title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Polish Army was made up of soldiers who had served in the armies of the partitioning empires (especially professional officers), as well as many new enlistees and volunteers. The soldiers had come from different armies, formations, backgrounds and traditions. While veterans of Piłsudski's Polish Legions and the Polish Military Organisation formed a privileged stratum, integrating the Greater Poland Army and the Polish Army from France into the national force presented many challenges. The unification of the Greater Poland Army led by General Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki (a highly regarded force of 120,000 soldiers), and the Polish Army from France led by General Józef Haller, with the main Polish Army under Józef Piłsudski, had been finalized on 19 October 1919 in Kraków, in a symbolic ceremony.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Within the young Polish state whose continuous existence was uncertain, members of many groups resisted conscription. For example, Polish peasants and small town dwellers, Jews, or Ukrainians from Polish-controlled territories tended to avoid service in Polish armed forces for different reasons. The Polish military was overwhelmingly ethnically Polish and Catholic. The intensifying desertion problem in summer 1920 led to the introduction of death penalty for desertion in August. The summary military trials and the executions often took place on the same day.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Female soldiers functioned as members of the Voluntary Legion of Women; they were normally assigned auxiliary duties. A system of military training for officers and soldiers was established with significant help from the French Military Mission to Poland.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Polish Air Force had about two thousand planes, mostly old. 45% of them had been captured from the enemy. Only two hundred could be airborne at any given time. They were used for various purposes including combat, but mostly for reconnaissance. 150 French pilots and navigators flew as part of the French Mission.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: According to Norman Davies, estimating the strength of the opposing sides is difficult and even generals often had incomplete reports of their own forces.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Polish forces grew from approximately 100,000 by the end of 1918 to over 500,000 in early 1920 and 800,000 in the spring of that year. Before the Battle of Warsaw, the army reached the total strength of about one million soldiers, including 100,000 volunteers.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Polish armed forces were aided by military members of Western missions, especially the French Military Mission. Poland was supported, in addition to the allied Ukrainian forces (over twenty thousand soldiers), by Russian and Belarusian units and volunteers of many nationalities. Twenty American pilots served in the Kościuszko Squadron. Their contributions in spring and summer 1920 on the Ukrainian front were considered to be of critical importance.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Russian anti-Bolshevik units fought on the Polish side. About one thousand White soldiers fought in summer 1919. The largest Russian formation was sponsored by the Russian Political Committee represented by Boris Savinkov and commanded by General Boris Permikin. The "3rd Russian Army" reached over ten thousand battle-ready soldiers and in early October 1920 was dispatched to the front to fight on the Polish side; they did not engage in combat because of the armistice that took effect at that time. Six thousand soldiers fought valiantly on the Polish side in the "Cossack" Russian units from 31 May 1920. Various smaller Belarusian formations fought in 1919 and 1920. However, the Russian, Cossack and Belarusian military organizations had their own political agendas and their participation has been marginalized or omitted in the Polish war narrative.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Soviet losses and the spontaneous enrollment of Polish volunteers allowed rough numerical parity between the two armies; by the time of the Battle of Warsaw, the Poles may have had gained a slight advantage in numbers and logistics. One of the major formations on the Polish side was the First Polish Army.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: In early 1918, Lenin and Leon Trotsky embarked on the rebuilding of the Russian armed forces. The new Red Army was established by the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) on 28 January, to replace the demobilized Imperial Russian Army. Trotsky became commissar of war on 13 March and Georgy Chicherin took over Trotsky's previous job as foreign minister. On 18 April, the Commissar Bureau was created; it initiated the practice of assigning political commissars to military formations. One million German soldiers occupied the western Russian Empire, but on 1 October, after the first indications of German defeat in the West, Lenin ordered general conscription with the intention of building a multi-million member army. While over 50,000 former tsarist officers had joined the White Volunteer Army, 75,000 of them ended up in the Bolshevik Red Army by summer 1919.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Revolutionary Military Council of the Russian Republic was established in September 1918. It was chaired by Trotsky. Trotsky lacked military experience or expertise, but knew how to mobilize troops and was a master of war propaganda. Revolutionary war councils of particular fronts and armies were placed under the council of the republic. The system was intended as implementation of the concept of collective leadership and management of military affairs.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Red Army's chief commander, from July 1919, was Sergey Kamenev; he was installed by Joseph Stalin. Kamenev's Field Staff was led by former tsarist generals. His every decision had to be approved by the Military Council. The actual command center was placed in an armored train, used by Trotsky to travel around the front areas and coordinate military activity.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Hundreds of thousands of recruits deserted from the Red Army, which resulted in 600 public executions in the second half of 1919. The army, however, conducted operations on several fronts and had remained an effective fighting force.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Officially, there were five million soldiers in the Red Army as of 1 August 1920, but only 10 or 12 percent of them could be counted as the actual fighting force. Female volunteers served in combat on the same basis as men, also in Semyon Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army. The Red Army was particularly weak in the areas of logistics, supplies, and communication. Great quantities of Western arms had been captured from the White and Allied forces and domestic production of military equipment kept increasing throughout the war. Still, the stocks were often critically short. As in the Polish Army, boots had been in short supply and many fought barefoot. There were relatively few Soviet airplanes (220 at the most at the Western Front) and the Polish air formations soon came to dominate the air space.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: When the Poles launched their Kiev Offensive, the Russian Southwestern Front had about 83,000 Soviet soldiers, including 29,000 front-line troops. The Poles had some numerical superiority, which was estimated from 12,000 to 52,000 personnel. During the Soviet counter-offensive in mid-1920, on all fronts, the Soviets numbered about 790,000, at least 50,000 more than the Poles. Mikhail Tukhachevsky estimated that he had 160,000 combat ready soldiers, while Piłsudski estimated Tukhachevsky's forces at 200,000–220,000.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: In 1920, the Red Army personnel numbered 402,000 on the Soviet Western Front and 355,000 on the Southwestern Front in Galicia, according to Davies. Grigori F. Krivosheev gives 382,071 personnel for the Western Front and 282,507 for the Southwestern Front between July and August.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: After the reorganization of the Western Rifle Division in mid-1919, there were no separate Polish units within the Red Army. Within both the Western and the Southwestern Fronts, besides Russian units, there had been separate Ukrainian, Latvian, and German–Hungarian units. In addition, many communists of various nationalities, for example the Chinese, fought in integrated units. The Lithuanian Army supported the Soviet forces to some degree.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Among the commanders leading the Red Army offensive were Semyon Budyonny, Leon Trotsky, Sergey Kamenev, Mikhail Tukhachevsky (the new commander of the Western Front), Alexander Yegorov (the new commander of the Southwestern Front), and Hayk Bzhishkyan.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Logistics were very bad for both armies and were supported by whatever equipment was left over from World War I or could be captured. The Polish Army, for example, used guns made in five countries and rifles manufactured in six, each of which used different ammunition. The Soviets had at their disposal many military depots that were left by the German armies after their withdrawal in 1918–1919, and modern French armaments that were captured in great numbers from the White Russians and the Allied expeditionary forces during the Russian Civil War. Still, they suffered a shortage of arms, as both the Red Army and the Polish forces were grossly underequipped by Western standards.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: However, the Red Army had at its disposal an extensive arsenal as well as fully functional armament industry concentrated in Tula, both inherited from tsarist Russia. In Poland, there were no firearm factories and everything, including rifles and ammunition, had to be imported. Gradual progress in the area of military manufacturing had been made and after the war there were in Poland 140 industrial establishments producing military items.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Polish–Soviet was fought not by trench warfare but by maneuverable formations. The total front was 1500 km (over 900 mi) long and was manned by relatively small amounts of troops. Around the time of the Battle of Warsaw and afterwards, the Soviets suffered from overly long transportation lines and had been unable to supply their forces in a timely manner.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: By early 1920, the Red Army had been very successful against the White movement. In January 1920, the Soviets began concentrating forces on the Polish northern front, along the Berezina River. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George ordered the Baltic Sea blockade of Soviet Russia lifted. Estonia signed with Russia the Treaty of Tartu on 3 February, recognizing the Bolshevik government. European arms merchants proceeded with supplying the Soviets with items needed by the military, for which the Russian government paid with gold and valuables taken from the imperial stock and confiscated from individuals.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: From early 1920, both the Polish and Soviet sides had prepared for decisive confrontations. However, Lenin and Trotsky had not yet been able to dispose of all the White forces, including especially the army of Pyotr Wrangel, threatening them from the south. Piłsudski, unconstrained by such limitations, was able to attack first. Convinced that the Whites were no longer a threat to Poland, he resolved to take care of the remaining enemy, the Bolsheviks. The plan for the Kiev Expedition was to beat the Red Army on Poland's southern flank and to install the pro-Polish Petliura government in Ukraine.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Victor Sebestyen, author of a 2017 biography of Lenin, wrote: "The newly independent Poles started the war. With England and France's backing, they invaded Ukraine in spring 1920." Some Allied leaders had not supported Poland, including former British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, who called the Kiev Expedition "a purely aggressive adventure, a wanton enterprise". Sebestyen characterized Piłsudski as a "Polish nationalist, not a socialist".


