376 GRANICE
- The Curzon Line, approved by the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, on
instructions drawn up at Spa, was described in a telegram sent from the
Foreign Office in London to Moscow on 11 July 1920. It was rejected by the
Soviet Government one week later. Very curiously, it contained a serious
discrepancy. Contrary to the intentions of its sponsors, its description of the
proposed frontier in the southern, Galician sector, 'west of Rawa Ruska, and
east of Przemysl to the Carpathians' did not coincide with the terms of the Spa
agreement, and would have left Lwow on the Soviet side. This discrepancy,
deriving most probably from a clerical error committed in London by diplo-
matic staff using maps and notes prepared earlier by Lewis Namier, caused
great confusion in Allied counsels when it was discovered in changed circum-
stances in 1943.^15 - The line proposed by the Soviet representative, Adolf Joffe, at the outset of
Polish—Soviet negotiations at Riga on 24 September 1920. At this moment of
military defeat, the Soviet Government was prepared to make concessions to
the Poles not far short of the 1772 frontier, on condition only that a ceasefire
was arranged within ten days. On the advice of Stanistaw Grabski, the
National Democratic member, the Polish Delegation declined Joffe's over-
gene-rous offer, choosing to fix a line 'more conducive to good neighbourly
relations'.^16 - The final Riga Armistice Line, agreed between Joffe and Dabski was signed
on 12 October 1920. It formed the basis of the territorial clauses of the Treaty
of Riga of 18 March 1921, and acted as the formal frontier between the Polish
Republic and the USSR until 1939. - The Nazi-Soviet Demarcation line of 28 September 1939 coincided very
closely with the limits of the old Congress Kingdom. - The Polish-Soviet frontier of 1945.
Of all these lines, the Riga Line alone possessed moral validity. Freely agreed by
the two contracting parties, it was free from all external sanctions. Its violation by
the Red Army on 17 September 1939 represented a clear case of international
aggression. However, it should not be forgotten that the Treaty of Riga effectively
partitioned Lithuania, Byelorussia, and Ukraine without reference to the wishes of
the population. By so doing, it obliged the Polish Government to abandon all
thoughts of sponsoring a federation of independent nations on its eastern border.^17
Frontier negotiations between Poland and the USSR have frequently been
diverted by the presence in the border area of separatist movements whose
wishes coincided neither with those of the Poles, nor with those of the Russians.
In that twilight era between the retreat of the Tsarist Empire in 1915 and the cre-
ation of the USSR in 1922, several nationalities seized the opportunity, as the
Poles did, to establish independent states of their own. Of these, the Lithuanian
Republic survived for twenty-three years, from 1917 to 1940; the West
Ukrainian People's Republic for only nine months, from November 1918 to July- Both came into direct conflict with the Polish Republic.