Book Review

Exporting Revolution 1920

The Polish/Soviet war in 1920 regularly gets a mention in books dealing with European  and Soviet history.  In the main it is dealt with briefly or as a footnote.  This is a little surprising, given the dramatis personae involved in the War, including such major political figures as Pilsudski, Tukhachevsky, Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, De Gaulle and Kamenev—to mention but a few.  Adam Zamoyski’s book, Warsaw 1920—Lenin’s Failed Conquest Of Europe,WARSAW, deals with the military dimension.  As I’m something of a military nerd, my interest was in its detailed study of the military strategy and tactical operations in that war. 

This, in itself, isn’t without a distinct political interest:  for example, it is received wisdom in Western historical circles that Stalin developed a personal grudge against General Tukhachevsky which led to his execution in 1936.  And again:  that the Soviet defeat ended Bolshevik delusions about World Revolution, leading to the ideological alternative of Socialism in One Country.  

Zamoyski’s book doesn’t deal with such Soviet concerns:  it deals with the military strategy and its consequences for Polish independence.  Adam Zamoyski is a Polish nationalist with a liberal-democratic disposition.  I suspect there isn’t much difference in his attitude to Soviet, Tsarist, and modern Russia. 

The Russian Revolution of 1917 and subsequent Civil War provides the backdrop to the Polish/Soviet War.  Soviet ideology held that Socialism was to be achieved in highly industrialised countries, like Germany and Britain:  not in overwhelmingly agrarian countries like Russia.  Lenin’s answer to this ideological conundrum was the exportation of revolution into Western Europe.  It is doubtful that the French and Germans would have welcomed the Red Army if it had arrived on their borders, it was a certainty that the Poles wouldn’t—they had just achieved their independence from Russia!  Unlike Lenin, Stalin was unconvinced with the idea—he understood the power of nationalism a good deal more than the other Bolsheviks.  He nevertheless went along with the invasion, albeit, with his customary pragmatism. 

The author, not surprisingly, presents Jozef Pilsudski as the hero of the book—a quibble or two aside, I would say, deservedly so. Pilsudski was a larger-than-life figure, born into the lower nobility he was quintessentially the Polish patriot, who initially embraced Socialism, seeing it as the only force that could challenge the Tsarist grip on Poland.  He spent time in Russian and German gaols and was a polemist, agitator, urban guerrilla, terrorist and bank robber:  He was also a self-taught military strategist.  Stalin mirrored some of these activities but, unlike Pilsudski, his actions are seen as character flaws rather than colourful virtues.  Both men learned their military skills commanding large formations of soldiers in the heat of battle.

This conflict was of necessity a cavalry war, where manoeuvres were highly mobile and ’Big Arrow’ in nature.  I read somewhere that the Soviet General, Mikhail Tukhachesky, who led the Red Army into Poland, used unique tactics—later codified into his famous theory of deep operation in which combined armed services destroy the enemy’s rear and logistics.  In fact, this is nonsense, he sought to break through the enemy’s weak spot in order to outflank his main force,  a standard tactic for centuries!  Tukhachevsky had little communication with different sections of his army and precious little coordination between Fronts.  The Poles were little better, although they used their few aeroplanes for reconnaissance purposes and had closer contact with their general command in Warsaw.  The newly-created Polish Army had a serious weakness:  it was an amalgamation of three different military traditions:  German, Russian and Austrian. 

The Red cavalry’s principal strength lay in its uncanny speed of movement and its “savage reputation as a kind of latter-day Mongol Horde”.  It marched, not in disciplined columns, but in loose order—giving the impression of vast numbers on the move and, since it lived off the land, it left behind a desert, as well as a trail of blood.  But the lack of evident discipline had a kind of organic harmony which give its movement cohesion and a strong tactical sense when it came to fighting.  I doubt if the Polish peasants felt liberated as it passed over their land!  Only a segment of totally impoverished Jews were prepared to support the Red Army.  This, needless to say, didn’t endear them to the Poles and fed into their already virulent antisemitism. 

The only successful combination of firepower with mobility on either side was the use of the Russian tachanka gun mounted on the back of horse-buggy.  It could deliver withering fire at close range and gallop away still firing.  Its prime function was an adjunct to cavalry, and it helps explain why and how cavalry emerged as an arm in its own right and a crucial one during this war.  It also explains why Soviet Generals like Budionny stubbornly held on to the belief in cavalry tactics and mass formation doctrine long after their usefulness in modern warfare had been successfully challenged during the contentious military debates in the 1920s and 30s.

