When there was a war with the Poles. Briefly about the Soviet-Polish war

Soviet-Polish War (1920–1921)
	Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia
	Riga Peace Treaty of 1921
Opponents
Ukrainian SSR
Byelorussian SSR
Latvian SSR	Entente intervention
Commanders
M. N. Tukhachevsky	Y. Pilsudsky
A. I. Egorov	E. Rydz-Smigly
S. M. Budyonny	S. V. Petlyura
	M. V. Omelyanovich-Pavlenko
	P. S. Makhrov
Side forces
About 900 thousand fighters (summer 1920)	About 850 thousand fighters (summer 1920)
Military casualties
100-150 thousand dead	About 60 thousand dead

Soviet-Polish war(Polish wojna polsko-bolszewicka (wojna polsko-rosyjska), Ukrainian Polish-Radyansk War) - an armed conflict between Poland and Soviet Russia, Soviet Belarus, Soviet Ukraine on the territory of the collapsed Russian Empire- Russia, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine in 1920–1921 during the Russian Civil War. In modern Polish historiography, it is called the "Polish-Bolshevik War". The troops of the Ukrainian People's Republic and the West Ukrainian People's Republic also took part in the conflict; in the first phase of the war they acted against Poland, then units of the UNR supported the Polish troops.

background

The main territories for the possession of which the war was fought, until the middle of the XIV century, were various ancient Russian principalities. After a period of internecine wars and the Tatar-Mongol invasion in 1240, they fell into the area of ​​​​influence of Lithuania and Poland. In the first half of the 14th century, Kyiv, the Dnieper region, the interfluve of the Pripyat and the Western Dvina became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and in 1352 the lands of the Galicia-Volyn principality were divided between Poland and Lithuania. In 1569, according to the Union of Lublin between Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, some Ukrainian lands, which had previously been part of the latter, come under the authority of the Polish crown. In 1772-1795, as a result of the three divisions of the Commonwealth, part of the lands (Western Belarus and most of Western Ukraine) passed under the authority of the Russian crown, the Galician territories became part of the Austrian monarchy.

After the defeat of Germany in the war in November 1918, when Poland was restored as an independent state, the question arose about its new borders. Although Polish politicians differed in their views on exactly what status the eastern territories of the former Commonwealth should have in the new state, they unanimously advocated their return to Polish control. The Soviet government, on the contrary, intended to establish control over the entire territory of the former Russian Empire, making it (as it was officially declared) a springboard for world revolution.

The goals of the participants in the conflict

The main goal of the leadership of Poland, led by Jozef Pilsudski, was the restoration of Poland within the historical borders of the Commonwealth of 1772, with the establishment of control over Belarus, Ukraine (including Donbass), Lithuania and geopolitical dominance in Eastern Europe:

On the Soviet side, the initial goal was to establish control over the western provinces of the former Russian Empire (Ukraine and Belarus) and Sovietize them. As the war progressed, the goal became the Sovietization of Poland, followed by Germany, and the transition to a world revolution. The Soviet leadership considered the war against Poland part of the struggle against the entire Versailles international system that existed at that time.

Lenin subsequently noted that the attack on Warsaw created a situation in which "and in relation to Germany, we probed the international situation." And this "probing" showed: a) "the approach of our troops to the borders of East Prussia" led to the fact that "Germany was all boiled"; b) "you won't get Soviet power in Germany without a civil war"; c) "in international relations there is no other power for Germany but Soviet Russia.”

The course of the war

The situation in Eastern Europe at the end of 1918

According to the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty of March 3, 1918, the western border of Soviet Russia was established along the line Riga - Dvinsk - Druya ​​- Drysvyaty - Mikhalishki - Dzevilishki - Dokudov - r. Neman - r. Zelvinka - Pruzhany - Vidoml.

On November 11, 1918, the Armistice of Compiègne was signed, ending the First world war, after which the withdrawal of German troops from the occupied territories began. In the countries of Eastern Europe, this led to a political vacuum that various forces tried to fill: on the one hand, local governments, for the most part, were the successors of the authorities formed during the German occupation; on the other hand, the Bolsheviks and their supporters supported by Soviet Russia.

In November 1918, the German units began to withdraw from the territories of the former Russian Empire they had occupied.

The Soviet Western Army, whose task was to establish control over Belarus, on November 17, 1918, moved after the retreating German units and on December 10, 1918 entered Minsk. The Poles of Lithuania and Belarus created the organization "Committee for the Defense of the Eastern Outskirts" (KZVO) with combat units formed from former soldiers of the Polish Corps, and turned to the Polish government for help. By a decree of the Polish ruler (“temporary head of state”) Jozef Pilsudski dated December 7, 1918, the KZVO detachments were declared an integral part of the Polish Army under the general command of General Wladyslaw Veitka. On December 19, the Polish government ordered its troops to occupy the city of Vilnius.

On December 21, 1918, a Polish administration was created in Vilnius: the Provisional Commission for the Administration of the District of Central Lithuania.

On January 1, 1919, the Byelorussian SSR was proclaimed. On the same day, Polish units took control of Vilnius, but on January 6, 1919, the city was recaptured by units of the Red Army. On February 16, the authorities of the Byelorussian SSR proposed to the Polish government to determine the borders, but Warsaw ignored this proposal. On February 27, after Lithuania was included in the Byelorussian SSR, it was renamed the Lithuanian-Belarusian SSR (Republic of Litbel).

Poland could not provide significant assistance to the KZVO detachments, since part of the Polish troops was drawn into the border conflict with Czechoslovakia and was preparing for a possible conflict with Germany over Silesia, and German troops were still in the western regions of Poland. Only after the intervention of the Entente on February 5 was an agreement signed that the Germans would let the Poles go east. As a result, on February 4, Polish troops occupied Kovel, on February 9 they entered Brest, on February 19 they entered Bialystok, abandoned by the Germans. At the same time, Polish troops moving east liquidated the administration of the Ukrainian People's Republic in the Kholm region, in Zhabinka, Kobrin and Vladimir-Volynsky.

On February 9 - 14, 1919, German troops let the Polish units pass to the line of the river. Neman (to Skidel) - r. Zelvyanka - r. Ruzhanka - Pruzhany - Kobrin. Soon units of the Western Front of the Red Army approached from the other side. Thus, a Polish-Soviet front was formed on the territory of Lithuania and Belarus. Although by February 1919 the Polish army nominally numbered more than 150 thousand people, the Poles at first had very insignificant forces in Belarus and Ukraine - 12 infantry battalions, 12 cavalry squadrons and three artillery batteries - only about 8 thousand people, the rest of the units were located on borders with Germany and Czechoslovakia or were in the process of formation. The size of the Soviet Western Army is estimated at 45 thousand people, however, after the occupation of Belarus, the most combat-ready units were transferred to other areas where the position of the Red Army was extremely difficult. On February 19, the Western Army was transformed into the Western Front under the command of Dmitry Nadezhny.

To prepare an offensive to the east, the Polish troops in Belarus, which received reinforcements, were divided into three parts: the Polesie group was commanded by General Antoni Listovsky, the Volyn group was commanded by General Edward Rydz-Smigly, the Lithuanian-Belarusian division of General Vatslav Ivashkevich-Rudoshansky was on the Shitno-Skidel line . To the south of them were units of Generals Juliusz Rummel and Tadeusz Rozwadowski.

The offensive of the Polish troops in Belarus

At the end of February, Polish troops crossed the Neman and launched an offensive in Belarus (since February 3, it was in the federation with the RSFSR). On February 28, units of General Ivashkevich attacked the Soviet troops along the Shchara River and occupied Slonim on March 1, and Pinsk was taken by Listovsky on March 2. The task of both groups was to prevent the concentration of Soviet troops along the Lida-Baranovichi-Luninets line and to prepare for the occupation of Grodno after the withdrawal of German troops from there. Soon Ivashkevich was replaced by Stanislav Sheptytsky.

On April 17-19, the Poles occupied Lida, Novogrudok and Baranovichi, and on April 19, the Polish cavalry entered Vilna. Two days later, Jozef Pilsudski arrived there, who addressed the Lithuanian people, in which he proposed that Lithuania return to the union of the times of the Commonwealth.

Meanwhile, Polish troops in Belarus under the command of Stanislav Sheptytsky continued to move east, receiving reinforcements from Poland - on April 28, the Poles occupied the city of Grodno, abandoned by the Germans. In May-July, the Polish units were replenished with the 70,000-strong army of Jozef Haller, transported from France. At the same time, Western Ukraine passes under the control of the Poles - on June 25, 1919, the Council of Foreign Ministers of Great Britain, France, the USA, and Italy authorizes Poland to occupy Eastern Galicia up to the river. Zbruch. By July 17, eastern Galicia was completely occupied by the Polish army, the administration of the West Ukrainian People's Republic (ZUNR) was liquidated.

The offensive of the Polish troops in Belarus continued - on July 4 Molodechno was occupied, and on July 25 Slutsk passed under Polish control. The commander of the Soviet Western Front, Dmitry Nadezhny, was removed from his post on July 22, and Vladimir Gittis was appointed in his place. However, the Soviet troops in Belarus did not receive significant reinforcements, since the Soviet General Staff sent all the reserves to the south against the Volunteer Army of Anton Denikin, which launched an attack on Moscow in July.

Meanwhile, in August, the Polish troops again went on the offensive, the main goal of which was Minsk. After a six-hour battle on August 9, Polish troops captured the Belarusian capital, and on August 29, despite the stubborn resistance of the Red Army, Bobruisk was taken by the Poles. In October, units of the Red Army launched a counterattack on the city, but were defeated. After that, the hostilities subsided until the beginning of the next year: the parties concluded a truce. This was due to the reluctance of the Entente countries and Anton Denikin to support plans for further Polish expansion. A long negotiation process began.

Diplomatic struggle

As mentioned above, the successes of the Polish troops in Belarus were largely due to the fact that the leadership of the Red Army sent the main forces for defense south direction from the advancing troops of Anton Denikin. Denikin, like the White movement as a whole, recognized the independence of Poland, but was opposed to Polish claims to lands east of the Bug, believing that they should be part of a single and indivisible Russia.

The position of the Entente on this issue coincided with Denikin's - in December the Declaration on the eastern border of Poland, coinciding with the line of ethnographic predominance of the Poles, was announced. At the same time, the Entente demanded that Pilsudski provide military assistance to Denikin's troops and resume the offensive in Belarus. However, at that time, the Polish troops were located much east of the Curzon line and the Pilsudski government did not intend to leave the occupied territories. After many months of negotiations in Taganrog between Denikin and Pilsudski's representative, General Alexander Karnitsky, ended in vain, Polish-Soviet negotiations began.

In Mikashevichi, a conversation took place between Julian Markhlevsky and Ignacy Berner. The release of political prisoners was supposed - a list was compiled of 1574 Poles imprisoned in the RSFSR, and 307 communists in Polish prisons. The Bolsheviks demanded a plebiscite in Belarus among the local population on the issue state structure and territorial affiliation. The Poles, in turn, demanded the transfer of Dvinsk to Latvia and the cessation of hostilities against the UNR Petlyura, with whom they had entered into an alliance by that time.

In October, Polish-Soviet negotiations resumed in Mikashevichi. The immediate reason why the Polish side again entered into negotiations was its concern about the success of Denikin's army in the fight against the Red Army, the occupation of Kursk and Orel on the way to Moscow. Piłsudski's assessment was that White support was not in Poland's interests. A similar opinion was expressed to Julian Markhlevsky by the authorized head of the Polish state at the talks in Mikashevichy, Captain Ignacy Berner, noting that "help to Denikin in his fight against the Bolsheviks cannot serve the interests of the Polish state." A direct consequence of the negotiations was the transfer of the elite Latvian division of the Red Army from the Polish to the Southern Front , the victory with White became possible only thanks to the flank attack of the Strike Group, which was based on the Latvians. In December 1919, negotiations in Mikashevichi were terminated at the initiative of the Poles. This is largely due to the low assessment of the Red Army (as well as the All-Union Socialist Republic) by Pilsudski before the start of hostilities of the Polish troops against the Reds - in particular, in January 1920, in an interview with the British diplomat Sir MacKinder, he expressed the following opinion:

Although the negotiations ended in vain, the break in hostilities allowed Pilsudski to suppress the pro-Soviet opposition, and the Red Army to transfer reserves to the Belarusian direction and develop an offensive plan.

Polish offensive in Ukraine

After the failure of the peace talks, hostilities resumed. In the first days of January 1920, the troops of Edward Rydz-Smigly took Dvinsk with an unexpected blow and then handed over the city to the Latvian authorities. On March 6, Polish troops launched an offensive in Belarus, capturing Mozyr and Kalinkovichi. Four attempts by the Red Army to recapture Mozyr were unsuccessful, and the offensive of the Red Army in Ukraine also ended in failure. The commander of the Western Front, Vladimir Gittis, was removed from his post, and 27-year-old Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who had previously proved himself in the course of battles against the troops of Kolchak and Denikin, was appointed in his place. Also, for better command and control of the troops, the southern part of the Western Front was transformed into the Southwestern Front, with Alexander Yegorov appointed commander of the troops.

The alignment of forces on the Soviet-Polish front by May 1920 was as follows:

On the southern sector of the front - from the Dnieper to Pripyat

Polish Army:

• 6th Army of General Vatslav Ivashkevich
• 2nd Army of General Antony Listovsky
• 3rd Army of General Edward Rydz-Smigly

Total: 30.4 thousand bayonets and 4.9 thousand cavalry.

Southwestern Front of Alexander Yegorov:

• 12th army of Sergei Mezheninov
• 14th Army of Ieronim Uborevich

Total: 13.4 thousand bayonets and 2.3 thousand sabers.

On the northern sector of the front - between Pripyat and the Western Dvina

Polish Army

• 4th Army (Polesie and Berezina region) of General Stanislav Sheptytsky
• Operational group of General Leonard Skersky (Borisov region)
• 1st Army (Dvina area) of General Stefan Mayevsky
• Reserve Army of General Kazimierz Sosnkowski

Total: 60.1 thousand bayonets and 7 thousand sabers.

Western Front of Mikhail Tukhachevsky:

• 15th Army of August Cork
• 16th Army of Nikolai Sollogub

Total: 66.4 thousand bayonets and 4.4 thousand cavalry.

Thus, in Belarus, the forces were approximately equal, and in Ukraine, the Poles had an almost threefold numerical superiority, which the Polish command decided to use to the maximum, transferring additional troops to this direction with a total force of 10 thousand bayonets and 1 thousand cavalry. In addition, the actions of the Poles, in accordance with the agreement, were supported by the troops of Petliura, who at that time numbered about 15 thousand people.

On April 25, 1920, Polish troops attacked the positions of the Red Army along the entire length of the Ukrainian border, and by April 28 they occupied the Chernobyl-Kozyatin-Vinnitsa-Romanian border line. Sergei Mezheninov, not risking engaging in battle, withdrew the troops of the 12th Army, whose units were scattered at a great distance from each other, lost their unified command and needed to be regrouped. These days, the Poles captured more than 25 thousand Red Army soldiers, captured 2 armored trains, 120 guns and 418 machine guns. On May 7, Polish cavalry entered Kyiv, abandoned by units of the Red Army, and soon the Poles managed to create a bridgehead up to 15 km deep on the left bank of the Dnieper.

The offensive of the Red Army in the spring and summer of 1920

Tukhachevsky decided to take advantage of the diversion of part of the Polish army from the Belarusian direction and on May 14 launched an offensive against the positions of the Poles with the forces of 12 infantry divisions. Despite the initial success, by May 27 the offensive of the Soviet troops bogged down, and on June 1 the 4th and units of the 1st Polish armies launched a counteroffensive against the 15th Soviet army and by June 8 inflicted a heavy defeat on it (the army lost dead, wounded and captured more than 12 thousand fighters).

On the Southwestern Front, the situation was turned in favor of the Soviets with the commissioning of the 1st Cavalry Army of Semyon Budyonny, transferred from the Caucasus (16.7 thousand sabers, 48 ​​guns, 6 armored trains and 12 aircraft). She left Maikop on April 3rd, defeated the detachments of Nestor Makhno in Gulyaipole, and crossed the Dnieper north of Yekaterinoslav (May 6th). On May 26, after the concentration of all units in Uman, the 1st Cavalry attacked Kazatin, and on June 5, Budyonny, having found a weak spot in the Polish defense, broke through the front near Samogorodok and went to the rear of the Polish units, advancing on Berdichev and Zhitomir. On June 10, the 3rd Polish Army of Rydz-Smigly, fearing encirclement, left Kyiv and moved to the Mazovia region. Two days later, the 1st Cavalry Army entered Kyiv. Attempts by Yegorov's small troops to prevent the retreat of the 3rd Army ended in failure. The Polish troops, having regrouped, tried to launch a counteroffensive: on July 1, the troops of General Leon Berbetsky attacked the front of the 1st Cavalry Army near Rovno. This offensive was not supported by adjacent Polish units and Berbetsky's troops were driven back. Polish troops made several more attempts to capture the city, but on July 10 it finally came under the control of the Red Army.

At dawn on July 4, the Western Front of Mikhail Tukhachevsky again went on the offensive. The main blow was delivered on the right, northern flank, on which an almost twofold superiority in people and weapons was achieved. The idea of ​​the operation was to bypass the Polish units of Guy's cavalry corps and push the Polish Belorussian front to the Lithuanian border. This tactic was successful: on July 5, the 1st and 4th Polish armies began to quickly retreat in the direction of Lida, and, unable to gain a foothold on the old line of German trenches, retreated to the Bug at the end of July. In a short period of time, the Red Army advanced more than 600 km: on July 10, the Poles left Bobruisk, on July 11 - Minsk, on July 14, units of the Red Army took Vilna. On July 26, in the Bialystok region, the Red Army crossed directly into Polish territory, and on August 1, despite Pilsudski's orders, Brest was surrendered to Soviet troops almost without resistance.

