The 1920 Kiev offensive (or Kiev expedition, Polish: wyprawa kijowska) was a major part of the Polish–Soviet War. It was an attempt by the armed forces of the recently established Second Polish Republic led by Józef Piłsudski, in alliance with the Ukrainian People's Republic led by Symon Petliura, to seize the territories of modern-day Ukraine which mostly fell under Soviet control after the October Revolution as the Russian Soviet Republic.
Polish and Soviet forces fought in 1919 and the Poles advanced in the disputed borderlands. In early 1920, Piłsudski concentrated on preparations for a military invasion of central Ukraine. It would result, he anticipated, in destruction of the Soviet armies and force Soviet acceptance of unilateral Polish conditions. The Poles signed an alliance, known as the Treaty of Warsaw, with the forces of the Ukrainian People's Republic. The Kiev offensive was the central component of Piłsudski's plan for a new order in Eastern Europe centered around a Polish-led Intermarium federation. The stated goal of the operation was to create a formally independent Ukraine, although its dependence on Poland was inherent to Piłsudski's plans. Ukrainians ended up fighting on both sides of the conflict.
The campaign was conducted from April to July 1920. The Polish Army faced the forces of the Russian Soviet Republic. At first, the war was successful for the allied Polish and Ukrainian armies, which captured Kiev (Kyiv) on 7 May 1920, but soon the campaign's progress was dramatically reversed due to a Red Army counter-offensive, in which the 1st Cavalry Army of Semyon Budyonny played a prominent part. In the wake of the Soviet advance, the short-lived Galician Soviet Socialist Republic was created. The Polish-Soviet War ended with the Peace of Riga of 1921, which settled the border between Poland and the Russian Soviet Republic.
Background
By late autumn 1919, many Polish activists from different political formations concluded that Poland, generally successful in pushing the Red Army forces to the east and gaining territory there, should now pursue peace by negotiating with Soviet Russia. The authorities increasingly had to deal with public protests and anti-war demonstrations. The Soviets also faced pressures to negotiate resolutions to the regional conflicts they were involved in. They launched diplomatic initiatives aimed at the eastern Baltic region states and Romania, which eventually resulted in treaties and improved relations.
Soviet Russia had not given up its mission of establishing a European Soviet Republic, but its leaders felt now that their goal could be accomplished at some time in the future, not necessarily immediate. They decided that peace with Poland would be desirable and on 22 December 1919, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgy Chicherin sent Warsaw the first of several peace offers. For the time being, the Soviets proposed a demarcation line at the current military frontiers, leaving permanent border issues to future determinations.
Some Polish politicians, including a majority on the Foreign and Military Affairs Committee of Polish parliament, insisted on negotiating with the Soviets. Socialist and agrarian leaders discussed the issue with Prime Minister Leopold Skulski. The National Democracy politicians had hoped that talks with the Soviets would derail the plans for Józef Piłsudski's alliance with Symon Petliura and resumption of the war with Russia, which they opposed. National Democrats did not believe that poor and relatively weak Poland was capable of carrying out Piłsudski's objective of building and leading an anti-Russian federation of states. The Soviet peace offers were rejected by Piłsudski, who did not trust the Russians and openly preferred to get the issues resolved on the battlefield. He had stated, on many occasions, that he could beat the Bolsheviks whenever and wherever he wanted to. On 22 April 1920, Stanisław Grabski, a National Democrat, resigned in protest his chairmanship of the parliamentary committee.
In the early months of 1920, Polish representatives engaged in pretended negotiations, as directed by Piłsudski. Stanisław Wojciechowski, Poland's future president, wrote that Poland had squandered the opportunity to conclude peace with the Soviets when they were most inclined to allow it.
Piłsudski was convinced that a rapid strike at the Soviet forces on the southern front would throw the Red Army far beyond the Dnieper River; consequently, the Soviets would have to accept the peace proposals presented by Poland. He argued that war provided optimal growth conditions for Polish industry and was an effective way to fight unemployment and its consequences. General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Piłsudski's close collaborator, claimed that war had turned out to be a highly profitable enterprise for state treasury.
Following fruitless exchanges with Foreign Minister Stanisław Patek, after 7 April Chicherin accused Poland of rejecting the Russian peace offer and heading for war; he notified the Allies and called on them to restrain the Polish aggression. The Poles claimed that the Russian Western Front presented an immediate danger and was about to launch an attack, but the narrative was not seen as convincing in the West (the Western Front forces were rather weak at that time and had no plans for an offensive). Soviet Russia's arguments turned out to be more persuasive and the image of Poland had suffered.
The Soviets came to realize that the Polish side was not interested in an armistice at the end of February. First, they suspected a strike in the north, in the direction of the so-called Smolensk Gateway. Vladimir Lenin ordered strengthening of the Western Front defenses. The Polish attack in the Polesia and Volhynia borderlands on 7 March, led by Władysław Sikorski, as well as other actions, reinforced the Soviet suspicions. Sikorski's offensive separated the Soviet Western and Southwestern Fronts. Additional Red Army troops were brought hurriedly from the Caucasian Front and from elsewhere. However, as the Soviet intelligence informed of concentrations of Polish forces in the south and in the north, the Soviet leaders had been unable to determine where the main Polish offensive was going to take place.
Ukrainian involvement
Since early 1919, the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) faced mounting attacks on the territory it claimed. It had lost control over most of Ukraine, which became divided among several disparate powers: Anton Denikin's Whites, the Red Army and pro-Soviet formations, Nestor Makhno's Revolutionary Insurgent Army in the southeast, the Kingdom of Romania in the southwest, Poland, and various bands lacking any political ideology. During the Polish–Ukrainian War, UPR forces fought the Polish Army. An armistice was signed by the combatants on 1 September 1919; it foresaw common action against the Bolsheviks.