The cavalry of the respective sides in the Polish campaign encapsulated the fundamental characteristics of the two armies:  the less numerous Poles relied on smaller, trained and equipped units operating according to the established rules of war;  the Russians on vast numbers of, often, entirely unsuitable men—equipped with whatever was at hand—and on improvisation and on ignoring received methods in order to exploit any situation.  This would prove an advantage, given the terrain.  The Front at the beginning in 1920 was over a thousand kilometres long, but only half of this could be used for military operations;  the geographical configuration of the theatre was such that the range of possible manoeuvres was rather limited.  (There are a swath of lake lands and forests towards the East, while on the South there is the Carpathian Mountains and River Dniester. The Eastern edge is open to Russia.)

Before Lenin had finalised his plans to invade Poland, Pilsudski had kicked off the War with a military failure and a diplomatic blunder.  In conjunction with a small and motley formation of Western Ukrainians, Pilsudski invaded Ukraine with the intention of capturing Kiev.  While the agenda of Ukrainians was an independent Ukraine, Pilsukski entertained a grander plan:  the creation of a greater Polish Federation, stretching to the Crimea.  However, his first aim was the crushing of two Russian armies—he failed in this objective, as they managed to escape his encirclement.  The Ententecountries were miffed at Pilsukski for starting a war, thinking that the Poles would be beaten.  They intervened with a proposal to separate both countries along the so-called ‘Curzon Line’.  But Lenin wasn’t interested. 

The Russians operated on two Fronts, the exhausted armies of the South-West, under the capable Alexander Yegorov and his political officer, Stalin.  The militarily worthless Voroshilov was also in attendance, while the dashing Budionny operated somewhat independently on the Front’s flank.  The main Front was in the North, under the highly intelligent and able (albeit,  egotistical) Mikhail Tukhachevsky.  On his flank was the quick-thinking General G.D. Gai.  The ideologue, Sergie Kamenev, was nominally the overall Commander in Chief, based initially in Ukraine, with Lenin playing armchair general back in Moscow.  Communication between these command centres were of necessity, erratic.  The battles in the South were hard fought, continuous and confusing, and far from being suitable in taking directions by written orders from afar—especially when that command and control was unable to keep up with a very fluid fighting situation. 

The main trust was given to Tukhachevsky, who was expected to take Warsaw in six weeks, a distance of 700 hundred kilometres.  This meant he could not afford to stop and fight any set-piece battles along the way;  however, the plan envisaged the destruction of the forces before him.  Speed was of the essence.  Such tactics had worked against the White Generals Kolchak and Deniken:  the enemy had melted away during retreats. 

Deaths were made up by desertions and supplies from captured enemy materiel.  Zamoyski argues that Tukhachevsky did not admit to any difference between the White Armies and the Polish ones and assumed that the Polish State would crumble in the face of the Russian advance:  He saw “this war entirely in ideological not national terms”.  Certainly, Lenin and Trotsky did.  Stalin on the other hand, realised the Poles would respond differently, because he had a greater understanding of nationalism, which had informed his earlier reservations to the war.  Needless to say, the author fails to note Stalin’s views:  as to do so would contradict the accepted cartoon characterisation of him in Western Soviet histories!

Despite Tukhachevsky’s success in causing the demoralised Poles to retreat in haste, he failed to destroy the army group in front of him, which was his objective.  Nevertheless, he reported to Kamenev that he had.  In just four weeks Tukhachevsky was on the outskirts of Warsaw without having won a decisive battle—an astonished De Gaulle reflected that “this is not war…there are no corpses”.  An understandable exaggeration if you are looking at a wall chart, but the reality was very different on the ground.  Tukhachevsky had defeated two Polish army groups and shattered the entire Polish system of defence.  However, as noted, they weren’t crushed.

Zamoyski gives a fascinating glimpse of this war’s nature—the utter chaos, the unfulfilled orders, the jumble of counter-measures, outdated reports and murderous behaviour of the armies involved.  The Polish General Staff were mesmerised into impotence, its effect on the rank-and-file devastating.  In the midst of the hysteria, Pilsudski kept his head and proceeded to organise a counter-offensive.  He did this with only trusted comrades and by building up an essentially separate and ‘secret’ force.

