A Precarious compromise: the territorial settlement of the Riga peace of 1921 in light of Soviet and Polish policies toward the borderlands

ENThe Riga peace of 1921 ended the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1920, fought by the two powers largely over the Borderlands, a territory between Poland proper and Russia proper. The crucial aspect of this peace treaty was its territorial settlement. It gave Poland most of the western Borderlands, including the Wilno region and the western parts of Belarus and Ukraine. The eastern Borderlands, including Minsk and Kiev, were recognized as belonging to Soviet Belarus and Soviet Ukraine, respectively. This territorial settlement was significantly affected by ethnic issues. Poland’s and Soviet Russia’s contrary assessments of the ethnic geography of the Borderlands counted among those fundamental differences contributing to hostility and making mutual understanding difficult. Given its significance, the disagreement ober this issue is here the point of departure and is presented in Chapter One. Taking these contrary views into account, the Soviet and Polish ethnic programs in the region were then developed. The basic assumptions of these programs and their practical implementation prior to the beginning of negotiations at Riga are considered in Chapter Two focusing on the Soviet program, and Chapter Three dealing with the Polish program known as federalism. Since they were mutually exclusive, there was no possibility of compromise. The resulting conflict could thus be resolved only on the battlefield. The military aspect of this resolution is analyzed in Chapter Four. After some remarkable military turnarounds, it became clear that neither side was strong enough to defeat the other decisively.Consequently, it was necessary to resort to some kind of territorial compromise. This compromise was made possible by a drastic decline in the credibility of federalism in Poland in the summer of 1920 coupled with the Soviet realization that strict adherence to the ethnic geography of the region, as seen by Moscow, would be counterproductive to a Polish-Soviet understanding. The whole process of negotiation, including its antecedents, is discussed in Chapter Five. Finally, the Epilogue deals with death tremors of Polish federalism and the issue of the durability of the Polish-Soviet territorial settlement.