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 17 April 1920, the Polish General Staff ordered the armed forces to assume attack positions. The Red Army, which had been regrouping since 10 March, was not fully ready for combat. The main goal of the military operation was to create a Ukrainian state, formally independent but under Polish patronage, which would separate Poland from Russia.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 25 April, the southern group of Polish armies under Piłsudski's command commenced an offensive in the direction of Kiev. The Polish forces were assisted by thousands of Ukrainian soldiers under Petliura, who represented the Ukrainian People's Republic.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Alexander Yegorov, commander of the Russian Southwestern Front, had at his disposal the 12th and 14th Armies. They faced the invading force, but were small (15,000 battle-ready soldiers), weak, poorly equipped, and had been distracted by peasant rebellions in Russia. Yegorov's armies had been gradually reinforced since the Soviets had found out of the Polish war preparations.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 26 April, in his "Call to the People of Ukraine", Piłsudski told his intended audience that "the Polish Army would only stay as long as necessary until a legal Ukrainian government took control over its own territory". However, although many Ukrainians were anti-communist, many were anti-Polish and resented the Polish advance.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The well-equipped and highly mobile Polish 3rd Army under Edward Rydz-Śmigły quickly overpowered the Red Army in Ukraine. The Soviet 12th and 14th Armies had for the most part declined to engage in combat and suffered limited losses; they withdrew or were pushed past the Dnieper River. On 7 May, the combined Polish–Ukrainian forces, led by Rydz-Śmigły, encountered only token resistance as they entered Kiev, mostly abandoned by the Soviet military.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Soviets proceeded with their first counteroffensive using the Western Front forces. Following the order of Leon Trotsky, Mikhail Tukhachevsky launched an offensive on the Belarusian front before the (planned by the Polish command) arrival of Polish troops from the Ukrainian front. On 14 May, his forces attacked the somewhat weaker Polish armies there and penetrated the Polish-held areas (territories between the Daugava and the Berezina Rivers) to the depth of 100 km. After two Polish divisions arrived from Ukraine and the new Reserve Army was assembled, Stanisław Szeptycki, Kazimierz Sosnkowski and Leonard Skierski led a Polish counteroffensive from 28 May. The result was the Polish recovery of the bulk of the lost territory. From 8 June, the front had stabilised near the Avuta River and remained inactive until July.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: This Polish thrust into Ukraine was met with Red Army counterattacks from 29 May. By that time, Yegorov's Southwestern Front had been considerably reinforced and he initiated an assault maneuver in the Kiev area.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Semyon Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army ("Konarmia") conducted repeated attacks and broke the Polish–Ukrainian front on 5 June. The Soviets deployed mobile cavalry units to disrupt the Polish rearguard and target communications and logistics. By 10 June, the Polish armies were in retreat along the entire front. Following Piłsudski's order, General Rydz-Śmigły, with the Polish and Ukrainian troops under his command, abandoned Kiev (the city was not being attacked) to the Red Army.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 29 April 1920, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Communist Party of Russia appealed for volunteers for the war with Poland, to defend the Russian republic against a Polish usurpation. The first units of the volunteer army departed Moscow and headed for the front on 6 May. On 9 May, the Soviet newspaper "Pravda" printed an article "Go West!" (): "Through the corpse of White Poland lies the way to the World Inferno. On bayonets, we will carry happiness and peace to working humanity". On 30 May 1920 General Aleksei Brusilov, the last tsarist commander-in-chief, published in "Pravda" an appeal "To all former officers, wherever they may be", encouraging them to forgive past grievances and join the Red Army. Brusilov considered it a patriotic duty of all Russian officers to enlist with the Bolshevik government, which he thought to be defending Russia against foreign invaders. Lenin understood the importance of the appeal to Russian nationalism. The Soviet Russia's counteroffensive was indeed boosted by Brusilov's involvement: 14,000 officers and over 100,000 soldiers of lower ranks enlisted in or returned to the Red Army; thousands of civilian volunteers contributed to the war effort as well.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The 3rd Army and other Polish formations avoided destruction in the course of their long retreat from the Kiev frontier, but remained tied down in western Ukraine. They could not support the Polish northern front and reinforce, as planned by Piłsudski, the defences at the Avuta River.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Poland's 320 km (200 mi) long northern front was manned by a thin line of 120,000 troops, backed by some 460 artillery pieces, with no strategic reserves. This approach to holding ground harked back to the World War I practice of establishing a fortified line of defense. The Polish–Soviet front, however, bore little resemblance to that war's conditions, as it was weakly manned, supported with inadequate artillery, and had almost no fortifications. Such arrangement allowed the Soviets to attain numerical superiority at strategically crucial locations.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Against the Polish line, the Red Army gathered its Western Front led by the young General Mikhail Tukhachevsky. Its numbers exceeded 108,000 infantry and 11,000 cavalry, supported by 722 artillery pieces and 2,913 machine guns.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: According to Chwalba, Tukhachevsky's 3rd, 4th, 15th, and 16th Armies had a total of 270,000 soldiers and a 3:1 advantage over the Poles in the area of the Western Front's attack.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: A stronger and better prepared Soviet second northern offensive was launched on 4 July along the Smolensk–Brest axis and crossed the Avuta and the Berezina Rivers. Important role was played by the 3rd Cavalry Corps, known as the "assault army" and led by Hayk Bzhishkyan. On the first day of fighting, the Polish first and second lines of defense were overpowered and on 5 July the Polish forces commenced a full and quick retreat along the entire front. The combat strength of the First Polish Army was reduced by 46% during the first week of fighting. The retreat soon turned into a chaotic and disorganized flight.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 9 July, Lithuania's talks with the Soviets commenced. The Lithuanians launched a series of attacks against the Poles and disorganized the planned relocation of Polish forces. Polish troops withdrew from Minsk on 11 July.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Along the line of old German trenches and fortifications from World War I, only Lida was defended for two days. Bzhishkyan's units together with Lithuanian forces captured Vilnius on 14 July. To the south, in eastern Galicia, Budyonny's cavalry approached Brody, Lviv and Zamość. It had become clear to the Poles that the Soviet objectives were not limited to countering the effects of the Kiev Expedition but that Poland's independent existence was at stake.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Soviet armies moved toward the west at a remarkable speed. Carrying out a bold maneuver, Bzhishkyan took Grodno on 19 July; the strategically important and easy to defend Osowiec Fortress was captured by Bzhishkyan's 3rd Cavalry Corps on 27 July. Białystok fell on 28 July and Brest on 29 July. A Polish counteroffensive Piłsudski aimed for was thwarted by the unexpected fall of Brest. The Polish high command attempted to defend the Bug River line, reached by the Russians on 30 July, but the quick loss of the Brest Fortress forced a cancellation of Piłsudski's plans. After crossing the Narew River on 2 August, the Western Front was only about 100 km (62 mi) from Warsaw.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: By that time, however, Polish resistance intensified. The shortened front facilitated greater concentrations of Polish troops involved in defensive operations; they were being constantly reinforced due to the closeness of Polish population centers and the influx of volunteers. Polish supply lines had become short, while the opposite was true regarding the enemy logistics. As General Sosnkowski was able to generate and energize 170,000 new Polish soldiers within a few weeks, Tukhachevsky noted that instead of quickly concluding their mission as expected, his forced encountered determined resistance.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Southwestern Front pushed the Polish forces out of most of Ukraine. Stalin thwarted Sergey Kamenev's orders and directed the formations under Budyonny's command to close on Zamość and Lviv, the largest city in eastern Galicia and garrison of the Polish 6th Army. The protracted Battle of Lviv began in July 1920. Stalin's action was detrimental to the situation of the forces of Tukhachevsky in the north, since Tukhachevsky needed relief from Budyonny near Warsaw, where in August decisive battles were fought. Instead of performing a concentric attack on Warsaw, the two Soviet fronts were getting further apart. Piłsudski used the resulting void to launch his counteroffensive on 16 August, during the Battle of Warsaw.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Fighting the Battle of Brody and Berestechko (29 July–3 August), the Polish forces attempted to stop Budyonny's advance on Lviv, but the effort was terminated by Piłsudski, who mustered two divisions to take part in the approaching struggle for the Polish capital.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 1 August 1920, Polish and Soviet delegations met at Baranavichy and exchanged notes, but their armistice talks produced no results.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Western Allies were critical of Polish politics and unhappy with Poland's refusal to cooperate with the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, but they supported the Polish forces fighting the Red Army nevertheless, shipping to Poland armaments, extending credits and supporting the country politically. France was especially disappointed, but also particularly interested in defeating the Bolsheviks, so Poland was a natural ally in this respect. British politicians represented a gamut of opinions on the Polish–Russian issue, but many were highly critical of Polish policies and actions. In January 1920, the United States Secretary of War Newton D. Baker accused Poland of conducting imperial politics at the expense of Russia. In early spring 1920 the Allies, irritated by the Polish conduct, considered the idea of transferring the lands east of the Bug River to Allied control, under auspices of the League of Nations.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: In autumn 1919, the British government of Prime Minister David Lloyd George agreed to provide arms for Poland. On 17 May 1920, following the Polish takeover of Kiev, the cabinet spokesman asserted in the House of Commons that "no assistance has been or is being given to the Polish government".