Meanwhile in Moscow, Lenin and Comintern delegates were in “paroxysm of excitement” believing that World Revolution was now on the cards.  Their enthusiasm blinded them to the realities of the situation at the Front.  Tukhachevsky had indeed done well:  but at a great cost to the condition of his troops and supply lines. A  Soviet Commander, Vitnovt Putna, reported that “there were signs of great weariness in our troops, the condition of the armies and particularly of their rear was a source of very serious alarm to me”.  A Polish priest described the Red Army infantry as a pitiable sight, mostly in bare feet wearing a mixture of uniforms and civilian garb:  Even though the priest was an ardent opponent of ‘Jewish-Bolshevism’, he admitted that “his heart ached at the sight of this famished and tattered mob”.

Tukhachsky, based in Smolensk, may or may not have been fully aware of the actual condition of his army, either way, he was determined to maintain the momentum towards Warsaw.  Apart from his troops’ exhaustion, there was the major issue of his army exposing its flank as it passed the Pripet Marshes.  In order to deal with this, Tukhachevsky sought the transfer of the South Western armies (under Yegorov and Stalin).  This transfer was logical—that is, it was militarily logical in theory. 

Zamoyski, like most Western historians, disparage Stalin for the failure to obey this order—the author decides that Stalin didn’t like “the idea of playing second fiddle to Tukhachevsky”.  I have no more idea than he what was in Stalin’s mind.  I do, however, appreciate that there were major difficulties in complying with the order.  The long march from Crimea and the heavy and continuous fighting had both sapped the strength and morale of these Soviet armies.  For example, Budionny later wrote “everywhere people were collapsing with exhaustion unable to move”. It took all of Budionny’s efforts “to keep it from cracking under the strain”.  Budionny cabled Kamenev that he needed to withdraw his forces in order to stop them from disintegrating.  He withdrew without waiting for a reply, probably realising that Kamenev was as delusional as Lenin.  Even if Stalin and Yegorov had obeyed the order, it wouldn’t have made any difference:  By the time they had dragged their army towards Warsaw, Tukhsachevsky’s army was in full retreat.  Zamoyski and other historians concede this.  

What is rarely mentioned is that the Soviets started the War in great haste without a general plan:  Dispositions were quickly improvised.  Indeed, the Stalin and Yegorov armies weren’t initially supposed to be in Poland!

Tukhachevsky (now in Minsk), needless -to- say, was livid at this insubordination, but it didn’t diminish his optimism or persuade him to pause for a reassessment.  He wrongly believed that the Polish armies to the North of him had been neutralised, and he proceeded towards Warsaw. Meanwhile, Pilsudski ignored General Weygand (of the Entente mission) and the Polish Chief of Staff’s plans to stop Tukhachevsky: He believed their plans “were not viable in the circumstances”.  There were quite a few people disobeying orders in this war!  

Pilsukski, having formulated his own plan and put together his own army group, was now ready to strike. His plan was daring, complex and hazardous, involving the disengagement of selective forces from the Warsaw Front.  In short, the plan involved exposing Pilsudski’s forces as he moved down Tukhachevsky’s flank.  The fog of war helped.  Both Tukhachevsky and Pilsudski had misconstrued each other’s intentions, each was given an inkling of them, but chose to ignore them.  Indeed, Tukhachevsky had got a copy of the Pilsudski plan from the body of a dead Polish officer, but believed it to be a hoax. 

When Pilsudski struck, Tukhachevsky was taken completely by surprise.  And worse, as the remnants of the Polish army defending Warsaw attacked head on, it caught the Red Army in a pincher movement.  The result was a catastrophic disintegration of the Soviet forces and their headlong flight out of Poland and beyond.  While this was initially playing out, Tukhachevsky was blissfully unaware of his defeat. In the first instance, when the offensive began, the Polish radio operators monitoring Russian radio traffic, switched to jamming signals. Secondly, Tukhachevsky was  over-confident in his original assessment of the situation when he first heard of the Polish offensive.  He did not immediately make the connection with the orders found on the dead Polish officer.  Tukhachevsky persisted in his view that he was pinning down the main Polish forces and Pilsudski was only involved in a diversion.

Delusion continued back in Moscow, with Kamenev concocting a madcap plan where the small, isolated forces under General Gai in the North, would take Warsaw.  Even if he had, Gai wouldn’t have been able to hold it (which, incidentally, I think would have been difficult even for Tukhachevsky!).  Gai and his troops ended up crossing into Germany where they were interned.  Zamoyski succinctly describes the Kamenev plan as, he—”…was in Moscow, and like Lenin’s thinking, it [the plan] was driven by political rather than military considerations”. 

