Peace of Riga

On the evening of 18 March 1921, in the House of the Blackheads in Riga, a peace treaty was signed between Poland on the one side and Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine on the other. Its first article stated briefly that “the state of war between them ceases”. The Polish–Soviet War, which had begun in earnest in February 1919, when after the departure of the Germans the Polish Army and the Red Army clashed in the lands of the former Russian Empire, formally ended after more than two years. The treaty fixed the eastern border of the Polish Republic, which was to last until September 1939.

Five months of negotiations

The most important decisions had already been made in the autumn, in the armistice of 12 October 1920. The armistice line, however, was not final. Poland claimed about 12,000 square kilometres east of it, while the Soviet side rejected some of Poland’s property claims. The deadlock was broken only in February 1921 by a confidential conversation between the head of the Polish delegation, Jan Dąbski, and Adolph Joffe. In the end the border was adjusted in Poland’s favour by about 3,000 square kilometres.

The treaty was signed by five plenipotentiaries on each side. Poland was represented by Dąbski, Stanisław Kauzik, Edward Lechowicz, Henryk Strasburger and Leon Wasilewski. On the other side stood Joffe, Jakub Hanecki, Emanuel Kviring, Yuriy Kotsiubynsky and Leonid Obolensky. Soviet Russia also signed the treaty on behalf of the Byelorussian Socialist Soviet Republic.

The border and other terms

In Article II the parties recognised the independence of Ukraine and Belarus, understood as Soviet republics, and described the border in detail, village by village: from the Dvina on the Latvian border through Belarus and Polesie to the Zbruch and its mouth on the Dniester. The Polish side received the Grodno region, the western part of the former Minsk governorate with Nieśwież and Stołpce, Pinsk, and western Volhynia with Lutsk, Równe and Krzemieniec; Minsk remained on the Soviet side. The border ran roughly along the line of the Second Partition of 1793. Russia and Ukraine renounced all rights to the lands west of it, Poland to the lands east of it. The question of Vilna, held since October by Żeligowski’s units, was left by the treaty, as by the armistice, to Poland and Lithuania alone.

The parties undertook not to interfere in each other’s internal affairs and not to support organisations fighting the other side. In practice this meant the end of Polish support for Symon Petliura and his army, Poland’s ally of 1920. The treaty provided for an amnesty, an exchange of prisoners and the right to choose citizenship for people connected with the Polish lands. Russia and Ukraine were to pay Poland, within a year, 30 million gold roubles for the part the Polish lands had played in the economy of the former empire, to return rolling stock and other property, and to hand back works of art, book collections and archives taken from Poland since 1772.

A peace without satisfaction

Polish society, exhausted by wars and economic crisis, received the news of peace with relief. Opinions of the treaty, however, differed from the start. Supporters of Piłsudski’s federal concept believed that Poland had abandoned the Ukrainians and the inhabitants of Belarus, and that east of the new border, according to various estimates, between 1.2 and 2 million Poles had been left behind. Others saw Riga as the realism of a state that had no strength for further war. The treaty did not fully satisfy either side.

Moscow regarded the peace, as it had earlier regarded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, as a pause in westward expansion forced by circumstances. Many of its provisions were never carried out. The gold was never paid, and only part of the cultural property came back. The Riga border was recognised in March 1923 by the Conference of Ambassadors of the Entente powers, which formally closed the question of Poland’s eastern borders.