Poland-Russia-USSR Conflict PDF

Poland/Russia-USSR Con ct (Resolved) Behavior Poland: fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi Decisions and Decision-Makers Viewed in terms of Poland’s behavior during this East European interstate con ct (1918–1981), there were six discernible phases, of unequal duration and frequency of decisions. In Pha...

Poland/Russia-USSR Con ct (Resolved) Behavior Poland: fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi Decisions and Decision-Makers Viewed in terms of Poland’s behavior during this East European interstate con ct (1918–1981), there were six discernible phases, of unequal duration and frequency of decisions. In Phase I (1918–1922), Poland made two major decisions. The frst was a strategic decision to initiate a war against Communist Russia in 1920, designed to restore Poland’s pre-1772 border with Tsarist Russia, prior to the frst partition of Poland by Hapsburg Austria, Prussia, and Russia that year. The second was an important tactical decision in 1920—to recognize Ukraine’s independence, in exchange for a military alliance between these two neighbors against Bolshevik Russia. The military victory by Poland and Ukraine 8 SELECT CASE STUDY FINDINGS ON INTERSTATE CONFLICTS … 229 was refected in the geopolitical outcome for Poland. The March 1921 Peace of Riga substantially enlarged Poland’s territory by moving the frontier between Poland and Russia further to the east than the Curzon Line, which had been imposed as their border by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. It was a major political achievement for Poland’s dominant and authoritarian decision-maker during the frst phase of this con ct, President Josef Pilsudski. There were no major decisions by Poland related to this protracted con ct during Phase II (1922–1926), following Pilsudski’s electoral defeat in 1922. However, soon after his return to power in 1926 via a coup d’état, Poland was actively engaged in the rivalry with Soviet Russia in Phase III (1926– 1935). During that phase, another strategic decision by Poland was to weaken the USSR via its Promethean program— supporting independence movements of non-Russian nations in East Europe. This decision was implemented by a major tactical decision—to foster good relations with Poland’s neighbors, a policy that was refected in two non-aggression pacts with its two most powerful neighbors, Stalin’s USSR in 1932 and Hitler’s Germany in 1934. The Pilsudski era of decision-making domination in Poland and Phase III of the Poland/USSR con ct ended with Pilsudski’s death in 1935. Phase IV (1935–1939) was dominated by a power-sharing agreement between General Felicjan and Slawoj-Skladkowski, who continued Pilsudski’s quest for alliances in attempts to counter Nazi Germany’s military superiority. The most visible expression of this policy was Poland’s strategic decision to form military alliances with the two major powers in Western Europe, both in May 1939—the Convention with France and the Defense Pact with the UK, in which the signatories pledged military assistance to each other in case of a military invasion of either party. Three months later Poland was engulfed by the German Army, followed by the partition and occupation of all of Poland by Germany and the USSR during most of World War II; that is, Poland ceased to exist as an independent state during the moribund Phase V of this con ct (1939– 1944). Its formal independence was restored in 1944, but throughout Phase VI of this con ct (1944–1981), Poland was under the control of a Communist regime, frst by the Sovietsupported Polish Committee of National Liberation, the Lublin regime, and from the end of WWII until 1981 by a government dominated by the Polish Workers Party. While tensions existed between the USSR and Poland’s Communist regime, 230 M. BRECHER the presence of a substantial Soviet military force in Poland and, since 1955, Poland’s membership in the USSR-dominated Warsaw Pact deprived Poland of autonomous decision-making power vis-à-vis its principal adversary in their protracted con ct, the Soviet Union. During most of this lengthy fnal con ct phase, decisions and acts by Poland took the form of non-governmental civil protests and demonstrations hostile to the Polish Government’s submissiveness vis-à-vis the decisions imposed by the Soviet Communist Party on the Polish Workers Party and by the dictates of the USSR regime on Poland’s subservient government. To the extent that decisions by Poland relating to its con ct with the USSR were made, they were generated by non-governmental organizations hostile to Poland’s Communist regime and the USSR, and took the form of popular movements and demonstrations. The Poland/USSR interstate con ct was substantively renewed only in its last 2 years, 1980 and 1981, when a new powerful Polish non-state actor, the Solidarity trade