2.92. NIEPODLEGLOSC
The collapse of all established order in Central and Eastern Europe con-
demned the infant Republic to a series of nursery brawls. In 1918-21, six wars
were fought concurrently.^3 The Ukrainian War, which started in Lwow in
November 1918 and ended with the collapse of the West Ukrainian Republic in
July 1919, established Polish control over East Galicia as far as the River
Zbrucz. The Posnanian War with Germany which erupted on 27 December
1918 was settled by the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919; but the Silesian
War, prosecuted intermittently through the three Risings - 16-24 August 1919,
19-25 August 1920, and 2 May - 5 July 1921 - was not settled until the Silesian
Convention, signed in Geneva in 1922. The Lithuanian War, which disputed
possession of the city of Wilno (Vilnius), began in July 1919 and continued in
practice to the truce of October 1920; in theory, in the absence of a formal peace
treaty, it continued throughout the inter-war period. The Czechoslovak War,
launched on 26 January 1919 by the Czechoslovak invasion of Cieszyn (Tesin)
in abrogation of a local agreement, was terminated by Allied arbitration on 28
July 1920. Minor conflicts in Spisz (Spis) and elsewhere in the Carpathians per-
sisted till 1925. Gravest of all was the Soviet War, which alone threatened the
Republic's existence. This was an ordeal by fire, which left an enduring mark.
(See Map 12.)
The Polish-Soviet War had implications far beyond those which most text-
books allow. It was not related to the Russian Civil War which proceeded con-
currently on other fronts; it was not waged by the Poles as part of Allied
Intervention in Russia, and cannot be described as 'The Third Campaign of the
Entente'. For the government of Pilsudski, who preferred the Bolsheviks to the
Whites in Russia, it was fought to maintain the independence of non-Russian
areas of the former Tsarist Empire. For the government of Lenin, it was fought
to re-create that Empire in socialist guise, and to spread the Revolution to the
advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe. It was caused in the first place
by the Germans' withdrawal from the intervening zone of occupation, the Ober-
Ost, in February 1919, and continued without a break until 12 October 1920.^4
The Soviet War grew out of the first unplanned skirmish which occurred at
Bereza Kartuska in Byelorussia on 14 February 1919. In the first phase, in 1919,
the initiative lay with the Poles. Pileudski's home city, Wilno, was recaptured in
April and Minsk was taken in August. Yet in the autumn, in spite of urgent pleas
from the Entente, Polish support for the advance of Denikin's Whites against
Moscow was expressly withheld. Peace talks miscarried owing to mutual suspi-
cions over the future of the Ukraine. In 1920, the action expanded dramatically.
Over one million men were deployed on a swiftly moving front stretching from
Latvia in the north to Romania in the south. From January onwards, the Red
Army was constructing a huge strike force of 700,000 men on the Berezina. On
10 March the Soviet Command gave orders for a major offensive to the west
under the 27-year-old General, Mikhail Tukhachevsky. But Pilsudski nipped
these preparations in the bud. A sharp attack at Mozyrz in March, the daring
march on Kiev launched on 24 April, and the fiercely contested Battle of the