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The initial success of the Kiev Expedition caused enormous euphoria in Poland and Piłsudski's leading role was recognized by most politicians. However, with the tide turning against Poland, Piłsudski's political power weakened, and that of his opponents, including Roman Dmowski, rose. The government of Leopold Skulski, Piłsudski's ally, resigned in early June. After protracted bickering, an extra-parliamentary government of Władysław Grabski was appointed on 23 June 1920.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Western Allies were worried by the progress of the Bolshevik armies but blamed Poland for the situation. The conduct of Polish leaders was adventurous in their opinion and amounted to foolishly playing with fire. It could lead to the destruction of the work of the Paris Peace Conference. Western societies wanted peace and good relations with Russia.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: As the Soviet armies advanced, the Soviet leadership's confidence soared. In a telegram, Lenin exclaimed, "We must direct all our attention to preparing and strengthening the Western Front. A new slogan must be announced: Prepare for war against Poland". The Soviet communist theorist Nikolai Bukharin, writing for the newspaper "Pravda", wished for the resources to carry the campaign beyond Warsaw, "right up to London and Paris". According to General Tukhachevsky's exhortation, "Over the corpse of White Poland lies the path to world conflagration ... On to ... Warsaw! Forward!" As the victory seemed more certain to them, Stalin and Trotsky engaged in political intrigues and argued about the direction of main Soviet offensive.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: At the height of the Polish–Soviet conflict, Jews were subjected to antisemitic violence by Polish forces, who considered them a potential threat and often accused of supporting the Bolsheviks. The perpetrators of the pogroms that took place were motivated by "Żydokomuna" accusations. During the Battle of Warsaw, the Polish authorities interned Jewish soldiers and volunteers and sent them to an internment camp.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: To counter the immediate Soviet threat, national resources were urgently mobilized in Poland and competing political factions declared unity. On 1 July, the Council of Defense of the State was appointed. On 6 July Piłsudski was outvoted in the council, which resulted in the trip of Prime Minister Grabski to the Spa Conference in Belgium made to request Allied assistance for Poland and their mediation in setting up peace negotiations with Soviet Russia. The Allied representatives made a number of demands as conditions for their involvement. On 10 July, Grabski signed an agreement containing several terms as required by the Allies: Polish forces would withdraw to the border intended to delineate Poland's eastern ethnographic frontier and published by the Allies on 8 December 1919; Poland would participate in a subsequent peace conference; and the questions of sovereignty over Vilnius, Eastern Galicia, Cieszyn Silesia and Danzig would be left up to the Allies. Promises of possible Allied help in mediating the Polish–Soviet conflict were made in exchange.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 11 July 1920, the British Foreign Secretary George Curzon sent a telegram to Georgy Chicherin. It requested the Soviets to halt their offensive at what had since become known as the Curzon Line and to accept it as a temporary border with Poland (along the Bug and San Rivers) until a permanent border could be established in negotiations. Talks in London with Poland and the Baltic states were proposed. In case of a Soviet refusal, the British threatened to assist Poland with unspecified measures. Roman Dmowski's reaction was that Poland's "defeat was greater than the Poles had realized". In the Soviet response issued on 17 July, Chicherin rejected the British mediation and declared willingness to negotiate only directly with Poland. Both the British and the French reacted with more definitive promises of help with military equipment for Poland.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Second Congress of the Communist International deliberated in Moscow between 19 July and 7 August 1920. Lenin spoke of the increasingly favorable odds for the accomplishment of the World Proletarian Revolution, which would lead to the World Soviet Republic; the delegates eagerly followed daily reports from the front. The congress issued an appeal to workers in all countries, asking them to forestall their governments' efforts to aid "White" Poland.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Piłsudski lost another vote at the Defense Council and on 22 July the government dispatched a delegation to Moscow to ask for armistice talks. The Soviets claimed interest in peace negotiations only, the subject the Polish delegation was not authorized to discuss.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Sponsored by the Soviets, the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee (Polrewkom) was formed on 23 July to organise the administration of Polish territories captured by the Red Army. The committee was led by Julian Marchlewski; Feliks Dzierżyński and Józef Unszlicht were among its members. They found little support in Soviet-controlled Poland. On 30 July in Białystok, the Polrewkom decreed the end of the Polish "gentry–bourgeoisie" government. At Polrewkom's Białystok rally on 2 August, its representatives were greeted on behalf of Soviet Russia, the Bolshevik party and the Red Army by Mikhail Tukhachevsky. The Galician Revolutionary Committee (Galrewkom) was established already on 8 July.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 24 July, the all-party Polish Government of National Defense under Wincenty Witos and Ignacy Daszyński was established.> It eagerly adopted a radical program of land reform meant to counter Bolshevik propaganda (the scope of the promised reform was greatly reduced once the Soviet threat had receded). The government attempted to conduct peace negotiations with Soviet Russia; a new Polish delegation tried to cross the front and establish contact with the Soviets from 5 August. On 9 August, General Kazimierz Sosnkowski became Minister of Military Affairs.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Piłsudski was severely criticized by politicians ranging from Dmowski to Witos. His military competence and judgement were questioned and he displayed signs of mental instability. However, a majority of members of the Council of National Defense, which was asked by Piłsudski to rule on his fitness to lead the military, quickly expressed their "full confidence". Dmowski, disappointed, resigned his membership in the council and left Warsaw.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Poland suffered from sabotage and delays in deliveries of war supplies when Czechoslovak and German workers refused to transit such materials to Poland. After 24 July in Gdańsk, given the Germany-instigated strike of seaport workers, the British official and Allied representative Reginald Tower, having consulted the British government, used his soldiers to unload commodities heading for Poland. On 6 August, the British Labour Party printed in a pamphlet that British workers would not take part in the war as Poland's allies. In 1920 London dockworkers refused to allow a ship bound for Poland until the weapons were off-loaded. The Trades Union Congress, the Parliamentary Labour Party, and the National Executive Committee also all threatened a general strike if the British Armed Forces directly intervened in Poland. The French Section of the Workers' International declared in its newspaper "L'Humanité": "Not a man, not a sou, not a shell for the reactionary and capitalist Poland. Long live the Russian Revolution! Long live the Workers' International!". Germany, Austria and Belgium banned transit of materials destined for Poland through their territories. On 6 August the Polish government issued an "Appeal to the World", which disputed the charges of Polish imperialism and stressed Poland's belief in self-determination and the dangers of a Bolshevik invasion of Europe.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Hungary offered to send a 30,000 cavalry corps to Poland's aid, but President Tomáš Masaryk and Foreign Minister Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia were opposed to assisting Poland and the Czechoslovak government refused to allow them through. On 9 August 1920, Czechoslovakia declared neutrality regarding the Polish–Soviet War. Significant amounts of military and other badly needed supplies from Hungary did arrive in Poland. The leading Polish commander Tadeusz Rozwadowski spoke of the Hungarians in September 1920: "You were the only nation that really wanted to help us".