On July 23, in Smolensk, the Bolsheviks formed the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Poland (Polrevkom), which was supposed to assume full power after the capture of Warsaw and the overthrow of Pilsudski. The Bolsheviks officially announced this on August 1 in Bialystok, where the Polrevkom was located. The committee was headed by Julian Markhlevsky. On the same day, August 1, the Polrevkom announced the "Appeal to the Polish working people of cities and villages", written by Dzerzhinsky. The “Appeal” announced the creation of the Polish Republic of Soviets, the nationalization of lands, the separation of church and state, and also called on the workers to drive away the capitalists and landowners, occupy factories and factories, create revolutionary committees as government bodies (65 such revolutionary committees were formed) . The Committee called on the soldiers of the Polish Army to revolt against Piłsudski and go over to the side of the Polish Republic of Soviets. The Polrevkom also began to form the Polish Red Army (under the command of Roman Longva), but did not achieve any success in this.

The creation of the Polrevkom was explained by the serious hopes of the Soviet leadership for the help of the Polish proletariat and played its negative role in deciding on further actions by the military leadership.

Having reached the Polish border, the High Command of the Red Army faced a difficult choice whether to continue the operation or not. Commander-in-Chief Kamenev 2 years later, in the article “Fight against White Poland” (originally published in the journal “Military Bulletin”, 1922, 12, pp. 7-15), later described the situation that had developed when making a decision:

“The period of struggle under consideration in the entire course of events turned out to be a cornerstone. After achieving the above successes, the last task of capturing Warsaw, obviously, became the Red Army by itself, and simultaneously with this task, the situation itself set a deadline for its implementation "immediately". This term was determined by two most important considerations: the information on the political side was summed up in the fact that the testing of the revolutionary impulse of the Polish proletariat must not be delayed, otherwise it would be strangled; judging by the trophies, the prisoners and their testimonies, the enemy army undoubtedly suffered a great defeat, therefore, it is impossible to delay: the uncut forest will soon grow. This forest could soon grow also because we knew about the help that France was in a hurry to provide to its battered offspring. We also had unequivocal warnings from Britain that if we crossed such and such a line, then Poland would be given real help. We crossed this line, therefore, it was necessary to stop until this "real help" was provided. The motives enumerated are weighty enough to determine how short the time we had at our disposal was. Naturally, our command faced the question in all its magnitude: is it possible for the Red Army to immediately solve the upcoming task in its composition and state in which it approached the Bug, and whether the rear will cope. And now, as then, the answer is yes and no. If we were right in taking into account the political moment, if we did not overestimate the depth of the defeat of the Belopolska army, and if the exhaustion of the Red Army was not excessive, then the task should have been started immediately. it would be too late to lend a helping hand to the proletariat of Poland and finally neutralize the force that carried out the treacherous attack on us. Having repeatedly checked all the information listed, it was decided to continue the operation without stopping.

As you can see, the decision was made on the basis of two factors - political and military. And if the second, in general, was probably assessed correctly - the Polish army was really on the verge of disaster, even according to outside observers (in particular, General Faury, a member of the French military mission, noted that “at the beginning of the operation on the Vistula, for all military specialists, the fate of Poland seemed completely doomed, and not only the strategic situation was hopeless, but morally, the Polish troops had formidable symptoms that seemed to have to finally lead the country to death”) and it was impossible to give her time for a respite under other favorable conditions, then the second factor turned out to be erroneous. As the same Kamenev noted, “Now the moment has come when the working class of Poland could really provide the Red Army with that help ... but there was no outstretched hand of the proletariat. Probably, the more powerful hands of the Polish bourgeoisie hid this hand somewhere..

Subsequently - this opinion has become widespread in recent times - it is customary to lay the blame for the decision to develop an extremely risky offensive further on Tukhachevsky. This opinion was also heard from the lips of military professionals, in particular Konev (here, for example, K. Simonov wrote down in his conversations with Marshal Konev: “To his (Tukhachevsky’s) shortcomings belonged the well-known raid of adventurism, which manifested itself even in the Polish campaign, in the battle near Warsaw. I. S. Konev said that he studied this campaign in detail, and, whatever the mistakes of Yegorov and Stalin on the Southwestern Front, there was no reason to blame them entirely for the failure near Warsaw of Tukhachevsky. His very movement with bare flanks, with stretched communications, and all his behavior during this period do not make a solid, positive impression.). Nevertheless, as we can see, this risk was recognized - and accepted - on the very highest level military and political leadership of the country:

“Thus, the Red Army openly took a risk, and the risk is excessive. After all, the operation, even with a satisfactory resolution of all the above conditions, still had to be carried out primarily without any rear, which was completely impossible to quickly restore after the destruction carried out by the White Poles. There was another moment of risk here, which was created by political significance Danzig corridor, which the Red Army could not appreciate and was forced to accept a plan to capture Warsaw from the north, since first of all it was necessary to cut it off from the highway, along which not only material assistance was supplied by the Poles themselves, but Entente help (read France) could appear alive by force. The very operation of capturing Warsaw from the north severely separated our main forces from the Ivangorod direction, where significant forces of the White Poles retreated, and then excessively stretched our front. Our forces, not being able to receive replenishment, since the railways left to us by the White Poles were completely destroyed, melted every day. Thus, by the time of the denouement, we were walking, decreasing every day in number, in military supplies and stretching our fronts.

In the end, it was the factor of stretched communications and the weakening of the Red Army, combined with the growing strength, and not the weakening (as the Soviet political leadership expected) of the rear of the Polish army, that led to the fact that the situation was balancing on a razor's edge. At that moment, any insignificant factor and/or the slightest tactical mistake could play a decisive role in turning fortunes to one side or another, which actually happened. Here is what an outside observer, a participant, wrote in particular white movement, Major General of the General Staff of the old army Goncharenko:

“The rapid advance, without the preparation of the rear and the equipment of communication lines, for its part, was most decisively reflected in the loss of the campaign. The leaders of the Red Army are blinded by political considerations ... At the same time, the command takes extremely bold, risky decisions, where not only the complete absence of any template, but where the presence of risk in every strategic maneuver strikes the eye, more than justifying the thought of old Moltke "without great risk, great successes in war are impossible". Moreover, the essence of operational plans is sharpened to such an extent that "one inch of strategic error nullifies miles of strategic success"

Nevertheless, by the beginning of August, the situation in Poland was critical and close to disaster. And not only because of the rapid retreat in Belarus, but also because of the deterioration international position countries. Great Britain actually ceased to provide military and economic assistance to Poland, Germany and Czechoslovakia closed the borders with Poland, and Danzig remained the only point of delivery of goods to the republic. However, the main supplies and assistance were carried out not by the above countries, but by France and the United States, which did not stop their activities (see below "The role of the "great powers" in the conflict"). With the approach of the Red Army troops to Warsaw, the evacuation of foreign diplomatic missions began from there.

Meanwhile, the situation of the Polish troops worsened not only in the Belarusian, but also in the Ukrainian direction, where the South-Western Front again went on the offensive under the command of Alexander Yegorov (with Stalin as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council). main goal front was the capture of Lvov, which was defended by three infantry divisions of the 6th Polish army and the Ukrainian army under the command of Mikhailo Omelyanovich-Pavlenko. On July 9, the 14th Army of the Red Army took Proskurov (Khmelnitsky), and on July 12 captured Kamenetz-Podolsky by storm. On July 25, the Southwestern Front launched the Lvov offensive operation, but failed to capture Lvov.

Warsaw battle

On August 12, the troops of the Western Front of Mikhail Tukhachevsky went on the offensive, the purpose of which was to capture Warsaw.

Composition of the Western Front

• Guy Guy's 3rd Cavalry Corps
• 4th Army of A. D. Shuvaev, Chief of Staff - G. S. Gorchakov
• 15th Army of August Cork
• 3rd Army of Vladimir Lazarevich
• 16th Army of Nikolai Sollogub
• Mozyr group of Tikhon Khvesin

Two fronts of the Red Army were opposed by three Polish ones:

Northern front of General Józef Haller

• 5th Army of General Vladislav Sikorsky
• 1st Army of General Frantisek Latinik
• 2nd Army of General Boleslav Roja

Central Front of General Edward Rydz-Smigly

• 4th Army of General Leonard Skersky
• 3rd Army of General Zygmunt Zelinsky

Southern Front of General Vaclav Ivashkevich

• 6th Army of General Vladislav Yendzheyevsky
• Army of the UNR General Mikhail Omelyanovich-Pavlenko

Total population personnel divergent in all sources. We can only say with certainty that the forces were approximately equal and did not exceed 200 thousand people on each side.

The plan of Mikhail Tukhachevsky provided for the crossing of the Vistula in the lower reaches and the attack on Warsaw from the west. According to some of the assumptions made, the purpose of "deviating" the direction of the Soviet attack to the north was to get to the German border as soon as possible, which should have accelerated the establishment of Soviet power in this country. On August 13, two rifle divisions of the Red Army struck near Radimin (23 km from Warsaw) and captured the city. Then one of them moved to Prague (the right-bank part of Warsaw), and the second turned to the right - to Neporent and Jablonna. Polish forces retreated to the second line of defense.

In early August, the Polish-French command finalized the counteroffensive plan. The Soviet historian of the Soviet-Polish war N. Kakurin, analyzing in detail the formation of this plan and the changes made to it, comes to the conclusion that the French military had a significant influence on the appearance of its final version:

“Thus, it can be considered that the final plan of action in the Polish main apartment completed on August 9th. It was the fruit of the collective creativity of Marshal Pilsudski, Gen. Rozvadovsky and Weigand. The first of these generals belonged technical processing plan, the second was the author of very important adjustments made to the original plan of action. Therefore, we can assume that the final action plan of the Polish High Command of August 9 is a symbiosis of the operational ideas of Marshal Pilsudski and Gen. Weigand, but by no means the fruit of the independent operational creativity of the first, as one might think on the basis of Pilsudski's book "1920". ... Turning to the analysis of the enemy’s plan, we note once again that it included elements of exceptional risk and was the fruit of collective creativity with a very solid participation of the gene. Weigand. Weigand's intervention, firstly, expanded and clarified its scope, gave a clear goal setting, activated the entire plan and, by creating a northern shock wing, somewhat mitigated the risk that Piłsudski's original plan was filled with. … Based on Piłsudski's own admission, we are inclined to regard his original decision of August 6 as more of a gesture of desperation than the fruit of sound calculation. In addition to the immediate goal - saving Warsaw at any cost - Pilsudski did not see anything ... "

The Polish counter-offensive plan provided for the concentration of large forces on the Vepsh River and a surprise attack from the southeast into the rear of the troops of the Western Front. To do this, two shock groups were formed from the two armies of the Central Front, General Edward Rydz-Smigly. However, order 8358 / III on a counterattack near Vepshem with a detailed map fell into the hands of the Red Army, but the Soviet command considered the document found to be disinformation, the purpose of which was to disrupt the Red Army's offensive on Warsaw. On the same day, Polish radio intelligence intercepted the order for the 16th Army to attack Warsaw on August 14th. To get ahead of the Reds, on the orders of Jozef Haller, the 5th Army of Vladislav Sikorsky, defending Modlin, from the area of ​​​​the Wkra River hit the stretched front of Tukhachevsky at the junction of the 3rd and 15th armies and broke through it. On the night of August 15, two reserve Polish divisions attacked the Soviet troops near Radimin from the rear. Soon the city was taken.

On August 16, Marshal Pilsudski launched the planned counterattack. The information received by radio intelligence about the weakness of the Mozyr group played a role. Having concentrated more than a double superiority against it (47.5 thousand fighters against 21 thousand), the Polish troops (the first strike group under the command of Pilsudski himself) broke through the front and defeated the southern wing of the 16th army of Nikolai Sollogub. At the same time, there was an attack on Vlodava by the forces of the 3rd Infantry Division of the Legions, and also, with the support of tanks, on Minsk-Mazovetsky. This created a threat of encirclement of all Red Army troops in the Warsaw area.

Considering the critical situation on the Western Front, on August 14, Commander-in-Chief Kamenev ordered that the 12th and 1st Cavalry Armies be transferred to the Western Front in order to significantly strengthen it. There is an opinion that the leadership of the Southwestern Front, which besieged Lvov, ignored this order, and one of the opponents of the transfer of Cavalry to the western direction was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southwestern Front, I.V. Stalin, who was generally a principled opponent of plans to conquer the native Polish territories, in particular, the capital of Poland.

This opinion appeared almost immediately after the Civil War, and became especially widespread in the 60s, with the debunking of the cult of personality, in connection with the transfer of the 1st Cavalry Army to the Western Front, as well as the assertion that it was this refusal that caused the defeat Bolsheviks near Warsaw. If the second part is true, then the first part of the statement is more than debatable. The issue of the delay in the turn of the First Cavalry to the north was analyzed in detail back in the 20s in the work "Civil War", written under the editorship of Kakurin and Vatsetis. Kakurin, who analyzed this issue in detail based on documents, eventually came to the conclusion that it was not possible to implement the decision taken by the Commander-in-Chief finally on August 10-11 to reorient the First Cavalry and 12th Armies to the north, in a timely manner, primarily due to friction in the operation of the control apparatus:

It was the friction in the work of the control apparatus and the inertia associated with the withdrawal of the 1st Cavalry from the battles in the Lviv direction that predetermined that fatal delay, which turned out to be decisive at the moment of crisis, "a straw that broke the camel's back."

So, only on August 20, the 1st Cavalry Army began to move north. By the time the 1st Cavalry Army began to act from near Lvov, the troops of the Western Front had already begun an unorganized retreat to the east. On August 19, the Poles occupied Brest, on August 23 - Bialystok. On the same day, the 4th Army and the 3rd Cavalry Corps of Guy Guy and two divisions from the 15th Army (about 40 thousand people in total) crossed the German border and were interned. At the end of August, through Sokal, the 1st Cavalry Army struck in the direction of Zamostye and Grubeshov, in order to then, through Lublin, reach the rear of the Polish attack group advancing to the north. However, the Poles advanced towards the 1st Cavalry Reserves of the General Staff.

There is a legend that at the end of August, near Komarov, the largest cavalry battle after 1813 took place, in which the 1st Polish division of Rummel, numbering 2,000 sabers, defeated the Cavalry Army, numbering 7,000 sabers (and according to other statements, 16 thousand). The reality, of course, was much more prosaic. Firstly, the size of the Cavalry Army of 16 thousand bayonets and sabers - this is its strength at the beginning of the campaign - after the Ukrainian campaign and heavy Lviv battles, its strength was more than halved. Secondly, when the First Cavalry was thrown into a raid on Zamostye, in order to alleviate the position of the armies of the Western Front, there it encountered by no means one Polish division. According to Soviet intelligence, by the time of the raid in the Zamostye area, the Poles had managed to regroup, and in addition to units of the 3rd Polish Army, the 10th and 13th Infantry, 1st Cavalry, 2nd Ukrainian and Cossack divisions were found there. Those who write about Rummel’s one and only division, which defeated the Cavalry alone, as a rule do not mention that this division arrived to reinforce the formations of the 3rd Polish army already operating in that area, while the reinforcements themselves were not limited to this division alone. The battle near Komarov was only one of the episodes in which only one of the four cavalry divisions, the 6th, took part from the side of the Cavalry, i.e., the number of Red and Polish units that clashed near Komarov was comparable, and the scale of the battles did not draw on the most a large cavalry battle (in Soviet historiography, the largest cavalry battle of the Civil War is the oncoming battle near Sredny Yegorlyk on February 25-27, 1920 - up to 25 thousand sabers on both sides). The failure of the raid on Zamostye was more than understandable - the Cavalry began this raid, being exhausted in the battles for Lvov, leaving supply bases on the right bank of the Western Bug, and being forced to overcome “during the entire five-day raid, the raging elements that all this wooded and marshy area with continuous rains it turned into difficult terrain, greatly complicating the issue of maneuvering. Extremely tired and not having enough ammunition, the units could not withstand the collision with the enemy, who received reinforcements, and with difficulty escaped from the planned encirclement. The army of Budyonny, and behind it the troops of the Southwestern Front, were forced to retreat from Lvov and go on the defensive.

As a result of the defeat near Warsaw, the Soviet troops of the Western Front suffered heavy losses. According to some estimates, during the Battle of Warsaw, 25,000 Red Army soldiers were killed, 60,000 were captured by the Polish, 45,000 were interned by the Germans. Several thousand people went missing. The front also lost a large amount of artillery and equipment. Polish losses are estimated at 15,000 killed and missing and 22,000 wounded.

Fighting in Belarus

After the retreat from Poland, Tukhachevsky entrenched himself on the line of the Neman - Shchara - Svisloch rivers, while using the German fortifications left from the First World War as a second line of defense. The Western Front received large reinforcements from the rear areas, and 30 thousand people from among the internees in East Prussia returned to its composition. Gradually, Tukhachevsky was able to almost completely restore the combat strength of the front: on September 1, he had 73 thousand soldiers and 220 guns. By order of Kamenev, Tukhachevsky was preparing a new offensive.

The Poles were also preparing for the offensive. The attack on Grodno and Volkovysk was supposed to tie up the main forces of the Red Army and enable the 2nd Army through the territory of Lithuania to reach the deep rear of the advanced units of the Red Army holding defenses on the Neman. On September 12, Tukhachevsky ordered an attack on Vlodava and Brest by the southern flank of the Western Front, including the 4th and 12th armies. Since the order was intercepted and deciphered by Polish radio intelligence, on the same day the Poles launched a preemptive strike, broke through the defenses of the 12th Army and took Kovel. This disrupted the general offensive of the Red Army troops and endangered the encirclement of the southern grouping of the Western Front and forced the 4th, 12th and 14th armies to withdraw to the east.

