Warsaw 1920. Adam Zamoyski

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СКАЧАТЬ to the point, Pilsudski perceived Denikin as no less of a threat than did Lenin.

      The Whites enjoyed the confidence of the Entente, which had just given them millions of pounds’ worth of equipment, and had even sent British troops to Russia in support. It followed that if they were victorious Russia would resume her former place as one of the four leading Allies. All Polish territorial claims, indeed her continued existence, would then be entirely conditional on Russia’s goodwill.

      Pilsudski was being urged by the Allies, and most energetically by the British Secretary of State for War, Winston Churchill, to press on into Russia in support of the Whites. But whatever he may have thought of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, he preferred to deal with them than with a White Russian government, particularly as Denikin had made clear that he viewed the re-emergence of an independent Poland with distaste and regarded most of her territory as Russian. Pilsudski therefore concluded a secret armistice with Lenin which allowed the latter to withdraw some 40,000 men from the Polish front and redeploy them against Denikin.⁶

      Within weeks the Red Army was surging southward, triumphantly sweeping Denikin’s forces before it. This kind of reversal was characteristic of the Russian Civil War, in which a minor setback would precipitate a retreat that snowballed as technical breakdown, the devastated terrain, the weather, the local population, disease, desertion and fear of political reprisals all conspired to destroy the fabric of the retreating force.

      But to politicians and public opinion in the West, it suggested that the Bolsheviks enjoyed the support of the masses and that they were militarily superior, which took away much of the appetite for further intervention in Russia. It also raised fears of unrest at home, fuelled by rose-tinted sympathy for the brave socialist experiment supposedly taking place in Russia. Only the more determined anti-Bolsheviks and the French military pressed for continued intervention.

      The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, who had been one of the most enthusiastic advocates of crushing the Bolsheviks by force, now declared that Russia would be saved by commerce, affirming that ‘the moment trade is established with Russia, communism will go’. Sensing an opportunity, Lenin launched a peace offensive, suggesting negotiations with all parties and offering Poland generous terms. Neither Lloyd George nor the French premier Georges Clemenceau had any intention of making peace with Bolshevik Russia, which they viewed as a dangerous example and a possible source of contagion for the working classes of their own countries. But having failed to destroy the Bolsheviks by military means, they were hoping to contain them. They therefore urged Poland and other states neighbouring Russia to take up the offer. As a result, Poland and Russia entered into official negotiations.⁷

      Neither side was in good faith. While the Poles were being publicly urged by Lloyd George and Clemenceau to make peace, they were receiving conflicting messages from other members of the British government and from the French general staff. When Clemenceau resigned, to be replaced by Alexandre Millerand in January 1920, the signals reaching Poland from France were unmistakably warlike. Albeit a socialist himself, Millerand saw his priority as stamping out the strikes paralysing France, and imposing order. This suited Pilsudski, who continued to consolidate his own military position. On 3 January he captured the city of Dunaburg (Daugavpils) from the Russians and handed it over to Latvia, whose government was decidedly anti-Bolshevik and pro-Polish, thereby cutting Lithuania off from Russia. He carried out a number of other operations aimed at strengthening the Polish front, and delayed the peace talks by suggesting venues unacceptable to the Russians.

      Lenin was not interested in peace either. He mistrusted the Entente, which he believed to be dedicated to the destruction of the Bolshevik regime in Russia. He saw Pilsudski as their tool, and was determined to ‘do him in’ sooner or later. He feared a Polish advance into Ukraine, where nationalist forces threatened Bolshevik rule, and was convinced the Poles were contemplating a march on Moscow. Russia was isolated and the Bolsheviks’ grip on power fragile. At the same time, the best way of mobilizing support was war, which might also allow Russia to break out of isolation and could yield some political dividends.

      Germany beckoned. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles, signed the previous summer, added humiliation to the already rich mix of discontent affecting German society, and even the most right-wing would have welcomed a chance of overturning the settlement imposed by it. The appearance of a Red Army on its borders would be viewed by many there as providential.

      In the final months of 1919 Lenin increased the number of divisions facing Poland from five to twenty, and in January 1920 the Red Army staff’s chief of operations Boris Shaposhnikov produced his plan for an attack on Poland, scheduled provisionally for April. This was accepted by the Politburo on 27 January, although the Commissar for War Lev Davidovich Trotsky and the Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgii Chicherin warned against launching an unprovoked offensive. Accordingly, Chicherin publicly renewed his offer of peace to Poland the following day. Two weeks later, on 14 February, Lenin took the final decision to attack Poland, and five days after that the Western Front command was created.⁸

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