Yergorov and Stalin, after much heavy fighting, managed to extract their forces relatively intact.  Even Budionny managed to survive an encirclement (by extraordinary bravery), despite obeying yet another stupid order from Kamenev. 

It was a decisive Soviet defeat.  Only eight Divisions—a mixed bag of disparate regiments, units and parts of the 33rd Kuban Division—were left of Tukhachevsky’s original twenty-one Divisions.  The Red Army had over 200,000 losses, not including deserters.  Not withstanding this comprehensive defeat, Tukhachevsky quickly assembled a new army of 130,000 troops:  Pilsudski was astonished and couldn’t understand where this new army had come from.  Yet again, Tukhachevsky operated on a false assumption:  he thought Pilsudski had not kept him in his sights.  When the latter struck, Tukhachevsky was taken yet again by surprise.  This time his forces kept their ground.  Despite Tukhachevsky’s perennial optimism, Lenin had had enough and eagerly engaged in the Entente’s peace plan.  Lenin ordered Tukhachevsky to hold his position, no matter what, until a ceasefire could take effect;  the situation was critical as the road to Smolensk and Moscow virtually lay open to Polish arms.

The dust had barely settled when the blame game began.  Tukhachevsky blamed Budionny, Yergorov and Stalin.  Zamoyski, no fan of Stalin and company, describes these excuses as “an irrelevance”.  Yes the author says, there was insubordination, but Yergorov’s forces were in a state of collapse and couldn’t in any event catch-up with Tukhachevsky’s army.  Back in Moscow, Lenin and Trotsky also blamed the Polish fiasco on Stalin (as he was the political officer):  Historian Robert Service accurately says he was “a handy scape goat”.  Unlike Stalin’s usual style, he only gave a brief lethargic defence, presumably because he realised he couldn’t win an argument against the combined weight of Lenin and Trotsky.  While others engaged in futile finger-pointing, only Putna and Fyodor Sergeyev accurately put the defeat down to Tukhachevsky’s inability to concentrate his forces at the right points combined with the assumption that Russian Civil War conditions would obtain in Poland.

 Unlike the Soviets, the West (with the exception of De Gaulle) made little effort to analyse the campaign.  Even historians like Richard Service still make silly comments about the campaign—in his biography of Trotsky he writes that Pilsudski “deployed his troops with less than total brilliance”.  As this is a brief review, I’ve only sketched-in the different military dispositions and manoevres involved in the Pilsudski offensive.  Suffice to say there was much more to the campaign than just the initial offensive outside Warsaw!  Pilsudski displayed a great piece of Generalship!

The Poles, meanwhile, having enlarged their country by acquiring pieces of Ukraine, Byelorussia and Lithuania, set about absorbing large numbers of national minorities and creating a stable Polish state.  The first General Election in 1922 indicated that there would be problems achieving that stability: The results produced 31political parties, including ones that represented Ukrainians, German, Byelorussian and Jews!  Only 69% of the State was Polish;  17% were either Byelorussian or Ukrainian;  2.7% were German;  and 10% were Jews.  Needless to say, governments were weak.

In 1926 Pilsudski staged a successful coup, which was supported by the entire Polish Left (including the Communists !). He, however, had no interest in running the country—his only interest was the army and a functioning authoritarian state.  Strikes and demonstrations were put down.  Pilsudski’s role was ill-defined, his influence paramount.  He was in effect a military dictator.  In 1935 Pilsudski died.  His military cronies continued much as before but without Pilsudski’s authority. 

The national minorities in the East and South-East were treated as second-class citizens:  Providing fertile ground for Ukrainian fascist groups like the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (funded by the German Intelligence services).  In 1930 the OUN began a campaign of assassinations and sabotage in Eastern Poland which was brutally put down, leading to the building of a concentration camp at Berza Kartuska.  Predictably, the violence wasn’t confined to the Ukrainians, with the innate anti-Semitism of Polish nationalism revealing itself in anti-Jewish quotas for the professions and occasional pogroms. 

The ‘Greater’ Poland produced by the Versailles Treaty and the 1920 victory against Russia led, perhaps inevitably, to the Polish defeat in 1939 by the Nazis.  Certainly, the upheavals of the period are still having geopolitical consequences to this day. 

Bill McCamley