THE MODERN POLISH FRONTIERS 377The conflict with Lithuania centred on the future of Wilno - in Lithuanian,
Vilnius; in Russian, Vilna; in German, Wilna. Although there were strong sen-
timental ties with Lithuania among all sections of Polish opinion, and hope in
some quarters for a federal union, there was no serious objection to the creation
of the Lithuanian national state. The trouble arose when the Lithuanian gov-
ernment in Kaunas (Kowno) not only laid claim to Wilno, but also declared it
to be the capital of their Republic. As the Lithuanian-speaking element in the
city did not exceed 5 per cent, the Polish majority there was not slow to protest.
(The situation was analogous to that in the Celtic fringe of Great Britain, where
a Welsh-speaking separatist movement might some day lay claim to Cardiff, or
a Gaelic-speaking Republic of Scotland might have pretensions to the ancient
capital of Edinburgh.) Furthermore, whilst the German army was supporting
the Lithuanian nationalists, the Soviets were supporting the Lithuanian com-
munists and the Polish Army was fighting them all. After the first occupation of
Wilno by the Poles, the Supreme Allied Council proposed the so-called Foch
Line, to keep the Polish and Lithuanian forces apart pending negotiations. But
their intervention proved vain. In the course of the local Civil War and the
Polish-Soviet War, Wilno was successively occupied by the German
Oberkommando Ost; by the nationalist Taryba (1917-18); by the Polish
Samoobrona (Self-defence) from December 1918 to January 1919; by the com-
munist Lithuanian-Byelorussian SSR, from January to April 1919; by the Polish
Army, from April 1919 to July 1920; and by the Russian Red Army, who on 14
July 1920 promptly handed it over to the Lithuanians. Its fate was sealed for the
duration on 9 October 1920, when Pibudski organized a fictional mutiny in his
Polish Army in order to recover the city for Poland without offending openly
against an Allied warning not to do so. After two years of nominal independ-
ence, the resultant state of Central Lithuania held elections to determine its
future. Its request to be incorporated into the Polish Republic was granted by
the Sejm in Warsaw in March 1922, and was eventually recognized by the
Supreme Allied Council; but it was never accepted by the Lithuanian govern-
ment in Kaunas.^18 Twenty years later, the Soviet authorities played the same
sort of game, but in a much cruder manner. Having occupied Lithuania by force,
and deported almost one-quarter of the electorate, they staged a fictional elec-
tion to confirm the Lithuanians' request to be incorporated into the USSR. (See
Map 20a.)
Poland's dispute with the Ukrainians involved a similarly complicated local
conflict, and was ultimately settled in exactly the same way- by Soviet coercion.
Here again, although Polish opinion looked on the creation of an independent
Ukraine with favour, there were strong reservations about its proper limits. The
prime political motive of Piisudski's march on Kiev, for example, was to revive
the fortunes of Petlura's Ukrainian Directorate as a buffer against Russia.
Tragically, from the Ukrainian point of view, the Poles were willing to support
the erection of a Ukrainian state within the bounds of the former Russian
Empire, but not within the frontiers of Galicia. As a result, the Ukrainian