page_title: Peace of Riga
section_title: Negotiations
hierarchical_section_title: Peace of Riga / Negotiations
caption_attribution_description: Беларуская: Карыкатура: «Далоў ганебны рыжскі падзел! Ніхай жыве вольная непадзельная селянская Беларусь!» English: Caricature for Riga Peace 1921. Shows a Pole in old-style officer's uniform and sword-belt, and an ammunition-bandoliered and skull-faced Red Army soldier, together tearing White Russia or Belarus into two, while stomping on Ukraine. Polski: Białoruska karykatura traktatu ryskiego: „Precz z haniebnym ryskim rozbiorem! Niech żyje wolna, niepodzielna, włościańska Białoruś!” Русский: Карикатура: «Долой позорный рижский раздел! Пускай живет свободная неделимая крестьянская Беларусь!» Українська: Карикатура: «Геть ганебний ризький поділ! Нехай живе вільна неподільна селянська Білорусь!»
context_page_description: The Peace of Riga, also known as the Treaty of Riga, was signed in Riga on 18 March 1921, among Poland, Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine. The treaty ended the Polish–Soviet War.
  The Soviet-Polish borders established by the treaty remained in force until World War II, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union jointly invaded and dismembered Poland. They were later redrawn during the Yalta Conference and Potsdam Conference.
context_section_description: Peace talks began in Minsk on 17 August 1920, but as the Polish counter-offensive drew near, the talks were moved to Riga, and resumed on 21 September. The Soviets proposed two solutions, the first on 21 September and the second on 28 September. The Polish delegation made a counter-offer on 2 October. Three days later the Soviets offered amendments to the Polish offer, which Poland accepted. An armistice was signed on 12 October and went into effect on 18 October 1920. The chief negotiators were Jan Dąbski for Poland and Adolph Joffe for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The Soviet side insisted, successfully, on excluding non-communist Ukrainian representatives from the negotiations.
  The Soviets' military setbacks made their delegation offer Poland substantial territorial concessions in the contested border areas. However, to many observers, it looked as though the Polish side conducted the Riga talks as if  Poland had lost the war. The Polish delegation was dominated by members of the National Democrats, who were Piłsudski's political opponents. The National Democrats did not want non-Polish minorities in the reborn Polish state to constitute more than one third of the overall population and so were therefore prepared to accept a Polish-Soviet border substantially to the west of what was being offered by the Soviets even though it would leave hundreds of thousands of ethnic Poles on the Soviet side of the border.
  That decision was also motivated by political objectives. The National Democrats' base of public support was among Poles in central and western Poland. In the east of the country and in the disputed borderlands, support for the National Democrats was greatly outweighed by support for Piłsudski, and in the countryside, outside the cities, Poles were outnumbered by Ukrainians or Belarusians in those areas. A border too far to the east would thus be against not only the National Democrats' ideological objective of minimising the minority population of Poland but also their electoral prospects. Warweary public opinion in Poland also favoured an end to the negotiations, and both sides remained under pressure from the League of Nations to reach a deal.
  A special parliamentary delegation, consisting of six members of the Polish Sejm, held a vote on whether to accept the Soviets' farreaching concessions, which would have left Minsk on the Polish side of the border. Pressured by the National Democrat ideologue, Stanisław Grabski, the 100 km of extra territory was rejected, a victory for the nationalist doctrine and a stark defeat for Piłsudski's federalism.
  Regardless, the peace negotiations dragged on for months because of Soviet reluctance to sign. However, the matter became more urgent for the Soviet leadership, which had to deal with increased internal unrest towards the end of 1920, such as the Tambov Rebellion and later the Kronstadt rebellion against the Soviet authorities. As a result, Vladimir Lenin ordered the Soviet plenipotentiaries to finalise the peace treaty with Poland.
  The Peace of Riga, signed on 18 March 1921, partitioned the disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between Poland and Russia and ended the conflict.
caption: Caricature: "Down with the infamous Riga partition! Long live a free peasant indivisible Belarus!"
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