Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

What had essentially been, throughout 1919, a low-level border conflict, was thus primed to erupt into full-scale war. By April 1920, the Red Army had over 700,000 troops concentrated on its Western Front and South-West Front facing Poland; the Poles could draw on an army of approximately the same number. Anticipating a Soviet offensive, Piłsudski launched his own (“Operation Kiev”) on 24 April 1920. This was a joint operation, with the Polish 3rd Army (under General Edward Rydz-Śmigły), 6th Army (under General Wacław Iwaszkiewicz), and 2nd Army (under General Listowski) advancing into Ukraine alongside the two remaining divisions (around 15,000–30,000 men) of S. V. Petliura’s Ukrainian Army. It was initially a remarkable success; Kiev was captured on 7 May 1920. Preparations were then made for an offensive against Żłobin, to secure the most direct rail route between Kiev and Minsk (then in Polish hands). However, the Polish and Ukrainian attackers had failed in their objective to entrap defending Soviet forces, and the 12th Red Army and 14th Red Army had both retreated beyond the Dnepr in good order. On 15 May 1920, a Red counteroffensive was duly launched on the South-West Front (commanded by A. I. Egorov), with S. M. Budennyi’s 1st Cavalry Army joining the fray. Bolstered by over 100,000 new volunteers (responding to a flood of Soviet agitprop directed toward rousing anti-Polish feeling) and some 14,000 new officer volunteers (answering a call by the former tsarist commander General A. N. Brusilov urging fellow officers to join the Red Army), by 10 June 1920 the Red Army had Polish forces in retreat along the entire front and on 13 June 1920 recaptured Kiev. Over the following weeks, the Poles attempted a series of counterattacks (at Usza on 19 June, at Horyń on 1 July, and at Równe on 8 July), but Egorov and Budennyi’s men pressed on.

Meanwhile, an offensive was launched, on 4 July 1920, by Soviet forces to the north, commanded by M. N. Tukhachevskii and comprising an army group made up of the 3rd Cavalry Corps, the 4th Red Army, the 15th Red Army, the 3rd Red Army, and the 16th Red Army (a total of some 108,000 infantry and 11,000 cavalry, backed by 722 artillery pieces and almost 3,000 machine guns). Facing them were around 120,000 troops of the 1st and 4th Polish Armies and Group Polesie, backed by some 460 artillery pieces. Again the Reds were successful, capturing Wilno/Vil′na on 14 July and Grodno on 19 July 1920 (and thereby sealing the secret military alliance with Lithuania that was an annex to the Soviet–Lithuanian Treaty of Moscow of 12 July 1920). On 1 August 1920, Brest-Litovsk fell, and that same day Red forces crossed the Narew and Western Bug Rivers, while in the south Polish forces had been pushed entirely out of Ukraine, and Budennyi was closing on Zamość and Lwów (now defended by the Polish 6th Army under General Władysław Jędrzejewski). At this point, however, the situation in the south improved for Poland, as the Polish 2nd Army recaptured Brody (2 August). Polish spirits were also lifted by the supportive activities of a strong French military mission in Warsaw (which included Marshal Foch’s chief of staff, Maxime Weygand, and a young Charles de Gaulle); by the activities of the Kościuszko Squadron of the Polish air force, which was manned by Polish American volunteers; and by the arrival of shipments of military supplies from Hungary, although the labor movements in France, Britain, and elsewhere (united in the “Hands Off Russia” campaign) were mostly critical of the Polish invasion of Ukraine. This sentiment struck something of a chord with Lloyd George, whose government had just entered negotiations with the Soviet government that would eventually lead to the Anglo–Soviet Trade Agreement. Poles have consequently always insisted (probably justly) that they alone were responsible for what then ensued.