Anti-Bolshevism in French Foreign Policy: The Crisis in Poland in 1920

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In the summer of 1920, almost two years after the end of the Great War, much of eastern Europe was still not at peace. Russia had been the scene of a long and bloody civil war in which powerfully armed counterrevolutionary forces sought to overthrow the Soviet Government of Lenin and Trotsky. By early 1920 Soviet armies had defeated their principal internal foes, but they still faced an external enemy in the western borderlands of Russia. This was the Polish Government of Jozef Pilsudski, Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the army. Pilsudski was an ambitious man and an ardent nationalist who sought to regain the Polish frontiers of 1772 and to re-establish Poland as a Great Power. To this end, he had quarrelled bitterly with the Czechoslovaks and fought for territory with the Lithuanians and western Ukrainians of Galicia. His forces had also