“One hundred years ago, Germany nearly became communist.” This happy thought is the introduction of an article by the newspaper Tagesspiegel and is supposed to sound threatening.
They make reference to the Polish-Sowjet-war of 1920, which ended with the Red Army being pushed back at the Weichsel. The history leading up to this war is often less talked about in bourgeois media, than the supposed “wonder at the Weichsel”. The Polish nationalists saw their chance after the first World War and the defeat of the Russian Empire at the hands of the Bolsheviki. Under the leadership of Józef Piłsudski, who went on to become a dictator, the Polish territory was expanded at the cost of their Eastern neighbors. The Tagesspiegel does not try to hide this and declares: “He conquered Lemberg (today in Ukraine), Wilna (today in Lithuania) and Minsk (today in Belarus) and nearly restored the borders of the Polish aristocratic republic before their split.” What is it to steal the capital of a neighbor, if the aggressor is at least an upstanding anticommunist. Piłsudskis army was trained in France with the goal of making Poland an ally against Germany and the Sowjet-union. 1920 he also marched against Kiew, the capital of Ukraine, where the revolution had won and it was part of the becoming Sowjet-Union. The Red Army struck back and pushed the overstrained Polish army back close to Warschau. In the end the Red Army lost the battle for the Polish capital and moved back out of Polish territory. The uprising of the Polish workers and peasants against the bourgeois rule in Poland hoped for, did not happen. The war ended in 1921 with the contract of Riga, which left Poland’s East-border into Ukraine and Belarus.
This military history is grounds for a big celebration by the Polish state on its 100year jubilee. Naturally they don’t critically reflect on things like the robbing of a capital during this. But the past is not the main star in events like this anyways. They are done as a place to project the geopolitics of the day. The Polish state once more is trying to be a good lacquey to imperialism, in this case Yankee-imperialism, as represented by the presence of Yankee-foreign-secretary Mike Pompeo at the celebrations. Before this they advertised trying to get the US-soldiers formerly stationed in the FRG into the Polish state. Once more they relation to Russia is trying to be used as leverage for the Polish bourgeois.
Also clear is, that the revolution in Europa after the war was not stopped by the bourgeois Polish army, but by the poison of revisionism represented by the social-democratic pests.
