The Soviet Polish Peace Of 1921 And The Creation Of Interwar Europe

The Riga peace of 1921 ended the Soviet-Polish war and is sometimes considered the most important Eastern European peace treaty of the inter-war period. This book offers an account of how the two sides came to sign the treaty - a pact that established a boundary with a measure of stability that would last untill 1939.

Professor Wandycz has written the first monograph in the English language on the turbulent diplomatic and military relations between Poland and Soviet Russia during the critical years 1917-1921. Soviet Russia, rules in 1917 by the newly triumphant Bolsheviks, faced Poland, a nation that had just recovered independence after more than a century of oppression. The Bolsheviks feared their revolution would fail if confined to Russia alone; Poland lay directly in their path to the West and international conquest. The resulting controversy, ending with the Treaty of Riga in 1921, spans one of the most complicated and crucial periods in the long and tulmultuous history of Russian-Polish relations. Although this conflict of 1917-1921 was part of the immediate international struggle of revolution and counterrevolution, centuries of antagonism and war were characteristic of the earlier relations between the two countries. The current dispute went far deeper than a Communist-nonCommunist clash; the entire balance of power in Eastern Europe was at stake. Pilsudski's great plan was to push Russia back to its seventeenth-century borders, thus creating an important and powerful Poland. For the Bolsheviks, a successful march on Warsaw might initiate the destruction of the Versailles settlement and the European post-war system. Using recently published documents and Russian, Polish, English, and American archives, the author presents an objective and sophisticated picture of the complicated Soviet-Polish relations in this period. He is careful to examine these affairs in the light of the historical background of the two nations, for although many of these relations were newly esetablished, few were entirely divorced from the past. The first chapter dips back in time for a brief outline of the social and political events behind the deep antagonism of the two nations. Included is an examination of the basic disharmony between their civilizations, caused by the philosophical differences in their respective religions, Polish Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy. Chapter Two introduces political figures and theories and the development in the half century preceding the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The nine remaining chapters are devoted to the struggles between the two countries over the territorial, ideological, and socio-political problems that dominated their relations. The Peace Treaty of Riga, signed in March 1921, proved to be only a stalemate, the negative effects of which were more pronounced for Poland than Russia. As Mr. Wandycz concludes, " The former lost the chance of becoming a real power; the plans of the latter were merely delayed." -- from dust jacket.

This detailed study traces the history of the Soviet-Polish War (1919-20), the first major international clash between the forces of communism and anti-communism, and the impact this had on Soviet Russia in the years that followed. It reflects upon how the Bolsheviks fought not only to defend the fledgling Soviet state, but also to bring the revolution to Europe. Peter Whitewood shows that while the Red Army's rapid drive to the gates of Warsaw in summer 1920 raised great hopes for world revolution, the subsequent collapse of the offensive had a more striking result. The Soviet military and political leadership drew the mistaken conclusion that they had not been defeated by the Polish Army, but by the forces of the capitalist world – Britain and France – who were perceived as having directed the war behind-the-scenes. They were taken aback by the strength of the forces of counterrevolution and convinced they had been overcome by the capitalist powers. The Soviet-Polish War and its Legacy reveals that – in the aftermath of the catastrophe at Warsaw –Lenin, Stalin and other senior Bolsheviks were convinced that another war against Poland and its capitalist backers was inevitable with this perpetual fear of war shaping the evolution of the early Soviet state. It also further encouraged the creation of a centralised and repressive one-party state and provided a powerful rationale for the breakneck industrialisation of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1920s. The Soviet leadership's central preoccupation in the 1930s was Nazi Germany; this book convincingly argues that Bolshevik perceptions of Poland and the capitalist world in the decade before were given as much significance and were ultimately crucial to the rise of Stalinism.

A Conversation -- On the Edge, In the World -- Democracy as Civilizing Mission -- The Integration Myth -- The Many Meanings of the Border -- Polish Towns? Jewish Towns? -- Depoliticizing the Volhynian Village -- Regionalism, or The Limits of Inclusion -- Thinking Technocratically.

A major new history of the eight days in February 1945 when FDR, Churchill, and Stalin decided the fate of the world Imagine you could eavesdrop on a dinner party with three of the most fascinating historical figures of all time. In this landmark book, a gifted Harvard historian puts you in the room with Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt as they meet at a climactic turning point in the war to hash out the terms of the peace. The ink wasn't dry when the recriminations began. The conservatives who hated Roosevelt's New Deal accused him of selling out. Was he too sick? Did he give too much in exchange for Stalin's promise to join the war against Japan? Could he have done better in Eastern Europe? Both Left and Right would blame Yalta for beginning the Cold War. Plokhy's conclusions, based on unprecedented archival research, are surprising. He goes against conventional wisdom-cemented during the Cold War- and argues that an ailing Roosevelt did better than we think. Much has been made of FDR's handling of the Depression; here we see him as wartime chief. Yalta is authoritative, original, vividly- written narrative history, and is sure to appeal to fans of Margaret MacMillan's bestseller Paris 1919.

The collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of World War I ushered in a period of radical change for East-Central European political structures and national identities. Yet this transformed landscape inevitably still bore the traces of its imperial past. Breaking with traditional histories that take 1918 as a strict line of demarcation, this collection focuses on the complexities that attended the transition from the Habsburg Empire to its successor states. In so doing, it produces new and more nuanced insights into the persistence and effectiveness of imperial institutions, as well as the sources of instability in the newly formed nation-states.

This set of essays introduces readers to new historical research on the creation of the new order in East-Central Europe in the period immediately following 1918. The book offers insights into the political, diplomatic, military, economic and cultural conditions out of which the New Europe was born. Experts from various countries take into account three perspectives. They give equal attention to both the Western and Eastern fronts; they recognise that on 11 November 1918, the War ended only on the Western front and violence continued in multiple forms over the next five years; and they show how state-building after 1918 in Central and Eastern Europe was marked by a mixture of innovation and instability. Thus, the volume focuses on three kinds of narratives: those related to conflicts and violence, those related to the recasting of civil life in new structures and institutions, and those related to remembrance and representations of these years in the public sphere. Taking a step towards writing a fully European history of the Great War and its aftermath, the volume offers an original approach to this decisive period in 20th-century European history.

The First World War did not end in Central Europe in November 1918. The armistices marked the creation of the Second Polish Republic and the first shot of the Central European Civil War which raged from 1918 to 1921. The fallen German, Russian, and Austrian Empires left in their wake lands with peoples of mixed nationalities and ethnicities. These lands soon became battle grounds and the ethno-political violence that ensued forced those living within them to decide on their national identity. Civil War in Central Europe seeks to challenge previous notions that such conflicts which occurred between the First and Second World Wars were isolated incidents and argues that they should be considered as part of a European war; a war which transformed Poland into a nation.