Conference of Ambassadors recognises Poland's eastern border

On 15 March 1923 in Paris the representatives of the British Empire, France, Italy and Japan in the Conference of Ambassadors (PL) signed a decision on Poland’s borders. The powers recognised its border with Russia along the line drawn under the Peace of Riga and its border with Lithuania, which left Vilna on the Polish side, and granted Poland full sovereignty over Eastern Galicia. For France the decision was signed by Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré, for Britain by Eric Phipps, standing in for the ambassador, who was ill, for Italy by Romano Avezzana and for Japan by Michikazu Matsuda. On behalf of the Polish government the decision was accepted by the envoy in Paris, Maurycy Zamoyski. After four years of wars and disputes the eastern border of the Polish Republic had won the recognition of the victorious powers.

A border without recognition

Article 87 of the Treaty of Versailles left it to the Principal Allied Powers to fix those borders of Poland which the treaty did not define. In the east Poland had won them by itself. The border with Soviet Russia and Ukraine had been set by the Peace of Riga of March 1921. The Polish army had occupied Eastern Galicia in 1919 with the consent of the Supreme Council, but its future status had remained open. Vilna had been taken in October 1920 by Żeligowski’s troops, and on 20 February 1922 the Vilna Sejm voted to unite the Vilna region with Poland, which the Legislative Sejm confirmed in March.

Successive foreign ministers, Eustachy Sapieha, Konstanty Skirmunt and Gabriel Narutowicz, sought recognition of these borders in vain. It was blocked above all by Britain, governed by Lloyd George, who was ill-disposed towards Poland, and insisting on real autonomy for the Ukrainians of Galicia. The law of 26 September 1922 on provincial self-government, which gave the Galician Ukrainians the right to elect half of the provincial assemblies in the three eastern provinces, did not convince the British.

Skrzyński’s offensive

The situation changed in the winter. In October 1922 Lloyd George’s government fell, and his successor, the Conservative Bonar Law, was much better disposed towards Poland. The new Foreign Minister in Władysław Sikorski’s government, Aleksander Skrzyński (PL), made the question of the borders his chief task. In January the powers were preoccupied with the occupation of the Ruhr and Lithuania’s seizure of Klaipėda, and Warsaw’s restrained reaction won their goodwill. On 3 February the Council of the League of Nations divided the neutral zone between Poland and Lithuania. On 6 February Skrzyński delivered his exposé in the Sejm, and the Sejm resolved that the Treaty of Riga had fixed the eastern border definitively and that the belonging of the Vilna land had been decided by “the expressed will of the local population”. On 15 February the Polish government formally asked the Conference of Ambassadors to settle the matter. Lithuania had asked for the same as early as November 1922.

France and Mussolini’s Italy took Poland’s side. On 1 March the Conference took up the matter, and the British ambassador, Lord Crewe, considered Galician autonomy insufficient. Weary of the whole affair, however, London gave way on 6 March: Lord Curzon dropped the demand for a separate convention on the status of Galicia. On 14 March the Conference adopted the final text, and it was signed the following afternoon.

The decision

The preamble to the decision recorded that Poland had recognised that “as regards the eastern part of Galicia, ethnographic conditions necessitate an autonomous regime”. Lawyers of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs considered that the wording committed Poland to nothing. The border with Russia was recognised along the line marked out with posts by agreement of both states on 23 November 1922, the border with Lithuania was described village by village, and Puńsk remained in Poland. The sections with Latvia and Romania were left to be settled separately.

On 16 March the Sejm held a ceremonial sitting. Prime Minister Sikorski thanked all who had contributed to the success, from Józef Piłsudski and Roman Dmowski to Skirmunt and Zamoyski. The Ukrainians of Galicia protested, but the decision proved irreversible. The government of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic in exile in Vienna had to dissolve itself. For Lithuania, which since 1920 had regarded Vilna as its capital, the decision was a defeat. For Poland the recognition of its borders by the powers was a major strengthening of its international position and a personal success for Skrzyński.