The Politics of Anti-Bolshevism: the French Government and the Russo-Polish War, December 1919 to May 1920

Abstract

On 26 April 1920 the Polish army launched a major offensive against Soviet Russia. The question of the French government's role in the unleashing of this attack has long been a matter of historical debate. P. S. Wandycz, whose work is the most recent detailed account of French eastern policy during the early twenties, attributes no major responsibility to the French for the outbreak of all-out war on Poland's eastern frontier. He states that the Quai d'Orsay was unenthusiastic about a Polish campaign and that the Poles had acted on their own initiative. N. Davies asserts that ‘Allied policy sought to discourage Poland from attacking Russia.’ ‘Without formally forbidding a Polish offensive,’ he writes, the Allies ‘emphasized that it “the offensive’ could not enjoy their support. On the other hand, Soviet and European Left-wing opinion has long condemned the Polish attack as a direct result of French influence. Vladimir Potemkin noted that Poland was incapable of waging a full-scale war with its own resources and that consequently Allied influence had to be decisive in determining Warsaw's attitude toward a continuation of the war.