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Lecture 14

The Emergence of an Independent State and the Settlement of the Frontiers

1. Introduction.

2. The Settlement of the Frontiers

The compromise which had led to the formation of the Paderewski government masked deep differences over the form the new state should take. No single group emerged dominant in the first elections and the period of the struggle for the frontiers saw a succession of weak governments. Throughout this period from the creation of the government in January 1919 to the end of the period of hostilities and the new elections, which were held in November 1922, there were shifting political alliances and the position of the Centre parties became more significant as the period grew on.

Table 1. Party alignments 19I9-22

Feb. 1919 June 1919 Jan. 1920 July

1922

Right (mainly the National Democrats) 34.2 35.8 18.1 24.8

Centre (mainly the various Peasant parties) 30.8 33.2 59.1 53.9 - 2 -

Left (mainly the (PPS) 30.3 26.8 17.7 16.5

National minorities 3.5 3.2 3.2 3.9

Non-party l.2 l.0 l.9 0.9

The differences over the frontiers and structure of the new state were a continuation of the long-standing feued between the National Democrats and the adherents of Piłsudski.

Dmowski and his followers, true to their belief that Germany was ’s principal enemy, aimed at extending the country as far as possible to the west, in order to make it a

‘buttress against the German Drang nach Osten’. In the memorandum Dmowski presented to President Wilson in October 1918 on behalf of the Polish National

Committee, he made large claims on Germany: Poznania, Pomerania, Upper Silesia and parts of East Prussia. He did not limit Polish claims in the east to those areas where there was a Polish minority, but demanded the whole of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, parts of Volhynia and Podolia and the whole of Galicia. In these areas he believed that

Polish cultural influence was dominant and their population could thus be assimilated to the Polish nation in a unitary and centralized state.

Piłsudski continued to regard Russia as the main threat to Polish independence.

Although he did not have his own party, he dominated political life in the first years on independence. Throughout the period from the establishment of the Paderewski government until the elections to the new parliament, which took place in November

1922, he retained the post of head of state as well as that of commander-in-chief, which he had resigned to parliament on 20 February and in which he had been unanimously - 3 - confirmed. Though he lacked a veto over domestic legislation, he played a major though not undisputed role in shaping foreign policy and was clearly the dominant figure in the army. Indeed, one of the most signicant developments in the first year of Polish independence was the great increase in the size of the army which grew from barely

30,000 officers and men on 11 November 1918 to over 600,000 by August 1919, organized in the autumn into twenty divisions.

Piłsudski continued to regard Russia as the main threat to Polish independence.

He opposed far-reaching claims in the west on the grounds that they would make impossible a satisfactory relationship with Germany. He saw in the weakening of Russia, caused by the revolution and civil war, the opportunity to ensure Poland’s security in the east by fostering the creation of national Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian states which would be federally linked with Poland. Though the were to be the dominant power in this federation, Piłsudski was almost certainly sincere in his claims that he respected the nationai aspirations of the Lithuanians, Belarusians and Ukrainians in these areas. The same could hardly be said for the Polish landowners here who saw in these federal schemes a means of safeguarding their estates. Poland probably lacked the resources to embark upon so grandiose a policy, but Pilsudski was convinced that only a powerful state of this type could maintain its independence against Germany and Russia.

As he asked rhetorically, was Poland ‘to be a state equal to the great world powers or a little state in need of the protection of the mighty?…[It is vital that Poland] should be the greatest power not only militarily, but also culturally, in the East.’1

The settlement of the frontiers of the new state preoccupied political life for the hrst two and a half years of independence. Indeed, the country only took the form it held - 4 - for most of the interwar period in March 1922, when the Vilna area was finally incorporated, and it was only in March 1923 that its frontiers were recognized by the

Allies. The Versailles treaty, finally signed on 28 June 1919, laid down the western frontiers of Poland. The settlement, partly as a result of the unwillingness of the British

Prime Minister, David Lloyd George to press Germany too hard, did not fully meet the

Polish claims. It assigned to Poland the province of Poznania, which had come under

Polish control as a result of an uprising on 27 December 1918 which had anticipated the peace treaty, some adjacent areas of Silesia and Pomerania (Pomorze), with access to the sea at Danzig. Danzig itself became a Free City, with Poland entrusted with the conduct of its foreign affairs and granted a customs area within it and use of the port, its railways and waterways. The future of disputed areas in East Prussia and Upper Silesia was to be decided by plebiscite. In Prussia the plebiscite took place in July when the Poles seemed about to be overwhelmed by the Red Army, but of greater importance was the tradition of long association with Germany and the use of administrative pressure. Only 2.2 per cent in Allenstein voted for amalgamation with Poland and 7.6 per cent in Marienwerder. The situation was different in Upper Silesia where the plebiscite took place after two Polish uprisings. The same factors were present as in East Prussia, but 40.3 per cent voted for

