Convention of Bobruisk

In the last days of February 1918 at Bobruisk General Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki, commander of the I Polish Corps, concluded an agreement with representatives of the German army. A British chronology of the war recorded under 25 February a “military convention” between Germany and Poland. Polish accounts speak of a preliminary agreement of 24 February and an agreement finally sealed on 26 February. The text, which Dowbor published in print as early as 1918, bears the heading “Agreement concerning the position of the Polish Corps, which took place at Bobruisk on 25–26/II 1918”. On the German side, according to the historian Rafał Tulicki, the talks were conducted by Major Wulffen. The corps, which had been fighting the Bolsheviks for a month, was recognised as a neutral force. It kept its arms and was given its own area.

The agreement was brought about by the German offensive. After the breaking off of the talks at Brest, the Germans set off eastwards on 18 February and advanced along the railway lines almost without resistance. The corps, which at the beginning of February had seized the Bobruisk fortress with its depots, suddenly found itself between the Bolsheviks and the approaching German army. According to Tulicki a German envoy came to Bobruisk with an offer of cooperation as early as 19 February. On the night of 19–20 February the Polish underground and soldiers of the corps who were in Minsk, with the participation of Belarusian units as well, took control of a large part of the city, but on 21 February the Germans entered it and the Poles had to withdraw. Fighting the Bolsheviks held out no prospect of lasting success, and fighting the Germans was out of the question.

The agreement stated that the Polish Corps was a “neutral force”, to which an area was assigned for quartering, feeding and defence against Bolshevik attacks, between the Dnieper from Mogilev to the mouth of the Berezina and the railway line Slutsk–Osipovichi–Lapichi–Grodziniec. The corps took over the provisional administration there and was to fight only if attacked there. German troops could pass through the area, and the Poles undertook to leave Minsk by 27 February. According to some authors they also had to hand over to the Germans the stocks they had gathered there. Polish units were not allowed to go beyond the assigned triangle.

Thus arose a Polish enclave in the fork of the Dnieper and the Berezina, of about 19,000 square kilometres according to the Institute of National Remembrance, sometimes called “Dowboria”. Bobruisk became its informal capital. The corps, which after the January fighting had dwindled according to some authors to about 12,000 men, numbered over 16,000 soldiers again in March. The agreement was controversial from the outset. The National Democrats and the left accused Dowbor of going over to the German side, and within the corps a conspiracy of opponents of the agreement was formed. Some historians, however, believe that the general had no choice, and that the agreement saved the corps from being destroyed by the Bolsheviks and gave it a few weeks to expand.

The protection proved short-lived. When on 3 March Russia signed peace with the Central Powers, the Polish corps ceased to be of use to the Germans. At the beginning of March Dowbor recognised the authority of the Regency Council in Warsaw, hoping that this would save his army from disarmament. In May, however, the Germans issued an ultimatum, and on 21 May 1918 the corps was disbanded, and its soldiers returned, without their arms, to the Kingdom of Poland.