God’s Playground. A History of Poland, Vol. 2. 1795 to the Present

374 GRANICE

the western Neisse River and along the western Neisse River to the Czechoslovak fron-
tier, including that portion of East Prussia not placed under the administration of the
USSR... and including the area of the former free city of Danzig, shall be under the
administration of the Polish State and for such purposes should not be considered as part
of the Soviet Zone of Occupation of Germany.^12

In practical terms, it mattered little that the intended Peace Conference was

never held. The Oder-Neisse frontier was recognized on 6 July 1950 by the

German Democratic Republic, which had been established in the former Soviet

Zone of Occupation. Thus the 'Recovered Territories'became an integral part

of Poland long before international recognition of the fact was gran ted; Danzig

became 'Gdansk'; Breslau, 'Wroclaw'; and Stettin, 'Szczecin'.^13

Poland's eastern frontier has generated the greatest controversies of all. Its

fortunes were bound up with the internecine history of the Polish-Russian bor-

ders, whose inhabitants contained relatively few Poles and no Russians, but

whose ground had been disputed between Poland and Russia for centuries. In

the twentieth century, the furthest Polish claim was made by Dmowski at the

Peace Conference when he demanded the line of 1772.. (Even Dmowski dis-

played a certain moderation, and avoided any mention of the Rzeczpospolita's,

eastern frontier at its greatest extent in 1634.) The traditional Russian claim,

preferred by Tsarist and Soviet regimes alike, coincided with the frontier of the

Russian Vistula Provinces prior to 1912 on the Bug. In between these two

extremes lay the vast expanse of the so-called 'ULB Area' (Ukraine, Lithuania,

Byelorussia), and a whole graveyeard of short-lived compromises. Leaving aside

proposals of minor importance, at least eight major proposals were put forward

between 1919 and 1945 (see Map 19):

1. The revised Provisional Demarcation Line proposed on 8 December by the
   Polish Commission of the Peace Conference in Paris. As this line referred
   exclusively to the proposals for the territories of the former Russian Empire,
   it stopped short on the old Russo-Austrian frontier, and did not extend into
   Eastern Galicia. It was never adopted by the Supreme Allied Council, and
   never formally presented to either the Poles or the Soviets.


2. The Dryssa - Bar line described in the Soviet Peace Note of 28 January 1920.
   This was more generous to Poland in territorial terms than the Allied
   Demarcation Line, and was recommended for acceptance by the Foreign
   Relations Committee of the Sejm in their report to the Chief-of-State. Owing
   to the breakdown of relations between the two parties in April 1920, it was
   never officially discussed.^14


3. The Spa Conference Line was agreed in discussions between the British and
   Polish Prime Ministers, Lloyd George and Wladyslaw Grabski on 10 July
   1920. According to this agreement, the Polish-Russian frontier was to follow
   the Provisional Demarcation Line in the northern sector and the battlefront
   of the Polish and Soviet armies on the southern sector in East Galicia. It left
   Lwow (Lemberg) on the Polish side.