Poles enter Kiev

On 7 May 1920 the first Polish units entered Kiev. Nobody defended the city: the command of the Soviet South-Western Front had decided not to hold it and to withdraw the remnants of its beaten troops beyond the Dnieper. After twelve days of the Kiev offensive, Polish troops and the allied units of the Ukrainian People’s Republic stood in the Ukrainian capital. According to the IPN the Polish soldiers reached a deserted city centre. Sources differ on the hour and the order in which the units entered, and some give 8 May, when the infantry marched in, as the day Kiev was taken.

By tram to the Khreshchatyk

Furthest forward was the cavalry of General Edward Rydz-Śmigły’s Third Army. A few days earlier a patrol of the 1st Light Horse Regiment (PL) had captured a tram in the suburb of Kurenivka, ridden it all the way to the Khreshchatyk (PL), taken a few prisoners and come back on the same tram. On 7 May the light horsemen rode into the city from the direction of the Golden Gate. According to the regimental history the whole regiment was in Kiev before noon, and its commander received the symbolic keys of the city at the town hall. Other accounts say that the first units entered only in the evening. On the bridge over the Dnieper there was a brief exchange of fire with the Soviet rearguard. Soon Polish infantry crossed to the left bank of the river and formed a bridgehead reaching some 15 kilometres deep, as far as Brovary (PL).

Many inhabitants greeted the Poles with flowers, and in the crowds in the streets, as one witness recalled, Polish was the language most often heard. “I saw Polish soldiers riding past on horseback with eagles on their caps,” recalled Zofia Krauze, who ran to the Khreshchatyk with her daughter that day. The city, however, had been ruined by war and hunger. Since 1917 Kiev had changed hands many times, and each successive authority had requisitioned whatever it could.

The parade and Ukrainian rule

On 9 May a joint Polish-Ukrainian parade marched through the centre of Kiev. Rydz-Śmigły took the salute. The march was also a show of strength: according to one participant, units that had passed down the Khreshchatyk turned back through side streets and marched past again, so that there would seem to be more troops. The Polish command tried to keep the presence of its troops from looking like an occupation: Ukrainian flags were hung on public buildings. Authority over the city was taken over in the name of Petliura’s government by Henryk Józewski (PL), a native of Kiev, who had become a deputy minister in the Ukrainian government. A few days later Symon Petliura himself arrived in Kiev.

Józef Piłsudski wrote at the time to Aleksandra Szczerbińska that he had smashed the Soviet 12th Army “to pieces” and that his losses had been remarkably small: “on the whole front I cannot count 150 killed and 300 wounded”. Poland and part of the Western press celebrated the victory. In London David Lloyd George warned that the Poles should be careful not to overreach themselves.

A victory without a decision

The capture of Kiev, however, was more a political than a military success. The Soviet armies had withdrawn without heavy losses and had not been destroyed. Their counter-attacks on the bridgehead beyond the Dnieper went on until 13 May. The appeals of Piłsudski and Petliura did not bring mass enlistment into the Ukrainian army, and peasants weary of war looked on yet another foreign army with reserve. In Russia, on the other hand, the Polish offensive strengthened support for the war. On 11 May the Soviet authorities introduced martial law in 24 provinces, and volunteers came forward to join the Red Army, among them former Tsarist officers. In Belarus the offensive of Mikhail Tukhachevsky’s Western Front began on 14 May, and from the Caucasus Budyonny’s First Cavalry Army was on its way to Ukraine.