The city of Kiev had undergone numerous changes of government. The UPR was established in 1917; a Bolshevik uprising was suppressed in January 1918. The Red Army took Kiev in February, followed by the Army of the German Empire in March; Ukrainian forces retook the city in December. In February 1919, the Red Army regained control. In August, it was taken first by the UPR and then by Denikin's army. The Soviets were in control again from December 1919 (the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had its temporary capital in Kharkiv).
By the time of the Polish offensive, the UPR had been defeated by the Red Army and controlled only a small sliver of land near the territory administered by Poland. Under these circumstances, Petliura saw no choice but to accept Piłsudski's offer of joining an alliance with Poland despite many unresolved territorial disputes between the two nations. By 16 November 1919, Polish forces had taken over Kamianets-Podilskyi and the surrounding areas, and the Polish authorities allowed the UPR to establish its official state structures there, including military recruiting (while advancing Poland's own claims to the territory). On 2 December, Ukrainian diplomats led by Andriy Livytskyi declared that they had given up Ukrainian claims to Eastern Galicia and western Volhynia, in return for Poland's recognition of Ukrainian (UPR) independence. Petliura had thus accepted the territorial gains Poland made in the course of the Polish–Ukrainian War, when it defeated the West Ukrainian People's Republic (WUPR), a Ukrainian statehood attempt in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. The two regions were largely Ukrainian populated but had a significant Polish minority.
On 21 April 1920, Piłsudski and a three-man Directorate of Ukraine, led by Petliura, agreed to the Treaty of Warsaw. The treaty has been known as the Petliura–Piłsudski Pact, but it was signed by Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Dąbski and Livytskyi. The text of the agreement was kept secret and it was not ratified by the Polish Sejm. In exchange for agreeing to a border along the Zbruch River, Petliura was promised military help in regaining Soviet-controlled Ukrainian territories, including Kiev. He would then reassume the authority of the Ukrainian People's Republic.
A military convention regarding common action and subordination of Ukrainian units to Polish command was signed by the Ukrainian and Polish sides on 24 April. On 25 April, the Polish and the UPR forces began an offensive aimed at Kiev.
A preliminary trade agreement was arrived at on 1 May by the Polish and Ukrainian sides. It foresaw extensive exploitation of Ukraine by the Polish state and capital. The signing of the agreement would reveal its content, with likely catastrophic consequences for Petliura, so it had not been signed.
Factions in the Polish parliament, most prominently the National Democrats, protested Piłsudski's alliance with Petliura's Ukraine, his slighting of the Polish government, and the policies of fait accompli. They felt that all major Polish moves should have been consulted with the Allies. The National Democrats did not recognize Ukrainians as a nation and to them the Ukrainian issue reduced to a proper division of Ukraine between Poland and White (or Red) Russia.
The UPR was not recognized by the Allies. The British and the French warned Poland that the treaty with the UPR amounted to irresponsible adventurism, because Poland lacked strong economic foundations, industry, or stable finances, and was not in a position to impose a new geostrategic situation in Europe.
The UPR was supposed to subordinate its military and economy to Warsaw. Ukraine was going to join the Polish-led Intermarium federation of states in central and eastern Europe. Piłsudski wanted a Poland-allied Ukraine to be a buffer between Poland and Russia. Provisions in the treaty guaranteed the rights of the Polish and Ukrainian minorities within each state and obliged each side not to conclude international agreements against each other. Piłsudski also needed an alliance with a Ukrainian faction as cover for the action perceived abroad as military aggression.
As the treaty legitimized Polish control over the territory that Ukrainians viewed as rightfully theirs, the alliance received a dire reception from many Ukrainian leaders, ranging from Mykhailo Hrushevsky, former chairman of the Central Council of Ukraine, to Yevhen Petrushevych, the leader of the West Ukrainian People's Republic who was forced into exile after the Polish–Ukrainian War. UPR Prime Minister Isaak Mazepa resigned his position in protest of the Warsaw agreements. While to many protesting WUPR activists Petliura was a traitor and renegade, the divided UPR circles quarreled about the merits of the Polish–Ukrainian alliance.
Preparations
Piłsudski resolved to realize his political objectives by way of military determinations. For political reasons, he chose to launch an attack on the southern, Ukrainian front, in the direction of Kiev. He had been assembling a large military force throughout the winter. He had become convinced that the Russian White movement and its forces, largely defeated by the Red Army, were no longer a security threat to Poland and that he could take on the remaining adversary, the Bolsheviks.
The Red Army, which had been regrouping since 10 March, was not fully ready for combat. One important factor that limited the Soviet response to the Polish attack was the peasant Pitchfork uprising that took place in February–March and was taken very seriously by the Bolshevik leadership. It distracted the Soviet Commissar of War Leon Trotsky so much that he had temporarily left Ukraine and Belarus poorly defended.
The Kiev Expedition, in which 65,000 Polish and 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers took part, commenced on 25 April 1920. It was carried out by the southern group of Polish armies, under Piłsudski's command. The operation was prepared and carried out by Piłsudski and his allies, Piłsudski's trusted officers with the Polish Legions backgrounds. Major generals on the General Staff were kept in the dark about the emerging details of the offensive. Piłsudski was convinced that the Soviets did not have major military forces at their disposal and that the Ukrainian population would generally support the Polish-led effort.