failed to arrive
   at all.

   The Soviet armies in the centre of the front fell into chaos.
   Tukhachevski ordered a general retreat toward the Bug River, but by
   then he had lost contact with most of his forces near Warsaw, and all
   the Bolshevik plans had been thrown into disarray by communication
   failures.

   The Bolshevik armies retreated in a disorganised fashion; entire
   divisions panicking and disintegrating. The Red Army's defeat was so
   great and unexpected that, at the instigation of Piłsudski's
   detractors, the Battle of Warsaw is often referred to in Poland as the
   " Miracle at the Vistula". Current investigation in Poland concluded
   that the "Miracle at the Vistula" was caused by a big net of Polish
   spies within the Red Army. Piłsudski knew about all the moves by the
   Red Army while the Soviets were left in the dark.

   The advance of Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army toward Lwów was halted,
   first at the battle of Brody ( July 29- August 2), and then on August
   17 at the Battle of Zadwórze, where a small Polish force sacrificed
   itself to prevent Soviet cavalry from seizing Lwów and stopping vital
   Polish reinforcements from moving toward Warsaw. Moving through weakly
   defended areas, Budyonny's cavalry reached the city of Zamość on 29
   August and attempted to take it in the battle of Zamość; however, he
   soon faced an increasing number of Polish units diverted from the
   successful Warsaw counteroffensive. On August 31, Budyonny's cavalry
   finally broke off its siege of Lwów and attempted to come to the aid of
   Russian forces retreating from Warsaw. The Russian forces were
   intercepted and defeated by Polish cavalry at the Battle of Komarów
   near Zamość, the greatest cavalry battle since 1813 and one of the last
   cavalry battles in history. Although Budionny's Army managed to avoid
   encirclement, it suffered heavy losses and it's morale plummeted. The
   remains of Budionny's 1st Cavalry Army retreated towards
   Volodymyr-Volynskyi on 6 September and was defeated shortly thereafter
   at the Battle of Hrubieszów.

   Tukhachevski managed to reorganize the eastward-retreating forces and
   in September established a new defensive line running from the
   Polish-Lithuanian border to the north to the area of Polesie, with the
   central point in the city of Grodno in Belarus. In order to break this
   line, the Polish Army had to fight the Battle of the Niemen River.
   Polish forces crossed the Niemen River and outflanked the Bolshevik
   forces, which were forced to retreat again. Polish forces continued to
   advance east on all fronts, repeating their successes from the previous
   year. After the early October Battle of the Szczara River, the Polish
   Army had reached the Ternopil- Dubno- Minsk- Drisa line.

   In the south, Petliura's Ukrainian forces defeated the Bolshevik 14th
   Army and on September 18th took control of the left bank of the Zbruch
   river. During the next month they moved east to the line Yaruha on the
   Dniester-Sharharod- Bar-Lityn.

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. Long negotiations of the peace treaty ensued.

   Meanwhile, Petliura's Ukrainian forces of about 23,000 soldiers,
   planned an offensive into Ukraine for November 11 but were attacked by
   the Bolsheviks on November 10. By November 21, after several battles,
   they were driven into Polish-controlled territory.

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 did not 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. The Polish
   government was also pressured by the League of Nations, and the
   negotiations were controlled by Dmowski's National Democrats: Piłsudski
   might have controlled the military, but parliament ( Sejm) was
   controlled by Dmowski, and the peace negotiations were of a political
   nature. National Democrats, like Stanisław Grabski, who earlier had
   resigned his post to protest the Polish–Ukrainian alliance and now
   wielded much influence over the Polish negotiators, cared little for
   Piłsudski's Międzymorze; this post-war situation proved a death blow to
   Piłsudski's dream of reviving the multicultural Polish-Lithuanian
   Commonwealth in the form of the Międzymorze.

   The National Democrats in charge of the state also had few concerns
   about the fate of Ukrainians, and cared little that their political
   opponent, Piłsudski, felt honour-bound by his treaty obligations; his
   opponents did not 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 Russian chief
   negotiator Adolf Joffe to concede almost all disputed territory,
   National Democrats ideology allowed the Soviets to regain certain
   territories. The Peace of Riga was signed on March 18, 1921, splitting
   the disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between Poland and
   Russia. The treaty, which Piłsudski called an act of cowardice, and for
   which he apologized to the Ukrainians, actually violated the terms of
   Poland's military alliance with Ukraine, which had explicitly
   prohibited a separate peace; Ukrainian allies of Poland suddenly found
   themselves interned by the Polish authorities. The internment worsened
   relations between Poland and its Ukrainian minority: those who
   supported Petliura felt that Ukraine had been betrayed by its Polish
   ally, a feeling that grew stronger due to the assimilationist policies
   of nationalist inter-war Poland towards its minorities. To a large
   degree, this inspired the growing tensions and eventual violence
   against Poles in the 1930s and 1940s.

   The war and its aftermath also resulted in other controversies, such as
   the situation of prisoners of war, 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.
   Graves of Polish soldiers fallen in the Battle of Warsaw (1920),
   Powązki Cemetery, Warsaw.
   Enlarge
   Graves of Polish soldiers fallen in the Battle of Warsaw (1920),
   Powązki Cemetery, Warsaw.

   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.

   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 so as 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.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish-Soviet_War"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