Poland, against 59.6 per cent for remaining part of Germany. The Poles, however, were in a majority in the more industrialized eastern districts. The fear that they might remain in Germany led to the third Silesian uprising on the night of 2-3 May 1921. Unable to agree among themselves on the future of Silesia, the Allies recommended to the Council of the League of Nations that the province be partitioned. Poland obtained most of the industrial and mining areas with a population of nearly a million, of whom about a - 5 - quarter were Germans. According to German statistics some 530,000 Poles remained within Germany. In truth the Polish government, being more concerned with the conflict with Soviet Russian and therefore wary of antagonizing the Western Powers, had been slow to support the Silesian insurgents. The special problems of Silesia led to the granting of wide autonomy, including a regional parliament dealing with all matters except foreign affairs, the army, the judiciary and tariffs. Polish Silesia continued to enjoy regional self-government until 1939.

The remaining source of conflict in the west was Austrian Silesia, of which the principal town was Teschen (Cieszyń). A provisional agreement was reached on 5

November 1918 between the Polish and Czech national committees which had sprung up in the area to divide the province on ethnic lines. This would, however, have left the railway from northern Bohemia to Slovakia in Polish hands, as well as the valuable coking coal deposits and metallurgical factories of the Karwina basin. It was therefore unacceptable to the Czechoslovak government, which took advantage of the

Polish-Ukrainian conflict in eastern Galicia to seize part of this area on 23 January 1919.

A truce was arranged by the Allies on 1 February with a new demarcation line favouring the Czechs. It was agreed that a final division of the territory was to be made by the

Supreme Allied Conference. Polish demands for a plebiscite, accepted by the Allies in

September, proved impossible to carry out and in July I920, at the height of the

Polish-Soviet war, the Allies decided at the Spa Conference in favour of Czechoslovakia.

As a result the area up to the left bank of the river Olża was incorporated into

Czechoslovakia with a Polish minority, overwhelmingly Protestant, amounting to

140,000 according to official Polish claims. This ostensibly minor dispute was to cast a - 6 - dark shadow over Polish-Czechoslovak relations throughout the inter-war period and after.

It was the settlement of the Polish eastern frontier which was to create most difficulty. Here not only did Piłsudski’s federal concepts conflict with the National

Democrat policy of a unitary state which would assimilate Lithuanians, Belarusians,

Ukrainians, but also created problems in the mixed-nationality areas between ethnic

Poland and ethnic Russia which involved the Russian Whites, the and the emergent nationalist groups. The Poles first clashed with the Bolsheviks when their troops, moving into the vacuum created by the collapse of the Ober-Ost, met one another at the small town of Bereza Kartuska in February 1919. The conflict assumed more serious dimensions in April, when Piłsudski captured Vilna, in his words, ‘the key to

Lithuanian-Belarusian affairs’. He failed, however, to win substantial support for his schemes from either the Lithuanians or the Belarusians. Lithuanian nationalism was fundamentally anti-Polish in character and Polish-Lithuanian relations deteriorated still further in August 1919 as a result of an attempted coup by the Polish Military

Organization (POW) aimed at placing a pro-Polish government in power at Kaunas

(Kovno). Among the Belarusians land-hunger and hostility to the largely Polish landlord class were stronger than anti-soviet nationalism. Piłsudski also failed in his attempt to obtain the backing of the Allies, and above all Britain, for his eastern schemes. This was largely because of his hostility to the Russian Whites, who in his view would, if they won the civil war, re-establish ‘Russia one and indivisible’, which would spell the end of his federal schemes. Indeed, all Allied attempts to sponsor an agreement between the Poles and the Whites foundered on this rock. Talks did take place between the two sides in July - 7 - and again in September 1919, but by October Piłsudski was observing with some satisfaction the increasingly obvious defeat of the Whites. This he thought was a necessary first stage in his plans for an agreement with Britain, but Britain was not in principle in favour of assigning Lithuania, , Volhynia and eastern Galicia to

Poland.