The defense of the Western Front on the Neman was held by three armies: the 3rd of Vladimir Lazarevich, the 15th of August Kork and the 16th of Nikolai Sollogub (a total of about 100 thousand fighters, about 250 guns). They were opposed by the Polish grouping of Jozef Pilsudski: the 2nd Army of General Edward Rydz-Smigly, the 4th Army of General Leonard Skersky, the reserve of the commander-in-chief (about 100 thousand soldiers in total).

On September 20, 1920, a bloody battle for Grodno began. At first, the Poles were successful, but on September 22, Tukhachevsky's troops pulled up reserves and restored the situation. Meanwhile, Polish troops invaded Lithuania and moved to Druskenniki (Druskininkai). Having captured the bridge over the Neman, the Poles went to the flank of the Western Front. September 25, unable to stop the advance of the Poles, Tukhachevsky orders the withdrawal of troops to the east. On the night of September 26, the Poles occupied Grodno, and soon crossed the Neman south of the city. The 3rd Army of Lazarevich, retreating to the east, was unable to restore the front and retreated to the Lida region with heavy losses. On September 28, however, the Soviet troops were unable to capture the city already occupied by the enemy and were soon defeated (most of the personnel were captured).

Pilsudski intended to build on success, encircle and destroy the remaining troops of the Western Front near Novogrudok. However, the Polish units, weakened in battles, could not fulfill this order, and the troops of the Red Army were able to regroup and organize defense.

During the Neman battle, Polish troops captured 40 thousand prisoners, 140 guns, a large number of horses and ammunition. fighting in Belarus continued until the signing of a peace treaty in Riga. On October 12, the Poles re-entered Minsk and Molodechno.

Terror against the civilian population

During the war, the troops of both countries carried out executions of the civilian population, while the Polish troops carried out ethnic cleansing, the object of which was mainly Jews. The leadership of both the Red Army and the Polish Army initiated official investigations on the results of such actions and tried to prevent them.

The first documented use of weapons against non-combatants was the shooting by the Poles of the mission of the Russian Red Cross on January 2, 1919, this act was most likely committed by the Polish Self-Defense units, since the regular Polish army had not yet left Poland. In March 1919, after the occupation of Pinsk by the Polish army, the Polish commandant ordered the execution of 40 Jews who had gathered for prayer, who were mistaken for a meeting of Bolsheviks. Part of the hospital staff was also shot. In April of the same year, the capture of Vilnius by the Poles was accompanied by massacres of captured Red Army soldiers, Jews and people who sympathized with the Soviet regime. The offensive of the Polish troops in Ukraine in the spring of 1920 was accompanied by Jewish pogroms and mass executions: in the city of Rovno, the Poles shot more than 3 thousand civilians, about 4 thousand Jews were killed in the town of Tetiev, for resistance during the requisitions of food, the villages of Ivanovtsy, Kucha, Sobachy were completely burned, Yablunovka, Novaya Greblya, Melnichi, Kirillovka and others, their inhabitants were shot. Polish historians question these data; According to the Brief Jewish Encyclopedia, the massacre in Tetiev was committed not by the Poles, but by the Ukrainians - a detachment of Ataman Kurovsky (Petliurite, former Red commander) on March 24, 1920. The representative of the Polish Civil Administration of the Eastern Lands (Polish administration in the occupied territories) M. Kossakovsky testified that the Polish military killed people just because they "looked like Bolsheviks."

A special place in the terror against the civilian population is occupied by the activities of the Belarusian units of the "ataman" Stanislav Balakhovich, at first subordinate to the Polish command, but after the truce they acted independently. The Polish military prosecutor, Colonel Lisovsky, who investigated complaints about the actions of the Balakhovites, described the activities of the Balakhovich division as follows:

An investigation conducted by Colonel Lisovsky, in particular, found that in Turov alone 70 Jewish girls aged 12 to 15 were raped by Balakhovites.

An excerpt from the testimony of H. Gdansky and M. Blumenkrank to the investigation, given in the book of the Polish researcher Marek Kabanovsky "General Stanislav Bulak-Balakhovich" (Warsaw, 1993):

A. Naidich, a resident of Mozyr, described the events in the capital of the BNR, Mozyr, after the capture of the city by the Balakhovites (GA RF. F. 1339. Op. 1. D. 459. L. 2-3.):

The report of the commission on registration of the victims of Balakhovich's raid in the Mozyr district stated that

On the Soviet side, Budyonny's army acquired the glory of the main pogrom force. Particularly large-scale pogroms were carried out by the Budyonnovists in Baranovka, Chudnov and Rogachev. In particular, from September 18 to September 22, the 6th Cavalry Division of this army committed more than 30 pogroms; in the town of Lyubar on September 29, during a pogrom, 60 people were killed by the fighters of the division; At the same time, “women were shamelessly raped in front of everyone, and the girls, like slaves, were dragged away by bandits to their wagons.” In Vakhnovka on October 3, 20 people were killed, many were injured and raped, 18 houses were burned. After the commissioner of the 6th division G. G. Shepelev was killed on September 28 while trying to stop the pogrom in the town of Polonnoe, the division was disbanded, and two brigade commanders and several hundred ordinary soldiers were put on trial and 157 were shot.

The Polish officers taken prisoner by the Red Army were shot on the spot, unconditionally, as were the Bolshevik commissars taken prisoner by the Poles.

The fate of prisoners of war

Until now, there is no exact data on the fate of Polish and Soviet prisoners of war. According to Russian sources, about 80,000 of the 200,000 Red Army soldiers who fell into Polish captivity died from starvation, disease, torture, bullying and executions.

Polish sources give figures of 85 thousand prisoners (at least that many people were in Polish camps by the time the war ended), of which about 20 thousand died. They were kept in camps left after the First World War - Strzalkow (the largest), Dombier, Pikulice, Wadowice and Tucholsky concentration camp. Under the 1921 agreement on the exchange of prisoners (an addition to the Riga Peace Treaty), 65,000 captured fighters of the Red Army returned to Russia. If the information about 200 thousand taken prisoner and the death of 80 thousand of them is correct, then the fate of about 60 thousand more people is unclear.

Mortality in the Polish camps reached 20% of the number of prisoners, mainly the cause of death was epidemics, which, in conditions of poor nutrition, overcrowding and lack of medical care, quickly spread and had a high mortality rate. This is how a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross described the camp in Brest:

From the guardrooms, as well as from the former stables in which the prisoners of war are housed, a sickening smell emanates. Prisoners chilly huddle around a makeshift stove, where several logs are burning - the only way to heat. At night, hiding from the first cold, they fit in close rows in groups of 300 people in poorly lit and poorly ventilated barracks, on boards, without mattresses and blankets. prisoners for the most part dressed in rags ... due to the overcrowding of the premises, not suitable for habitation; joint close living of healthy prisoners of war and infectious patients, many of whom immediately died; malnutrition, as evidenced by numerous cases of malnutrition; edema, hunger during the three months of stay in Brest - the camp in Brest-Litovsk was a real necropolis.

The story of a private of the Red Army: Manin Polikarp Ivanovich, a resident of the village of Akhidovka, Rodnikovsky district Ivanovo region Russia: “In 1919, our detachment of 17 people got lost and was taken prisoner near Warsaw. We were lined up and the Polish chief asked who could pay off. I had a royal gold coin, taken to the war “for good luck”. The Poles valued the coin at two lives and let me and my colleague go. The rest were immediately hacked to pieces before our very eyes.” Recorded from his words by his grandson, Mikhail Ivanovich Manin.

In the prisoner of war camp in Strzalkow, among other things, there were numerous abuses of prisoners, for which the commandant of the camp, Lieutenant Malinovsky, was later put on trial.

As for Polish prisoners of war, according to updated data, 33.5-34 thousand prisoners of war were taken in 1919-1920 (the figure of 60 thousand prisoners of war given by Meltyukhov without reference to sources does not correspond to reality - this figure is taken from the reports of the Polish Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b ), which in the spring of 1921 asked for trains for the repatriation of Poles for such a number of people); even before 8 thousand prisoners, this is the 5th Polish division, which surrendered in the winter of 1919-20 in Krasnoyarsk). In total, it turns out 41-42 thousand Polish prisoners of war, of which a total of 34,839 Polish prisoners of war were repatriated from March 1921 to July 1922, and about 3 thousand more expressed a desire to remain in the RSFSR. Thus, the total loss amounted to only about 3-4 thousand prisoners of war, of which about 2 thousand were documented as having died in captivity.

The role of the "great powers" in the conflict

The Soviet-Polish war took place simultaneously with the intervention in Russia of the Entente countries, which actively supported Poland from the moment it was recreated as an independent state. In this regard, Poland's war against Russia was seen by the "great powers" as part of the struggle against the Bolshevik government.

However, the views of the Entente countries regarding the possible strengthening of Poland as a result of the conflict differed greatly - the United States and France advocated all-round assistance to the Pilsudski government and took part in the creation of the Polish army, while Great Britain tended to limited assistance to Poland, and then to political neutrality in this conflict. The participation of the Entente countries concerned the economic, military and diplomatic support of Poland.

From February to August 1919, Poland received 260,000 tons of food from the United States worth $51 million. In 1919, only from the US military warehouses in Europe, Poland received military property worth 60 million dollars, in 1920 - 100 million dollars.

In total, in 1920, France alone supplied the following volumes of weapons (in brackets for comparison, the figures for British deliveries to Denikin for the period March-September 1919):

(figures for French supplies to the Polish army are given according to the work of Kakurin and Melikov, for British - Denikin - according to the report of the British military mission of General Hallman dated October 8, 1919). According to other sources, in the spring of 1920, England, France and the United States supplied Poland with 1,494 guns, 2,800 machine guns, about 700 aircraft, and 10 million shells.

As can be seen from a comparison with British deliveries of the AFSR, the figures are quite comparable. At the same time, the scale and importance of British deliveries is well demonstrated by the fact that, for example, the number of cartridges supplied by the British to the AFSR was comparable to the number of cartridges received by the Red Army over the same period from the warehouses of the tsarist army and from the then operating cartridge factories. Here, in relation to French deliveries to Poland, the number of cartridges is not indicated, but the comparability of other figures allows us to conclude about the importance and scale of French deliveries.

In addition to the supply of weapons, France also sent a military mission, which not only trained the Polish troops, but also had a significant impact in the planning and development of operations, and as a result, greatly contributed to the victory of the Polish army. The US military also took part in the hostilities on the side of the Poles - the Kosciuszko squadron, which operated against the Budyonny army, was made up of US pilots, commanded by US Colonel Fontlera. In July 1919, a 70,000-strong army arrived in Poland, created in France mainly from emigrants of Polish origin from France and the USA. French participation in the conflict was also expressed in the activities of hundreds of French officers, led by General Maxime Weygand, who arrived in 1920 to train Polish troops and assist the Polish General Staff. Among the French officers in Poland was Charles de Gaulle.

Britain's position was more reserved. The Curzon Line, proposed by the British Minister as the eastern border of Poland in December 1919, assumed the establishment of a border to the west of the front line at that time and the withdrawal of Polish troops. Six months later, when the situation changed, Curzon again proposed fixing the border along this line, otherwise the Entente countries pledged to support Poland "with all the means at their disposal." Thus, throughout the entire war, Great Britain advocated a compromise option for dividing the disputed territories (along the eastern border of the Poles).

However, even in the conditions of the critical martial law of Poland, Great Britain did not provide it with any military support. In August 1920, a conference of trade unions and labor voted for a general strike if the government continued to support Poland and tried to intervene in the conflict, further shipment of ammunition to Poland was simply sabotaged. At the same time, the International Trade Union Federation in Amsterdam instructed its members to increase the embargo on ammunition destined for Poland. Only France and the United States continued to provide assistance to the Poles, but Germany and Czechoslovakia, with which Poland managed to enter into border conflicts over disputed territories, at the end of July 1920 banned the transit of weapons and ammunition for Poland through their territory.

The reduction in assistance from the Entente countries played a significant role in the fact that after the victory near Warsaw, the Poles were unable to build on their success and defeat the Soviet troops of the Western Front. A change in the diplomatic position of Great Britain (under the influence of trade unions, in turn secretly financed by the Soviet government), hastened the conclusion of a peace treaty in Riga.

The results of the war

None of the parties during the war achieved their goals: Belarus and Ukraine were divided between Poland and the republics that joined the Soviet Union in 1922. The territory of Lithuania was divided between Poland and the independent state of Lithuania. The RSFSR, for its part, recognized the independence of Poland and the legitimacy of the Pilsudski government, temporarily abandoned the plans for a "world revolution" and the elimination of the Versailles system. Despite the signing of a peace treaty, relations between the two countries remained tense for the next twenty years, which ultimately led to the participation of the USSR in the partition of Poland in 1939.

Disagreements between the Entente countries, which arose in 1920 on the issue of military and financial support for Poland, led to a gradual cessation of support by these countries for the White movement and anti-Bolshevik forces in general, followed by international recognition Soviet Union.

#war #1920 #history #RSFSR

Causes of the conflict

The Polish state, formed in November 1918, from the very beginning began to pursue an aggressive policy towards its eastern neighbor - Russia. On November 16, the Head of the Polish state, Jozef Pilsudski, notified all countries, except for the RSFSR, of the creation of an independent Polish state. But, despite ignoring Soviet Russia, nevertheless, in December 1918, the Soviet government announced its readiness to establish diplomatic relations with Poland. She turned down the offer. Moreover, on January 2, 1919, the Poles shot down the mission of the Russian Red Cross, which caused an aggravation of relations between the two states. Poland was proclaimed an independent state within the borders of the Commonwealth in 1772 (the year of the first partition of Poland - M.P.). This involved a radical revision of its borders, including with Russia. The border between Poland and Russia was the subject of discussion at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The eastern border of Poland was defined in ethnic boundaries between Poles on the one hand, and Ukrainians and Belarusians on the other. It was established at the suggestion of the British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon and was called the "Curzon Line". On January 28, 1920, the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs once again turned to Poland with a peace proposal based on the recognition of its independence and sovereignty. At the same time, serious territorial concessions were made to Poland. The border was supposed to run from 50 to 80 km east of the Curzon Line, that is, Soviet Russia was ready to cede significant territories. Lenin noted on this occasion: “When in January (1920 - M.P.) we offered Poland peace, which was extremely beneficial for her, very unprofitable for us, the diplomats of all countries understood this in their own way:“ the Bolsheviks - so they are unreasonably weak ”(Lenin V.I. T. 41. S. 281). In mid-February 1920, Pilsudski announced that he was ready to start negotiations with Russia if she recognized the borders of Poland within the 1772 Commonwealth.

This approach was unacceptable for Russia. The Polish ruling elite put forward the national slogan of creating "Great Poland" "from sea to sea" - from the Baltic to the Black. This nationalist project could only be realized at the expense of Russia. Pilsudski raised the issue of revising the border between Poland and Soviet Russia, that is, it was about tearing away the historical territories of Russia and their annexation to Poland. On the Polish side, as preconditions for negotiations, they demanded that the Soviet side withdraw Soviet troops from all territories that were part of the Commonwealth before the first partition of Poland. They were supposed to be occupied by Polish troops. On March 6, the Soviet government offered peace to Poland for the third time since the beginning of 1920. On March 27, 1920, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs S. Patek announced his readiness to start peace negotiations. The place of negotiations was the city of Borisov, which was located in the area of ​​hostilities and was occupied by Polish troops. The Polish side offered to declare a truce only in the Borisov region, which allowed it to conduct military operations on the territory of Ukraine.

The Soviet side offered to declare a general truce for the period of negotiations and choose any place for negotiations far from the front line. Poland did not accept these proposals. The last time a Soviet offer of peace was sent to Poland was on February 2, 1920, and on April 7 it was refused to conduct any negotiations with the Soviets. All attempts by the Soviet government to establish peaceful relations and resolve disputed issues through negotiations ended in failure.

As noted by L.D. Trotsky, we "wanted with all our might to avoid this war." Thus, among the main reasons for the Soviet-Polish war of 1920, one should name the desire of Poland to seize the territory of Russia, as well as the policy of the Entente, which encouraged the attack of Poland on Soviet Russia in order to overthrow the power of the Bolsheviks.

Beginning and course of the war

France, England, the United States helped Poland create a strong army.

In particular, the United States provided her with $50 million in 1920. Assistance with advisers and instructors was provided by France and England. Ferdinand Foch in January 1920 set the task of the French mission in Warsaw: "to prepare the strongest army possible in the shortest possible time." In France, under the command of General Haller, a Polish army was created, consisting of two corps. In 1919 she was transferred to Poland. These states provided Poland with enormous military and economic assistance. In the spring of 1920, they supplied her with 1494 guns, 2800 machine guns, 385.5 thousand rifles, 42 thousand revolvers, about 700 aircraft, 200 armored vehicles, 800 trucks, 576 million cartridges, 10 million shells, 4.5 thousand wagons, 3 million pieces of equipment, 4 million pairs of shoes, communications and medicines.

With the help of the above countries, by the spring of 1920, Poland managed to create a strong and well-equipped army of about 740 thousand people. By April 1920, the Polish armed forces on Eastern Front consisted of six armies, the combat strength of which was determined at 148.4 thousand soldiers and. They were armed with 4157 machine guns, 302 mortars, 894 artillery pieces, 49 armored vehicles and 51 aircraft. On the Soviet side, they were opposed by two fronts: the Western (commander V.M. Gittis, member of the Revolutionary Military Council I.S. Unshlikht), deployed on the territory of Belarus, and the South-Western (commander A.I. Egorov, member of the Revolutionary Military Council R.I. Berzin ), located on the territory of Ukraine. Both fronts had two armies. On the whole, on the Soviet-Polish front, Polish troops slightly outnumbered Soviet troops. However, in Ukraine, where the Polish command planned to strike the main blow, he managed to create superiority in fighters by 3.3 times, machine guns by 1.6 times, guns and mortars by 2.5 times. The plan of the Polish command, approved by the Entente, provided for the defeat of the 12th and 14th Soviet armies at the first stage of hostilities, they began to retreat. However, it was not possible to defeat them, as the Polish command intended.

