Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

In the spring Stalin was sent to bolster the defence of Petrograd, which was threatened by General Yudenich’s White Army based in Estonia. For several months he was a highly visible figure of authority in the Petrograd area, touring the front line and inspecting military bases. In October 1919 Stalin went to the Southern Front to help with the defence of the southern approaches to Moscow, which were threatened by General Denikin’s troops.

Stalin’s next assignment was the South-West Front, whose forces were attacked by the armies of newly independent Poland in April 1920. Recreated in the aftermath of the First World War, the new Polish state was carved out of territory that belonged to Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Tsarist Russia. Its border with Russia was demarcated by an international commission headed by the British foreign secretary, Lord Curzon. This border, which became known as the ‘Curzon Line’, was unacceptable to the Poles, who decided to grab as much territory as they could while civil war raged in Russia.

Headed by Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the Poles’ campaign went well at first, but the Red Army soon halted and then reversed their advances. The question arose of taking the fight into Polish territory, with the aim of defeating Piłsudski and inspiring a proletarian revolution in Poland that would then spread to Germany and the rest of Europe. Stalin was cautious as he had already experienced many rapid advances and reverses during the civil war. His front had to contend also with Baron Wrangel’s White forces based in Crimea. In an interview with Pravda in mid-July, Stalin said:

our successes on the anti-Polish Front are unquestionable. . . . But it would be unbecoming boastfulness to think that the Poles are as good as done with, that all that remains for us to do is to ‘march on Warsaw’. . . . It is ridiculous to talk of a ‘march on Warsaw’ . . . as long as the Wrangel danger has not been eliminated.⁶³

But when asked by Lenin how the government should respond to a ceasefire proposal from Curzon, Stalin cabled, on 13 July, that

the Polish armies are completely falling apart. . . . I don’t think imperialism has ever been as weak as it is now, at the moment of Poland’s defeat, and we have never been as strong as we are now, so the more resolutely we behave ourselves, the better it will be for Russia and for international revolution.⁶⁴

The party central committee duly decided to invade Poland. And on 23 July the Politburo established a Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee.⁶⁵

The Red Army’s thrust into Poland was initially quite successful. As it approached Warsaw, delegates to the Second World Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) meeting in Moscow were thrilled by Lenin’s charting of the Red Army’s progress on a large-scale war map.⁶⁶

Stalin got rather carried away, too. On 24 July he wrote to Lenin:

It would be a sin not to encourage revolution in Italy now that we have the Comintern, a beaten Poland and a reasonable Red Army while the Entente is trying to obtain a breathing space for the Polish army so it can be reorganised and rearmed. . . . The Comintern should consider organising an uprising in Italy and in weak states such as Hungary and Czechoslovakia (Romania has to be smashed, too).⁶⁷

Among the formations under Stalin’s remit as the South West Front’s Bolshevik commissar was Semen Budenny’s First Cavalry Army. In mid-August Budenny was ordered by Moscow (the Bolshevik capital since March 1918) to support the Red Army’s campaign to capture Warsaw. Amid continuing concerns about the threat from Wrangel, Stalin, who had his eye on taking Lvov not Warsaw, refused to counter-sign the order.⁶⁸ While the delay in Budenny’s redeployment did not help matters, the Red Army’s offensive was probably doomed anyway, not least because the anticipated proletarian insurrection in Poland failed to materialise. By the end of August the Poles had repulsed the attack on Warsaw and the Red Army was in full-scale retreat. Lenin was forced to sue for peace and then, in March 1921, to sign the Treaty of Riga, an agreement that imposed severe territorial losses on Soviet Russia, notably the incorporation into Poland of western Belorussia and western Ukraine, territories that were populated mainly by Belorussians, Ukrainians and Jews.