Treaty of Warsaw (1920)

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uk, Варшавський договір
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, image_width = 234px
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, type = Bilateral political treaty (Military alliance)
, date_drafted =
, date_signed = 21 April 1920 (24 April 1920)
, location_signed = Warsaw, Poland
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, date_effective = when signed
, condition_effective =
* Recognition of independence of the Ukrainian People's Republic by Poland
* Providing military support by Ukraine to Poland
* Recognizing of Poland-Ukraine border along Zbruch as international
, date_expiration = Signing of the Peace of Riga
, signatories =
, parties =
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, languages =
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The Treaty of Warsaw (also the Polish-Ukrainian or Petliura-Piłsudski Alliance or Agreement) of April 1920 was a military-economical alliance between the Second Polish Republic, represented by Józef Piłsudski, and the Ukrainian People's Republic, represented by Symon Petliura, against Bolshevik Russia. The treaty was signed on 21 April 1920, with a military addendum on 24 April.

The alliance was signed during the Polish-Soviet War, just before the Polish Kiev Offensive. Piłsudski was looking for allies against the Bolsheviks and hoped to create a '' Międzymorze'' alliance; Petliura saw the alliance as the last chance to create an independent Ukraine.

The treaty had no permanent impact. The Polish-Soviet War continued and the territories in question were distributed between Russia and Poland in accordance with the 1921 Peace of Riga. Territories claimed by the Ukrainian national movement were split between the Ukrainian SSR in the east and Poland in the west ( Galicia and part of Volhynia).

Background

The Polish leader Józef Piłsudski was trying to create a Poland-led alliance of East European countries, the Międzymorze federation, designed to strengthen Poland and her neighbors at the expense of the Russian Empire, and later of the Russian SFSR and the Soviet Union.''"Although the Polish premier and many of his associates sincerely wanted peace, other important Polish leaders did not. Josef Pilsudski, chief of state and creator of Polish army, was foremost among the latter. Pilsudski hoped to build not merely a Polish nation state but a greater federation of peoples under the aegis of Poland which would replace Russia as the great power of Eastern Europe. Lithuania, Belorussia and Ukraine were all to be included. His plan called for a truncated and vastly reduced Russia, a plan which excluded negotiations prior to military victory."''

Richard K Debo, '' Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918-192''
Google Print, p. 59
McGill-Queen's Press, 1992, .''"Pilsudski's program for a federation of independent states centered on Poland; in opposing the imperial power of both Russia and Germany it was in many ways a throwback to the romantic Mazzinian nationalism of Young Poland in the early nineteenth century. But his slow consolidation of dictatorial power betrayed the democratic substance of those earlier visions of national revolution as the path to human liberation"''

James H. Billington
''Fire in the Minds of Men''
p. 432, Transaction Publishers, His plan was however plagued with setbacks, as some of his planned allies refused to cooperate with Poland, and others, while more sympathetic, preferred to avoid conflict with the Bolsheviks. But in April 1920, from a military standpoint, Polish army needed to strike at the Soviets, to disrupt their plans for an offensive of their own. Piłsudski also wanted an independent Ukraine to be a buffer between Poland and Russia rather than seeing Ukraine again dominated by Russia right at the Polish border. Piłsudski, who argued that "There can be no independent Poland without an independent Ukraine", may have been more interested in Ukraine being split from Russia than he was in Ukrainians' welfare."The newly founded Polish state cared much more about the expansion of its borders to the east and southeast ("between the seas") than about helping the dying krainianstate of which Petliura was ''de facto'' dictator. ("A Belated Idealist." ''Zerkalo Nedeli