The Polish army was supported by Polish nationalists. On April 21, 1920, a secret "political convention" was signed between Pilsudski and Petliura, one of the leaders of the Central Ukrainian Rada. Petliurists for the recognition of their "government" gave Poland 100 thousand square meters. km. Ukrainian territory with a population of 5 million people. In Ukraine, there was no strong resistance to Pilsudski. And this despite the fact that the Poles took out industrial equipment, robbed the population; punitive detachments burned villages, shot men and women. In the city of Rovno, the Poles shot more than 3 thousand civilians. The villages of Ivantsy, Kucha, Yablukovka, Sobachy, Kirillovka and others were completely burned down for the refusal of the population to give food to the occupiers. The inhabitants of these villages were machine-gunned. In the town of Tetievo, 4,000 people were slaughtered during a Jewish pogrom. Troops of the 12th Army left Kyiv on May 6, where Polish troops entered. A few days later, the Polish General E. Ryndz - Smigly received a parade of allied troops on Khreshchatyk. Polish troops also occupied a significant part of the territory of Belarus with the city of Minsk.

By mid-May 1920, almost all of Right-Bank Ukraine was under the control of Polish troops. By the same time, the front in Ukraine had stabilized. The Soviet 12th and 14th armies suffered heavy losses, but were not defeated. Strategic goals, that is, the defeat of the troops of the Southwestern Front, Pilsudski failed to realize. As he himself admitted on May 15, "we hit the air with our fist - we traveled a long distance, but we did not destroy the enemy's manpower." The start of a broad Polish offensive in Ukraine and the capture of Kyiv led to significant changes in the strategy of Soviet Russia. The Polish front became the main one for Moscow, and the war with Poland became the “central task”. On May 23, the theses of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) "The Polish Front and Our Tasks" were published, in which the country was called upon to fight pan-pan Poland. As early as April 30, that is, a week before this document, the appeal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars "To all workers, peasants and honest citizens of Russia" was published.

It revealed the aggressive nature of the war, and again confirmed the independence and sovereignty of Poland. There was a mass mobilization in the country. By November 1920, 500 thousand people were mobilized. Komsomol and party mobilizations were also carried out: 25,000 communists and 12,000 Komsomol members were mobilized. By the end of 1920, the strength of the Red Army reached 5.5 million people. The Soviet-Polish war and the seizure of the historical territories of Russia during it led to a certain national unity in the country split by the civil war. Former officers and generals of the tsarist army, who had previously not sympathized with the Bolsheviks, now declared their support. Famous generals of the Russian army A.A. Brusilov, A.M. Zaionchkovsky and A.A. Polivanov May 30, 1920 appealed to "all former officers, wherever they are" with a call to side with the Red Army. Quite a few have come to the conclusion that the Red Army is now being transformed from a Bolshevik army into a national, state army, that the Bolsheviks are defending the interests of Russia. Following this appeal, on June 2, 1920, a decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On the release from responsibility of all White Guards who will help in the war with Poland and Wrangel" was issued.

Counteroffensive of the Red Army

After the capture of Kyiv, according to Trotsky, "the country was shaken up." Thanks to mobilization measures, the preconditions for a counteroffensive of the Red Army were created. On April 28, 1920, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) discussed the plan of the counteroffensive. The main blow was planned in Belarus, north of Polesye. The troops of the Western Front received significant reinforcements. From March 10 to June 1, 1920, the front received more than 40 thousand replenishment people. The number of horses increased from 25 thousand to 35. On April 29, M.N. became the commander of the Western Front. Tukhachevsky, who replaced Gittis. At the same time (May 26), Stalin was appointed a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southwestern Front, F.E. Dzerzhinsky. The offensive of the Western Front began on the morning of May 14 (15th Army - Commander A.I. Kork) in the Vitebsk region. Here it was possible to create a preponderance of forces over the Poles, both in manpower and in weapons. The defense of the first Polish division was broken. Already on the first day of the offensive, Soviet troops advanced 6-20 km. The 43rd regiment of the 5th rifle division under the command of V.I. Chuikov. The troops of the Western Front advanced westward up to 100-130 km.

However, the enemy, having pulled up reserves, managed to push our troops back 60-100 km. But this was done to a large extent by moving troops from Ukraine, where the Poles had weakened their positions. The May offensive of the Soviet troops in Belarus forced them to use up a significant part of their reserves. This made it easier for the troops of the southwestern front to go over to the offensive. In May 1920, the Southwestern Front received a reinforcement of 41 thousand people. FROM North Caucasus the first Cavalry Army was transferred to the Southwestern Front. Its commander was S.M. Budyonny; members of the RVS - K.E. Voroshilov and E.A. Shchadenko. Cavalry made a 1000-kilometer campaign on horseback. During the campaign, she defeated many insurgent and anti-Soviet detachments operating in the rear of the troops of the Southwestern Front. On May 25, the cavalry concentrated in the Uman region (18 thousand sabers). It significantly strengthened the offensive capabilities of the Southwestern Front. May 12-15 at the front headquarters in Kharkov with the participation of Commander-in-Chief S.S. Kamenev developed a plan for the counteroffensive of the front. On the eve of the offensive, the balance of forces looked like this: the Polish troops consisted of 78 thousand bayonets and cavalry; The Southwestern Front had 46,000 infantry and cavalry. But he seriously outnumbered the enemy in cavalry. In early June, the first cavalry went on the offensive. On June 7, the 4th Cavalry Division captured Zhitomir, freeing 7,000 Red Army soldiers from captivity, who immediately entered service. Pilsudski's headquarters were nearly captured here. On June 8, they took the city of Berdichev. The Polish front in Ukraine was split into two parts. June 12 was liberated Kyiv, June 30 - Exactly.

During the liberation of these cities, the 25th Chapaev division and the cavalry brigade of Kotovsky especially distinguished themselves. The Soviet offensive in Belarus developed successfully. At dawn on July 4, the troops of the Western Front went on the offensive. Already on the first day of the offensive, the right wing of the front advanced 15-20 km. However, it was not possible to surround and completely destroy the 1st Polish army opposing him. The 16th army advanced on Minsk, and on July 11 it was liberated, on July 19 - Baranovichi was liberated. In order to save Poland from complete defeat, on July 11, 1920, British Foreign Secretary Curzon addressed the Soviet government with a Note, which proposed conditions for ending the war and concluding a truce. This note was called "Curzon's ultimatum" in our country. It contained the following proposals: the Polish army retreats to the line outlined in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference (the "Curzon Line"). Soviet troops stop 50 km away. east of this line; the final decision on the border between Poland and Russia was to take place at an international conference in London; if the offensive of the Soviet troops continues, the Entente will support Poland. In addition, it was proposed to conclude a truce with Wrangel. In those conditions, this meant the annexation of Crimea from Russia. Moscow was given 7 days to respond and it was reported that Poland agreed to these conditions. Curzon's note was discussed by the Soviet government on July 13-16. There was no unity on this issue. G.V. Chicherin, L.B. Kamenev, L.D. Trotsky believed that the terms of the truce were favorable for the Soviet side, so they could agree to negotiations and, taking into account our conditions, conclude a truce with Poland. Given the way events unfolded in the future, this approach was very promising for Russia. However, the point of view prevailed, according to which it was believed that Poland was weak and a strong blow would lead to its final defeat, and after it the collapse of the entire Versailles system, which did not take into account Soviet interests, could also occur. This position was based on an erroneous assessment of the successes of the Red Army and the perception that Poland was on the verge of defeat. AT

As a result, on July 16, at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), Curzon's note was rejected and a decision was made on a further offensive against Poland. Already after 2.5 months in September 1920, at the IX All-Russian Conference of the RCP (b), Lenin was forced to admit the fallacy of such a decision. Meanwhile, against the backdrop of the victories of the Red Army in Ukraine and Belarus, there was a growing conviction that this war could turn into a revolutionary war. The leadership of Soviet Russia planned that the entry of the Red Army into the territory of Poland and the defeat of Pilsudski here could be the beginning of the transformation of pan-bourgeois Poland into a Soviet Republic, headed by Polish workers and peasants. On July 30, the Polish Revolutionary Committee (Polrevkom) was created in Bialystok, which included the Bolsheviks of Polish origin Julian Markhlevsky (Chairman), Felix Dzerzhinsky, Felix Kohn, Edvard Pruchniak and Jozef Unshlikht. 1 million rubles were allocated for its activities. The task of the Polrevkom was to prepare the revolution in Poland. In late July - early August 1920, the Red Army entered the territory of ethnic Poland.

Disaster of the Red Army on the Vistula

On August 10, 1920, the commander of the Western Front, M.N. Tukhachevsky signed a directive to cross the Vistula and capture Warsaw. It said: “Fighters of the workers' revolution. Set your eyes to the West. The problems of the world revolution are being solved in the West. Through the corpse of white Poland lies the path to the world conflagration. On bayonets we will bring happiness and peace to working mankind. To the west! To decisive battles, to resounding victories! The troops of the front numbered more than 100 thousand bayonets and sabers, somewhat inferior to the enemy in numbers. In the Warsaw and Novogeorgievsk directions, it was possible to create a preponderance of forces over the Poles, of which there were about 69 thousand bayonets and cavalry, and the Soviet troops (4, 15, 3 and 16 armies) - 95.1 thousand. However, in the Ivangorod direction, where Pilsudski was preparing a counterattack , the number of troops was: 38 thousand bayonets and sabers from the Poles and 6.1 thousand from the soldiers of the Red Army. The main forces of the Polish troops were withdrawn beyond the Vistula for regrouping. They've got a fresh addition. The Soviet units that came out to the Vistula, on the contrary, were extremely tired and small in number. During the fighting, they suffered heavy losses, the rear units fell behind by 200 - 400 km, in connection with which the supply of ammunition and food was disrupted. The troops did not receive reinforcements.

In some divisions, there were no more than 500 fighters. Many regiments turned into companies. In addition, between the two Soviet fronts, the Southwestern, whose main forces were fighting for the city of Lvov, and the Western, which was supposed to force the Vistula and take Warsaw, a gap of 200 - 250 km was formed, which did not allow them to quickly interact with each other . In addition, the 1st Cavalry Army transferred from the Southwestern Front to the Western Front, at the time of the decisive battles for Warsaw, was far from the main battlefield and did not provide the necessary assistance. The hopes of the Bolsheviks for support from the Polish workers and the poorest peasants did not come true. If the Bolsheviks said that the Red Army was going to Poland to liberate the workers and peasants from exploitation, then Pilsudski said that the Russians were going to enslave again, they were again trying to eliminate the Polish statehood. He managed to give the war, at the stage when the Red Army was on the territory of Poland, a national liberation character and unite the Poles. The Polish workers and peasants did not support the Red Army. At the IX All-Russian Conference of the RCP(b) (October 1920), a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 15th Army of the Western Front, D. Poluyan, said: “In the Polish army, the national idea solders both the bourgeois, and the peasant, and the worker, and this has to be observed everywhere.” The entry of the Red Army into Poland frightened the West, the Entente countries, as they believed that in the event of a socialist revolution and the beginning of Sovietization in this country, a chain reaction would begin and other European countries would be influenced by Soviet Russia, and this would lead to the destruction of the Versailles system.

Therefore, the West has seriously stepped up assistance to Poland. Under such conditions, on August 13, 1920, the battle on the Vistula began. On the same day, after stubborn fighting, they managed to capture the city of Radzimin, located 23 km from Warsaw, the next day - two forts of the Modlin fortress. But this was the last success of the Soviet troops. The situation for the Soviet troops was further aggravated by the fact that on August 12 the Armed Forces of the South of Russia launched an offensive under the command of Baron Wrangel, who pulled back part of the Red Army forces destined for the Polish front. On August 16, Polish troops launched a counteroffensive and launched a strong flank attack between the Western (Warsaw) and Southwestern (Lvov) fronts. The enemy quickly broke through the weak front of the Mozyr Group of Forces of the Western Front and created a threat of encirclement of the Warsaw grouping of Soviet armies.

Therefore, the front commander Tukhachevsky ordered the retreat of the troops to the east, although a large part was surrounded. On August 18, Pilsudski, as the Head of the Polish state, addressed the population with an ominous appeal not to let a single Red Army soldier who remained in the encirclement leave Polish soil. As a result of the defeat near Warsaw, the troops of the Western Front suffered heavy losses. According to some estimates, 25,000 Red Army soldiers died during the Warsaw battle, more than 60,000 were captured, and 45,000 were interned by the Germans. Several thousand people went missing. The front also lost a large amount of artillery, small arms and property. Polish losses are estimated at 4,500 killed, 10,000 missing and 22,000 wounded. On August 25, 1920, the retreating Soviet troops ended up in the area of ​​the Russian-Polish border of the 18th century. However, it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that at that time in the West few people believed that Piłsudski could win. The Entente countries did not have confidence in him. This is evidenced by the fact that at the meeting of Lloyd George and French Prime Minister Milner, Warsaw was actually recommended to remove Pilsudski from the post of Commander-in-Chief. The Polish government offered this post to the French General Weygand, who refused, believing that in the specific conditions of this war a local commander should be in command. The authority of Piłsudski as a military leader was also low among the Polish military. It is no coincidence, therefore, that many said that either Providence or a Miracle could save Poland. And Churchill would call the Polish victory at Warsaw "The Miracle on the Vistula, with only a few changes, it was a repeat of the Miracle on the Marne." But the victory was won, and in the future they began to associate her with Jozef Pilsudski. During the battle on the Vistula, on August 17, a peaceful Soviet-Polish conference opened in Minsk. The Soviet delegation consisted of representatives of the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR. The interests of Belarus were represented by the Russian delegation. During the work of the conference hostilities between Poland and Russia did not stop. In order to undermine the negotiating positions of the Soviet delegation, the Polish troops stepped up their offensive, capturing new territories. On October 15-16, 1920, they occupied Minsk, and in the southwestern direction they were stopped by September 20 at the turn of the Ubort, Sluch, Litvin, Murafa rivers, that is, much east of the Curzon Line. Negotiations from Minsk were transferred to Riga. They started on October 5th. Poland did not stop hostilities this time either, capturing new territories and pushing the border more and more towards Russia. The armistice was signed on 12 October 1920 and came into effect at midnight on 18 October.

The final peace treaty between the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR, on the one hand, and the Polish Republic, on the other, was signed on March 18, 1921 in Riga. Under the treaty, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were ceded to Poland. The state border ran much to the east of the Curzon Line. The captured territory was 200 thousand square meters. km., more than 13 million people lived on it. The financial and economic conditions of the agreement were also difficult for Russia. Russia released Poland from liability for the debts of the Russian Empire; Russia and Ukraine pledged to pay Poland 30 million rubles in gold as the Polish part of the gold reserves of the former Russian Empire and as recognition of Poland's secession from Russia. Poland also received 555 steam locomotives, 695 passenger cars, 16,959 freight cars, railway property along with stations. All this was estimated at 18 million 245 thousand rubles in gold in 1913 prices. Diplomatic relations were established between the parties. The state of war between states ceased from the moment the treaty entered into force. Despite the fact that the bloodshed was over, but the signed agreement did not lay the foundation for future good neighborly relations between Russia and Poland, on the contrary, it became the cause of a severe conflict between the two neighbors. "On the live" were divided Belarusian and Ukrainian lands. Eastern Galicia, against the will of the Ukrainian population, was transferred to Poland.

The great drama of this war was the fate of the prisoners of war of the Red Army in Polish captivity. It should be noted that there is no reliable data on the total number of Red Army soldiers who were in captivity and the number of dead and dead. Polish and Russian historians give different data. Polish historians Z. Karpus, D. Lepinska-Nalench, T. Nalench note that at the time of the cessation of hostilities in Poland there were about 110 thousand prisoners of the Red Army, of which 65,797 prisoners of war were sent to Russia after the end of the war. According to Polish data, the total number of deaths in the camps for various reasons amounted to 16-17 thousand people. According to the Russian historian G.M. Matveev, 157 thousand Red Army soldiers were in Polish captivity, of which 75,699 returned to their homeland. The fate of the remaining more than 80 thousand prisoners developed in different ways. According to his calculations, from hunger, disease, etc. could die in captivity from 25 to 28 thousand people, that is, approximately 18 percent of the Red Army soldiers who were actually captured. I.V. Mikhutina cites data on 130,000 Red Army prisoners of war, of whom 60,000 died in captivity in less than two years. M.I. Meltyukhov calls the number of prisoners of war in 1919-1920. 146 thousand people, of which 60 thousand died in captivity, and 75,699 returned to their homeland. Thus, in Russian historiography there is no generally accepted data on the number of Soviet prisoners of war who were in Polish captivity, as well as on the number of those who died in captivity. Polish captivity turned out to be a real nightmare for the Red Army. Inhuman conditions of detention put them on the brink of survival. The prisoners had extremely poor food, in fact, there was no medical care. The delegation of the American Christian Youth Union, which visited Poland in October 1920, testified in its report that Soviet prisoners were kept in premises unsuitable for habitation, with windows without glass and through cracks in the walls, without furniture and sleeping appliances, placed on the floor, without mattresses and blankets.

The report also emphasized that the prisoners were also taken away clothes and shoes, many were without clothes at all. As for the Polish prisoners of war in Soviet captivity, their situation was quite different. No one pursued a policy of destruction towards them. Moreover, they were considered victims of the Polish lords and capitalists, and in Soviet captivity they were looked upon as "class brothers". In 1919-1920. 41-42 thousand people were taken prisoner, of which 34,839 people were released to Poland. Approximately 3 thousand people expressed a desire to stay in Soviet Russia. Thus, the total loss was approximately 3-4 thousand, of which about 2 thousand were documented as having died in captivity.