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Soviets presented their armistice conditions to the Allies on 8 August in Britain. Sergey Kamenev issued assurances of Soviet recognition of Poland's independence and right to self-determination, but the conditions he presented amounted to demands for surrender of the Polish state. Prime Minister David Lloyd George and the British House of Commons approved the Soviet demands as just and reasonable and the British ambassador in Warsaw presented the United Kingdom's categorical advice on that matter to Foreign Minister Eustachy Sapieha. On 14 August, the Polish delegation finally went to Tukhachevsky's headquarters in Minsk for the official peace talks. Severe conditions for peace were presented to them by Georgy Chicherin on 17 August. Decisive battles were already taking place on the outskirts of Warsaw. Most foreign deputations and Allied missions had left the Polish capital and went to Poznań.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: In summer 1919, Lithuania had been engaged in territorial disputes and armed skirmishes with Poland over the city of Vilnius and the areas around Sejny and Suwałki. Piłsudski's attempt to take control of Lithuania by engineering a coup in August 1919 contributed to worsening of the relations. The Soviet and Lithuanian governments signed on 12 July 1920 the Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty; it recognised Vilnius and extended territories as parts of a proposed Greater Lithuania. The treaty contained a secret clause that allowed Soviet forces unrestricted movement in Lithuania during any Soviet war with Poland, which led to questions regarding Lithuanian neutrality during the ongoing Polish–Soviet War. The Lithuanians also provided the Soviets with logistic support. Following the treaty, the Red Army occupied Vilnius; the Soviets returned the city to Lithuanian control just before it was recaptured by Polish forces in late August. The Soviets had also encouraged their own communist government, the Litbel, and planned a Soviet-sponsored Lithuanian regime when they win the war with Poland. The Soviet–Lithuanian Treaty was a Soviet diplomatic victory and Polish defeat; it had, as predicted by the Russian diplomat Adolph Joffe, a destabilizing effect on Poland's internal politics.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The French Military Mission to Poland of four hundred members arrived in 1919. It consisted mostly of French officers but included also a few British advisers led by Adrian Carton de Wiart. In summer 1920, there were one thousand officers and soldiers in the mission, under General Paul Prosper Henrys. Members of the French Mission, through the training programs they conducted and frontline involvement, contributed to battle readiness of Polish forces. The French officers included Captain Charles de Gaulle. During the Polish–Soviet War he won the Virtuti Militari, Poland's highest military decoration. In France, de Gaulle had enlisted in General Józef Haller's "Blue Army". The army's transit to Poland in 1919 was facilitated by France. Blue Army troops were mostly of Polish origin but included also international volunteers who had been under French command during World War I. In 1920, France was reluctant to aid Poland in Poland's war with Soviet Russia. Only after the Soviet armistice conditions were presented on 8 August, France declared, through its representative in Warsaw, the intention to support Poland morally, politically and materially in its fight for independence.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 25 July 1920, the expanded Interallied Mission to Poland arrived in Warsaw. Led by the British diplomat Edgar Vincent, it included the French diplomat Jean Jules Jusserand and Maxime Weygand, chief of staff to Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the supreme commander of the victorious Entente. The Allied politicians expected to assume control over Poland's foreign affairs and military policies, with Weygand becoming top military commander in the war. It was not allowed and General Weygand accepted an advisory position. The dispatch of the Allied mission to Warsaw was a proof that the West had not given up on Poland and gave the Poles a reason to believe that not all was lost. The mission members made a significant contribution to the war effort. However, the crucial Battle of Warsaw was fought and won primarily by the Poles. Many in the West erroneously believed that it was the timely arrival of the Allies that had saved Poland; Weygand occupied the central role in the myth that was created.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: As Polish–French cooperation continued, French weaponry, including infantry armament, artillery and Renault FT tanks, were shipped to Poland to reinforce its military. On 21 February 1921, France and Poland agreed to a formal military alliance. During the Soviet–Polish negotiations, Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs paid particular attention to keeping the Allies informed of their course and making them feel co-responsible for the outcome.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Soviet emphasis had gradually shifted from promoting world revolution to dismantling the Treaty of Versailles system, which, in Lenin's words, was the treaty of the "triumphant world imperialism". Lenin made remarks to that effect during the 9th Conference of the Russian Communist Party RKP(b), convened on 22–25 September 1920. He repeatedly referred to the Soviet military defeat, for which he indirectly held himself largely responsible. Trotsky and Stalin blamed each other for the war's outcome. Stalin sharply rebutted Lenin's accusations regarding Stalin's judgement ahead of the Battle of Warsaw. As Lenin saw it, the conquest of Warsaw, not very important in itself, would have allowed the Soviets to demolish the Versailles European order.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: According to the plan of the commander-in-chief of the Red Army Sergey Kamenev as of 20 July 1920, two Soviet fronts, Western and Southwestern, were going to execute a concentric attack on Warsaw. However, after consulting Tukhachevsky, the Western Front commander, Kamenev concluded that the Western Front alone could manage the occupation of Warsaw.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Tukhachevsky's intention was to destroy the Polish armies in the region of Warsaw. His plan was to have one of his armies attack the Polish capital from the east, while three other were to force their way across the Vistula further north, between Modlin and Toruń. Parts of this formation were going to be used to outflank Warsaw from the west. He issued orders to this effect on 8 August. It had soon become apparent to Tukhachevsky that his designs were not producing the desired result.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Southwestern Front was given the task of attacking Lviv. Accordingly (and in agreement with his own previously expressed views) Stalin, member of the Revolutionary Council of the Southwestern Front, directed Budyonny to unleash an assault on Lviv, aimed at taking the city (Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army and other Southwestern Front forces were originally supposed to head north in the direction of Brest, to execute, together with Tukhachevsky's armies, an assault on Warsaw). Budyonny's forces fought in the vicinity of Lviv until 19 August. In the meantime, already on 11 August, Kamenev ordered the 1st Cavalry Army and the 12th Army of the Southwestern Front to proceed in the northwestern direction toward the Western Front area to fight there under Tukhachevsky's command. Kamenev repeated his order on 13 August, but Budyonny, following Stalin's directives, refused to obey. On 13 August, Tukhachevsky in vain pleaded with Kamenev to expedite the redirecting of both Southwestern armies to his area of combat. Such circumstances led to a Soviet disadvantage as the crucial Battle of Warsaw was about to unfold.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Leon Trotsky interpreted Stalin's actions as insubordination, but the historian Richard Pipes asserts that Stalin "almost certainly acted on Lenin's orders" in not moving the forces toward Warsaw. According to Stalin's biographer Duraczyński, Stalin, despite his devotion to Lenin, displayed a great deal of initiative and boldness. Unlike other Soviet officials, including Lenin, he had not become euphoric about the Soviet victories. However, he insisted on the exceptional importance of the activities of the Southwestern Front, which turned out to be costly for the Soviets.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Stalin may have been motivated by the letter Lenin wrote to him on 23 July. Regarding the defeat of the Polish armies as already practically accomplished, the Soviet leader suggested a redirection of main Soviet efforts toward the south-west, into Romania, Hungary, Austria, and ultimately Italy. Stalin agreed and he saw the conquest of Lviv on the way as fitting well with the overall scheme.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Piłsudski had his counteroffensive plan figured by 6 August. He resolved to reinforce the Warsaw and Modlin region, tie-up the Soviet assault forces there, and then use the divisions taken from the front and others in a risky maneuver of attacking the rear of Tukhachevsky's forces from the Wieprz River area. The Soviets found a copy of Piłsudski's order, but Tukhachevsky thought it to be a hoax. In the final parade Piłsudski received before the attack, about half of his worn out and undersupplied soldiers marched barefoot.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: In August 1919, Polish military intelligence first decrypted the Red Army's radio messages. From the spring of 1920, the Polish high command had been aware of current Soviet moves and plans, which may have had decisively influenced the outcome of the war.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 8 August 1920, Tukhachevsky ordered some of the Soviet forces to cross the Vistula River in the area of Toruń and Płock. The 4th Army and the formations under Hayk Bzhishkyan's command were supposed to take Warsaw from the west, while the main attack came from the east. On 19 August, after intense fighting, the Soviets were repelled from Płock and Włocławek. Bzhishkyan's corps came close to crossing the Vistula, but ended up retreating toward East Prussia. Of the four Soviet armies attacking from the east, none had been able to force its way across the river.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 10 August, Polish Chief of staff Tadeusz Rozwadowski, who co-authored the offensive concept, ordered a two-pronged attack, from the Wkra and the Wieprz Rivers.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Piłsudski, still harshly criticized, submitted a letter of resignation as commander-in-chief to Prime Minister Witos on 12 August. Witos refused to consider the resignation and kept the matter to himself.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 12 August, Tukhachevsky's 16th and 3rd Armies commenced their assault on Warsaw from the east. The Polish 1st Army under General Franciszek Latinik retreated at first, but having received reinforcements stopped the enemy at the Battle of Radzymin and on 15 August initiated offensive actions of its own. The pitched Battle of Ossów, fought on 13–14 August at a nearby location, became the first clear Polish victory in the Warsaw area.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Polish 5th Army, under General Władysław Sikorski, counterattacked on 14 August from the area of the Modlin Fortress and crossed the Wkra River. It faced the combined forces of the Soviet 3rd and 15th Armies, which were numerically and materially superior. The attack split the Soviet front into two parts. The Soviet advance toward Warsaw and Modlin was halted and had soon turned into a retreat, which contributed to the success of the drive by the main Polish formation coming from the Wieprz River area under Piłsudski's command.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: By 16 August, the Polish counteroffensive had been joined by Piłsudski's group coming from the Wieprz, south-east of Warsaw. The weak Mozyr Group, which was supposed to protect the link between the Soviet fronts, was destroyed. The Poles continued their northward offensive and reached the rear of Tukhachevsky's forces. The Soviet armies were unable to communicate; Tukhachevsky and Kamenev became disoriented and issued orders not relevant to the situation. A rapid pursuit of the Russians followed and continued to the Prussian border and to the Neman River. Of the four armies of the Western Front, two disintegrated; the 4th Army with a cavalry corps crossed into East Prussia, where they were interned.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Tukhachevsky, at his headquarters in Minsk, on 18 August belatedly ordered the remnants of his forces to regroup. He hoped to straighten the front line, halt the Polish attack and regain the initiative, but it was too late and on 19 August he directed his armies to retreat over the entire front.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: In order to reorganize the Polish forces ahead of new operations, the chase after the retreating Russians was stopped on 25 August. A large portion of the defeated Soviet troops had been taken prisoner (over 50,000) or interned in Prussia (45,000). Twelve of the twenty two Soviet divisions survived. Edward Rydz-Śmigły's formations manned the new frontline, which ran from Brest to Grodno. The victory allowed the Poles to regain the initiative and undertake further military offensive.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The outcome of the struggle for the Polish capital saddened the leadership in Moscow, as well as communists and their sympathizers all over the world. Clara Zetkin spoke of the flower of revolution having been frozen.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: To diminish Piłsudski's military achievement and his role in the saving of Warsaw, at the instigation of his Polish detractors, the Battle of Warsaw had been referred to as the "Miracle on the Vistula", and the phrase has since remained in Catholic and popular use in Poland. The "miracle" was attributed to the Virgin Mary.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: According to Piłsudski and his people, on the other hand, the miracle was performed solely by the marshal. After the May Coup of 1926, the possibly indispensable contributions of Sikorski or Rozwadowski would never be mentioned in school textbooks or official accounts. The myth of the great marshal was propagated and became dominant through the Sanation politics of remembrance. In the West, it was mostly Maxime Weygand who had been assigned a "veni, vidi, vici" kind of role, even though Weygand himself had honestly denied having such an impact.