union, successfully challenged USSR domination of Poland’s economic, political and military systems of power, leading to the fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi termination of USSR control of Poland and the end of their con ct. Poland: Decision Process As indicated above, Poland’s decision-making on issues relating to this lengthy con ct was highly authoritarian. For most of the pre-1944 years, 1918–1922 and 1926–1935, decisional power was concentrated in, and exercised by, President Pilsudski, virtually alone except for a small group of technical aides. From 1935 to 1939, decisional authority was shared by General Felicjan and Slawoj-Skladkowski, whose powers as president were greatly increased in a new constitution imposed by Pilsudski before his death in 1935. It was only in Phase II (1922–1926), after Pilsudski’s electoral defeat by the National Democratic Party that decision-making approached the democratic model; but most decisions in that phase focused on the growing problem of domestic con ct, not the con ct with the USSR. With the coming to power of Polish Communists in 1944, the decision process in Poland resumed its authoritarian character—from the Left, not the Right, as in the Pilsudski era. In reality, the decision process on issues related to the USSR and PolandSoviet Union relations moved to Moscow, with Poland’s Communist regime acting primarily as the implementer of decisions made by the Soviet leader—Stalin (1944–1953), Khrushchev (1955– 1964), and a Brezhnev-led ‘troika’ from 1964 to the end of the Poland/USSR 8 SELECT CASE STUDY FINDINGS ON INTERSTATE CONFLICTS … 231 con ct—with Moscow decisions, especially from 1955 to 1981, authorized by the Soviet Communist Party Politburo. Russia-USSR: Decisions, Decision-Makers, and Decision Process As in other protracted con cts in which Russia (from 1922 the USSR) was a principal adversary (Finland/Russia-USSR, Iran/Russia-USSR, Georgia/ Russia-USSR, and USA/Russia-USSR), the Russia/USSR phases in this con ct refected the changes in the composition of its key decision-makers, caused by death, expulsion, or dismissal: Phase I, 1920–1922, ending with the death of Lenin; Phase II, 1929–1953, ending with the death of Stalin; Phase III, 1955–1964, ending with the dismissal of Khrushchev; Phase IV, 1964–1972, ending with the illness of Brezhnev; and 1972–1981, ending with the termination of Brezhnev’s tenure as First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. In Phase I of this con ct, Russia made two major decisions. The frst was an important negative tactical decision: to accept its inability to avoid a war with Poland in 1920, because Poland’s President Pilsudski was determined to take advantage of Russia’s pre-occupation with its civil war against the ‘Whites’ in 1919–1920, who were supported by military contingents from major powers—France, Japan, the UK, and the USA, providing him a unique opportunity to re-gain Poland’s eastern frontier as it existed before the frst Partition of Poland in 1772. The second important tactical decision by the Bolshevik regime in this phase—by Lenin, in consultation with his two most likely contenders for the succession to leader of the Bolshevik regime, Trotsky and Stalin—was to make a signifcant territorial concession to Poland in their March 1921 Peace of Riga: Poland’s eastern border was extended 200 km east of the 1919 Versailles Treaty-sanctioned Curzon Line, enabling the Bolshevik regime to cope more effectively with the growing ‘White Russian’ threat. In the frst 7 years of Phase II of its con ct with Poland (1922–1929), the struggle for power between Stalin and Trotsky, the key rivals for succession to Lenin, was the major focus of attention within the Bolshevik leadership. Partly, perhaps, because of this pre-occupation, there were no major decisions by the USSR relating to the con ct with Poland during that interregnum. Then, having triumphed in the battle for succession to Lenin and, ideologically, in imposing his doctrine of ‘Socialism in one Country’, rejecting Trotsky’s doctrine of ‘Permanent Revolution’, Stalin concentrated on domestic economic and political goals in the 1930s and 232 M. BRECHER the elimination of all other possible rivals to his leadership, via the ‘Great Purge’ trials in the mid- and late 1930s. In foreign policy, he sought alliances to cope with the emerging threat from a rising Germany. In that context, the Soviet Union (Stalin) made two major decisions relating to this con ct in the 1930s. One, already noted in the discussion of Poland’s behavior, was to prevent a feared Germany–Poland alliance by signing a non-aggression pact with Poland in 1932. The other decision, with far-reaching consequences, including erasing the treaty with Poland, was to sign an agreement with Germany in August 1939, the MolotovRibbentrop Pact, which committed the two great