Tukhachevsky's offensive

At dawn on 4 July 1920 the troops of the Soviet Western Front (PL) went over to the attack in Belarus, along the whole front from the Latvian border to the Polesie marshes. They were commanded by the 27-year-old Mikhail Tukhachevsky. Two days earlier he had proclaimed in an order to his troops: “Over the corpse of White Poland lies the road to world conflagration. On our bayonets we will bring happiness and peace to the working masses. To the West!” The attack broke the Polish defence on the Auta (PL) river and began a retreat that six weeks later brought the Red Army to the gates of Warsaw.

Two armies on the Auta

Tukhachevsky, an officer of the Tsar’s Guard who was taken prisoner by the Germans near Łomża at the turn of February and March 1915 and escaped from the camp at Ingolstadt only in 1917, rose rapidly during the Civil War. He took over the Western Front at the end of April 1920. His first attack, launched on 14 May, was beaten off by the Poles, but in June he received reinforcements, while the Polish command had to shift reserves to Ukraine against Budyonny’s Cavalry Army.

Sources give very different figures for the strength of the armies. According to Russian accounts the Western Front had 81,000 infantry, 10,500 cavalry and more than 700 guns; Polish accounts put its strength at 150,000 to 160,000 men, and some even at about 270,000. It consisted of four armies (the 4th, 15th, 3rd and 16th), the Mozyr Group and the 3rd Cavalry Corps, commanded by the Armenian Gaya Gai (PL). Facing them was General Stanisław Szeptycki’s Polish North-Eastern Front, some 70,000 men with about 460 guns. On the axis of the main attack, on the northern wing, Tukhachevsky concentrated about 60,000 men and, according to Russian accounts, had a twofold superiority there.

The breakthrough

The plan was to outflank the Polish First Army of General Gustaw Zygadłowicz (PL) from both sides and destroy it around Głębokie (PL). In the north the 4th Army and Gai’s cavalry corps were to go round the Polish left wing between the Dvina and the lakes, in the centre the 15th Army of August Kork (PL) attacked frontally, and from the south the 3rd Army struck across the Berezina. On 4 July Gai’s cavalry entered a breach in the Polish defences and began to outflank the left wing of the First Army. The heaviest losses were inflicted on the Poles by the 15th Army: the brigades it attacked were no longer fit to fight by the end of the day. According to Russian accounts, in breaking through the fortifications near Zyabki station the Red Army used three captured Renault tanks for the first time.

On 5 July the attack was renewed. The Soviets took Głębokie and Dokshytsy, and Gai’s cavalry threw the Polish left wing back to the west. Some Polish units, such as General Lucjan Żeligowski’s group, held well, but in the afternoon Szeptycki ordered a retreat, and on 6 July a further withdrawal to the line of the old German trenches from the Great War. Tukhachevsky failed to encircle the First Army, but the Polish front in Belarus fell apart.

Retreat to the west

Tukhachevsky’s tactics consisted of constantly outflanking the Polish northern wing. Gai’s corps moved along the Lithuanian and then the Prussian border and pushed the Polish troops southwards, towards Polesie. On 8 July the Soviets forced the Berezina. The Polish units, exhausted and without reserves, fell back, in places in panic. On 11 July the Red Army took Minsk, on 14 July Vilna, and in the second half of the month Grodno and Białystok.

The offensive coincided with the first decisions of the Council of State Defence, which on 3 July called on the nation to defend itself. On 6 July Prime Minister Władysław Grabski went to Spa to ask the Entente for mediation in negotiations with Moscow. The rapid victory, however, convinced the Soviet command that the Polish army had been smashed. Russian historians point out that this is precisely why the Western Front pushed on towards Warsaw without a pause to bring up its rear services and reserves.