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The progress of the Soviet forces on the southern front in Ukraine was slower than in the north. The losses suffered by Semyon Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army at the Battle of Brody and Berestechko delayed its advance on Lviv. On 16 August, the army got going and soon reported being 15 km from the center of the city.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 17 August, at the Battle of Zadwórze, a Polish battalion sacrificed itself to stop Budyonny. On 20 August, Budyonny's cavalry belatedly terminated its attacks in the Lviv area in order to come to the aid of Soviet forces retreating from Warsaw. 1st Army units moved on Zamość on 29 August but the town was successfully defended by Polish and Ukrainian troops. On 31 August, the much reduced 1st Cavalry Army was defeated by Polish cavalry under Colonel Juliusz Rómmel at the Battle of Komarów near Hrubieszów. It was the largest battle of Polish cavalry since 1831. The remains of Budyonny's army retreated towards Volodymyr on 6 September and on 29 September were withdrawn from the Polish front.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Heading east into Volhynia, the Polish 3rd Army under Władysław Sikorski crossed the Bug River and on 13 September took Kovel. The Polish 6th Army under Józef Haller, together with the Ukrainian People's Army, launched their offensive from eastern Galicia. By the end of September, the front reached the Pinsk–Sarny–Khmelnytskyi–Yampil line. In October, Juliusz Rómmel's cavalry corps arrived at Korosten, Ukraine.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The immediate Soviet threat having been repelled, the Council of National Defense voted to continue the Polish offensive. By 15 September, forces were assembled for the "Niemen operation". At that time, the Polish armies had an advantage over the Soviet Western Front in manpower (209,000 to 145,000 soldiers) and armaments.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Mikhail Tukhachevsky established from 26 August a new frontline, running from the Polish–Lithuanian border area in the north to Polesia, centered on the Neman and Svislach Rivers line. The Soviet commander utilized a three-week lull in the fighting to reorganize and reinforce his battered forces, expected to be ready to attack by the end of September. The Poles struck already on 20 September and soon became engaged in the Battle of the Niemen River, the second greatest battle of the campaign. After heavy fighting, they secured Grodno on 26 September. Edward Rydz-Śmigły led from there an outflanking maneuver, as a result of which Lida was taken and the Red Army's rear destabilized. Polish frontal attacks followed, the Soviet units disintegrated and rapidly retreated. After the battle, the Soviet forces lost the ability to effectively resist and the Poles unleashed a continuous pursuit. The Polish units reached the Daugava River and in mid-October entered Minsk.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: In the south, Petliura's Ukrainian forces defeated the Bolshevik 14th Army and took control of the left bank of the Zbruch River on 18 September. In October, they moved east to the Yaruha–Sharhorod–Bar–Lityn line. They now numbered 23,000 soldiers and controlled territories immediately to the east of the Polish-controlled areas. They had planned an offensive in Ukraine for 11 November but were attacked by the Bolsheviks on 10 November. By 21 November, after several battles, they were driven into Polish-controlled territory.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Peace negotiations commenced in Minsk in mid-August 1920. Initially, the Soviets made harsh demands on the Polish side; their implementation would turn Poland into a Soviet-dependent state. After the Battle of Warsaw defeat, Adolph Joffe became chief Soviet negotiator and the original Soviet conditions for an armistice were withdrawn. The negotiations were moved to Riga on 21 September. As winter approached and there had not been a military resolution to the conflict (the Red Army, despite many defeats, had not been destroyed), both sides decided to stop fighting. The Polish Council of National Defense ruled, against the insistence of Piłsudski and his supporters, that Poland could not afford to continue fighting the war. "Poland must conclude a peace even without guarantees of its durability" – declared Foreign Minister Eustachy Sapieha. Limited continuation of the current offensive was allowed (until the armistice) to improve Poland's bargaining position. The Soviets, in addition to their battlefield losses, were pressured by events that necessitated the use of their military elsewhere, such as developments in the Turkish–Armenian War, Pyotr Wrangel's White Army still occupying the Crimea, or peasant rebellions in Russia.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Preliminary Treaty of Peace and Armistice Conditions was signed on 12 October and the armistice went into effect on 18 October. Ratifications were exchanged at Liepāja on 2 November. The peace treaty negotiations ensued and were concluded, between Poland on one side and Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Russia, and Soviet Belarus on the other, on 18 March 1921. The Peace of Riga, signed on that day, determined the Polish–Soviet border and divided the disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between Poland and the Soviet Union (soon to be officially established). The treaty also regulated various other aspects of Polish–Soviet relations. It complemented the Treaty of Versailles and laid foundations for the relatively peaceful coexistence in Eastern Europe that lasted less than two decades.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The armistice preliminary stipulations required foreign allied forces to leave Poland. Signing the treaty with the Soviet republics, Poland had to rescind its recognition of Petliura's Ukrainian People's Republic and other Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian "White" governments and organizations; the allied military units of the three nationalities present in Poland were disbanded. The Ukrainian People's Army crossed the armistice line and fought the Red Army for a month. Its remnants returned into the Polish territory, where they were interned.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Peace of Riga was approved by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on 14 April 1921, by Polish Sejm on 15 April, and by the Central Executive Committee of Soviet Ukraine on 17 April. Until late summer 1939, the Soviet Union refrained from officially questioning the Riga treaty settlement, but it had been understood that the Soviet policy objective was to have it overturned.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: During the Polish–Soviet War, about 100,000 people were killed. A complicated problem of prisoners of war was left to be resolved. On both sides, great destruction and economic losses, as well as deep psychological trauma resulted. Piłsudski's goal of separating Ukraine from Russia was not accomplished and the compromise Polish–Soviet border attained indicated future instability.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Thousands of peasant disturbances and rebellions took place in Russia between 1917 and 1921. The Pitchfork uprising of February–March 1920 greatly distracted the Soviet leadership and negatively affected their military preparedness in Ukraine and Belarus before the Polish Kiev Expedition. Lenin considered the peasant resistance to grain requisitions and other privations of war communism more threatening to Soviet Russia than the White movement. The last and possibly the greatest of peasant uprisings was the Tambov Rebellion of 1920–1921. Acute food shortages reached also Moscow and Saint Petersburg and contributed to the outbreak of the Kronstadt rebellion in March 1921.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Soviet Russia was unable to accomplish many of the political objectives of its war with Poland. Despite the support of Germany, it could not destroy the Versailles-imposed European system and the two powers had to wait for another opportunity to redress their grievances.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Polish delegation at the peace talks, led by Jan Dąbski, concentrated on an armistice line and the future border. For the Soviets, these were secondary concerns. The statehood status of the Ukrainian and Belarusian Soviet republics was of utmost importance and their recognition was the most fateful concession the Polish negotiators had made.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement, signed on 16 March 1921, was the first of a series of such international treaties. It broke diplomatic isolation of Soviet Russia. The resulting influx of foreign arms and equipment contributed to the success of the offensive against the partisans in the Tambov province, executed by Mikhail Tukhachevsky and completed by July.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The grain requisition practices were eventually replaced by the New Economic Policy, announced by Lenin on 23 March 1921. It represented a partial compromise with capitalism.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 16 April 1922, Russia and Germany signed the Treaty of Rapallo. Diplomatic relations were established and the Russian negotiators obtained favorable resolution of their financial concerns.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: After the Peace of Riga, Soviet Russia withdrew behind its "cordon sanitaire". Its leaders abandoned in reality the cause of the international revolution. The result was the Stalinist "socialism in one country" pursuit. The Soviet Union entered a period of intensive industrialization, to eventually become the second greatest industrial power in the world.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Their losses during and after the Battle of Warsaw made the Soviets offer the Polish peace delegation substantial territorial concessions, including Minsk and other areas occupied by Polish forces. Polish resources were also exhausted and Polish public opinion wanted a settlement. Piłsudski and his camp were opposed to the peace process and wanted the warfare to continue to make a realization of the "Intermarium" concept possible. Fulfilment of Piłsudski's territorial and political ideas was precluded already on 11 September 1920, when the Defense Council voted on Poland's border expectations. Despite the positive outcome of the Battle of Warsaw, Piłsudski's political position remained weak and he was unable to prevent developments that meant ruin to his long-held vision of a grand Polish-led alliance.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The negotiations were controlled by Roman Dmowski's National Democrats. The National Democrats wanted to directly incorporate into the Polish state the lands they found desirable. Polish parliament (Sejm) was controlled by Dmowski's allies, whose ideas on the nature of the Polish state and the arrangement of its borders had since permanently prevailed.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Because of the failed Kiev Expedition, Piłsudski had lost his ability to act as the main player, to manipulate people and events in Polish politics. The consensus on his dominant role was gone. As a consequence, he was allowed to win the war, but the conditions of peace were determined already by his opponents.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The National Democrats, led at the Riga talks by Stanisław Grabski, wanted only the territory they viewed as "ethnically or historically Polish" (had Polish-dominated cities) or, in their opinion, could be Polonised. In the east, Polish culture was weakly represented even in the cities, except for a few in the western part of the disputed territories, and Grabski refrained from seeking a border along the so-called Dmowski's Line, previously promoted by his movement. Despite the Red Army's defeat and the willingness of the chief Soviet negotiator, Adolph Joffe, to concede most of the areas occupied by Polish troops, the National Democratic politics allowed the Soviets to regain some of the territories acquired by the Polish armies during the campaign. The National Democrats worried that Poland would not be able to control overly extended territories, dominated by national minorities; Grabski wanted lands where Poles could predominate. Among the territories evacuated by the Polish Army were Minsk in the north and Kamianets-Podilskyi and other areas east of the Zbruch River in the south. The "Grabski Corridor", a strip of land inserted to separate Lithuania from Russia and connect Poland to Latvia, made Piłsudski's so-called Żeligowski's Mutiny and the Polish annexation of the Vilnius area possible. The National Democrats were also conscious of the weakening of their electoral position that would result from annexing more territories dominated by non-Polish ethnic groups. The failed federalist orientation was represented at Riga by Piłsudski's associate, Leon Wasilewski.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: In the long run, the National Democrats' scheme had not quite worked, because "the Riga settlement created a Poland which was too westerly to be a federation, but not westerly enough to remain a national state". Poland ended up with the largest total percentage of ethnic minorities of any unitary state in interwar Europe (only about two thirds of Polish citizens considered themselves ethnically Polish or of Polish nationality). Still, the refusal of the easternmost areas considered was beneficial to the National Democrats' electoral prospects. The resolution of the war had thus dealt a death blow to the "Intermarium" project. One consequence of the outcome of the Polish–Soviet War was that Poland's elites acquired an exaggerated perspective of the country's military capabilities. This point of view was not shared by Western observers, who stressed that Poland was able to defend itself only because of the financial, logistic and material support from the Allies. 99,000 Polish soldiers died or went missing and the country suffered enormous other losses and destruction.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Peace of Riga partitioned Ukraine and gave a portion of its territory to Poland (eastern Galicia and most of Volhynia) and the other portion to the Soviets. The Ukrainian Soviet Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Republic were recognized by Poland. Historian Timothy Snyder writes: "That the Soviet Union established in 1922 included a Ukrainian SSR was the most important consequence of the attempts to establish an independent Ukrainian state in 1918–1920."