powers in Central and Eastern Europe, hitherto unconcealed enemies in the international politics of the 1930s, to the partition of Poland, the 4th partition since 1772. The USSR (Stalin) made two other strategic decisions relating to the con ct with Poland in fi fi fi fi fi fi the closing months of World War II. One was to assert USSR hegemony over Poland, which had long been, and was correctly perceived by Tsarist and Communist leaders of Russia to be, the gateway to invasion of Russia by West European and Central European Great Powers—Napoleonic France in the early nineteenth century, and Germany twice in the twentieth century. That decision was implemented by providing total support for the claim to primacy of the Polish Communist Lublin regime in 1944 and 1945, during its intense rivalry with the UK and US-supported London Polish Government-inExile, the successor to Poland’s pre-WWII Government of Poland. This USSR policy was persistent in the negotiations among the leaders of the UK, the USA, and the USSR prior to and culminating at the Yalta Conference of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin in February 1945. The stakes were very high for the USSR—control over the historic gateway to invasion from the West; and the outcome was a major triumph for the Soviet Union. The second USSR strategic decision in 1945, more directly related to the Poland/Russia-USSR con ct, was the Soviet Union’s insistence on territorial revision of the 1921 Peace of Riga award to Poland of substantial territory east of the Curzon Line, noted above. On this issue too, the outcome was a triumph for the USSR, a roll-back to the Curzon Line border between Poland and the USSR, with compensation to Poland of territory in the eastern part of Germany. There were no other strategic or important tactical USSR decisions relating to this East Europe con ct during the last eight years of the Stalin era (1945–1953). During Phase III, 1955–1964, when 8 SELECT CASE STUDY FINDINGS ON INTERSTATE CONFLICTS … 233 Khrushchev was the primary Soviet decisionmaker, and for most of Phase IV, when Brezhnev was the leading USSR decision-maker (1964– 1972) and the rest of this phase (1972–1981), when major decisions in foreign policy, including intra-Soviet bloc decisions, were made by the ‘troika’—Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Podgorny—or small commissions acting as agents of the Communist Party Politburo, the Communist leaders of Poland role in the decision process was to implement major decisions on issues relating to Poland taken by the Soviet Communist Party leadership. It was only in the last year of Phase IV that the USSR Communist Party leadership was compelled to make another strategic decision—how to respond to the accumulating turmoil and mass criticism of both the Communist political system in Poland and the continuing pervasive Soviet domination of Poland, sustained by a USSR military presence and a compliant Communist government in Poland? The options were to suppress the antiCommunist and anti-Soviet Union upheaval, as the USSR had responded to comparable turmoil in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1968), or to yield to the unmistakable expression of a widespread demand for the end of the Soviet Union’s commanding presence. In 1981, the Soviet Communist Politburo correctly interpreted the national mood in Poland and chose the latter option, leading to the termination of this protracted con ct. In sum, despite the fundamental differences in the political system and ideology-belief system of the two principal adversaries and their leaders, the decision process in both Poland and the USSR on issues relating to their protracted con ct, as distinct from the content of their decisions, reveal two shared characteristics: a very small number of decision-makers, for many decisions a single person and a shared authoritarian style of decisionmaking. Poland/Russia-USSR: Con ct-Sustaining Acts Violence there was one full-scale war in this protracted con ct (April– October 1920), initiated by an attack on Soviet-ruled Ukraine by Poland, which had been revived as an independent state in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles. There were substantial casualties, killed and wounded, by both adversaries, approximately 60,000 Poles and 150,000 Russians. The next two decades were virtually without state-to-state violence. Then, following the partition of Poland by Germany and the USSR (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, August 1939), an estimated 234 M. BRECHER half million Poles were forcibly transported to Soviet Central Asia and Siberia, with large-scale mass killings (21,000) of Polish military offcers, police, and civil servants in 1940–1941, highlighted by the laterdiscovered Katyn Massacre, and frequent clashes between Poland’s ‘Home Army’ and Soviet forces