page_title: Józef Piłsudski
section_title: Polish–Soviet War
hierarchical_section_title: Józef Piłsudski / Polish–Soviet War
caption_attribution_description: YJózef Piłsudski (1867-1935) and Edward Rydz-Śmigły (1886-1941) during the Polish-Bolshevik war. Photo taken in 1920. Public Domain.
context_page_description: Józef Klemens Piłsudski was a Polish statesman who served as the Chief of State and First Marshal of Poland. He was considered the de facto leader of the Second Polish Republic as the Minister of Military Affairs. After World War I, he held great power in Polish politics and was a distinguished figure on the international scene. He is viewed as a father of the Second Polish Republic re-established in 1918, 123 years after the final Partition of Poland by Austria, Prussia and Russia in 1795.
  Seeing himself as a descendant of the culture and traditions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Piłsudski believed in a multi-ethnic Poland—"a home of nations" including indigenous ethnic and religious minorities he hoped would establish a robust union with the independent states of Lithuania and Ukraine. His principal political opponent, Roman Dmowski, leader of the National Democrat party, by contrast, called for a Poland limited to the pre-Partitions Polish Crown and based mainly on a homogeneous ethnically Polish population and Roman Catholic identity.
  Early in his political career, Piłsudski became a leader of the Polish Socialist Party.
context_section_description: In the aftermath of World War I, there was unrest on all Polish borders. Regarding Poland's future frontiers, Piłsudski said, "All that we can gain in the west depends on the Entente—on the extent to which it may wish to squeeze Germany". In the east, "there are doors that open and close, and it depends on who forces them open and how far". In 1918 in the east, Polish forces clashed with Ukrainian forces in the Polish–Ukrainian War, and Piłsudski's first orders as Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army, on 12 November 1918, were to provide support for the Polish struggle in Lviv.
  Piłsudski was aware that the Bolsheviks were no friends of independent Poland and that war with them was inevitable. He viewed their advance west as a major problem, but he also considered the Bolsheviks less dangerous for Poland than their White opponents. The "White Russians", representatives of the old Russian Empire, were willing to accept only limited independence for Poland, probably within borders similar to those of the former Congress Poland, and they clearly objected to Polish control of Ukraine, which was crucial for Piłsudski's Intermarium project.
  That was in contrast to the Bolsheviks, who proclaimed the partitions of Poland null and void. Piłsudski thus speculated that Poland would be better off with the Bolsheviks, alienated from the Western powers, than with a restored Russian Empire. By ignoring the strong pressures from the Entente Cordiale to join the attack on Lenin's struggling Bolshevik government, Piłsudski probably saved it in the summer and the fall of 1919.
  In the wake of the Russian westward offensive of 1918–1919 and of a series of escalating battles that resulted in the Poles advancing eastward, on 21 April 1920, Marshal Piłsudski (as his rank had been since March 1920) signed a military alliance (the Treaty of Warsaw) with Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura to conduct joint operations against Soviet Russia. The goal of the Polish-Ukrainian Treaty was to establish an independent Ukraine and independent Poland in alliance, resembling that once existing within Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth In return, Petliura gave up Ukrainian claims to western lands of Galicia being a historical part of the Crown of Poland for which he was denounced by Ukrainian nationalist leaders.
  The Polish and the Ukrainian Armies, under Piłsudski's command, launched a successful offensive against the Russian forces in Ukraine. On 7 May 1920, with remarkably little fighting, they captured Kiev.
  The Bolshevik leadership framed the Polish actions as an invasion; in response, thousands of officers and deserters joined the Red Army, and thousands of civilians volunteered for war work. The Soviets launched a counter-offensive from Belarus, and counterattacked in Ukraine, advancing into Poland in a drive toward Germany to encourage the Communist Party of Germany in their struggles for power. Soviet confidence soared. The Soviets announced their plans to invade Western Europe; Soviet communist theoretician Nikolai Bukharin, writing in Pravda, hoped for the resources to carry the campaign beyond Warsaw "straight to London and Paris". Soviet commander Mikhail Tukhachevsky's order of the day for 2 July 1920 read: "To the West! Over the corpse of White Poland lies the road to worldwide conflagration. March upon Vilnius, Minsk, Warsaw!" and "onward to Berlin over the corpse of Poland!"
  On 1 July 1920, in view of the rapidly advancing Soviet offensive, Poland's parliament, the Sejm, formed a Council for Defense of the Nation, chaired by Piłsudski, to provide expeditious decision-making as a temporary supplanting of the fractious Sejm. The National Democrats, however, contended that the string of Bolshevik victories had been Piłsudski's fault and demanded that he resign; some even accused him of treason. On 19 July they failed to carry a vote of no-confidence in the council and this led to Dmowski's withdrawal from the Council. On 12 August, Piłsudski tendered his resignation to Prime Minister Wincenty Witos, offering to be the scapegoat if the military solution 
caption: Piłsudski (left) and Edward Rydz-Śmigły (right), 1920, during Polish-Soviet War
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