|
Note there can hardly be any doubts cast upon the personal integrity of the authors of the following quotation. However,
I have some doubts on the authenticity of the copy of “Poland and Russia” from which the note has been taken; and,
One notes that the sponsor of the work quoted by me, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was not immune to the Bolshevik (Soviet) disinformation ; (vide the case of the notorious Alger Hiss who for a time was part of said Endowment. )
Thus one cannot take any datum of the period and place without careful corroboration, and by comparison with many sources ; remembering that some sources were mere forgeries planted by. the agents of the then-Bolshevik Kremlin, possibly by other forces, sometimes hidden, sometimes quite apparent.
(WPT)
From Poland and Russia 1919-1945, James T. Shotwell, Max M. Laserson, 1945
The starting point for this, as for all other elements of the question, is the period of the first World War and the peace settlements, or from 1916 to the conclusion of the Riga Peace Treaty on March 18, 1921. Important milestones mark these intermediary years. Among them there was in the first place, on November 5, 1916, the imperial German and Austro-Hungarian proclamation of the future independence of Poland. This was followed by the proclamation of a free Poland by Imperial Russia on December 25, 1916, on the eve of the Kerensky revolution. Then a month later came the address of President Wilson to the United States Senate in which he said, “I take it for granted . . . that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland.” Later, on January 8, 1918, came President Wilson’s Fourteen {Points, with the guarantee of Polish independence, in terms which took note of the ethnographical factor, as follows:
An independent Polish State should e erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.
The independence of Poland was recognized by Russia, under Kerensky, on March 30, 19171 and by Soviet Russia on August 29, 1918, according to the decree of the Council of the People’s Commissars. Finally, the recognition of the restored sovereignty of Poland was assured by the Versailles
Treaty, on June 28, 1919, signed by Poland and the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan. The concluding touch was given by the Riga Treaty of 1921, at the end of the war between Soviet Russia and Poland which for the first tie delimited the frontier between the neighboring states. This frontier was recognized March 15, 1923, by the Conference of Ambassadors representing the United States, the British Empire, France, Italy and Japan. Acquiescing in this settlement, the Conference withdrew the proposal for a mandate over Eastern, or Ukrainian, Galicia which originally had been allotted to Poland for twenty-five years, after which the whole question of Eastern Galicia was to have been re-opened by the League of Nations. This “betrayal of trust,” as the Ukrainians termed it, was thus not an act of the League but of the Conference of Ambassadors.
Comment : To the Ruthene (Ukrainian) brethren :
The one stable datum which can be gleaned from the historic records was the Pilsudski/Petlura alliance.
The records of the Polish-Ukrainian (or Polish-Ruthenian) relations may often contain more than just two parties involved. The un-Polish or un-Ruthenian (Ukrainian) interests in this relation between two peoples may have been legitimate and voiced openly, or illegitimate and promoted clandestinely.
In this context, one of the possible solutions for clarification may have been the agreements arrived at by Pilsudski on one hand and Simon Petlura on the other hand ; the actual formulations made by the two men may be of considerable interest and possible usefulness including as of now (2005).
There having been approximately five wars going on at the time in the places under consideration, one hardly expects any perfection anywhere. One merely considers what has been most nearly workable — whether it had been successful or not.
The person of Jozef Pilsudski has been often targeted for disinformation, from many sources. The person of Simon Petlura had been targeted for assassination (please see “Murdered by Moscow”) — and not any less for disinformation, some of what I have seen extremely vicious.
The above has been proposed, not by an expert but by a learner — by a hopeful one. There should be no reason any points of agreement be overlooked, or points of disagreement be unresolved, possibly by some novel (not yet invented) solutions. (WPT, 10 Sep 2005).
Although the old Polish intransigent dream of restoring the borders of 1772 did not materialize, nevertheless Poland was recognized widely beyond her ethnographic boundaries. The borders proposed to Poland by the Soviets in April, 1920, in order to stop the war, were even more favorable for Poland than those fixed in the Riga Peace Treaty.*
* As if the Bolsheviks had ever done anything other than trying to gain time for the criminality of their ‘world revolution’.
This item (the “generous” terms of the Riga treaty, etc.) has been often mistaken by the historians for an instance of “good will” on the part of the Bolshevik “government". The brute facts were that the further East the more convenient it was for the then-Kremlin to organize its propaganda and its influence, the aims being an encroachment not only upon Poland but onto Germany, France, and England, not forgetting the Browder-Foster etc. plans for the U.S.A.
These were the statements by the Bolsheviks themselves and there hardly was any ambiguity in them. Not one single "official" datum that had ever come from the Bolshevik “government” could be taken on its face value ; let no one who had not studied the matter assume otherwise.
(WPT)
|