The Forgotten Victory

Once Polish troops had occupied Kiev, Minsk, Vilnius and large parts of European Russia in 1919, the Red Army, albeit weakened by civil war at home, managed to retaliate, occupied the Ukraine and could only just be stopped, by a hair’s breadth, at the gates of Warsaw. It was the moment Józef Piłsudki called ‘the miracle of the Vistula’ and that has long been understood as Europe’s rescue from bolshevism. But this was not a conflict between civilization and barbarism; it was a war based on concrete imperial ambitions that reached far beyond Poland and Russia.  There were hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers and civilans all over Eastern Europe, vast areas were devastated, and once again, Jews were made scape goats. Stephan Lehnstaedt presents readers with the story of Poland’s and Ukraine’s conflict with their all-powerful neighbour and why it is vital to understanding Eastern Europe today.