Peace of Riga - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Peace of Riga, also known as the Treaty of Riga; was signed in Riga

Riga

Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...

on 18 March 1921, between Poland

Second Polish Republic

The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...

, Soviet Russia

Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....

and Soviet Ukraine. The treaty ended the Polish-Soviet War

Polish-Soviet War

The Polish–Soviet War was an armed conflict between Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine and the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic—four states in post–World War I Europe...

.

The Soviet-Polish borders established by the treaty remained in force until the Second World War. They were later redrawn during the Yalta Conference

Yalta Conference

The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, held February 4–11, 1945, was the wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D...

and Potsdam Conference

Potsdam Conference

The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 16 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States...

Background

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

destabilized national borders in Europe. Poland

Second Polish Republic

established its independence in 1918, but its borders were not formally determined. The Russian Civil War

Russian Civil War

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...

presented an opportunity for Poland to regain the territories of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a dualistic state of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch. It was the largest and one of the most populous countries of 16th- and 17th‑century Europe with some and a multi-ethnic population of 11 million at its peak in the early 17th century...

lost to the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

during the late 18th century Partitions of Poland

Partitions of Poland

The Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland for 123 years...

. Meanwhile, many in the Soviet leadership desired to export the revolution to the rest of Europe, by military force if necessary, and Poland was seen by them as a land bridge to the West. The Polish-Soviet War

Polish-Soviet War

The Polish–Soviet War was an armed conflict between Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine and the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic—four states in post–World War I Europe...

ensued, culminating in the 1920 Battle of Warsaw

Battle of Warsaw (1920)

The Battle of Warsaw sometimes referred to as the Miracle at the Vistula, was the decisive battle of the Polish–Soviet War. That war began soon after the end of World War I in 1918 and lasted until the Treaty of Riga resulted in the end of the hostilities between Poland and Russia in 1921.The...

. Both sides were receptive to ending the conflict. After the military setbacks that followed their defeat near Warsaw, the Soviets were eager to begin peace treaty negotiations. Likewise the Poles, pressured by the League of Nations

League of Nations

The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...

, were willing to negotiate since its army controlled most of the disputed territories but was nearing exhaustion.

Preparations for the Treaty

Peace talks were started on August 17, 1920, in Minsk

Minsk

- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...

, but as the Polish counter-offensive

Counter-offensive

A counter-offensive is the term used by the military to describe large-scale, usually strategic offensive operations by forces that had successfully halted an enemy's offensive, while occupying defensive positions....

drew near, the talks were moved to Riga, and resumed on September 21. The Soviets proposed two solutions, the first on September 21 and the second on the 28th. The Polish delegation made a counter-offer on the 2nd of October. Three days later the Soviets offered amendments to the Polish offer, which Poland accepted. An armistice

Armistice

An armistice is a situation in a war where the warring parties agree to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, but may be just a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace...

was signed on October 12. and went into effect on October 18. The chief negotiators were Jan Dąbski

Jan Dabski

Jan Dąbski was a Polish politician.Founder of Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe Piast in 1913. He was the chief negotiator for Poland at the peace negotiations in Riga after the Polish-Soviet war . Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland in 1921...

for Poland and Adolph Joffe

Adolph Joffe

Adolph Abramovich Joffe was a Communist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and a Soviet diplomat of Karaim descent.-Revolutionary career:...

for the RSFSR.

Due to their military setbacks, the Bolsheviks offered the Polish peace delegation substantial territorial concessions in the contested border areas. However, to many observers it looked like the Polish side was conducting the Riga talks as if Poland had lost the war. In fact, a special parliamentary delegation consisting of six members of the Sejm

Sejm

The Sejm is the lower house of the Polish parliament. The Sejm is made up of 460 deputies, or Poseł in Polish . It is elected by universal ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm ....

held a vote on whether to accept the Soviets' far-reaching concessions, which would leave Minsk on the Polish side of the border. Pressured by the national democrat

Endecja

National Democracy was a Polish right-wing nationalist political movement active from the latter 19th century to the end of the Second Polish Republic in 1939. A founder and principal ideologue was Roman Dmowski...

Stanisław Grabski, the 100 km of extra territory was rejected, a victory for the nationalist doctrine and a stark defeat for Piłsudksi's federalism

Federalism

Federalism is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together by covenant with a governing representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and...

