In the Polish-bolshevik war, all of Europe’s freedom was at stake: Norman Davies
August 15 marks the anniversary of the 1920 Battle of Warsaw, when the young Polish state halted the advancing Red Army outside the capital.
“The Polish–Soviet War (…) was crucial not just for the survival of newly independent Poland, but also for the rest of Europe,” Norman Davies, a British–Polish historian and Oxford University alumnus, told TVP World. “This wasn’t just a battle between the Poles in Warsaw and the Soviets. It was Lenin’s great attempt to spread the revolution throughout Europe.”
Russia’s war against Ukraine invites comparisons with the events of 1920. But Davies argues the situations are fundamentally different.
“It looks very different from the conditions of 1920. My Polish father-in-law was a 16-year-old boy (…) who volunteered to fight,” Davies said, recalling accounts of chronic shortages and mismatched equipment. “The Polish army today is extremely impressive, well prepared, trained, and so on. In 1919 to 1920, the Polish army was in its infancy, and everything had to be improvised.”
“The Western allies were very skeptical. (…) There were actually strikes in London to prevent assistance being sent to Poland. (…) The British strikers’ main slogan was ‘Hands off Russia.’ They thought that Poland had attacked Russia,” Davies said. “It’s very different from today, where Poland is a member of NATO, a large international defense organization. And Poland is not alone. But essentially in 1920 as in 1939, Poland was alone.”
Davies also argues that today’s Russia poses a different and more limited challenge than Soviet Russia did in 1920.
“Putin is desperately trying to conquer the last piece of the former Soviet Union which he has hopes of capturing,” the historian said, believing that a Russian attack on NATO territory is unlikely. “He looks to be failing at the moment. And Russia today is a shadow of what it was during the Soviet Union.”
Join TVP World’s Sascha Fahrbach and his guest as they explore foreign assistance to Poland in 1920, the battle’s enduring lessons, and how Lenin’s ambitions differed from Putin’s.
Chapters:
00:00 The Battle of Warsaw and its European stakes
02:18 From improvised forces to modern Polish defense
04:13 Foreign volunteers and allied assistance
06:04 Poland’s 1920 isolation compared with today’s NATO membership
09:06 Comparing Bolshevik expansion with Russia’s current war
11:07 The enduring lesson of the Battle of Warsaw
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