How Poland Saved the World from Russia

National Interest ^ | April 3, 2016 | Michael Peck

[C19fan]

In the summer of 1920, Russia seemed poised to take over Europe.

Newly victorious in the Russian Civil War, but convinced that the capitalists were bent on strangling the cradle of Communism, the Bolsheviks looked for salvation. Their gaze fell on Germany, exhausted and embittered by defeat in the First World War, and now engulfed in civil strife between Communist revolutionaries and protofascist freikorps paramilitaries. If only the Red Army's bayonets could install a Bolshevik regime in Berlin, then the two most powerful states in Central and Eastern Europe would be united in a Communist monolith. And from there, perhaps Communism would spread to Italy, France, Hungary and beyond. Could Marx's prediction of world revolution finally be at hand?

[C19fan]

The Miracle on the Vistula is the most underrated event in modern history. For the 2nd time in history the Poles saved the West. The Leninists were pretty explicit about not just stopping on Poland but marching to Berlin.

[Leaning Right]

Good post, it’s an important piece of history.

[marktwain]

Thank you for this article.

[PGR88]

Interesting how Pilsudski said 100 years ago, that an independent Ukraine is the key to an independent Poland.

[rmlew]

Sadly, the Ukranians threw their lot in with the communists and blamed all their resulting misfortunes on Jews.

[dfwgator]

And Stalin did not forget about this when he made the deal with Hitler in 1939.

[dfwgator]

Ukrainians slaughtered many Christian Poles as well during WWII.

[rmlew]

Ukrainians slaughtered many Christian Poles as well during WWII.
My father was born in Polish Eastern Galicia (now part of Ukraine) in 1932 and My mother's parents were Polish. I know the religious, ethnic, and nationalist bloodletting of the World War 2 in the area all too well.

[dfwgator]

And yet Pilsudski couldn’t bring himself to support the Whites in the Ukraine, because he saw them as a bigger threat than the Bolsheviks, whom at the time he felt would weaken Russia if they were in power.

[pa_dweller]

Ukrainians slaughtered many Christian Poles as well during WWII.

The Poles took revenge after the war with some ethnic cleansing of their own.

Savage Continent

[tlozo]

the Ukranians threw their lot in with the communists

Poland broke the Treaty of Warsaw(1920) and signed the Polish-Soviet Peace of Riga next year, Ukrainian territory found itself split between the Ukrainian SSR in the east, and Poland in the west (Galicia and part of Volhynia). Pilsudski felt the agreement was a shameless and short-sighted political calculation. Allegedly, having walked out of the room, he told the Ukrainians waiting there for the results of the Riga Conference: "Gentlemen, I deeply apologize to you".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Warsaw_%281920%29

Jozef Pilsudski and Symon Petliura (1920)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks C19fan.

[Fiddlstix]

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[Cronos]

The article gets most right except " As always, the Jews were victims: Polish and Russian troops both continued their traditions of looting and murdering them at will." -- Poles never had a "tradition" of looting and murdering Jews. In the commonwealth (i.e. when Poland existed pre 1791) there were no pogroms and Jews were under the direct protection of the (elected) king.

From 1791 to 1919 Poland did not exist, so what "tradition" is the author talking about?

[colorado tanker]

Thanks for the reminder. I didn’t even learn of this as a history major, but learned about it in later reading. A very important event little known in America.