Polynov M.F. USSR/Russia in local wars and
armed conflicts of the XX-XXI centuries. Tutorial. - St. Petersburg,
2017. - Publishing house Info-Da. – 162 p.

The main actors in the Soviet-Polish war were: Poland and the UNR (Ukrainian People's Republic) on one side, and Soviet Ukraine on the other.
In connection with the surrender of Germany, the Soviets canceled the conditions of the shameful "" and launched Operation Vistula. In December 1918 Minsk was occupied by the Red Army, and already in January 1919 it entered Kovno and Vilna. On February 27 of the same year, the restoration of the Lithuanian-Belarusian Socialist Republic was officially announced.
Concerned about the rapid advance of the Soviet troops to the West, the Polish government agreed with the retreating German units to let their army pass through the areas occupied by the Germans. By February 14, Polish troops fortified on the line: Pruzhany, Kobrin, along the Neman and Zalivanka rivers. Thus, the Polish-Soviet front was formed in the Belarusian and Lithuanian territories.

In March 1919, Polish troops launched an offensive. The military group of General Shcheptytsky took Slonim, and parts of General Listovsky captured Minsk and crossed the Oginsky Canal. Then, in April 1919, another attack by the Polish army followed, as a result of which it captured Baranovichi, Novogrudok, Lida and Vilna. For some time - until mid-July, the situation at the front stabilized.

In early autumn, the Poles signed an agreement on a joint fight against the Red Army with Petlyura, who led the UNR. At the same time, J. Pilsudski broke off allied relations with, who sought to restore imperial Russia within the borders before the First World War, and therefore did not recognize the independence of Poland.

From October to December 1919, the Polish side began peace negotiations with the Soviet government in and on the territory of Polissya. This break in the offensive of the Polish troops allowed the Red Army to mobilize part of the forces from the Polish front and defeat S. Petlyura and A.I. Denikin. By this time, under the control of Poland were territories to the east up to the Berezina River and Bobruisk. By January 1920, there was a temporary lull, which both sides used to regroup units and prepare for a further offensive.

April 25, 1920 the Polish army went on the offensive in Ukraine, and already on May 7, units under the leadership of E. Rydza-Shmiglovo captured Kyiv on May 7, and on May 9 they fortified themselves on the heights of the Dnieper. In response, the Soviet units launched an offensive on the Dvina and Berezina, but it was stopped.

The Red Army began a new offensive in Ukraine on May 26, and on June 5, the cavalry under command broke through the Polish positions near Samokhorodka, threatening to encircle the Polish army in Kyiv. In this regard, on June 10, the Polish units left the city and retreated to the west with heavy losses. Inflicting serious blows on the retreating Poles, the Red Army approached Lvov and Zamost.

Events also developed successfully for the Soviet army in Belarus and Lithuania. Having launched an offensive on July 4, 1920, by the end of the same month, units of the Red Army entered Vilna, Grodno, Lida and Belastok. Under the command of the Soviet army approached the Vistula, and created a threat to the encirclement of Warsaw. In this situation, the government of L. Skulsky was forced to resign.

It was the Warsaw battle that became the turning point of the war, which took place on August 13-25, 1920. After unsuccessful attempts by the Red Army to break through the enemy's defenses, on August 16-21, the 5th army of V. Sikorsky successfully attacked the positions of the 15th and 3rd Soviet army over Wkra. And on August 16, a group of units under the command of Pilsudski broke through the Soviet front near Kotsk and went to the rear of Tukhachevsky's army. The Soviet units were forced to withdraw, and in September Tukhachevsky organized a defense on the Neman River, accepted the battle, but was completely defeated.

Understanding the criticality of the situation on the Western Front, on August 14, Commander-in-Chief Kamenev orders the advance of the 1st Cavalry and 12th Army to the Western Front in order to significantly strengthen it. But, the leaders of the Southwestern Front, who were besieging Lvov at that time, ignored him. It was only on August 20 that the 1st Cavalry began to move north, but it was too late - the troops of the Western Front had already begun a panicked retreat to the east. Soon the Polish army occupied Brest, Bialystok and Podlasie. And the 1st Cavalry Army, exhausted in battles and long marches, was defeated by Rumell's division, despite more than 2-time superiority in forces.

The Red Army was also defeated in southern Poland. A general retreat of the Soviet units followed. By October 12, the Poles entrenched themselves on the line: Dubno, Tarnopol, Drissa, Minsk, after which the signing of a decree on laying down arms followed. On October 18, hostilities on both sides were stopped. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Riga on March 18, 1921 and the establishment of the eastern borders of Poland. Under its terms, until 1939, the territories of Western Belarus and Ukraine were part of Poland.

Soviet-Polish war against the backdrop of fratricidal strife in Russia
The Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1920 was part of a large Civil War on the territory of the former Russian Empire. But on the other hand, this war was perceived by the Russian people - both those who fought for the Reds and those who fought on the side of the Whites - precisely as a war with an external enemy.

New Poland "from sea to sea"

This duality has been created by history itself. Before the First World War, most of Poland was Russian territory, other parts of it belonged to Germany and Austria - an independent Polish state did not exist for almost a century and a half. It is noteworthy that with the outbreak of World War II, both the tsarist government and the Germans and Austrians officially promised the Poles after the victory to recreate an independent Polish monarchy. As a result, thousands of Poles in 1914-1918 fought on both sides of the front.

The political fate of Poland was predetermined by the fact that in 1915 the Russian army, under pressure from the enemy, was forced to retreat from the Vistula to the east. The entire Polish territory was under the control of the Germans, and in November 1918, after the surrender of Germany, power over Poland automatically passed to Jozef Pilsudski.

This Polish nationalist was engaged in anti-Russian struggle for a quarter of a century, with the outbreak of World War I he formed the “Polish Legions” - volunteer detachments as part of the Austro-Hungarian troops. After the surrender of Germany and Austria, the "legionnaires" became the basis of the new Polish government, and Pilsudski officially received the title of "Head of State", that is, dictator. At the same time, the new Poland, headed by a military dictator, was supported by the winners in the First World War, primarily France and the United States.

Paris hoped to make from Poland a counterbalance to both the defeated but not reconciled Germany, and Russia, in which the power of the Bolsheviks, incomprehensible and dangerous for the Western European elites, appeared. The United States, for the first time realizing its increased power, saw in the new Poland a convenient opportunity to extend its influence to the very center of Europe.

Taking advantage of such support and the general turmoil that engulfed central countries Europe at the end of the First World War, a revived Poland immediately came into conflict with all its neighbors over borders and territories. In the west, the Poles began armed conflicts with the Germans and Czechs, the so-called "Silesian uprising", and in the east - with the Lithuanians, the Ukrainian population of Galicia (Western Ukraine) and Soviet Belarus.

For the new extremely nationalist authorities in Warsaw Time of Troubles 1918-1919, when there were no stable authorities and states in the center of Europe, it seemed very convenient to restore the borders of the ancient Commonwealth, the Polish empire of the 16th-17th centuries, stretching od morza do morza - from sea to sea, that is, from the Baltic to the Black Sea coast.

The beginning of the Soviet-Polish war

No one declared a war between nationalist Poland and the Bolsheviks - in the context of widespread uprisings and political chaos, the Soviet-Polish conflict began without prior notice. Germany, which occupied the Polish and Belarusian lands, capitulated in November 1918. And a month later, Soviet troops moved into the territory of Belarus from the east, and Polish troops from the west.

In February 1919, in Minsk, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the creation of the "Lithuanian-Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic", and on the same days the first battles of Soviet and Polish troops began on these lands. Both sides tried to quickly correct the chaotically folding borders in their favor.

The Poles were more fortunate then - by the summer of 1919, all the forces of the Soviet government were diverted to the war with the White armies of Denikin, who launched a decisive offensive on the Don and in the Donbass. By that time, the Poles had captured Vilnius, the western half of Belarus and all of Galicia (that is, western Ukraine, where Polish nationalists fiercely suppressed the uprising of Ukrainian nationalists for six months).

The Soviet government then several times offered Warsaw to officially conclude a peace treaty on the terms of the actually formed border. It was extremely important for the Bolsheviks to free up all their forces to fight Denikin, who had already issued the “Moscow directive” - an order for a general attack by the Whites on the old Russian capital.

Soviet poster. Photo: cersipamantromanesc.wordpress.com

The Poles of Pilsudski did not respond to these peace proposals at that time - 70 thousand Polish soldiers, equipped with the most modern equipment, had just arrived in Warsaw from France. The French formed this army back in 1917 from Polish emigrants and prisoners to fight the Germans. Now this army, very significant by the standards of the Russian Civil War, came in handy for Warsaw to expand its borders to the east.

In August 1919, the advancing White armies occupied the ancient Russian capital of Kyiv, while the advancing Poles captured Minsk. Soviet Moscow found itself between two fires, and in those days it seemed to many that the days of Bolshevik power were numbered. Indeed, in the event of joint action by the Whites and the Poles, the defeat of the Soviet armies would have been inevitable.

In September 1919, the Polish embassy arrived in Taganrog at the headquarters of General Denikin, met with great solemnity. The mission from Warsaw was led by General Alexander Karnitsky, Knight of St. George and former Major General of the Imperial Russian Army.

Despite the solemn meeting and the mass of compliments that the white leaders and representatives of Warsaw expressed to each other, the negotiations dragged on for many months. Denikin asked the Poles to continue their offensive to the east against the Bolsheviks, General Karnitsky suggested first to decide on the future border between Poland and the "United Indivisible Russia", which would be formed after the victory over the Bolsheviks.

Poles between reds and whites

While negotiations were underway with the Whites, the Polish troops stopped the offensive against the Reds. After all, the victory of the Whites threatened the appetites of the Polish nationalists in relation to the Russian lands. Pilsudski and Denikin were supported and supplied with weapons by the Entente (an alliance of France, England and the USA), and if the Whites succeeded, it would be the Entente that would become the arbiter on border issues between Poland and “white” Russia. And Pilsudski would have had to make concessions - Paris, London and Washington, the winners in the First World War, having become the arbiters of the fate of Europe at that time, had already determined the so-called Curzon Line, the future border between the restored Poland and Russian territories. Lord Curzon, head of the British Foreign Office, drew this line along the ethnic border between Catholic Poles, Uniate Galicians and Orthodox Belarusians.

Pilsudski understood that in the event of the capture of Moscow by the Whites and negotiations under the patronage of the Entente, he would have to cede to Denikin part of the occupied lands in Belarus and Ukraine. The Bolsheviks were outcasts for the Entente. The Polish nationalist Pilsudski decided to wait for the Red Russians to push the White Russians back to the outskirts (so that the White Guards would lose influence and no longer compete with the Poles in the eyes of the Entente), and then start a war against the Bolsheviks with the full support of the leading Western states. It was this option that promised the Polish nationalists the maximum bonuses in case of victory - the capture of vast Russian territories, up to the restoration of the Commonwealth from the Baltic to the Black Sea!

While the former tsarist generals Denikin and Karnitsky were wasting time on polite and fruitless negotiations in Taganrog, on November 3, 1919, a secret meeting took place between representatives of Pilsudski and Soviet Moscow. The Bolsheviks managed to find the right person for these negotiations - the Polish revolutionary Julian Markhlevsky, who had known Pilsudski since the time of the anti-tsarist uprisings of 1905.

At the insistence of the Polish side, no written agreements were concluded with the Bolsheviks, but Piłsudski agreed to stop the advance of his armies to the east. Secrecy became the main condition of this oral agreement between the two states - the fact of Warsaw's agreement with the Bolsheviks was carefully hidden from Denikin, and mainly from England, France and the United States, which provided political and military support to Poland.

Polish troops continued local battles and skirmishes with the Bolsheviks, but Piłsudski's main forces remained motionless. The Soviet-Polish war froze for several months. The Bolsheviks, knowing that in the near future there was no need to fear a Polish attack on Smolensk, almost all their forces and reserves were transferred against Denikin. By December 1919, the White armies were defeated by the Reds, and the Polish embassy of General Karnitsky left the headquarters of General Denikin. On the territory of Ukraine, the Poles took advantage of the retreat of the White troops and occupied a number of cities.

Polish trenches in Belarus during the battle on the Neman. Photo: istoria.md

It was the position of Poland that predetermined the strategic defeat of the Whites in the Russian Civil War. This was directly recognized by one of the best red commanders of those years, Tukhachevsky: “Denikin’s offensive against Moscow, supported by the Polish offensive from the west, could have ended much worse for us, and it’s hard to even predict the final results ...”.

Piłsudski's offensive

Both the Bolsheviks and the Poles understood that the informal truce in the autumn of 1919 was a temporary phenomenon. After the defeat of Denikin's troops, it was Pilsudski who became for the Entente the main and only force capable of resisting "Red Moscow" in Eastern Europe. The Polish dictator skillfully took advantage of this circumstance by bargaining large military aid from the West.

In the spring of 1920, France alone supplied Poland with 1,494 guns, 2,800 machine guns, 385,000 rifles, about 700 aircraft, 200 armored vehicles, 576 million rounds of ammunition and 10 million shells. At the same time, many thousands of machine guns, over 200 armored vehicles and tanks, more than 300 aircraft, 3 million sets of uniforms, 4 million pairs of soldiers' shoes, a large amount of medicines, field communications and other military equipment were delivered to Poland by American ships from the USA.

By April 1920, the Polish troops on the borders with Soviet Russia consisted of six separate armies, fully manned and well-armed. The Poles had a particularly serious advantage in the number of machine guns and artillery pieces, and Pilsudski's army absolutely outnumbered the Reds in aviation and armored vehicles.

Having waited for the final defeat of Denikin and thus becoming the main ally of the Entente in Eastern Europe, Pilsudski decided to continue the Soviet-Polish war. Relying on weapons generously supplied by the West, he hoped to quickly defeat the main forces of the Red Army, weakened by long battles with the Whites, and force Moscow to cede all the lands of Ukraine and Belarus to Poland. Since the defeated whites were no longer a serious political force, Pilsudski had no doubt that the Entente would prefer to give these vast Russian territories under the control of the allied Warsaw, rather than see them under the rule of the Bolsheviks.

On April 17, 1920, the Polish "Head of State" approved the plan to capture Kyiv. And on April 25, Pilsudski's troops launched a general offensive on Soviet territory.

This time, the Poles did not drag out the negotiations and quickly concluded a military-political alliance against the Bolsheviks, both with the whites who remained in the Crimea, and with the Ukrainian nationalists of Petliura. Indeed, in the new conditions of 1920, it was Warsaw that was the main force in such alliances.

The head of the Whites in the Crimea, General Wrangel, bluntly stated that Poland now has the most powerful army in Eastern Europe (at that time 740 thousand soldiers) and it is necessary to create a "Slavic front" against the Bolsheviks. An official representative office of the White Crimea was opened in Warsaw, and the so-called 3rd Russian Army began to form on the territory of Poland itself (the first two armies were in Crimea), which was created by the former revolutionary terrorist Boris Savinkov, who knew Pilsudski from the pre-revolutionary underground.

The fighting was carried out on a huge front from the Baltic to Romania. The main forces of the Red Army were still in the North Caucasus and Siberia, where they finished off the remnants of the White armies. The rear of the Soviet troops was also weakened by peasant uprisings against the policy of "war communism".

On May 7, 1920, the Poles occupied Kyiv - this was already the 17th change of power in the city in the last three years. The first blow of the Poles was successful, they captured tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers and created an extensive bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnieper for further offensive.

Tukhachevsky's counteroffensive

But the Soviet government was able to quickly transfer reserves to the Polish front. At the same time, the Bolsheviks skillfully used patriotic sentiments in Russian society. If the defeated Whites agreed to a forced alliance with Pilsudski, then the broad sections of the Russian population perceived the invasion of the Poles and the capture of Kyiv as external aggression.

Sending mobilized communists to the front against the White Poles. Petrograd, 1920. Reproduction. Photo: RIA

These national sentiments were reflected in the famous appeal of the hero of the First World War, General Brusilov, "To all former officers, wherever they may be," which appeared on May 30, 1920. By no means sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, Brusilov declared to the whole of Russia: "As long as the Red Army does not let the Poles into Russia, the Bolsheviks and I are on the way."

On June 2, 1920, the Soviet government issued a decree "On the release from liability of all White Guard officers who will help in the war with Poland." As a result, thousands of Russian people volunteered to join the Red Army and went to fight on the Polish front.

The Soviet government was able to quickly transfer reserves to the Ukraine and Belarus. In the Kiev direction, the cavalry army of Budyonny became the main striking force of the counteroffensive, and in Belarus divisions liberated after the defeat of the white troops of Kolchak and Yudenich went into battle against the Poles.

Piłsudski's headquarters did not expect that the Bolsheviks would be able to concentrate their troops so quickly. Therefore, despite the superiority of the enemy in technology, the Red Army again occupied Kyiv in June 1920, and Minsk and Vilnius in July. The uprisings of Belarusians in the Polish rear contributed to the Soviet offensive.

Piłsudski's troops were on the verge of defeat, which worried the Western patrons of Warsaw. First, a note from the British Foreign Office came out with a proposal for a truce, then the Polish ministers themselves turned to Moscow with a request for peace.

But here the sense of proportion betrayed the Bolshevik leaders. The success of the counter-offensive against Polish aggression gave rise among them to hope for proletarian uprisings in Europe and the victory of the world revolution. Leon Trotsky then bluntly offered to "probe the revolutionary situation in Europe with the Red Army bayonet."