during this transition from the outbreak of World War II (September 1939) to Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. There were further deportations of thousands of Polish members of the ‘Underground’ during WWII, and minor clashes between the Sovietdominated Communist regime in Poland and antiCommunist anti-Soviet groups in Poland from the fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi end of WWII (1945) to the end of this protracted con ct in 1981. The cumulative effect of Soviet occupation, deportations, and mass killings was to reinforce the hostility and mistrust that resulted from more than a century of Russia’s occupation of large parts of Poland (1772–1919) and the profound religious and cultural divide between Roman Catholic Poland and Eastern Orthodox Russia. Political Hostility was rampant in Poland during the years of Soviet occupation of the eastern part of Poland (1939–1941), during WWII, when Poland was a continuous battleground between German and Soviet armies (1941–1944), and throughout the period of a Sovietcreated and -sustained Polish Communist regime (1944–1981). From 1920 onwards, the pre-eminent theme of Poland’s acts of political hostility toward the USSR was the demand for the restoration of its eastern border before the frst partition of Poland (1772): this demand was raised in March 1920, soon after the state of Poland was restored by the Treaty of Versailles, and weeks before the onset of the Poland/Bolshevik Russia War in April 1920; and it remained the primary goal of Poland until vindication in the aftermath of WWII. Among the many acts of political hostility during the Poland/ Russia con ct, a dramatic illustration was the USSR’s decision to halt the advance of the Red Army across the Vistula River, opposite Warsaw, in 1944 or to provide any material assistance to the Warsaw Uprising, which was then attempting to expel German forces from Poland’s capital. Acts of political hostility during the long period of Communist rule in Poland reinforced the animosity between Poland and Russia, including frequent detentions of Poles critical of the Communist regime, the dissolution of Poland’s Catholic Church in 1953, the cessation of religious instruction in the schools of an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic 8 SELECT CASE STUDY FINDINGS ON INTERSTATE CONFLICTS … 235 nation in 1961, and, in response, the creation of a large, wellorganized trade union, Solidarity, which became the focus of strident opposition to Poland’s Communist regime and its dominating patron, the Soviet Union, in 1981, The growth of political opposition within Poland, reinforced by acts of political and military hostility to the Polish Communist regime and its patron, the Soviet Union, generated violent outbreaks in Poland in 1970, 1976, and 1981, the last leading to the proclamation of martial law in Poland in December 1981 and the concentration of Warsaw Pact forces on Poland’s borders. The 1981 upheaval was to lead, in turn, to the fall of Poland’s Communist regime and the termination of the Poland/Russia interstate protracted con ct. Verbal Hostility—was a secondary con ct-sustaining technique, as in many interstate con cts. In the Poland/Russia-USSR con ct, propaganda in various forms (print, radio, later, TV) was utilized by both adversaries to reinforce national unity by emphasizing the ties that bind members of the nation and the differences, notably ideology (Poland’s anti-Communism vs. Soviet Communism) and religious belief (Poland’s Roman Catholicism vs. Russia’s orthodoxy or the USSR’s atheism) that separate each state from its adversary, often by demonizing the adversary’s values and/or behavior. Economic Discrimination—as in most aspects of public policy, the economic goals of Poland and Russia-USSR differed sharply, each attempting to retain and strengthen its economic system. Poland, primarily agricultural, and based upon private landholding until the USSR’s imposition of its Communist regime (1944 ff.), opposed pressure by the USSR during the period of the Communist regime in Poland (1944– 1981) to transform the foundations of Poland’s economic system: this con ct became evident soon after WWII, when the USSR compelled Poland (and other East European states, recently absorbed into the Soviet Union’s sphere of infuence) to reject the US-offered membership in the Marshall Plan and to adopt the Soviet model of collectivized agriculture and state-planned economic growth generally. Poland’s resistance to Soviet pressure was unsuccessful; but their con ct over economic policy and the economic consequences for a largely antiCommunist population in Poland reinforced the mistrust and hostility between the two adversaries that had been generated by the other types 236 M. BRECHER of con ct-sustaining acts during their protracted con ct—military, political, and propaganda.