The main concern of the Soviet leaders at this stage was to win the civil war and to this end they were ready to conclude an unfavourable peace like that of Brest-Litovsk with Germany even at the price of the collapse of the Lithuanian-Belarusian Soviet

Republic established early in 1919. Thus from the spring of 1919 Soviet Russia, in spite of the opposition of some Polish communists, undertook discussions with the Polish government, which led to formal talks in July. Soviet Russia was represented at them by the veteran Polish communist, Julian Marchlewski, who was prepared to make far-reaching concessions, believing that any frontier settlement would be rapidly overturned by the world revolution. No agreement was reached and Piłsudski continued his advance, capturing Minsk on 8 August 1919, where he issued a manifesto on 19

September to the inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania promising to defend their national traditions.

The key to the conflict, however, was . Although the Poles were locked in a bitter conflict with the Ukrainians in eastern Galicia, over which they gained full control in July 1919, they nevertheless were able, for a time at least, to establish satisfactory relations with the Ukrainian national government in Kiev, which had established itself in Kiev. The agreement of May 1919 between the two parties was soon repudiated, but the capture of Kiev by the Whites at the end of August soon drove them - 8 - together again, the Whites having no sympathy for either Polish or Ukrainian aspirations.

The Bolsheviks were still determined to buy peace by ceding territory on their western frontiers and made successful approaches to Estonia in August, and to Finland, Latvia and Lithuania in September. In October they began talks with the Poles at the small

Byelorussian town of Mikashevichi. There has been some dispute over the reason for their breakdown, which became obvious in mid-December. Norman Davies, in his book on the Polish-Soviet War has argued that the Soviet aim was merely to buy time and that by the end of 1919 Lenin was in an expansionist mood. The debate in Soviet circles, it is suggested, ‘was not whether the Polish bridge should be crossed, but how and when’.

Piłsudski’s refusal to accept Soviet terms was thus a recognition of the impossibility of reaching a negotiated settlement. On the other hand it could be claimed that, although there was some support for the use of the Red Army to extend the revolution, the Soviet leaders, in view of the exhaustion and war-weariness of Russia, were in fact interested in an agreement. This is not to say that Piłsudski was not willing to reach a settlement.

Where he erred was in his overestimation of Soviet weakness and the determination of

Allied intervention. He wished to have a free hand in the borderlands and above all in the

Ukraine in return for the recognition of Bolshevik rule in Russia. This was too much for the Bolsheviks to accept, convinced as they were that Pilsudski’s eastern policy had the support of the Western Allies.

The failure of the Mikashevichi negotiations made an escalation of the conflict inevitable. With the fall of Paderewski’s government and the formation of a new cabinet under the more pliable the peasant leader, Leopold Skulski, in December 1919,

Pilsudski’s internal position seemed stronger. He took too little account, however, of - 9 - war-weariness in Poland, where the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) was leading a campaign for peace. The National Democrats likewise were hostile to his plans and he was still unable to obtain the British support upon which he had reckoned. He nevertheless continued with his policy, concluding in December an agreement for far-reaching political and economic cooperation with Symon Petliura, the Ukrainian nationalist leader.

Soviet Russia, while preparing for war, undertook also a peace offensive, making a far-reaching offer of territorial concessions to Poland in the hope of avoiding conflict.

The effect of this move on Western Europe was considerable, making Britain even more unwilling to support Polish plans. The Allied Supreme Council declared on 13 December

1919 that it was in the interest of the Allies that there should be a strong Poland, but

Britain’s position was essentially one of aiding Poland to defend herself rather than of encouraging her to adopt a forward policy in the east. Indeed, the Ambassadors’ Council in December 1919 proposed the so-called ‘Curzon Line’ as the frontier between Poland and Soviet Russia. This was a line which ran from the Carpathians west of Rawa Ruska to East Prussia, giving to Poland the region of Białystok, but not the northern part of the

Suwałki province inhabited by Lithuanians. In July 1920 Curzon was to ask the Soviet government to halt its forces on this line and undertake negotiations for peace. Pilsudski thus pursued his policy at his peril. He hoped to obtained still better terms from Soviet

Russia and in March 1920 proposed a settlement which would have recognized Polish dominance in Ukraine. Soviet Russia rejected this proposal, whereupon Pilsudski on 21

April concluded a political agreement with Petliura, supplemented three days later by a military convention. - 10 -

Early in May 1920 the Poles attacked. Pilsudski’s aim was to establish an independent Ukraine under Polish influence and at first his efforts were crowned with success, his troops capturing Kiev on 7 May. However, support for the Ukrainian national movement proved weak and the Poles were soon thrown back by the strong Soviet counter-offensive. As the Polish army retreated a debate took place in Bolshevik circles which in the end resulted in the decision to pursue the Polish forces into ethnic Poland and establish there a Polish Provisional Revolutionary Committee at Bialystok under the leadership of Julian Marchlewski which was to set up a Soviet state. Even at this stage the Western Allies showed reluctance to give assistance to Poland, but the Polish victory in the battle of on 6 August thrust back the Soviet army in disarray. On 25

August the Bolsheviks decided to seek a peace. Talks began in October and a peace treatry was hnally signed in Riga on 18 March 1921 which gave to Poland the western part of Byelorussia and eastern Galicia, which was to the west of a line proposed to

Poland by Soviet Russia in January 1920. In October 1920 Pilsudski organized a coup de main through one of his followers, Lucjan Żeligowski, at Vilna, which with the surrounding area was incorporated intoPoland in March 1922.