The Soviet troops, despite losses and devastation in the rear, continued their decisive offensive with the last of their strength, trying to take Lvov and Warsaw in August 1920. The situation in Western Europe was then extremely difficult; after a devastating world war, all states, without exception, were shaken by revolutionary uprisings. In Germany and Hungary, local communists then quite realistically claimed power, and the appearance in the center of Europe of the victorious Red Army of Lenin and Trotsky could really change the entire geopolitical alignment.

As Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who commanded the Soviet offensive against Warsaw, later wrote: “There is no doubt that if we had won a victory on the Vistula, the revolution would have engulfed the entire European continent in flames.”

"Miracle on the Vistula"

In anticipation of victory, the Bolsheviks had already created their own Polish government - the "Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Poland", which was headed by communist Poles Felix Dzerzhinsky and Julian Marchlewski (the one who negotiated an armistice with Pilsudski at the end of 1919). The famous cartoonist Boris Efimov has already prepared for the Soviet newspapers a poster "Warsaw taken by the Red Heroes."

Meanwhile, the West stepped up its military support for Poland. The actual commander of the Polish army was the French General Weygand, head of the Anglo-French military mission in Warsaw. Several hundred French officers with extensive experience in World War II became advisers in the Polish army, creating, in particular, a radio intelligence service, which by August 1920 had established the interception and decoding of Soviet radio communications.

On the side of the Poles, an American aviation squadron, financed and manned by pilots from the United States, actively fought. In the summer of 1920, the Americans successfully bombed Budyonny's advancing cavalry.

The Soviet troops that made their way to Warsaw and Lvov, despite the successful offensive, found themselves in an extremely difficult situation. They were hundreds of kilometers away from the supply bases, due to the devastation in the rear, they were not able to deliver replenishment and supplies on time. On the eve of the decisive battles for the Polish capital, many red regiments were reduced to 150-200 fighters, artillery lacked ammunition, and the few serviceable aircraft could not provide reliable reconnaissance and detect the concentration of Polish reserves.

But the Soviet command underestimated not only the purely military problems of the "campaign to the Vistula", but also the national moods of the Poles. Just as in Russia during the Polish invasion there was a reciprocal surge of Russian patriotism, so in Poland, when the Red troops reached Warsaw, a national upsurge began. This was facilitated by active Russophobic propaganda, which represented the advancing Red troops in the form of Asian barbarians (although the Poles themselves in that war were extremely far from humanism).

Polish volunteers in Lvov. Photo: althistory.wikia.com

The result of all these reasons was the successful counteroffensive of the Poles, launched in the second half of August 1920. In Polish history, these events are called unusually pathetic - "The Miracle on the Vistula." Indeed, this is the only major victory for Polish weapons in the last 300 years.

Peaceful Riga Peace

The actions of the White troops of Wrangel also contributed to the weakening of the Soviet troops near Warsaw. In the summer of 1920, the Whites just launched their last offensive from the territory of the Crimea, capturing a vast territory between the Dnieper and the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov and diverting the Red reserves. Then the Bolsheviks, in order to free part of the forces and secure the rear from peasant uprisings, even had to make an alliance with the anarchists of Nestor Makhno.

If in the fall of 1919 Pilsudski's policy predetermined the defeat of the Whites in the attack on Moscow, then in the summer of 1920 it was Wrangel's strike that predetermined the defeat of the Reds in the attack on the Polish capital. As the former tsarist general and military theorist Svechin wrote: “In the end, it was not Pilsudski who won the Warsaw operation, but Wrangel.”

The Soviet troops defeated near Warsaw were partially captured, and partially retreated to the German territory of East Prussia. Near Warsaw alone, 60,000 Russians were captured, and in total, more than 100,000 people ended up in Polish prison camps. Of these, at least 70 thousand died in less than a year - this clearly characterizes the monstrous regime that the Polish authorities established for the prisoners, anticipating the Nazi concentration camps.

The fighting continued until October 1920. If during the summer the Red troops fought more than 600 km to the west, then in August-September the front again rolled back more than 300 km to the east. The Bolsheviks could still gather new forces against the Poles, but they chose not to risk it - they were increasingly distracted by the peasant uprisings that flared up throughout the country.

Pilsudski, after a costly success near Warsaw, also did not have sufficient forces for a new offensive against Minsk and Kyiv. Therefore, peace negotiations began in Riga, which stopped the Soviet-Polish war. The final peace treaty was signed only on March 19, 1921. Initially, the Poles demanded from Soviet Russia monetary compensation of 300 million royal gold rubles, but during the negotiations they had to cut their appetites by exactly 10 times.

As a result of the war, the plans of neither Moscow nor Warsaw were realized. The Bolsheviks failed to create Soviet Poland, and Pilsudski's nationalists failed to recreate the ancient borders of the Commonwealth, which included all Belarusian and Ukrainian lands (Pilsudski's most zealous supporters even insisted on the "return" of Smolensk). However, the Poles returned the western lands of Ukraine and Belarus under their rule for a long time. Until 1939, the Soviet-Polish border was only 30 km west of Minsk and was never peaceful.

In fact, the Soviet-Polish war of 1920 largely laid the foundation for the problems that "shot" in September 1939, contributing to the outbreak of World War II.

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The Soviet-Polish war is an armed conflict between Poland and Soviet Russia, Soviet Belarus, Soviet Ukraine on the territory of the collapsed Russian Empire - Russia, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine in 1919-1921 during the Civil War in Russia. In modern Polish historiography, it is called the "Polish-Bolshevik War". The troops of the Ukrainian People's Republic and the West Ukrainian People's Republic also took part in the conflict; in the first phase of the war they acted against Poland, then units of the UNR supported the Polish troops.

In Russia, in the documents of that time, it was also called the Polish Front.

background

The main territories for the possession of which the war was fought, until the middle of the XIV century, were various principalities. After a period of internecine wars and the Tatar-Mongol invasion in 1240, they fell into the area of ​​​​influence of Lithuania and Poland. In the first half of the 14th century, Kyiv, the Dnieper region, the interfluve of the Pripyat and the Western Dvina became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and in 1352 the lands of the Galicia-Volyn principality were divided between Poland and Lithuania. In 1569, according to the Union of Lublin between Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, some Ukrainian lands, which had previously been part of the latter, come under the authority of the Polish crown. In 1772-1795, as a result of the three divisions of the Commonwealth, part of the land passes under the authority of the Russian crown, the Galician territories become part of the Austrian monarchy.

On January 25, 1918, the I Polish Corps under the command of Dovbor-Musnitsky raised a rebellion, which was localized by the troops of Joachim Vatsetis on February 13, 1918. However, taking advantage of the resumption of the war, on February 21, the corps occupied Minsk and, by agreement with the Austro-German command, became part of the occupying forces.

On August 29, 1918, V. I. Lenin signed a decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR on the rejection of treaties and acts concluded by the government of the former Russian Empire, on the partitions of Poland.

After the defeat of Germany in the war in November 1918, when Poland was restored as an independent state, the question arose about its new borders. Although Polish politicians differed in their views on exactly what status the eastern territories of the former Commonwealth should have in the new state, they unanimously advocated their return to Polish control. The Soviet government, on the contrary, intended to establish control over the entire territory of the former Russian Empire, making it (as it was officially declared) a springboard for world revolution.

On January 1, 1919, in Smolensk, the formation of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus (SSRB) was proclaimed as part of the RSFSR.

The situation in Eastern Europe at the end of 1918

According to the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty of March 3, 1918, the western border of Soviet Russia (adjacent to Germany and Austria) was established along the line Riga - Dvinsk - Druya ​​- Drysvyaty - Mikhalishki - Dzevilishki - Dokudov - r. Neman - r. Zelvinka - Pruzhany - Vidoml.

On November 11, 1918, the Armistice of Compiègne was signed, ending the First World War, after which the withdrawal of German troops from the occupied territories began. In the countries of Eastern Europe, this led to a political vacuum that various forces tried to fill: on the one hand, local governments, for the most part, were the successors of the authorities formed during the occupation by Germany; on the other hand, the Bolsheviks and their supporters, supported by Soviet Russia, which announced on November 13, in connection with the signed truce, the invalidity of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty.

In November 1918, the German units began to withdraw from the territories of the former Russian Empire they had occupied.

The Soviet Western Army, whose task was to establish control over Belarus, on November 17, 1918, moved after the retreating German units and on December 10, 1918 entered Minsk. The Poles of Lithuania and Belarus created the organization "Committee for the Defense of the Eastern Outskirts" (KZVO) with combat units formed from former soldiers of the Polish Corps, and turned to the Polish government for help. By a decree of the Polish ruler (“temporary head of state”) Jozef Pilsudski dated December 7, 1918, the KZVO detachments were declared an integral part of the Polish Army under the general command of General Wladyslaw Veitka.

The goals of the participants in the conflict

The main goal of the leadership of Poland, led by Jozef Pilsudski, was the restoration of Poland within the historical borders of the Commonwealth of 1772, with the establishment of control over Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania and geopolitical dominance in Eastern Europe:

Enclosed within the borders of the times of the sixteenth century, cut off from the Black and Baltic Seas, deprived of the land and mineral wealth of the South and Southeast, Russia could easily become a second-rate power, unable to seriously threaten Poland's newfound independence. Poland, as the largest and most powerful of the new states, could easily secure for itself a sphere of influence that would stretch from Finland to the Caucasus Mountains.

Y. Pilsudsky

On the Soviet side, the initial goal was to establish control over the western provinces of the former Russian Empire (Ukraine and Belarus) and Sovietize them. As the war progressed, the goal became the Sovietization of Poland, followed by Germany, and the transition to a world revolution. The Soviet leadership considered the war against Poland part of the struggle against the entire Versailles international system that existed at that time.

V. I. Lenin: By destroying the Polish army, we are destroying that Treaty of Versailles on which the entire system of present-day international relations rests. If Poland had become Soviet, the Treaty of Versailles would have been destroyed and the entire international system won by victories over Germany would have collapsed.

L. D. Trotsky: Lenin developed a firm plan: to finish the job, that is, to enter Warsaw in order to help the Polish working masses overthrow the Pilsudski government and seize power.

Lenin subsequently noted that the attack on Warsaw created a situation in which "and in relation to Germany, we probed the international situation." And this "probing" showed: a) "the approach of our troops to the borders of East Prussia" led to the fact that "Germany was all boiled"; b) "you won't get Soviet power in Germany without a civil war"; c) "in international relations there is no other force for Germany, except for Soviet Russia."

The course of the war

Formation of the Soviet-Polish front

On December 19, the Polish government gave an order to its troops to occupy the city of Vilna;

The first armed clash between units of the Red Army and Polish units took place on January 6, 1919, when the Polish garrison was driven out of Vilna. On February 16, the authorities of the Byelorussian SSR proposed to the Polish government to determine the borders, but Warsaw ignored this proposal. On February 27, after Lithuania was included in the Byelorussian SSR, it was renamed the Lithuanian-Belarusian SSR.

Poland could not provide significant assistance to the KZVO detachments, since part of the Polish troops was drawn into the border conflict with Czechoslovakia and was preparing for a possible conflict with Germany over Silesia, and German troops were still in the western regions of Poland. Only after the intervention of the Entente on February 5 was an agreement signed that the Germans would let the Poles go east. As a result, on February 4, Polish troops occupied Kovel, on February 9 they entered Brest, on February 19 they entered Bialystok, abandoned by the Germans. At the same time, Polish troops moving east liquidated the administration of the Ukrainian People's Republic in the Kholm region, in Zhabinka, Kobrin and Vladimir-Volynsky.

On February 9-14, 1919, German troops let the Polish units pass to the line of the river. Neman (to Skidel) - r. Zelvyanka - r. Ruzhanka - Pruzhany - Kobrin. Soon units of the Western Front of the Red Army approached from the other side. Thus, a Polish-Soviet front was formed on the territory of Lithuania and Belarus. Although by February 1919 the Polish Army nominally numbered more than 150 thousand people, the Poles at first had very insignificant forces in Belarus and Ukraine - 12 infantry battalions, 12 cavalry squadrons and three artillery batteries - only about 8 thousand people, the rest of the units were located on borders with Germany and Czechoslovakia or were in the process of formation. The size of the Soviet Western Army is estimated at 45 thousand people, however, after the occupation of Belarus, the most combat-ready units were transferred to other areas where the position of the Red Army was extremely difficult. On February 19, the Western Army was transformed into the Western Front under the command of Dmitry Nadezhny.

To prepare an offensive to the east, the Polish troops in Belarus, which received reinforcements, were divided into three parts: the Polesie group was commanded by General Antoni Listovsky, the Volyn group was commanded by General Edward Rydz-Smigly, the Lithuanian-Belarusian division of General Vatslav Ivashkevich-Rudoshansky was on the Shitno-Skidel line . To the south of them were units of Generals Juliusz Rummel and Tadeusz Rozwadowski.

The offensive of the Polish troops on Belarus

At the end of February, Polish troops crossed the Neman and launched an offensive on the territory of Soviet Belarus (since February 3, it was in a federation with the RSFSR). On February 28, units of General Ivashkevich attacked the Soviet troops along the Shchara River and occupied Slonim on March 1, and Pinsk was taken by Listovsky on March 2. The task of both groups was to prevent the concentration of Soviet troops along the Lida-Baranovichi-Luninets line and to prepare for the occupation of Grodno after the withdrawal of German troops from there. Soon Ivashkevich was replaced by Stanislav Sheptytsky.

On April 17-19, the Poles occupied Lida, Novogrudok and Baranovichi, and on April 19, the Polish cavalry entered Vilna. Two days later, Jozef Pilsudski arrived there, who addressed the Lithuanian people, in which he proposed that Lithuania return to the union of the times of the Commonwealth.

Meanwhile, Polish troops in Belarus under the command of Stanislav Sheptytsky continued to move east, receiving reinforcements from Poland - on April 28, the Poles occupied the city of Grodno, abandoned by the Germans. In May - July, the Polish units were replenished with the 70,000-strong army of Jozef Haller, transported from France. At the same time, Western Ukraine passes under the control of the Poles - on June 25, 1919, the Council of Foreign Ministers of Great Britain, France, the USA, and Italy authorizes Poland to occupy Eastern Galicia up to the river. Zbruch. By July 17, eastern Galicia was completely occupied by the Polish army, the administration of the West Ukrainian People's Republic (ZUNR) was liquidated.

The offensive of the Polish troops in Belarus continued - on July 4 Molodechno was occupied, and on July 25 Slutsk passed under Polish control. The commander of the Soviet Western Front, Dmitry Nadezhny, was removed from his post on July 22, and Vladimir Gittis was appointed in his place. However, the Soviet troops in Belarus did not receive significant reinforcements, since the Soviet General Staff sent all the reserves to the south against the Volunteer Army of Anton Denikin, which launched an attack on Moscow in July.

Meanwhile, in August, the Polish troops again went on the offensive, the main goal of which was Minsk. After a six-hour battle on August 9, Polish troops captured the Belarusian capital, and on August 29, despite the stubborn resistance of the Red Army, Bobruisk was taken by the Poles. In October, units of the Red Army launched a counterattack on the city, but were defeated. After that, the hostilities subsided until the beginning of the next year: the parties concluded a truce. This was due to the reluctance of the Entente countries and Anton Denikin to support plans for further Polish expansion. A long negotiation process began.

Diplomatic struggle

As mentioned above, the successes of the Polish troops in Belarus were largely due to the fact that the leadership of the Red Army sent the main forces to defend the southern direction from the advancing troops of Anton Denikin. Denikin, like the White movement as a whole, recognized the independence of Poland, but was opposed to Polish claims to lands east of the Bug, believing that they should be part of a single and indivisible Russia.

The position of the Entente on this issue coincided with Denikin's - on December 8, 1919, the Declaration on the eastern border of Poland (see Curzon Line) was announced, coinciding with the line of ethnographic predominance of the Poles. At the same time, the Entente demanded that Pilsudski provide military assistance to Denikin's troops and resume the offensive in Belarus. However, at that time, the Polish troops were located much east of the Curzon line and the Pilsudski government did not intend to leave the occupied territories. After many months of negotiations in Taganrog between Denikin and Pilsudski's representative, General Alexander Karnitsky, ended in vain, Polish-Soviet negotiations began.

In Mikashevichi, a conversation took place between Julian Markhlevsky and Ignacy Berner. The release of political prisoners was supposed - a list was compiled of 1574 Poles imprisoned in the RSFSR, and 307 communists in Polish prisons. The Bolsheviks demanded a plebiscite in Belarus among the local population on the issue of state structure and territorial affiliation. The Poles, in turn, demanded the transfer of Dvinsk to Latvia and the cessation of hostilities against the UNR Petlyura, with whom they had entered into an alliance by that time.

In October, Polish-Soviet negotiations resumed in Mikashevichi. The immediate reason why the Polish side again entered into negotiations was its concern about the success of Denikin's army in the fight against the Red Army, the occupation of Kursk and Orel on the way to Moscow. Piłsudski's assessment was that White support was not in Poland's interests. A similar opinion was expressed to Julian Markhlevsky by the authorized head of the Polish state at the negotiations in Mikashevichy, Captain Ignacy Berner, noting that "help to Denikin in his fight against the Bolsheviks cannot serve the interests of the Polish state." A direct consequence of the negotiations was the transfer of the elite Latvian division of the Red Army from the Polish to the Southern Front, the victory over the Whites became possible solely due to the flank attack of the Shock Group, which was based on the Latvians. In December 1919, negotiations in Mikashevichi were terminated at the initiative of the Poles. This is largely due to the low assessment of the Red Army (as well as the All-Union Socialist Republic) by Pilsudski. Before the start of hostilities of the Polish troops against the Reds, in particular in January 1920, in a conversation with the British diplomat Sir MacKinder, he expressed the following opinion:

“At the beginning of the conversation, he (Pilsudski) spoke pessimistically about the organization of the armed forces of General Denikin ... He expressed the opinion that at the moment the Bolshevik armed forces were superior in their organization to the armed forces of General Denikin. Piłsudski argued that General Denikin could never overthrow the Bolshevik regime alone. Nevertheless, he regarded the Bolsheviks as being in a difficult position and strongly argued that the Polish army could independently enter Moscow next spring, but in this case the question would arise before him - what to do politically.

