Polish Independence and the Polish-Soviet War
The collapse of all three partitioning empires — Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia — in November 1918 simultaneously created the conditions for Polish independence for the first time since the 1795 partition. Josef Pilsudski, released from German imprisonment, returned to Warsaw on 10 November 1918 and was granted command of Polish forces by the Regency Council. The Second Polish Republic was proclaimed on 11 November. The new state immediately faced existential challenges: its borders were undefined and contested by virtually all its neighbours. Poland fought on six fronts between 1918 and 1921 — against Germany in the west, in disputed Silesia and Pomerania, against Czechoslovakia over Teschen, against Lithuania over Wilno, and against Ukrainian forces in the southeast. The decisive contest was the Polish-Soviet War of 1920, in which Leon Trotsky and the Red Army launched a massive westward offensive aimed at carrying the Bolshevik revolution through Poland to Germany. By August 1920, Soviet forces had reached the outskirts of Warsaw and foreign governments were preparing to recognise Poland's defeat. In a counter-offensive conceived by Pilsudski — subsequently called the 'Miracle on the Vistula' — Polish forces struck the over-extended Soviet southern flank, causing a catastrophic Red Army collapse: some 150,000 Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner. Lenin described the defeat as 'enormous.' The Treaty of Riga (1921) established Poland's eastern frontier and ended the war, giving Poland a multi-ethnic eastern borderland that would generate its own tensions for the next two decades.
- Year: 1918 CE
- Category: Political