4. Conclusion

The effects of the war with Soviet Russia on Polish political life were enormous. It revived in a bitter form the antipathy towards Pilsudski among the National Democrats, for whom the advance upon Kiev had been an act of rash and even criminal folly.

Pilsudski for his part bitterly resented their attempts to belittle his role in the battle of - 11 -

Warsaw, which they claimed had been won by the French general, Weygand, though some in a spirit of compromise were prepared to ascribe the victory to divine intervention as ‘The Miracle on the Vistula’.

The war, apart from making difficult Polish-Soviet relations, embittered the

Belarusians, Ukrainians and in eastern Poland, who were subjected to harassment in the course of the military operations and treated as second-class citizens after their becoming

Polish citizens. The Poles showed little understanding for the desire of Jews in ethnically mixed areas to maintain a neutral posture in the national conflicts there, or, as in the case of

Vilna, to support the Lithuanian case. At the same time, the fact that Jews constituted a significant proportion of the communist leadership both in Russia and in Poland, and that a small percentage of the Jews had welcomed the Bolshevik revolution, was seized upon as a means of discrediting the post-war revolutionary wave as a primarily Jewish phenomenon.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the Polish-Soviet conflict was accompanied by a series of anti-Jewish outrages. In the areas where it was fought the towns, such as Vilna and Minsk, were largely Polish, with substantial Jewish minorities, while the countryside was largely

Lithuanian, Belarusian, or Ukrainian. Inevitably Jews were caught up in the conflict which resulted from the extension of Polish power into this region. In the first place, they suffered from the widespread breakdown of law and order. In the eyes of many of the Poles fighting in these areas, Jews and Bolsheviks were identified. Serious anti-Jewish excesses thus took place as the ill-disciplined and poorly paid troops of General Dowbór-Muśnicki, strengthened by volunteers from the local population and some Belarusian and Ukrainian nationalist formations moved eastwards, driving out the Bolsheviks. These incidents are documented in the unpublished diary of Stanisław Michal Kossakowski, adjutant of the Polish general - 12 - commission for the civil administration of the eastern territories, who also refers to the many former officers of the Tsarist Armies, who were of Polish origin and who shared the widespread view among the Russian Officer Corps that the Jews were responsible for the

Bolshevik revolution.2 They were explained in the following way by the socialist daily

Robotnik on 12 March 1919:

Clearly a significant factor is the quality of the soldiers making up the Lithuanian- Belarusian division. They are drawn almost exclusively from the forces established in Russia [after the February revolution] by General Dowbór-Muśnicki and have been seasoned by the marauding adventures of his 1st corps to play the role of brutal and ruthless troops. The special mission with which they were entrusted in Russia – the crushing of peasants and Jews - has clearly deformed them psychologically.

A particularly shocking incident took place in Pinsk, a town with a predominantly

Jewish population. It was occupied by Polish troops on 17 March without any fighting. On 5

April a meeting of about 100 people took place in the local Zionist club for the distribution of charity from Jewish institutions in the United States, including matzahs for Passover. The organizers believed they had received authorization from the local military authorities to hold the meeting. The local commander seems however to have believed a rumour which came to him that an illegal meeting of revolutionaries was taking place. He sent out a patrol, which arrested a fair number of people on a haphazard basis. On the night of 5 April, the panicky commander executed thirty-five of them, including women and children. The remainder were only saved as a result of the intercession of representatives of the principal charity involved, the American joint distribution committee, with the Polish authorities in Warsaw. 3

Pogrom-type outbreaks took place after the Poles took , , Vilna and a number of other towns. They aroused widespread shock and indignation in Western Europe and the United States.4 Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, was even provoked to write to

Paderewski in June 1919 calling on the Polish authorities to take steps to protect the Jews, to - 13 - which Paderewski replied that his government had ‘taken all the necessary measures referred to by your Excellency to check anti-Jewish movements in Poland’. At the same time he claimed that ‘the majority of racial conflicts are due to provocation both from within and without the country’.5