. The National Democrats envisioned the Polish state containing a population of no more than a third of minorities, a prerequisite, in their eyes, for any successful attempts at Polonization

Polonization

Polonization was the acquisition or imposition of elements of Polish culture, in particular, Polish language, as experienced in some historic periods by non-Polish populations of territories controlled or substantially influenced by Poland...

. The National Democrats were also motivated by internal political concerns. While the National Democrats' base of support was among Poles in central and western Poland, many of the hundreds of thousands of Poles left by them to live under Soviet rule were supporters of Pilsudski. The elections within the territories of the Treaty of Riga were evenly split. If the Poles and eastern Slavs in the territories given to the Soviet Union had remained in Poland, the National Democrats would have never won an election. Public opinion in Poland also favored an end to the hostilities. Both sides were also under pressure from the League of Nations

League of Nations

to make peace.

Regardless, the negotiations for the peace treaty dragged on for months due to Soviet reluctance to sign. However, the Soviet leadership had to deal with increased internal unrest. Between February 23 and March 17 a sailors’ revolt

Kronstadt rebellion

The Kronstadt rebellion was one of many major unsuccessful left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War...

occurred in Kronstadt

Kronstadt

Kronstadt , also spelled Kronshtadt, Cronstadt |crown]]" and Stadt for "city"); is a municipal town in Kronshtadtsky District of the federal city of St. Petersburg, Russia, located on Kotlin Island, west of Saint Petersburg proper near the head of the Gulf of Finland. Population: It is also...

, which was suppressed; peasants were also rising up against the Soviet authorities, who were collecting grain in order to feed the Red Army and this was causing food shortages. As a result of this situation, Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

ordered the Soviet plenipotentiaries to secure the peace treaty with Poland. The Peace of Riga was signed on March 18, 1921, partitioning the disputed territories in Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

and Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

between Poland and Russia and ending the conflict.

Terms

The Treaty consisted of 26 articles. Poland was to receive monetary compensation (30 million rubles

Russian ruble

The ruble or rouble is the currency of the Russian Federation and the two partially recognized republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Formerly, the ruble was also the currency of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union prior to their breakups. Belarus and Transnistria also use currencies with...

in gold) for its economic input into the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

during the times of partitions of Poland

Partitions of Poland

. Under Article XIV Poland was also to receive railway materials (locomotives, rolling stock, etc.) with a value of 29 million gold roubles. Russia was to surrender works of art and other Polish national treasures acquired from Polish territories after 1772 (such as the Jagiellonian tapestries

Jagiellonian tapestries

The so-called Jagiellonian tapestries is collection of tapestries which originally consisted of about 360 fabrics gathered by the Jagiellons to decorate the interiors of the royal residencies...

and the Załuski Library). Both sides renounced claims to war compensation.

Article 3 stipulated that border issues between Poland and Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

would be settled by those states. Article 6 created citizenship options for persons on either side of the new border. Article 7 consisted of a mutual guarantee that all nationalities would be permitted "free intellectual development, the use of their national language, and the exercise of their religion."

Treaty aftermath

The Soviet-Polish peace treaty was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on August 12, 1921.

The Allied Powers were reluctant to recognize the treaty, which had been concluded without their participation. Their postwar conferences supported the Curzon Line

Curzon Line

The Curzon Line was put forward by the Allied Supreme Council after World War I as a demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and Bolshevik Russia and was supposed to serve as the basis for a future border. In the wake of World War I, which catalysed the Russian Revolution of 1917, the...

as the Polish-Russian border, and Poland's territorial gains in the treaty lay about 250 kilometers east of that line. French support led to its recognition in March 1923 by France, Great Britain, Italy, and Japan, followed by the US in April.
In Poland, the Treaty of Riga was met with criticism from the very beginning. Some characterized the treaty as short-sighted and argued that much of what Poland had gained during the Polish-Soviet war was lost during the peace negotiations. By 1921, General Jozef Piłsudski was no longer the head of state, and had only participated as an observer during the Riga negotiations, which he called an act of cowardice. Piłsudski felt the agreement was a shameless and short-sighted political calculation. Allegedly, having walked out of the room, he told the Ukrainians waiting there for the results of the Riga Conference: "Gentlemen, I deeply apologize to you".