Although the negotiations ended in vain, the break in hostilities allowed Pilsudski to suppress the pro-Soviet opposition, and the Red Army to transfer reserves to the Belarusian direction and develop an offensive plan.

Polish offensive in Ukraine

After the failure of the peace talks, hostilities resumed. In the first days of January 1920, the troops of Edward Rydz-Smigly took Dvinsk with an unexpected blow and then handed over the city to the Latvian authorities. On March 6, Polish troops launched an offensive in Belarus, capturing Mozyr and Kalinkovichi. Four attempts by the Red Army to recapture Mozyr were unsuccessful, and the offensive of the Red Army in Ukraine also ended in failure. The commander of the Western Front, Vladimir Gittis, was removed from his post, and 27-year-old Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who had previously proved himself in the course of battles against the troops of Kolchak and Denikin, was appointed in his place. Also, for better command and control of the troops, the southern part of the Western Front was transformed into the Southwestern Front, with Alexander Yegorov appointed commander of the troops.

Thus, in Belarus, the forces were approximately equal, and in Ukraine, the Poles had an almost threefold numerical superiority, which the Polish command decided to use to the maximum, transferring additional troops to this direction with a total force of 10 thousand bayonets and 1 thousand cavalry. In addition, the actions of the Poles, in accordance with the agreement, were supported by the troops of Petliura, who at that time numbered about 15 thousand people.

On April 25, 1920, Polish troops attacked the positions of the Red Army along the entire length of the Ukrainian border, and by April 28 they occupied the Chernobyl-Kazatin-Vinnitsa-Romanian border line. Sergei Mezheninov, not risking engaging in battle, withdrew the troops of the 12th Army, whose units were scattered at a great distance from each other, lost their unified command and needed to be regrouped. These days, the Poles captured more than 25 thousand Red Army soldiers, captured 2 armored trains, 120 guns and 418 machine guns.

On April 26, in Zhytomyr, Jozef Pilsudski addressed the Ukrainian people, confirming their right to independence and their own choice of state structure. For his part, Semyon Petliura stressed the inviolability of the Polish-Ukrainian alliance.

On May 7, Polish cavalry entered Kyiv, abandoned by units of the Red Army, and soon the Poles managed to create a bridgehead up to 15 km deep on the left bank of the Dnieper.

The offensive of the Red Army in the spring and summer of 1920

Tukhachevsky decided to take advantage of the diversion of part of the Polish army from the Belarusian direction and on May 14 launched an offensive against the positions of the Poles with the forces of 12 infantry divisions. Despite the initial success, by May 27 the offensive of the Soviet troops bogged down, and on June 1 the 4th and units of the 1st Polish armies launched a counteroffensive against the 15th Soviet army and by June 8 inflicted a heavy defeat on it (the army lost dead, wounded and captured more than 12 thousand fighters).

On the Southwestern Front, the situation was turned in favor of the Soviets with the commissioning of the 1st Cavalry Army of Semyon Budyonny, transferred from the Caucasus (16.7 thousand sabers, 48 ​​guns, 6 armored trains and 12 aircraft). She left Maikop on April 3rd, defeated the detachments of Nestor Makhno in Gulyaipole, and crossed the Dnieper north of Yekaterinoslav (May 6th). On May 26, after the concentration of all units in Uman, the 1st Cavalry attacked Kazatin, and on June 5, Budyonny, having found a weak spot in the Polish defense, broke through the front near Samogorodok and went to the rear of the Polish units, advancing on Berdichev and Zhitomir. On June 10, the 3rd Polish Army of Rydz-Smigly, fearing encirclement, left Kyiv and moved to the Mazovia region. Two days later, the 1st Cavalry Army entered Kyiv. Attempts by Yegorov's small troops to prevent the retreat of the 3rd Army ended in failure. The Polish troops, having regrouped, tried to launch a counteroffensive: on July 1, the troops of General Leon Berbetsky attacked the front of the 1st Cavalry Army near Rovno. This offensive was not supported by adjacent Polish units and Berbetsky's troops were driven back. Polish troops made several more attempts to capture the city, but on July 10 it finally came under the control of the Red Army.

To the west!

To the West, workers and peasants!

Against the bourgeoisie and landowners,

for the international revolution

for the freedom of all peoples!

Fighters of the workers' revolution!

Set your eyes on the West.

The fate of the world revolution is being decided in the West.

Through the corpse of white Poland lies the path to the world conflagration.

On bayonets we will carry happiness

and peace to working humanity.

To the west!

To decisive battles, to resounding victories!

At dawn on July 4, the Western Front of Mikhail Tukhachevsky again went on the offensive. The main blow was delivered on the right, northern flank, on which an almost twofold superiority in people and weapons was achieved. The idea of ​​the operation was to bypass the Polish units of Guy's cavalry corps and push the 4th Army of the Red Army of the Belorussian Front to the Lithuanian border. This tactic was successful: on July 5, the 1st and 4th Polish armies began to quickly retreat in the direction of Lida, and, unable to gain a foothold on the old line of German trenches, retreated to the Bug at the end of July. In a short period of time, the Red Army advanced more than 600 km: on July 10, the Poles left Bobruisk, on July 11 - Minsk, on July 14, units of the Red Army took Vilna. On July 26, in the Bialystok region, the Red Army crossed directly into Polish territory, and on August 1, despite Pilsudski's orders, Brest was surrendered to Soviet troops almost without resistance.

On July 23, in Smolensk, the Bolsheviks formed the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Poland (Polrevkom), which was supposed to assume full power after the capture of Warsaw and the overthrow of Pilsudski. The Bolsheviks officially announced this on August 1 in Bialystok, where the Polrevkom was located. The committee was headed by Julian Markhlevsky. On the same day, August 1, the Polrevkom announced the "Appeal to the Polish working people of cities and villages", written by Dzerzhinsky. The “Appeal” announced the creation of the Polish Republic of Soviets, the nationalization of lands, the separation of church and state, and also called on the workers to drive away the capitalists and landowners, occupy factories and factories, create revolutionary committees as government bodies (65 such revolutionary committees were formed) . The Committee called on the soldiers of the Polish Army to revolt against Piłsudski and go over to the side of the Polish Republic of Soviets. The Polrevkom also began to form the Polish Red Army (under the command of Roman Longva), but did not achieve any success in this.

The creation of the Polrevkom was explained by the serious hopes of the Soviet leadership for the help of the Polish proletariat and played its negative role in deciding on further actions by the military leadership.

Having reached the Polish border, the High Command of the Red Army faced a difficult choice whether to continue the operation or not. Commander-in-Chief Kamenev 2 years later, in the article “The Fight against White Poland” (originally published in the journal “Military Bulletin”, 1922, 12, pp. 7-15), described the situation that had developed when making the decision:

“The period of struggle under consideration in the entire course of events turned out to be a cornerstone. Upon achieving the above successes, the Red Army obviously had the last task of capturing Warsaw by itself, and simultaneously with this task, the situation itself set a deadline for its implementation “immediately”.

This term was determined by two most important considerations: the information on the political side was summed up in the fact that the testing of the revolutionary impulse of the Polish proletariat must not be delayed, otherwise it would be strangled; judging by the trophies, the prisoners and their testimonies, the enemy army undoubtedly suffered a great defeat, therefore, it is impossible to delay: the uncut forest will soon grow. This forest could soon grow also because we knew about the help that France was in a hurry to provide to its battered offspring. We also had unequivocal warnings from Britain that if we crossed such and such a line, then Poland would be given real help. We crossed this line, therefore, it was necessary to stop until this "real help" was provided. The motives enumerated are weighty enough to determine how short the time we had at our disposal was.

Naturally, our command faced the question in all its magnitude: is it possible for the Red Army to immediately solve the upcoming task in its composition and state in which it approached the Bug, and whether the rear will cope. And now, as then, the answer is yes and no. If we were right in taking into account the political moment, if we did not overestimate the depth of the defeat of the Belopolska army, and if the exhaustion of the Red Army was not excessive, then the task should have been started immediately. Otherwise, the operation, quite possibly, would have to be abandoned altogether, since it would have been too late to extend a helping hand to the proletariat of Poland and finally neutralize the force that carried out the treacherous attack on us. Having repeatedly checked all the above information, it was decided to continue the operation without stopping.

As you can see, the decision was made on the basis of two factors - political and military. And if the second, in general, was probably assessed correctly - the Polish army was really on the verge of disaster, even according to outside observers (in particular, General Faury, a member of the French military mission, noted that “at the beginning of the operation on the Vistula, for all military specialists, the fate of Poland seemed finally doomed, and not only the strategic situation was hopeless, but morally, the Polish troops had formidable symptoms that, it seemed, should finally lead the country to death”) and it was impossible to give it time for a respite under other favorable conditions, then the first factor was wrong. As the same Kamenev noted, “now the moment has come when the working class of Poland could really provide the Red Army with that help ... but the outstretched hand of the proletariat did not turn out. Probably, the more powerful hands of the Polish bourgeoisie hid this hand somewhere.

Subsequently - this opinion has become widespread in recent times - it is customary to lay the blame on Tukhachevsky. This opinion was also heard from the lips of military professionals, in particular Konev (here, for example, K. Simonov wrote down in his conversations with Marshal Konev: “To his (Tukhachevsky’s) shortcomings belonged a well-known raid of adventurism, which manifested itself even in the Polish campaign, in the battle of Warsaw I. S. Konev said that he studied this campaign in detail, and, whatever the mistakes of Yegorov and Stalin on the Southwestern Front, there was no reason to blame them entirely for the failure near Warsaw of Tukhachevsky. exposed flanks, with stretched out communications, and all his behavior during this period does not make a solid, positive impression.") Nevertheless, as we can see, this risk was recognized - and accepted - at the highest level by the military and political leadership of the country:

“Thus, the Red Army openly took a risk, and the risk is excessive. After all, the operation, even with a satisfactory resolution of all the above conditions, still had to be carried out primarily without any rear, which was completely impossible to quickly restore after the destruction carried out by the White Poles.

There was another moment of risk here, which was created by the political significance of the Danzig corridor, which the Red Army could not appreciate and was forced to accept a plan to capture Warsaw from the north, since, first of all, it was necessary to cut it off from the highway, along which not only material assistance was supplied by the Poles themselves, but the help of the Entente (read France) could appear with manpower.

The very operation of capturing Warsaw from the north severely separated our main forces from the Ivangorod direction, where significant forces of the White Poles retreated, and then excessively stretched our front. Our forces, not being able to receive replenishment, since the railways left to us by the White Poles were completely destroyed, melted every day.

Thus, by the time of the denouement, we were walking, decreasing every day in number, in military supplies and stretching our fronts.

In the end, it was the factor of stretched communications and the weakening of the Red Army, combined with the growing strength, and not the weakening (as the Soviet political leadership expected) of the rear of the Polish army, that led to the fact that the situation was balancing on a razor's edge. At that moment, any insignificant factor and/or the slightest tactical mistake could play a decisive role in turning fortunes to one side or another, which actually happened. Here is what, in particular, an outside observer wrote - a member of the White movement, Major General of the General Staff of the old army Goncharenko:

“The rapid advance, without the preparation of the rear and the equipment of communication lines, for its part, was most decisively reflected in the loss of the campaign. The leaders of the Red Army are blinded by political considerations ... At the same time, the command takes extremely bold, risky decisions, where not only the complete absence of any pattern, but where the presence of risk in every strategic maneuver hits the eye, justifying more than more than the old Moltke’s idea “without great risk, great successes in war are impossible. Moreover, the essence of operational plans is sharpened to such an extent that “one inch of strategic error nullifies miles of strategic success.”

Nevertheless, by the beginning of August, the situation in Poland was critical and close to disaster. And not only because of the rapid retreat in Belarus, but also because of the worsening international position of the country. Great Britain actually ceased to provide military and economic assistance to Poland, Germany and Czechoslovakia closed the borders with Poland, and Danzig remained the only point of delivery of goods to the republic. However, the main supplies and assistance were carried out not by the above countries, but by France and the United States, which did not stop their activities (see below "The role of the "great powers" in the conflict"). With the approach of the Red Army troops to Warsaw, the evacuation of foreign diplomatic missions began from there.

On July 12, 1920, Lord Curzon, with a special note addressed to the Soviet government, sought to hold back the offensive of the Soviet troops against the Poles. If the offensive is not stopped, Curzon wrote, "the British Government and its allies will feel obliged to help the Polish nation to defend its existence with all the means at their disposal."

Meanwhile, the situation of the Polish troops worsened not only in the Belarusian, but also in the Ukrainian direction, where the South-Western Front again went on the offensive under the command of Alexander Yegorov (with Stalin as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council). The main goal of the front was the capture of Lvov, which was defended by three infantry divisions of the 6th Polish Army and the Ukrainian army under the command of Mikhailo Omelyanovich-Pavlenko. On July 9, the 14th Army of the Red Army took Proskurov (Khmelnitsky), and on July 12 captured Kamenetz-Podolsky by storm. On July 25, the Southwestern Front launched the Lvov offensive operation, but failed to capture Lvov.

Warsaw battle

On August 12, the troops of the Western Front of Mikhail Tukhachevsky went on the offensive, the purpose of which was to capture Warsaw.

Composition of the Western Front

Guy Guy's 3rd Cavalry Corps

4th Army of A. D. Shuvaev, Chief of Staff - G. S. Gorchakov

15th Army of August Cork

3rd Army of Vladimir Lazarevich

16th Army of Nikolai Sollogub

Mozyr group of Tikhon Khvesin

Two fronts of the Red Army were opposed by three Polish ones:

Northern front of General Józef Haller

5th Army of General Vladislav Sikorsky

1st Army of General Franciszek Latinik

2nd Army of General Boleslav Roja

Central Front of General Edward Rydz-Smigly

4th Army of General Leonard Skersky

3rd Army of General Zygmunt Zelinsky

Southern Front of General Vaclav Ivashkevich

6th Army of General Vladislav Yendzheyevsky

Army of the UNR General Mikhail Omelyanovich-Pavlenko

The total number of personnel differs in all sources. We can only say with certainty that the forces were approximately equal and did not exceed 200 thousand people on each side.

The plan of Mikhail Tukhachevsky provided for the crossing of the Vistula in the lower reaches and the attack on Warsaw from the west. According to some of the assumptions made, the purpose of "deviating" the direction of the Soviet attack to the north was to get to the German border as soon as possible, which should have accelerated the establishment of Soviet power in this country. On August 13, two rifle divisions of the Red Army struck near Radimin (23 km from Warsaw) and captured the city. Then one of them moved to Prague (the right-bank part of Warsaw), and the second turned to the right - to Neporent and Jablonna. Polish forces retreated to the second line of defense.

In early August, the Polish-French command finalized the counteroffensive plan. The Soviet historian of the Soviet-Polish war N. Kakurin, analyzing in detail the formation of this plan and the changes made to it, comes to the conclusion that the French military had a significant influence on the appearance of its final version:

“Thus, we can assume that the final plan of action in the Polish headquarters took shape only on August 9th. It was the fruit of the collective creativity of Marshal Pilsudski, Gen. Rozvadovsky and Weigand. The first of these generals owned the technical processing of the plan, the second was the author of very important adjustments made to the original plan of action. Therefore, we can assume that the final action plan of the Polish High Command of August 9 is a symbiosis of the operational ideas of Marshal Pilsudski and Gen. Weigand, but by no means the fruit of the independent operational creativity of the first, as one might think on the basis of Piłsudski's book "1920". ... Turning to the analysis of the enemy’s plan, we note once again that it included elements of exceptional risk and was the fruit of collective creativity with a very solid participation of the gene. Weigand. Weigand's intervention, firstly, expanded and clarified its scope, gave a clear goal setting, activated the entire plan and, by creating a northern shock wing, somewhat mitigated the risk that Piłsudski's original plan was filled with. … Based on Piłsudski's own admission, we are inclined to regard his original decision of August 6 as more of a gesture of desperation than the fruit of sound calculation. Apart from the immediate goal - saving Warsaw at any cost - Pilsudski did not see anything ... ".

The Polish counter-offensive plan provided for the concentration of large forces on the Vepsh River and a surprise attack from the southeast into the rear of the troops of the Western Front. To do this, two shock groups were formed from the two armies of the Central Front, General Edward Rydz-Smigly. However, order 8358 / III on a counterattack near Vepshem with a detailed map fell into the hands of the Red Army, but the Soviet command considered the document found to be disinformation, the purpose of which was to disrupt the Red Army's offensive on Warsaw. On the same day, Polish radio intelligence intercepted the order for the 16th Army to attack Warsaw on August 14th. To get ahead of the Reds, on the orders of Jozef Haller, the 5th Army of Vladislav Sikorsky, defending Modlin, from the area of ​​​​the Wkra River hit the stretched front of Tukhachevsky at the junction of the 3rd and 15th armies and broke through it. On the night of August 15, two reserve Polish divisions attacked the Soviet troops near Radimin from the rear. Soon the city was taken.

On August 16, Marshal Pilsudski launched the planned counterattack. The information received by radio intelligence about the weakness of the Mozyr group played a role. Having concentrated more than a double superiority against it (47.5 thousand fighters against 21 thousand), the Polish troops (the first strike group under the command of Pilsudski himself) broke through the front and defeated the southern wing of the 16th army of Nikolai Sollogub. At the same time, there was an attack on Vlodava by the forces of the 3rd Infantry Division of the Legions, and also, with the support of tanks, on Minsk-Mazovetsky. This created a threat of encirclement of all Red Army troops in the Warsaw area.