Indeed, the general reaction of Polish society was very disappointing to those who hoped that independence would lead to an improvement in Polish-Jewish relations. The antisemitic groups consistently denied that any organized anti-Jewish violence had occurred, or claimed, if it had, that it was the fault of the Jews themselves. Attempts to publicize what was taking place were attacked as part of a campaign to blacken the name of Poland and undermine Polish territorial claims. More alarming to the Jews was the attitude of some progressive and left-wing circles. In reply to a protest of the Swedish Social Democrats,

Ignacy Daszyński, a leading member of the Polish Socialist Party, replied that the in

Galicia were the work of Austrian marauders and that they were ‘directed against speculation’. He did concede that unfortunately some innocent people had suffered In June

1919, but denied that any pogroms had taken place in Poland and declared: ‘If somebody falls victim to street battles, in struggles as bitter as those for the possession of Lwów, Lida or

Vilna, they cannot be called victims of pogroms.’6 Yet in all these cases, most Jewish casualties occurred after the fighting was over.

These attitudes were not universally shared. In , the PPS-dominated council of workers’ delegates in Warsaw voted unanimously to condemn the pogroms, which it claimed were being organized by reactionaries. A similar motion was unanimously adopted after the Pinsk massacre, holding the army responsible for what had taken place. Similarly, the parliamentary faction of the PPS severely censured the army for the excesses which had - 14 - occurred after the capture of Lublin in April 1919. The wave of anti-Jewish incidents was also condemned by the former Austro-Hungarian Minister of Finance, Leo

Biliński, who was to hold high office in post-war Poland, by General Alexander Babiański and by Professor Baudoin de Courtenay. The eminent Polish writer Andrzej Strug made a public protest against what he called the ‘conspiracy of silence’ in government circles and in the press concerning the antisemitic atrocities.7

Military expenditure strained an already overburdened treasury. Victory bequeathed to the Polish army a completely false sense of reality. While the Reichswehr in Germany and the Red Army began to consider the techniques of mechanized warfare, the senior officers of the Polish army basked in the glory of 1920 and adhered to the concept of the overriding role of the cavalry. The lack of support from France and Britain induced in the mind of official Poland a belief in their country’s capacity to rely upon its own resources. The facts of the case were different. Poland was a state of second magnitude, beset with internal difficulties accentuated by the neglect attendant upon partition. With the temporary eclipse of Germany and Russia, illusion could enjoy the appearance of reality, but the ultimate reality was that Poland lay exposed to grave dangers.

Perhaps the most judicious summary is that of Piotr Wandycz:

…one can perhaps blame Piłsudski for undertaking, largely on his own, a most dangerous operation, which Poland was not strong enough to carry through. Undoubtedly, the Kievan expedition was a gamble, but if Piłsudski had overestimated Polish capabilities and Soviet weaknesses, the temptation to reverse the course of the last 200 hundred years of history was overwhelming. Indeed, only a realization of this great eastern design might have made Poland sufficiently powerful to withstand external pressures. With the Peace of Riga in 1921, Poland became a middle-size state too large to be anyone’s satellite, but too small and too weak to be a great power. Many of the subsequent problems of Polish diplomacy stemmed from this half-way house position.8 - 15 -

1 Józef Piłsudski, Pisma zbiorowe, Warsaw, 1937-8, V, pp.137-8.

2 This is to be found in the archives of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

3 On the events in Pinsk, see J. Tomaszewski, ‘Pinsk, Saturday 5 April 1919’, POLIN, 1,

Oxford, 1986, 227–51 J. Lewandowski, ‘History and Myth: Pinsk, April 1919’, POLIN, 2,

Oxford, 1987, 50-72; La Situation des Juifs en Pologne. Rapport de la commission d’etude designee par la Conference Socialiste Internationale de Lucerne, Brussels, , 1920, 219-

30; A. Shohat, ‘Parashat hapogrom bepinsk behamishah be-april 1919, Gal Ed, 7, (Tel Aviv,

1973),

4 La Situation des Juifs en Pologne, 22.

5 For the foreign reaction, see Korzec, ‘Problem żydowski w życiu politycznym Polski 1900-

1939’ (ms in the possession of Antony Polonsky), 110-119: W. Stankiewicz, A. Piber (eds.)

Archiwum Polityczne Ignacego Paderewskiego, (Ossolineum, 1973), II, 219, 229-30

6 La Situation des Juifs en Pologne, 65-6.

7 Korzec, ‘Problem…’ 149-153.

8P. Wandycz, Polish Diplomacy 1914-1945; Aims and Achievements, p.16