Budyonny's Cavalry Army breaks through the front

On 5 June 1920 the First Cavalry Army (PL) of Semyon Budyonny (PL) broke through the Polish front in Ukraine. After ten days of unsuccessful attacks the Soviet cavalry struck with concentrated force at a single point, the junction of the Polish Third and Sixth Armies, near the village of Samhorodok south-west of Kiev. By evening a gap some 10 kilometres wide had opened in the Polish defences, and through it Budyonny’s divisions reached the Polish rear. It was the beginning of the end of the Kiev offensive: five days later the Poles had to abandon Kiev.

An army from the Caucasus

The First Cavalry Army was the strongest formation of the Red Army. Formed in the autumn of 1919, it had beaten General Anton Denikin’s Whites on the Don and in the Kuban. On 10 March 1920 the Soviet command decided to transfer it to the Polish front. The army set out from Maikop on 3 April and rode across southern Ukraine, scattering units of Nestor Makhno (PL) on the way. According to Russian figures, before the attack it had about 16,000 sabres, 53 guns and several hundred machine guns, some of them on tachankas, light carts with a mounted machine gun, as well as armoured cars and armoured trains.

On 27 May the Cavalry Army went into action south of Kiev. Its first attacks on the positions of the Polish 13th Infantry Division failed, and on 29 May at Volodarka (PL) Polish cavalry fought a victorious action against it. Budyonny then changed his tactics. Instead of attacking on a broad front, he regrouped his four divisions and concentrated them opposite the weakest point of the Polish defence.

The fight at Samhorodok

The Samhorodok area, a sector some 20 kilometres wide, was held by an improvised force under General Jan Sawicki: a few companies of the 19th Infantry Regiment and the 3rd Cavalry Brigade. The Polish command was itself preparing an attack on the Cavalry Army’s flank for 6 June. Budyonny forestalled it. On the morning of 5 June two brigades of the Soviet 14th Cavalry Division, supported by armoured cars, attacked Samhorodok. The company defending it beat off the first attack, but at about one in the afternoon the village fell. In the afternoon dismounted cavalry of the Soviet 4th Division broke into neighbouring Ozerna. A charge by the 12th Uhlan Regiment collapsed under machine-gun fire from tachankas and armoured cars. According to Polish accounts about 460 Polish soldiers were killed or wounded in the fighting, and about 200 were taken prisoner.

Four divisions of the Cavalry Army passed through the gap. By the evening of 6 June they were several dozen kilometres behind the Polish front. On 7 June the 4th Cavalry Division burst into Zhytomyr and the 11th Division into Berdychiv. They destroyed railway junctions, depots and communications, and in Zhytomyr they freed several thousand Soviet prisoners.

Retreat from Kiev

General Edward Rydz-Śmigły’s Polish Third Army was threatened with encirclement: from the west came the Cavalry Army, from the north and south the 12th Army and Iona Yakir’s group were attacking. On 8 June the High Command ordered a retreat. On 10 June the Polish army began to leave Kiev. Rydz-Śmigły withdrew along the railway to Korosten (PL), taking with him equipment, part of the booty and the Ukrainian administration, and at Borodianka he fought his way through an attempt to surround him. Budyonny spent too long on Zhytomyr and Berdychiv instead of striking at the rear of the Third Army.

The breakthrough at Samhorodok turned the course of the war in Ukraine. The initiative passed to the Soviet side for almost three months, and the Polish troops fell back westwards. Fear of Budyonny’s cavalry spread beyond the soldiers. Józef Piłsudski later wrote that for the unprepared Polish troops it became “some legendary, invincible force”, and that the further from the front, the stronger this suggestion was. Serving in its ranks was the writer Isaac Babel (PL), who recorded in his diary looting and violence against civilians, including pogroms of Jews committed by soldiers of both sides.