Considering the critical situation on the Western Front, on August 14, Commander-in-Chief Kamenev ordered that the 12th and 1st Cavalry Armies be transferred to the Western Front in order to significantly strengthen it. There is an opinion that the leadership of the Southwestern Front, which besieged Lvov, ignored this order, and one of the opponents of the transfer of Cavalry to the western direction was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southwestern Front, I.V. Stalin, who was generally a principled opponent of plans to conquer the native Polish territories, in particular, the capital of Poland.

This opinion appeared almost immediately after the Civil War, and became especially widespread in the 60s, with the debunking of the cult of personality, in connection with the transfer of the 1st Cavalry Army to the Western Front, as well as the assertion that it was this refusal that caused the defeat Bolsheviks near Warsaw. If the second part is true, then the first part of the statement is more than debatable. The issue of the delay in the turn of the First Cavalry to the north was analyzed in detail back in the 20s in the work "Civil War", written under the editorship of Kakurin and Vatsetis. Kakurin, who analyzed this issue in detail based on documents, eventually came to the conclusion that it was not possible to implement the decision taken by the Commander-in-Chief finally on August 10-11 to reorient the First Cavalry and 12th Armies to the north, in a timely manner, primarily due to friction in the operation of the control apparatus:

“Many participants in the Civil War, due to the paucity of published historical documents relating to the war, were left with the impression that the command of the Southwestern Front refused to comply with the directive of the commander-in-chief. In fact, this is not true. We will return to those shortcomings that relate to the implementation of this directive by the commander, but they were not of decisive importance to us. AT this case this role was played poorly even at that time by the well-established field service of the headquarters ... The decision of the commander-in-chief, due to the poorly functioning control apparatus, did not have time to exert its decisive influence on the fate of the entire campaign on the banks of the Vistula.

It was the friction in the work of the control apparatus and the inertia associated with the withdrawal of the 1st Cavalry from the battles in the Lviv direction that predetermined that fatal delay, which turned out to be decisive at the moment of crisis, "a straw that broke the camel's back."

So, only on August 20, the 1st Cavalry Army began to move north. By the time the 1st Cavalry Army began to act from near Lvov, the troops of the Western Front had already begun an unorganized retreat to the east. On August 19, the Poles occupied Brest, on August 23 - Bialystok. In the period from August 22 to 26, the 4th Army, Guy Guy's 3rd Cavalry Corps, as well as two divisions from the 15th Army (about 40 thousand people in total) crossed the German border and were interned. At the end of August, through Sokal, the 1st Cavalry Army struck in the direction of Zamostye and Grubeshov, in order to then, through Lublin, reach the rear of the Polish attack group advancing to the north. However, the Poles advanced towards the 1st Cavalry Reserves of the General Staff.

There is a legend that at the end of August, near Komarov, the largest cavalry battle after 1813 took place, in which the 1st Polish division of Rummel, numbering 2000 sabers, defeated the Cavalry Army of 7000 sabers (and according to other statements, 16 thousand). The reality, of course, was much more prosaic. Firstly, the size of the Cavalry Army of 16 thousand bayonets and sabers - this is its strength at the beginning of the campaign - after the Ukrainian campaign and heavy Lviv battles, its strength was more than halved. Secondly, when the First Cavalry was thrown into a raid on Zamostye, in order to alleviate the position of the armies of the Western Front, there it encountered by no means one Polish division. According to Soviet intelligence, by the time of the raid in the Zamostye area, the Poles had managed to regroup, and in addition to units of the 3rd Polish Army, the 10th and 13th Infantry, 1st Cavalry, 2nd Ukrainian and Cossack divisions were found there. Those who write about Rummel’s one and only division, which defeated the Cavalry alone, as a rule do not mention that this division arrived to reinforce the formations of the 3rd Polish army already operating in that area, while the reinforcements themselves were not limited to this division alone. The battle near Komarov was just one of the episodes in which only one of the four cavalry divisions, the 6th, took part from the side of the Cavalry. That is, the number of Red and Polish units clashed near Komarov was comparable, and the scale of the battles did not in any way draw on the largest cavalry battle (in Soviet historiography, the oncoming battle at Sredny Yegorlyk on February 25-27, 1920 is considered the largest cavalry battle of the Civil War - up to 25 thousand . sabers on both sides). The failure of the raid on Zamostye was more than understandable - the Cavalry began this raid, being exhausted in the battles for Lvov, leaving supply bases on the right bank of the Western Bug, and being forced to overcome “during the entire five-day raid, the raging elements that all this wooded and marshy area with continuous rains it turned into difficult terrain, greatly complicating the issue of maneuvering. Extremely tired and not having enough ammunition, the units could not withstand the collision with the enemy, who received reinforcements, and with difficulty escaped from the planned encirclement. The army of Budyonny, and behind it the troops of the Southwestern Front, were forced to retreat from Lvov and go on the defensive.

As a result of the defeat near Warsaw, the Soviet troops of the Western Front suffered heavy losses. According to some estimates, during the Battle of Warsaw, 25,000 Red Army soldiers were killed, 60,000 were captured by the Polish, 45,000 were interned by the Germans. Several thousand people went missing. The front also lost a large amount of artillery and equipment. Polish losses are estimated at 15,000 killed and missing and 22,000 wounded.

We expected uprisings and revolutions from the Polish workers and peasants, but received chauvinism and stupid hatred of the "Russians".

Voroshilov

Subsequently, acad. I. P. Trainin explained this by the fact that “under the influence of the PPS (Polish Socialist Party), a significant part of the proletariat strayed into nationalist positions. By the time the former Polish state was formed, the Polish proletariat had been dispersed and dispersed. About half a million workers from Poland were forcibly transferred to Germany and Austria.

Fighting in Belarus

After the retreat from Poland, Tukhachevsky entrenched himself on the line of the Neman - Shchara - Svisloch rivers, while using the German fortifications left from the First World War as a second line of defense. The Western Front received large reinforcements from the rear areas, and 30 thousand people from among the internees in East Prussia returned to its composition. Gradually, Tukhachevsky was able to almost completely restore the combat strength of the front: on September 1, he had 73 thousand soldiers and 220 guns. By order of Kamenev, Tukhachevsky was preparing a new offensive.

The Poles were also preparing for the offensive. The attack on Grodno and Volkovysk was supposed to tie up the main forces of the Red Army and enable the 2nd Army through the territory of Lithuania to reach the deep rear of the advanced units of the Red Army holding defenses on the Neman. On September 12, Tukhachevsky ordered an attack on Vlodava and Brest by the southern flank of the Western Front, including the 4th and 12th armies, but the order was intercepted and deciphered by Polish radio intelligence. On the same day, a little-known battle for the city of Kobrin began, then the defense of the 12th Army was broken through and Kovel was taken. This disrupted the general offensive of the Red Army troops and endangered the encirclement of the southern grouping of the Western Front and forced the 4th, 12th and 14th armies to withdraw to the east.

The defense of the Western Front on the Neman was held by three armies: the 3rd of Vladimir Lazarevich, the 15th of August Kork and the 16th of Nikolai Sollogub (a total of about 100 thousand fighters, about 250 guns). They were opposed by the Polish grouping of Jozef Pilsudski: the 2nd Army of General Edward Rydz-Smigly, the 4th Army of General Leonard Skersky, the reserve of the commander-in-chief (about 100 thousand soldiers in total).

On September 20, 1920, a bloody battle for Grodno began. At first, the Poles were successful, but on September 22, Tukhachevsky's troops pulled up reserves and restored the situation. Meanwhile, Polish troops invaded Lithuania and moved to Druskenniki (Druskininkai). Having captured the bridge over the Neman, the Poles went to the flank of the Western Front. September 25, unable to stop the advance of the Poles, Tukhachevsky orders the withdrawal of troops to the east. On the night of September 26, the Poles occupied Grodno, and soon crossed the Neman south of the city. The 3rd Army of Lazarevich, retreating to the east, was unable to restore the front and retreated to the Lida region with heavy losses. On September 28, however, the Soviet troops were unable to capture the city already occupied by the enemy and were soon defeated (most of the personnel were captured).

Pilsudski intended to build on success, encircle and destroy the remaining troops of the Western Front near Novogrudok. However, the Polish units, weakened in battles, could not fulfill this order, and the troops of the Red Army were able to regroup and organize defense.

During the Neman battle, Polish troops captured 40 thousand prisoners, 140 guns, a large number of horses and ammunition. The fighting in Belarus continued until the signing of a peace treaty in Riga. On October 12, the Poles re-entered Minsk and Molodechno.

On the same day at 7:30 pm local time in the Schwarzkopf Palace in Riga, representatives of Poland, the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR signed an armistice agreement and preliminary peace conditions. Under the terms of the agreement, Poland undertook to recognize the independence of Belarus and Ukraine and confirmed that it respects their state sovereignty. The parties that signed the agreement pledged not to interfere in each other's internal affairs, not to create or support organizations "aimed at armed struggle against the other contracting party", and also not to support "foreign military operations against the other side".

On March 18, 1921, in Riga between Poland on the one hand and the RSFSR (whose delegation also represented the Byelorussian SSR) and the Ukrainian SSR on the other, the Riga Peace Treaty was signed, which brought the final line under the Soviet-Polish war.

Terror against the civilian population

During the war, executions of the civilian population were carried out, while the Polish troops carried out ethnic cleansing, the object of which was mainly Jews. In turn, the leadership of the Red Army severely punished the exposed participants in the pogroms.

The biggest episode of this kind on the Soviet side is the mutiny of the sixth cavalry division of the Budyonnovsky army: “6th division goes to the rear with the slogans “Beat the Jews, communists, commissars and save Russia”, “Let's go to connect with Old Man Makhno”, - along the way, it makes massive robberies , murders and pogroms ... The masses of soldiers do not listen to their commanders and, according to the commander, they no longer obey him ... ”(424 - 425). Divisional commissar Georgy Georgievich Shepelev, defending a Jewish family, shot one of the rioters on the spot, for which he paid own life. As stated in the order of the Revolutionary Military Council of the First Cavalry Army: "this honest revolutionary, a laboring Don Cossack ..." was killed "by the criminal vile hands of bandits of the 31st, 32nd and 33rd regiments", "and already dead was robbed" (870). According to the verdict of the Revolutionary Tribunal, "pogromists - 141 people - including 19 representatives of the command staff - were sentenced to death ..., 31 sentenced capital punishment was commuted to imprisonment, the rest were shot" (870).

The fate of prisoners of war

Until now, there is no exact data on the fate of Polish and Soviet prisoners of war. According to Russian sources, about 80,000 of the 200,000 Red Army soldiers who fell into Polish captivity died from starvation, disease, torture, bullying and executions.

Polish sources give figures of 85 thousand prisoners (at least that many people were in Polish camps by the time the war ended), of which about 20 thousand died. They were kept in camps left after the First World War - Strzalkow (the largest), Dombier, Pikulice, Wadowice and Tucholsky concentration camp. Under the 1921 agreement on the exchange of prisoners (an addition to the Riga Peace Treaty), 65,000 captured fighters of the Red Army returned to Russia. If the information about 200 thousand taken prisoner and the death of 80 thousand of them is correct, then the fate of about 60 thousand more people is unclear.

Mortality in the Polish camps reached 20% of the number of prisoners, mainly the cause of death was epidemics, which, in conditions of poor nutrition, overcrowding and lack of medical care, quickly spread and had a high mortality rate. This is how a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross described the camp in Brest:

From the guardrooms, as well as from the former stables in which the prisoners of war are housed, a sickening smell emanates. Prisoners chilly huddle around a makeshift stove, where several logs are burning - the only way to heat. At night, hiding from the first cold, they fit in close rows in groups of 300 people in poorly lit and poorly ventilated barracks, on boards, without mattresses and blankets. The prisoners are mostly dressed in rags ... because of the overcrowding of the premises, not suitable for habitation; joint close living of healthy prisoners of war and infectious patients, many of whom immediately died; malnutrition, as evidenced by numerous cases of malnutrition; edema, hunger during the three months of stay in Brest - the camp in Brest-Litovsk was a real necropolis.

In the prisoner of war camp in Strzalkow, among other things, there were numerous abuses of prisoners, for which the commandant of the camp, Lieutenant Malinovsky, was later put on trial.

As for Polish prisoners of war, according to updated data, 33.5-34 thousand prisoners of war were taken in 1919-1920 (the figure of 60 thousand prisoners of war given by Meltyukhov without reference to sources does not correspond to reality - this figure is taken from the reports of the Polish Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b ), which in the spring of 1921 asked for trains for the repatriation of Poles for such a number of people); even before 8 thousand prisoners, this is the 5th Polish division, which surrendered in the winter of 1919-20 in Krasnoyarsk). In total, it turns out 41-42 thousand Polish prisoners of war, of which a total of 34,839 Polish prisoners of war were repatriated from March 1921 to July 1922, and about 3 thousand more expressed a desire to remain in the RSFSR. Thus, the total loss amounted to only about 3-4 thousand prisoners of war, of which about 2 thousand were documented as having died in captivity.

The role of other countries in the conflict

The Soviet-Polish war took place simultaneously with the intervention in Russia of the Entente countries, which actively supported Poland from the moment it was recreated as an independent state. In this regard, Poland's war against Russia was seen by the "great powers" as part of the struggle against the Bolshevik government.

However, the views of the Entente countries regarding the possible strengthening of Poland as a result of the conflict differed greatly - the United States and France advocated all-round assistance to the Pilsudski government and took part in the creation of the Polish army, while Great Britain tended to limited assistance to Poland, and then to political neutrality in this conflict. The participation of the Entente countries concerned the economic, military and diplomatic support of Poland.

From February to August 1919, Poland received 260,000 tons of food from the United States worth $51 million. In 1919, only from the US military warehouses in Europe, Poland received military property worth 60 million dollars, in 1920 - 100 million dollars.

In total, in 1920, France alone supplied the following volumes of weapons (in brackets for comparison, the figures for British deliveries to Denikin for the period March-September 1919):

supplied weapons and equipment	amount
guns (different calibers)	1 494 (558)
airplanes	291 (168)
machine guns	2 600 (4013)
rifles	327 000 (214 753)
trucks	250 (398)

(figures for French deliveries to the Polish army are given according to the work of Kakurin and Melikov, for British - Denikin - according to the report of the British military mission of General Hollman dated October 8, 1919). According to other sources, in the spring of 1920, England, France and the United States supplied Poland with 1,494 guns, 2,800 machine guns, about 700 aircraft, and 10 million shells.

As can be seen from a comparison with British deliveries of the AFSR, the figures are quite comparable. At the same time, the scale and importance of British deliveries is well demonstrated by the fact that, for example, the number of cartridges supplied by the British to the AFSR was comparable to the number of cartridges received by the Red Army over the same period from the warehouses of the tsarist army and from the then operating cartridge factories. Here, in relation to French deliveries to Poland, the number of cartridges is not indicated, but the comparability of other figures allows us to conclude about the importance and scale of French deliveries.

In addition to the supply of weapons, France also sent a military mission, which not only trained the Polish troops, but also had a significant impact in the planning and development of operations, and as a result, greatly contributed to the victory of the Polish army. The US military also took part in the hostilities on the side of the Poles - the Kosciuszko squadron, which operated against the Budyonny army, was made up of US pilots, commanded by US Colonel Fontlera. In July 1919, a 70,000-strong army arrived in Poland, created in France mainly from emigrants of Polish origin from France and the USA. French participation in the conflict was also expressed in the activities of hundreds of French officers, led by General Maxime Weygand, who arrived in 1920 to train Polish troops and assist the Polish General Staff. Among the French officers in Poland was Charles de Gaulle.

Britain's position was more reserved. The Curzon Line, proposed by the British Minister as the eastern border of Poland in December 1919, assumed the establishment of a border to the west of the front line at that time and the withdrawal of Polish troops. Six months later, when the situation changed, Curzon again proposed fixing the border along this line, otherwise the Entente countries pledged to support Poland "with all the means at their disposal." Thus, throughout the entire war, Great Britain advocated a compromise option for dividing the disputed territories (along the eastern border of the Poles).

However, even in the conditions of the critical martial law of Poland, Great Britain did not provide it with any military support. In August 1920, a conference of trade unions and labor voted for a general strike if the government continued to support Poland and tried to intervene in the conflict, further shipment of ammunition to Poland was simply sabotaged. At the same time, the International Trade Union Federation in Amsterdam instructed its members to increase the embargo on ammunition destined for Poland. Only France and the United States continued to provide assistance to the Poles, but Germany and Czechoslovakia, with which Poland managed to enter into border conflicts over disputed territories, at the end of July 1920 banned the transit of weapons and ammunition for Poland through their territory.

The reduction in assistance from the Entente countries played a significant role in the fact that after the victory near Warsaw, the Poles were unable to build on their success and defeat the Soviet troops of the Western Front. A change in the diplomatic position of Great Britain (under the influence of trade unions, in turn secretly financed by the Soviet government), hastened the conclusion of a peace treaty in Riga.

The results of the war

None of the parties during the war achieved their goals: Belarus and Ukraine were divided between Poland and the republics that became part of the Soviet Union in 1922. The territory of Lithuania was divided between Poland and the independent state of Lithuania. The RSFSR, for its part, recognized the independence of Poland and the legitimacy of the Pilsudski government, temporarily abandoned the plans for a "world revolution" and the elimination of the Versailles system.

Despite the signing of a peace treaty, relations between the two countries remained tense.

Disagreements between the Entente countries that arose in 1920 on the issue of military and financial support for Poland led to a gradual cessation of support by these countries for the White movement and anti-Bolshevik forces in general, and the subsequent international recognition of the Soviet Union.