Warsaw 1920

Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe by Adam Zamoyski, HarperPress, 2008.

Russian Civil War

During the Russian Civil War, just after World War I, when the Communist Red Army was fighting the White Army in the East and South, Lenin tried to spread his Bolshevik revolution westward into Poland. The Red Army greatly outnumbered the Polish Army. Nevertheless, Lenin was stopped by the Polish Army, lead by Jozef Pilsudski. This book makes it clear that Europe owes a great debt to Poland, for stopping the Bolsheviks from spreading their revolution to Europe. Because of the courage of the Poles, Eastern Europe remained free for the two decades between the two world wars.

The European Worker Do Not Revolt

The Bolsheviks expected that the workers of Europe would be happy to be liberated by them. But things turned out otherwise. The Bolsheviks appealed to the workers in Europe to block supplies from reaching the Polish Army, but this had limited success. The Red Army presented itself as liberators, who were freeing the Poles from their class oppressors, but the Polish people saw things in traditional nationalistic terms and were motivated by patriotism. Also, the Polish Roman Catholic Church opposed the Communists.

Kiev

During the war between the Red Army and the Polish Army, the Polish Army actually captured Kiev at one point, but was pushed back to the Vistula river, just east of Warsaw. The Red Army also captured Vilnius, and then Brzesc three weeks later.

Warsaw

The Red Army planned to attack Warsaw from its northeast, cutting off the railway line from Gdansk to Warsaw. The NE plan had the drawback of leaving its southern flank exposed. Orders came from Moscow that the southern Red Army should relocate to protect this southern flank.

Stalin

But Stalin and Yegorov ignored the order. Part of the southern Red Army was told to move eastward to the Crimea to fight the White Army. But Stalin ignored that, too. Stalin wanted to conquer the central and southern parts of eastern Europe: Lwow, Silesia and Hungary.

Peace of Riga

A ceasefire was agreed upon on 16 October 1920. A peace treaty was signed in Riga, Latvia on 18 March 1921. Because the Poles stopped the Red Army, there followed twenty years of freedom for eastern Europeans.

Baltic States

Between World War I and World War II, the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania) were free from Soviet control and able to develop democratic institutions. The author suggests that these twenty years of freedom produced individuals with the memory of freedom who were able to lead the Baltic nations and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union In 1991.