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Treaty of Warsaw between Poland and the Directorate of Ukraine had been invalidated. The Riga treaty violated the spirit of Poland's prior alliance with the Ukrainian People's Republic. From the beginning of the talks, the Polish side "de facto" recognized the Ukrainian SSR and the armistice agreement stipulated termination of support for foreign forces allied against the other side. Members of the Ukrainian faction that accepted the alliance with Poland and fought within that alliance, were now interned by the Polish authorities. The peace negotiations and their outcome were condemned and bitterly criticized by Ukrainian politicians and military leaders. As Polish democracy was "alien, unrepresentative, and eventually curtailed", great resentment had been generated in the remaining interwar years because of repressive policies of Polish governments towards Ukrainians living in post-Riga Poland.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: In the 1920s, the Soviet policy was to help create a modern Ukrainian culture. Ukrainian intellectuals, co-opted by the communist party, were encouraged to create in the Ukrainian language and the result was cultural revival and a period of great productivity. Children were educated and most books and newspapers were published in the native language. The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was established. The liberal policies ended under Joseph Stalin's rule, when the new church was banned and the Ukrainian intelligentsia destroyed in massive purges.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Given the circumstances, in the 1930s Poland's eastern Galicia had become the center of Ukrainian political and cultural activity. Despite the atrocities that took place in Soviet Ukraine, Poland was regarded by Ukrainian activists as the principal enemy. They felt disappointed by the failed alliance and the Riga betrayal, and were annoyed by daily domination of the Polish authorities and local Polish elites. Many perceived the Soviet Union primarily as the creator of a Ukrainian state, the Ukrainian SSR.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: On 11 July 1920, Soviet forces entered Minsk and on 1 August the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was officially established. Belarus, like Ukraine, was partitioned between Poland and the Soviet Union after the Peace of Riga. The policies of the Byelorussian Soviet Republic were determined by Moscow.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Unlike in the cases of Lithuania and Ukraine, Piłsudski or his allies had not proposed a Belarusian state associated with Poland until the Riga talks, when they wanted to claim Minsk as capital of a Belarusian People's Republic in that role.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Like the Ukrainian Petliura's forces, in Belarus the Volunteer Allied Army under General Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz attacked the Soviets after the armistice. Bułak-Bałachowicz's troops commenced their offensive on 5 November and after temporary successes had to retreat back into Polish-controlled territory on 28 November. The Belarusian soldiers were also interned by the Polish authorities.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Belarusian activists regarded the Peace of Riga results as a tragic betrayal. Without Minsk, Polish Belarusians were reduced to being a mostly rural, marginalized group. To many of them, the Soviet republic to the east seemed an attractive alternative. In 1922, the Soviet Union was established as a formal federation of republics. Its policy called for an eventual extension of the Byelorussian SSR, to include the Belarusian lands under Polish administration. The Communist Party of Western Belorussia, established in Poland, was under Soviet control. The territory of the Byelorussian SSR was extended to the east in 1923, 1924 and 1926 by lands taken from the Russian Republic. In contrast to the repressive Polish policies, in the 1920s the Soviet Union supported Belarusian culture; several major national institutions and thousands of Belarusian schools had been established. However, the official Belarusian progress was mostly destroyed under Stalin in the 1930s.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Belarusian activists held a Congress of Representatives in Prague in the fall of 1921, to discuss the Peace of Riga and its consequences for Belarus. Vera Maslovskaya was sent there as the delegate of the Białystok area, and she proposed a resolution to fight for the unification of Belarus. She sought independence of all Belarusian lands and denounced the partition. Though the convention did not adopt a proposal instituting armed conflict, it passed Maslovskaya's proposal, which led to immediate retaliation from the Polish authorities. They infiltrated the underground network fighting for Belarusian unification and arrested the participants. Maslovskaya was arrested in 1922 and tried in 1923, along with 45 other participants, mostly peasants. Among the arrested were also a sister and brother of Maslovskaya and several teachers and professionals. Maslovskaya accepted all responsibility for the underground organisation, but specifically stated that she was guilty of no crime, having acted only to protect the interests of Belarus against foreign occupiers, in a political and not military action. Unable to prove that the leaders had participated in armed rebellion, the court found them guilty of political crimes and sentenced to six years in prison.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Pressured by the Entente powers, Poland and Lithuania signed the Suwałki Agreement on 7 October 1920; the armistice line left Vilnius on the Lithuanian side of the border. However, Polish military activities, especially the so-called Żeligowski's Mutiny launched two days after the Suwałki Agreement, allowed Poland to capture the Vilnius Region, where a Polish-dominated Governance Committee of Central Lithuania was formed. On 8 January 1922, the Polish military enforced local legislative elections, but they were boycotted by Jews, Belarusians and Lithuanians. The resulting Vilnius assembly voted for the incorporation of "Central Lithuania" into Poland on 20 February 1922 and Polish Sejm approved the annexation on 24 March. The Western powers condemned the Polish actions but on 15 March 1923 the Conference of Ambassadors, convinced of the desirability of geographical separation of Lithuania from the Soviet Union, approved Poland's eastern borders, as already determined by the League of Nations in early February (the Soviet Union rejected the granting of Vilnius to Poland). Lithuania refused to comply; the events and the incorporation worsened Polish–Lithuanian relations for decades to come. According to Alfred E. Senn, even though Lithuania lost territory to Poland, it was only the Polish victory against the Soviets in the Polish–Soviet War that derailed the Soviet plans for westward expansion and gave Lithuania the period of interwar independence.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Latvia's fighting with the Bolsheviks ended with the Latvian–Soviet Peace Treaty on 11 August 1920. The Peace of Riga negotiations followed; it established a Polish-Latvian border in the area of Daugavpils. That same year Latvia passed a comprehensive land reform and in 1922 introduced a democratic constitution. The Warsaw Accord was signed by foreign ministers of Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Poland on 17 March 1922. However, the Treaty of Rapallo, signed on 16 April 1922, effectively placed the Baltic states in the German and Soviet spheres of influence.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: According to sources quoted by Chwalba, of the 80–85 thousand Soviet prisoners of war, 16–20 thousand died in Polish captivity. Of the 51 thousand Polish prisoners, 20 thousand died. The practice of disproportionate killing of Polish commissioned officers continued into World War II, when a series of executions known as the Katyn massacre took place.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The war and its aftermath resulted in controversies, such as the situation of prisoners of war in Poland and in Soviet Russia and Lithuania, treatment of the civilian population, or the behaviour of some commanders, including Semyon Budyonny, Hayk Bzhishkyan, Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz, and Vadim Yakovlev. The reported pogroms of Jews by the Polish military caused the United States to send a commission, led by Henry Morgenthau, to investigate the matter.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: The Polish–Soviet War influenced the Polish military doctrine; under Piłsudski's leadership, it emphasized the mobility of elite cavalry units. It also influenced Charles de Gaulle, who was an instructor in the Polish Army with a rank of major and fought in several of the battles, including the Battle of Warsaw. He and Władysław Sikorski correctly predicted, based on their experiences during the war, the importance of maneuver and mechanization in the next war. Although they had failed to convince their respective military establishments to heed those lessons during the interwar period, during World War II, they rose to the command of their respective armed forces in exile.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Despite the final retreat of Soviet forces and the annihilation of three Soviet field armies, historians do not universally agree on the question of victory. Lenin spoke of a great military defeat suffered by Soviet Russia. Sebestyen wrote: "The Poles heavily defeated and embarrassed the Soviet state – one of Lenin's biggest setbacks." The conflict, however, is also viewed as military victory for Poland coupled with political defeat. In the peace treaty, Poland formally gave up its ambitions of helping build independent Ukraine and Belarus and recognized the two states as dependencies of Moscow. The countries envisioned by Piłsudski as members of Poland-led "Intermarium" federation had instead, under Lenin and Stalin, become incorporated into the Soviet Union.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: In the autumn of 1920, both combatants had realized that they could not win a decisive military victory. Internally, the newly reestablished Polish state had proved its viability, as an overwhelming majority of its people contributed to the defense of the country and turned out insensitive to Bolshevik appeals for joining the revolution. As for the main protagonists, neither one was able to accomplish his principal objective. For Piłsudski, it was to recreate in some form the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. For Lenin, to cause the downfall of the capitalist edifice in Europe by facilitating revolutionary processes in key states of the West.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Russian and Polish historians tend to assign victory to their respective countries. Outside assessments vary mostly between calling the result a Polish victory or inconclusive. The Poles claimed a successful defence of their state, but the Soviets claimed a repulse of the Polish invasion of Ukraine and Belarus, which they viewed as a part of the foreign intervention in the Russian Civil War. Some British and American military historians argue that the Soviet failure to destroy the Polish Army ended Soviet ambitions for international revolution.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Andrzej Chwalba lists a number of ways in which the Polish military victory in reality turned out being a loss (the fundamental "status quo" – Poland's sovereign existence – had been preserved). The perception of Poland as the aggressor damaged the country's reputation. Historians and publicists, in the West as well as in the East, have presented the country's eastern policy in negative terms, as irresponsible and adventurous. In 1920 and its aftermath, likely hundreds of thousands of people died without any territorial or political gain for Poland.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: After signing the armistice with Poland in October 1920, the Soviets transferred troops toward Crimea and attacked the Isthmus of Perekop. Pyotr Wrangel's White Army was ultimately defeated there. By 14 November, 83,000 soldiers and civilians had been evacuated aboard French and Russian ships to Istanbul (the British government refused to provide any assistance), while 300,000 White collaborators were left behind. The Red Army then diverted its troops into the Tambov region of central Russia to crush an anti-Bolshevik peasant uprising.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: In September 1926, the Soviet–Lithuanian Non-Aggression Pact was signed. The Soviets renewed their recognition of the Lithuanian claim to the Vilnius area. In 1939, after the Soviet invasion of Poland, Stalin gave Vilnius to Lithuania. In 1940, Lithuania was incorporated into the Soviet Union as a Soviet republic. This arrangement, interrupted by the German occupation of Lithuania in 1941–44, had lasted until the restoration of Lithuanian independent state in 1990. Under the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, Vilnius became a city dominated by ethnic Lithuanians.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: After the Soviet invasion of Poland of September 1939, the partition of Belarus and Ukraine ended on Soviet terms. After Operation Barbarossa and occupation by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union returned in 1944 and the two Soviet republics permanently reclaimed what had been Polish "Kresy" from 1920 to 1939. Since the post-World War II adjustments, the borders of the republics had remained stable, except for the 1954 transfer of Crimea from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. The Soviet republics' borders had been preserved as borders of independent Belarus and Ukraine following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: In 1943, during the course of World War II, the subject of Poland's eastern borders was reopened and was discussed at the Tehran Conference. Winston Churchill argued in favour of the 1920 Curzon Line rather than the Peace of Riga borders, and an agreement among the Allies to that effect was reached at the Yalta Conference in 1945. The Western Allies, despite having alliance treaties with Poland and despite the Polish contribution to the war, left Poland within the Soviet sphere of influence. The Allies allowed Poland to be compensated for the territorial losses in the east with the bulk of the former eastern territories of Germany. The post-war arrangement imposed had become known to many Poles as the Western betrayal.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: From the end of World War II until 1989, the communists held power in Poland, and the Polish–Soviet War was omitted or minimised in Polish and other Soviet Bloc countries' history books, or was presented as a foreign intervention during the Russian Civil War.


