Adam Zamoyski - Warsaw 1920

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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