Belarussian and Ukrainian independence movements saw the treaty as a setback. Four million Ukrainians and over one million Belarussians lived within areas ceded to Poland; in one estimate, only 15% of the population was ethnically Polish. The Ukrainian People's Republic

Ukrainian People's Republic

The Ukrainian People's Republic or Ukrainian National Republic was a republic that was declared in part of the territory of modern Ukraine after the Russian Revolution, eventually headed by Symon Petliura.-Revolutionary Wave:...

led by Symon Petliura had been allied with Poland by Treaty of Warsaw

Treaty of Warsaw (1920)

The Treaty of Warsaw of April 1920 was an alliance between the Second Polish Republic, represented by Józef Piłsudski, and the Ukrainian People's Republic, represented by Symon Petlura, against Bolshevik Russia...

, but the Treaty of Riga abrogated it. The new treaty violated Poland's military alliance with the UPR, which had explicitly prohibited a separate peace. In doing so, it worsened relations between Poland and those Ukrainians who had supported Petliura. These supporters felt Ukraine had been betrayed by its Polish ally, a feeling that would be exploited by Ukrainian nationalists

Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists is a Ukrainian political organization which as a movement originally was created in 1929 in Western Ukraine . The OUN accepted violence as an acceptable tool in the fight against foreign and domestic enemies particularly Poland and Russia...

and contribute to the growing tensions and eventual violence

Massacres of Poles in Volhynia

The Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were part of an ethnic cleansing operation carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army West in the Nazi occupied regions of the Eastern Galicia , and UPA North in Volhynia , beginning in March 1943 and lasting until the end of...

in the 1930s and 1940s. By the end of 1921, the majority of Poland-allied Ukrainian, Belarusian and White Russian

White movement

The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...

forces had either crossed the Polish border and laid down their arms or had been annihilated by Soviet forces.

Consequences

The treaty contributed to the failure of Józef Piłsudski's plans to create a Polish-led federation of Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

an countries (Międzymorze

Miedzymorze

Międzymorze was a plan, pursued after World War I by Polish leader Józef Piłsudski, for a federation, under Poland's aegis, of Central and Eastern European countries...

), as portions of the territory proposed for the federation were ceded to the Soviets. Lenin also considered the treaty unsatisfactory. He had to temporarily give up his plans for exporting the revolution West.
While the Treaty of Riga led to a two-decade stabilization of the Soviet-Polish conflict, the conflict was renewed during World War II and the treaty's borders were overridden by decision of that war's Allied powers. In the view of some observers, the treaty's incorporation of significant minority populations into Poland did not serve Poland's best interests, since these minorities persistently pursued independence and borders passing through ethnically-mixed areas would prove difficult to defend.
The populations separated by the division suffered varying degrees of repressions under their respective governments, particularly in the 1930s. Ethnic Poles left within Soviet borders were subjected to persecution and repressions, their property confiscated. Most Poles left in the Soviet Union by the Treaty of Riga would be deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan in the 1930s. Belarussians and Ukrainians, having failed to create their own states, faced difficult situation or outright persecution on both sides of the border. In Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, they were subject to Sovietization

Sovietization

Sovietization is term that may be used with two distinct meanings:*the adoption of a political system based on the model of soviets .*the adoption of a way of life and mentality modelled after the Soviet Union....

, with their cultural institutions suppressed, many communities forcibly resettled, and increasing economic hardships (culminating in the Holodomor

Holodomor

The Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "terror-famine in Ukraine" and "famine-genocide in Ukraine", millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of...

in the Ukraine). Several hundred thousands Belorussians, Poles, Ukrainians and members of other minorities were executed or deported by the Soviet government during the 1930s. The Polish portion of Belarus and Ukraine were in turn subjected to Polonization

Polonization

; the minorities, particularly Ukrainians, resisted, leading to the adoption of terrorist

Terrorism

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...

tactics by the Ukrainian extremists (OUN). During government anti-guerrilla operations minority members were arrested or even executed, and cultural institutions lost much support.

Soviet Union, thwarted in 1921, would see its sphere of influence expand after World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, with its control over the People's Republic of Poland

People's Republic of Poland

The People's Republic of Poland was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1990. Although the Soviet Union took control of the country immediately after the liberation from Nazi Germany in 1944, the name of the state was not changed until eight years later...

and border changes that unified Belorussian and Ukrainian territory within the USSR. In 1989, however, Poland would regain its full sovereignty, and soon afterward, with the fall of the Soviet Union, Belarus