The Polish-Soviet War in the Norwegian Press of the Years 1920-1921

Abstract

Summary: Observers of the Polish-Soviet war of the years 1919-1921 considered it the most significant conflict since the end of WWI. It was common knowledge then that the conflict in question had a considerable influence on the situation of the Mid- and West European states. It was expected that, should the Red Army have won, the Soviet revolution would have spread as far as the Marne; a reason why the conflict in question was of so much interest to the Norwegian press, considered a mirror of the stand the Norwegian public opinion took as regards the position of the then superpowers towards the said war, the meaning of the war for the Norwegian public opinion as well as Norwegians’s sympathy for or disfavour of the militant parties. This article aims both at presenting the above mentioned issues and juxtaposing them with the political, military, and social questions to date as they appeared in the then Norwegian press. For that purpose my article will also resort to the literature on the subject of the Polish-Bolshevist war.