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At first glance, the Russo-Polish War of 1920 seems like a strong case for the triumphalists’ proposition that democracies have a significant advantage over nondemocracies in the wise selection and successful conduct of war. Poland was a democracy, and it launched a successful war. Historian Norman Davies characterized Poland as a parliamentary democracy and the POLITY dataset gives Poland an impressive democracy score of 8, which places it squarely in the “high democracy” category.1 Given the overwhelming Soviet advantage in military manpower and Poland’s newly assembled and untested armed forces, Poland’s victory in late summer and fall of 1920 borders on the miraculous. This stunning victory over the Soviet Union caught almost all foreign observers by surprise. Even Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for war in British prime minister Harold Lloyd George’s cabinet, and a staunch supporter of the Polish cause, was taken aback by the magnitude of the Polish reversal of fortune after August 16, 1920. He recalled with amazement the course of the battles in Poland that summer: “there had come a transformation—sudden, mysterious and decisive. Once again armies were advancing, exulting, seemingly irresistible. . . . Once again for no assignable cause they halt . . . and begin to retreat.”2 Given that the Poles were significantly outnumbered and outgunned by the Soviets, it is tempting to attribute this victory to the fact that Poland was a democracy, as the triumphalists do. In this chapter, I assess through in-depth process tracing whether the outcome of the Russo-Polish War is in fact attributable to Polish democracy. I begin with a brief synopsis of the war. Next, I inquire as to whether the Russo-Polish c h a p t e r 3 Democracy and the Russo-Polish War case supports the triumphalist’s selection effects argument that democracies are better at starting wars they can easily win. I look then at each of the triumphalist’s wartime effectiveness arguments—rent seeking, alliances, strategic evaluation, public support, and soldiers on the battlefield—to see if any of them explain the outcome. Finally, I explore some alternative explanations, unrelated to regime type, that might explain Poland’s remarkable defeat of the Soviet Union. My conclusion is that neither the triumphalists’ prewar selection effects nor their wartime effective arguments persuasively explain the outcome of the Russo-Polish War. While Poland had democratic institutions, its parliamentary system does not seem to have mattered very much for the outcome of the war. Rather, other factors such as the balance of forces, the nature of the conflict, nationalism , a weak adversary, geography, and intelligence provide much more convincing explanations for the war’s outcome. the russo-polish war Poland was part of the Russian Empire, but much of it was occupied by the Central Powers during the First World War. After the February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government granted Poland independence but it was not until after the German surrender in November 1918 that it truly gained it. Between November 1918 and December 1919, newly independent Poland engaged in a series of wars to establish its borders with the Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, and Russia. In April 1920 Polish forces invaded the Ukraine and captured Kiev with the intention of setting up an independent and pro-Polish regime. The Poles attacked the Soviet Union because they saw two windows of opportunity: Russia was suffering the ravages of its ongoing Civil War, and the Allies were preoccupied with other issues.3 Given the former, Russia was vulnerable to attack in the spring of 1920, and the Poles thought they could exploit this vulnerability to establish an independent and pro-Polish government in the Ukraine.4 Given the latter, the Poles judged that they could execute this plan with little overt opposition from the Allies. In May the Soviet forces launched a major counterattack to recapture the Ukraine and expel the Poles. After retreating most of the summer in the face of a seemingly inexorable Red juggernaut, Poland defeated the Red Army in the Battle of the Vistula literally at the gates of Warsaw during midAugust 1920 and drove it deep into the disputed territories in the Baltic region and Beylorussia.5 The Soviet Union sued for an armistice in October 1920 and then signed the Treaty of Riga in March 1921, which ratified these Polish conquests.6 democracy and the russo-polish war 71 [3.140.242.165] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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