title: Polish–Soviet War

text: Polish Lieutenant Józef Kowalski was the last living veteran of the war. He was awarded the Order of Polonia Restituta on his 110th birthday by President Lech Kaczyński of Poland. He died on 7 December 2013 at the age of 113.


title: François Hollande

text: François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (; born 12 August 1954) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2012 to 2017. He previously was First Secretary of the Socialist Party (PS) from 1997 to 2008, Mayor of Tulle from 2001 to 2008, and President of the General Council of Corrèze from 2008 to 2012. Hollande also served in the National Assembly twice for the 1st constituency of Corrèze from 1988 to 1993, and again from 1997 until 2012.


title: François Hollande

text: Born in Rouen and raised in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hollande began his political career as a special advisor to newly elected President François Mitterrand, before serving as a staffer for Max Gallo, the government's spokesman. He became a member of the National Assembly in 1988 and was elected First Secretary of the PS in 1997. Following the 2004 regional elections won by the PS, Hollande was cited as a potential presidential candidate, but he resigned as First Secretary and was immediately elected to replace Jean-Pierre Dupont as President of the General Council of Corrèze in 2008. In 2011, Hollande announced that he would be a candidate in the primary election to select the PS presidential nominee; he won the nomination against Martine Aubry, and was elected to the presidency on 6 May 2012 during the second round with 51.6% of the vote, defeating incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.


title: François Hollande

text: During his tenure, Hollande legalised same-sex marriage by passing Bill no. 344, reformed labour laws and credit training programmes, withdrew combat troops present in the Afghanistan military intervention, and concluded an EU directive on the protection of animals in laboratory research through a Franco-German contract. Hollande led the country through the January and November 2015 Paris attacks, as well as the 2016 Nice truck attack. He was a leading proponent of EU mandatory migrant quotas and NATO's 2011 military intervention in Libya. He also sent troops to Mali and the Central African Republic with the approval of the UN Security Council in order to stabilise those countries, two operations largely seen as failures. Hollande drew controversy among his left-wing electoral base for his support of the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.


title: François Hollande

text: Paris hosted the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference and Hollande's efforts to attract the 2024 Summer Olympics to the city were successful. Notwithstanding, with unemployment up to 10% and domestic troubles, in particular over his tenure due to terrorism, he faced spikes and downturns in approval rates, ultimately making him the most unpopular head of state under the Fifth Republic. On 1 December 2016, he announced he would not seek reelection in the 2017 presidential election, for which polls suggested his defeat in the first round.


title: François Hollande

text: Hollande was born on 12 August 1954 in Rouen. His mother, Nicole Frédérique Marguerite Tribert (1927–2009), was a social worker, and his father, Georges Gustave Hollande (1923–2020), was a retired ear, nose, and throat doctor, who "ran for local election on a far right ticket in 1959". The name "Hollande" meant "one originally from Holland" – it is mostly found in Hollande's ancestral land, Hauts-de-France, and it is speculated to be Dutch in origin. The earliest known member of the Hollande family lived circa 1569 near Plouvain, working as a miller.


title: François Hollande

text: When Hollande was thirteen, the family moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, a highly exclusive suburb of Paris. He attended Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-la-Salle boarding school, a private Catholic school in Rouen, the Lycée Pasteur, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, receiving his baccalaureate in 1972 then graduated with a bachelor's degree in Law from Panthéon-Assas University. Hollande studied at HEC Paris, graduated in 1975, and then attended the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and the École nationale d'administration (ENA). He did his military service in the French Army in 1977. He graduated from the ENA in 1980, and chose to enter the prestigious Cour des comptes.


title: François Hollande

text: Hollande lived in the United States in the summer of 1974 as a university student. Immediately after graduation, he was employed as a councillor in the Court of Audit.


title: François Hollande

text: Five years after volunteering as a student to work for François Mitterrand's ultimately unsuccessful campaign in the 1974 presidential election, Hollande joined the Socialist Party. He was quickly spotted by Jacques Attali, a senior adviser to Mitterrand, who arranged for Hollande to run in legislative election of 1981 in Corrèze against future President Jacques Chirac, who was then the leader of the Rally for the Republic, a Neo-Gaullist party. Hollande lost to Chirac in the first round.


title: François Hollande

text: He went on to become a special advisor to newly elected President Mitterrand, before serving as a staffer for Max Gallo, the government's spokesman. After becoming a municipal councillor for Ussel in 1983, he contested Corrèze for a second time in 1988, this time being elected to the National Assembly. Hollande lost his bid for re-election to the Assembly in the so-called "blue wave" of the 1993 election, described as such due to the number of seats gained by the Right at the expense of the Socialist Party.


title: François Hollande

text: As the end of Mitterrand's term in office approached, the Socialist Party was torn by a struggle of internal factions, each seeking to influence the direction of the party. Hollande pleaded for reconciliation and for the party to unite behind Jacques Delors, the President of the European Commission, but Delors renounced his ambitions to run for the French presidency in 1995. Former party leader Lionel Jospin resumed his position, and selected Hollande to become the official party spokesman. Hollande went on to contest Corrèze once again in 1997, successfully returning to the National Assembly.


title: François Hollande

text: That same year, Jospin became the Prime Minister of France, and Hollande won the election for his successor as First Secretary of the party, a position he would hold for eleven years. Because of the very strong position of the Socialist Party within the French government during this period, Hollande's position led some to refer to him the "Vice Prime Minister". Hollande would go on to be elected mayor of Tulle in 2001, an office he would hold for the next seven years.


title: François Hollande

text: The immediate resignation of Jospin from politics following his shock defeat by far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the 2002 presidential election forced Hollande to become the public face of the party for the 2002 legislative election. Although he managed to limit defeats and was re-elected in his own constituency, the Socialists lost nationally. In order to prepare for the 2003 party congress in Dijon, he obtained the support of many notable personalities of the party and was re-elected first secretary against opposition from left-wing factions.


title: François Hollande

text: After the triumph of the Left in the 2004 regional elections, Hollande was cited as a potential presidential candidate, but the Socialists were divided on the European Constitution, and Hollande's support for the ill-fated "Yes" position in the French referendum on the European constitution caused friction within the party. Although Hollande was re-elected as first secretary at the Le Mans Congress in 2005, his authority over the party began to decline. Eventually his domestic partner, Ségolène Royal, was chosen to represent the party in the 2007 presidential election, where she would lose to Nicolas Sarkozy.


title: François Hollande

text: Hollande was widely blamed for the poor performances of the Socialist Party in the 2007 elections, and he announced that he would not seek another term as First Secretary. Hollande publicly declared his support for Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, but it was Martine Aubry who would go on to win the race to succeed him in 2008. Hollande was next elected to replace Jean-Pierre Dupont as the president of the General Council of Corrèze in April 2008, and won re-election in 2011.


title: François Hollande

text: Hollande announced in early 2011 that he would be a candidate in the upcoming primary election to select the Socialist and Radical Left Party presidential nominee. The primary marked the first time that both parties had held an open primary to select a joint nominee at the same time. He initially trailed the front-runner, former finance minister and International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Following Strauss-Kahn's arrest on suspicion of sexual assault in New York City in May 2011, Hollande began to lead the opinion polls, and his position as front-runner was established just as Strauss-Kahn declared that he would no longer seek the nomination. After a series of televised debates with other candidates throughout September, Hollande topped the ballot in the first round held on 9 October with 39% of the vote. He did not, however, gain the 50% required to avoid a run-off election, and was obliged to enter a second ballot against Martine Aubry, who had come in second with 30% of the vote.


title: François Hollande

text: The second ballot took place on 16 October 2011. Hollande won with 56% of the vote to Aubry's 43% and thus became the official Socialist and Radical Left Party candidate for the 2012 presidential election. All his main opponents in the primary – Aubry, Ségolène Royal, Arnaud Montebourg, and Manuel Valls – pledged their support to him for the general election.


title: François Hollande

text: Hollande's presidential campaign was managed by Pierre Moscovici and Stéphane Le Foll, a member of Parliament and Member of the European Parliament respectively. Hollande launched his campaign officially with a rally and major speech at Le Bourget on 22 January 2012 in front of 25,000 people. The main themes of his speech were equality and the regulation of finance, both of which he promised to make a key part of his campaign.


title: François Hollande

text: On 26 January, he outlined a full list of policies in a manifesto containing 60 propositions, including the separation of retail activities from riskier investment-banking businesses; raising taxes on big corporations, banks and the wealthy; creating 60,000 teaching jobs; bringing the official retirement age back down to 60 from 62; creating subsidised jobs in areas of high unemployment for the young; promoting more industry in France by creating a public investment bank; granting marriage and adoption rights to same-sex couples; and pulling French troops out of Afghanistan in 2012. On 9 February, he detailed his policies specifically relating to education in a major speech in Orléans.


