Both Poles and Russians desperately wanted peace, yet only on their own terms, which were : for the former, the old frontier of 1772 ; for the latter, the continuance of world revolution. So it came about that, when on December 22, 1920 [1919?], the Soviet Government invited the Polish Government to negotiate peace, though the proposal was accepted, nothing came of it.
At length, on April 25, diplomatic fencing was brought to an end by a sudden offensive launched by Pilsudski. Its aim was to seize Kiev, and then to turn northward against Tukhachevski, who faced his left wing. Led by Pilsudski the Polish army, supported on its right by two divisions of Ukrainians under the Hetman Petliura, was well as by some Rumanians, swept towards the Dnieper, and, on May 7, occupied Kiev.
The forces faced each other as follows :
Russian : North of the Pripet, the Army of the West, under Tukhachevski, consisted of the Fourth, Fifteenth, Third and Sixteenth Armies, and the IIIrd Cavalry Corps (Gay Khan) ; and south of the Pripet the Army of the South-West, commanded by Yegorov, comprised the Twelfth and Fourteenth Armies, and five divisions of cavalry under Budienny. In all — possibly — 200,000 men.
Polish : North of the Pripet, the First and Fourth Armies, with a Reserve Army in rear near Vilna in process of formation ; and south of the Pripet, the Third, Second and Sixth Armies. In all, some 120,000 men.2
2 Correct strengths for both sides are impossible to give. Throughout the campaign they changed constantly.
Though the Russian numerical superiority was important, more especially as the bulk of it was opposed to the far weaker Polish left flank, what was more important was that the area between the Bug and Dnieper was cut in half by the swamps of Polesia, a dead-level country practically impassable by large bodies of troops. This meant that a general action on the whole front of the two armies would at once develop into two separate actions which could not cooperate. When Comrade Sergei Kamenev, the commander-in-chief of all the Soviet armed forces, realized this, he ordered Tukhachevski to attack the Polish left wing. This he was eager to do, for frantic with revolution, dreamt of watering his horses on the Rhine[1], carrying the war into western Europe. . . . Trotsky . . , on May 2, made the following forecast :
�There can be no doubt that the war of the Polish bourgeoisie against the Ukrainian and Russian workers and peasants will end with a workers� revolution in Poland. It would be a pitiful lack of spirit to be frightened at the first successes of Pilsudski. They are unavoidable. They were foreseen. They were a result of the earlier development of our relations with Poland. The deeper the right wing of the Polish troops penetrates into Ukrainia, the more fatal for the Polish troops will be the concentrated blow which the Red troops will give them.�1
[1] Le chef de l�armée rouge, Fervacque, p. 123.
1 History of the Revolution, Trotsky, (1932-35), vol. iii, book 2, p. 102.
Strategically this was correct, and when, on May 15, Tukhachevski selected as his objective the railway junction of Molodechno, and launched his Fifteenth Army against it, his aim was to drive it into the Pinsk swamps. Thought the attack failed, it shook Pilsudski ; but before he could reinforce his left wing, a formidable attack was launched against him in the south. There Budienny, who had served in the ranks during the Russo-Japanese War, at the head of 16,700 Cossacks, accompanied by 48 cannon, five armoured trains, eight armoured cars and 12 aeroplanes, struck at Pilsudski's right wing in the neighbourhood of Elizavetgrad on May 18. Next, he moved northward ; attacked the Polish forces south and south-west of Kiev ; broke through near Gaisin ; raided west of Kiev ; and swept into Berditchev and Zhitomir. On June 5th the Polish Third Army was nearly surrounded, but on the 13th it broke away and retired westward while Budienny�s horsemen swept onward, crossed the Horyn on July 3, and two days later occupied Rovno. From there they pressed forward to the outskirts of Lvov (Lemberg).
As Pilsudski informs us, panic followed, and "the work of the State itself began to crack." He writes : �For our troops who were not prepared to meet this new offensive instrument, Budienny�s cavalry became an invincible, legendary force. And it should be remembered that the farther in rear one goes, the more does such an obsession escape all reason — to become all-powerful and irresistible. Thus for me began to be created that most dangerous of all fronts — the inner one.�2 At the time, all he could do to meet this critical development was to save his left wing, the right flank of which had been turned by the defeat of his right wing ; he therefore ordered its withdrawal.
2 L�Année 1920, Joseph Pilsudski (1929), p. 51.
( pages 342 - 345 )