title: François Hollande

text: Incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on 15 February that he would run for a second and final term, strongly criticising the Socialist proposals and claiming that Hollande would bring about "economic disaster within two days of taking office". Opinion polls showed a tight race between the two men in the first round of voting, with most polls showing Hollande comfortably ahead of Sarkozy in a hypothetical second round. The first round of the presidential election was held on 22 April. François Hollande came in first place with 28.63% of the vote, and faced Nicolas Sarkozy in a run-off. In the second round of voting on 6 May 2012, Hollande was elected with 51.6% of the vote.


title: François Hollande

text: Hollande was inaugurated on 15 May 2012, and shortly afterwards appointed Jean-Marc Ayrault to be his Prime Minister. He was the first Socialist Party president since François Mitterrand left office in 1995. The President of the French Republic is one of the two joint heads of state of the Principality of Andorra. Hollande hosted a visit from Antoni Martí, head of the government, and Vicenç Mateu Zamora, leader of the parliament.


title: François Hollande

text: He also appointed Benoît Puga to be the military's chief of staff, Pierre-René Lemas as his general secretary and Pierre Besnard as his Head of Cabinet. Hollande's full Council of Ministers became the first ever in France to show gender parity, with 17 men and 17 women, and each member was required to sign a new "code of ethics" that placed significant restrictions on their conduct and compensation, above that of existing law. The first measure enacted by the new government was to lower the salaries of the President, the Prime Minister, and other members of the government by 30%.


title: François Hollande

text: Hollande's economic policies are wide-ranging, including supporting the creation of a European credit rating agency, the separation of lending and investment in banks, reducing the share of electricity generated by nuclear power in France from 75 to 50% in favour of renewable energy sources, merging income tax and the General Social Contribution (CSG), creating an additional 45% for additional income of 150,000 euros, capping tax loopholes at a maximum of €10,000 per year, and questioning the relief solidarity tax on wealth (ISF, "Impôt de Solidarité sur la Fortune") measure that should bring €29 billion in additional revenue. Hollande also signalled his intent to implement a 75% income tax rate on revenue earned above 1,000,000 euros per year, to generate the provision of development funds for deprived suburbs, and to return to a deficit of zero percent of GDP by 2017. The tax plan proved controversial, with courts ruling it unconstitutional in 2012, only to then take the opposite position on a redrafted version in 2013.


title: François Hollande

text: Hollande had also announced several reforms to education, pledging to recruit 60,000 new teachers, to create a study allowance and means-tested training, and to set up a mutually beneficial contract that would allow a generation of experienced employees and craftsmen to be the guardians and teachers of younger newly hired employees, thereby creating a total of 150,000 subsidized jobs. This was complemented by the promise of aid to SMEs, with the creation of a public bank investment-oriented SME's, and a reduction of the corporate tax rate to 30% for medium corporations and 15% for small.


title: François Hollande

text: Hollande's government has announced plans to construct 500,000 public homes per year, including 150,000 social houses, funded by a doubling of the ceiling of the A passbook, the region making available its local government land within five years. In accordance with long-standing Socialist Party policy, Hollande has announced that the retirement age will revert to 60, for those who have contributed for more than 41 years.


title: François Hollande

text: Hollande has also announced his personal support for same-sex marriage and adoption for LGBT couples, and outlined plans to pursue the issue in early 2013. In July 2012, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault announced that "In the first half of 2013, the right to marriage and adoption will be open to all couples, without discrimination", confirming this election promise by Hollande.


title: François Hollande

text: The bill to legalize same-sex marriage, known as Bill no. 344, was introduced to the National Assembly of France on 7 November 2012. On 12 February 2013, the National Assembly approved the bill in a 329–229 vote. The Right-wing opposed the bill. The Senate approved the full bill with a 171–165 majority on 12 April with minor amendments. On 23 April, the National Assembly approved the amended bill, in a 331–225 vote, and following approval of the law by the Constitutional Council of France, it was signed into law by President Hollande on 18 May 2013, with the first same-sex weddings under the law taking place eleven days later.


title: François Hollande

text: As President, Hollande pursued labour reform to make France more competitive internationally. Legislation was introduced in late 2012 and after much debate passed the French lower and upper house in May 2013. The bill includes measures such as making it easier for workers to change jobs and for companies to fire employees. One of the main measures of the bill allows companies to temporarily cut workers' salaries or hours during times of economic difficulty. This measure takes its inspiration from Germany, where furloughs have been credited with allowing companies to weather difficult times without resorting to massive layoffs. Layoffs in France are often challenged in courts and the cases can take years to resolve. Many companies cite the threat of lengthy court action – even more than any financial cost – as the most difficult part of doing business in France. The law shortens the time that employees have to contest a layoff and also lays out a scheme for severance pay. The government hopes this will help employees and companies reach agreement faster in contentious layoffs.


title: François Hollande

text: Another key measure introduced are credits for training that follow employees throughout their career, regardless of where they work, and the right to take a leave of absence to work at another company. The law will also require all companies to offer and partially pay for supplemental health insurance. Lastly, the law also reforms unemployment insurance, so that someone out of work doesn't risk foregoing significant benefits when taking a job that might pay less than previous work or end up only being temporary. Under the new law, workers will be able to essentially put benefits on hold when they take temporary work, instead of seeing their benefits recalculated each time.


title: François Hollande

text: As President, Hollande pursued reform to the pension system in France. The process proved to be very contentious, with members of Parliament, Labor Unions, and general public all opposed. Mass protests and demonstrations occurred throughout Paris. Despite the opposition, the French Parliament did pass a reform in December 2013 aimed at plugging a pension deficit expected to reach 20.7 billion euros ($28.4 billion) by 2020 if nothing were to be done. Rather than raising the mandatory retirement age, as many economists had advised, Hollande pursued increases in contributions, leaving the retirement age untouched. The reform had a rough ride in parliament, being rejected twice by the Senate, where Hollande's Socialist Party has a slim majority, before it won sufficient backing in a final vote before the lower house of parliament. French private sector workers will see the size and duration of their pension contributions increase only modestly under the reform while their retirement benefits are largely untouched.


title: François Hollande

text: As President, Hollande promised an early withdrawal of French combat troops present in Afghanistan in 2012. He also pledged to conclude a new contract of Franco-German partnership, advocating the adoption of a Directive on the protection of public services. Hollande has proposed "an acceleration of the establishment of a Franco-German civic service, the creation of a Franco-German research office, the creation of a Franco-German industrial fund to finance common competitiveness clusters, and the establishment of a common military headquarters". As well as this, Hollande has expressed a wish to "combine the positions of the presidents of the European Commission and of the European Council (currently held by José Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy respectively) into a single office [...] and that it should be directly chosen" by the members of the European Parliament.


title: François Hollande

text: On 11 January 2013, Hollande authorised the execution of Operation Serval, which aimed to curtail the activities of Islamist extremists in the north of Mali. The intervention was popularly supported in Mali, as Hollande promised that his government would do all it could to "rebuild Mali". During his one-day visit to Bamako, Mali's capital, on 2 February 2013, he said that it was "the most important day in [his] political life". In 2014, Hollande took some of these troops out of Mali and spread them over the rest of the Sahel under Operation Barkhane, in an effort to curb jihadist militants.


title: François Hollande

text: On 27 February 2014, Hollande was a special guest of honor in Abuja, received by Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan in celebration of Nigeria's amalgamation in 1914, a 100-year anniversary. In July 2014, Hollande expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, and told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "France strongly condemns these aggressions [by Hamas]."


title: François Hollande

text: In September 2015, Hollande warned former Eastern Bloc countries against rejecting the EU mandatory migrant quotas, saying: "Those who don't share our values, those who don't even want to respect those principles, need to start asking themselves questions about their place in the European Union".


title: François Hollande

text: Hollande supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, re-supplying the Saudi military. France authorised $18 billion (€16 billion) in arms sales to Saudi Arabia in 2015.


title: François Hollande

text: In 2014, French bank BNP Paribas agreed to pay an $8.9 billion fine, the largest ever for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran at that time. In October 2016, Hollande said: "When the (European) Commission goes after Google or digital giants which do not pay the taxes they should in Europe, America takes offence. And yet, they quite shamelessly demand 8 billion from BNP or 5 billion from Deutsche Bank."


title: François Hollande

text: An IFOP poll released in April 2014 showed that Hollande's approval rating had dropped five points since the previous month of March to 18%, dipping below his earlier low of 20% in February during the same year. In November 2014, his approval rating reached a new low of 12%, according to a YouGov poll. Following the "Charlie Hebdo" shooting in January 2015, however, approval for Hollande increased dramatically, reaching 40% according to an IFOP poll two weeks after the attack, though an Ipsos-Le Point survey in early February showed his rating declining back to 30%.


title: François Hollande

text: Hollande is the most unpopular president of the French Fifth Republic. In September 2014, his approval rating was down to 13% according to an IFOP/JDD survey, making him the first French leader in modern times to ever break the 20% threshold. One year before the end of his mandate, in April 2016, his approval rating was at 14%, and surveys predicted that if he were to run for a second term, he would be defeated in the first round of the 2017 presidential elections. By November 2016, Hollande's approval rating was just 4%.


title: François Hollande

text: For twenty nine years, his partner was fellow Socialist politician Ségolène Royal, with whom he has four children: Thomas (1984), Clémence (1985), Julien (1987) and Flora (1992). In June 2007, just a month after Royal's defeat in the French presidential election of 2007, the couple announced that they were separating.