You may not be a Pole
When General V. Ivashkevich, who had just headed the 3rd division, admitted to the commander of the 1st corps of the Polish Army I. Dovbor-Musnitsky that he did not really like the Poles, he, to his surprise, did not hear any objections. The leaders of the future Polish army were very weakly connected with Poland in general, especially since the country itself, which formally received independence from the hands of Russia, remained under Austro-German occupation.
Many generals and officers simply fled to Polish units from the revolution and did not even have to know the Polish language. The formation of independent national units within the Russian army, which went rather sluggishly before the February Revolution, was not immediately approved by the Provisional Government.
Many Polish officers considered the formation of a separate army in the midst of decisive battles "dangerous political fuss," beneficial only to the Germans. The soldiers were much more eager to return to their homeland one way or another than to continue fighting for Russia or "make a world revolution."
General Dovbor-Musnitsky, who fell to lead the 1st Polish corps, is remembered in our country mainly from the Soviet-Polish war of 1920. The future first red commander-in-chief I. Vatsetis, who in 1917 was the commander of the Latvian riflemen, believed that Dovbor's military talents were very average, and that his character was ambitious and despotic. Nevertheless, largely due to the excellent characteristics of such colleagues as A. Denikin, it was he who was preferred to other Polish generals.
Dovbor-Musnitsky had every chance of becoming a Polish dictator or even earlier to be on the other side of the front, but relations with the Bolsheviks did not work out. Most likely because Pilsudski was much nicer to him than Dzerzhinsky, but more on that below.
However, it did not work out with the "whites" either, with all the Polish commanders, and Wrangel in 1920 did not receive real support from the Poles. And not because the “head” of the new state, Y. Pilsudski, had a very rich revolutionary past. Much more important is that both he and his comrades-in-arms were not at all pleased with the prospect of cooperation with those Russians who were ready to take seriously the restoration of the "united and indivisible Russian empire." Let it be in the form of a republic, not a Romanov monarchy or any other dynasty.
The first attempt to win over the Poles to the side of the counter-revolution was made back in the days of the Kornilov uprising, but no documentary evidence of the negotiations between General Dovbor-Musnitsky and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief was found.
The matter was limited to the movement to Mogilev, where the Russian Headquarters was located, two infantry regiments weakened to 700 people and the redeployment of the lancers regiment at the Korosten and Rogachev stations. And that was all that the officer on duty from Kornilov's headquarters managed to achieve from the representative of the so-called Nachpol in the 1st corps, Lieutenant Colonel Yasinsky.
Contact Nachpol
Nachpol, as the Polish Supreme Military Committee, created in the early days of the revolution, was called in abbreviated form, is an informal structure, very characteristic of that era. It was created after the 1st All-Russian Congress of Polish Servicemen under the chairmanship of the Minsk lawyer Vladislav Rachkevich, who will become the Polish president in exile during the Second World War.
However, the effective name was not backed up by real powers. Nachpol took up the formation of Polish units, but turned out to be nothing more than a representative body of the Polish military. The Russian headquarters quickly suppressed all the claims of the functionaries of Nachpol for the role of the headquarters of the future Polish Army.
By the end of August, Dovbor's corps was not only "raw", but also small in number, and this despite the fact that after a rather tough "cleansing" the corps was based on personnel from the 1st Polish Rifle Division. Some Polish historians are ready to link personnel cleansing in the ranks of riflemen with almost every tenth execution, but in reality this practice became widespread only later - not only among Trotsky, but also among whites.
By the summer of 1917, the riflemen were actually the only combat-ready Polish unit, although they almost "got infected" by the revolution from the Russian regiments. During the June offensive, the 1st Infantry Rifle showed itself so badly that the commander-in-chief A. Brusilov gave the order to disband it, noting that
"The division consists of self-seekers, hiding behind loud phrases about the need to protect Polish formations as a cadre of the future Polish army."
However, the German counter-offensive quickly healed the Poles, and they fought heroically near Krekhovtsy. The Ulan regiment was even renamed the Krekhovetsky Shock Cavalry. Nevertheless, in August, almost four thousand officers and soldiers, either unreliable or simply not knowing Polish, were removed from the 7,000th division.
The remaining contingent poured into the Dovbor-Musnitsky corps, which at the time of Kornilov's speech hardly numbered much more than 10 thousand people. And this is with a three-divisional composition (in contrast to the Russian army corps, which consisted of two divisions) and a full staff of 68 thousand people. And, it seems, just because of the small number of the corps, the main reason for the passivity of the Poles in those days was the same desire to “save cadres”.
But the vague position of Nachpol in relation to the rebellion and rebels also played a role. The left-wing radical part of the military congress participants, united in the Polish Revolutionary Military Club, initiated a search in the premises of Nachpol in the capital. Were found 300 carbines and lists of soldiers and officers sympathetic to the "left", but Nachpol was widely condemned only as a possible ally of Kornilov.
It is characteristic that even members of the same party of Pilsudski, who was in prison in the Magdeburg prison, from the PPS, both from the "Levitsa" and from the "faction", spoke out against Nachpol. However, the wave of anger subsided as soon as on September 13, Dovbor-Musnitsky made a public statement about the neutrality of the 1st corps. At the same time, 700 Polish soldiers left the vicinity of Mogilev.
Divorce from the Bolsheviks
By the time Lenin and his comrades-in-arms planned to take power and create a new, Soviet, albeit also "provisional" government, Dovbor-Musnitsky's corps had managed to get stronger to the point where the unit could actually fight. However, he was still very far from full staff, and the prevalence of officers and old soldiers was clearly excessive.
Despite the fact that the Bolsheviks in the first days after the coup sent precisely Polish patrols to guard foreign embassies, a real revolutionary alliance did not work out. The 1st corps was too far from Petrograd, but the Poles did not intervene in the events around the Headquarters in Mogilev, where the commander-in-chief General N. Dukhonin was killed, and his place was completely unexpectedly taken by "only" ensign N. Krylenko.
And in the revolutionary Petrograd Soviet, Dovbor-Musnitsky did not forget the rather strange "neutrality" in the days of the Kornilov revolt, and any actions and orders of the general were immediately checked for "counter-revolutionary". However, in relation to Nachpol, the position of the Bolsheviks and their allies was similar, in which Yu. Unshlikht and F. Dzerzhinsky played a significant role, who, from February to October, were not included in at least some significant national body.
And this despite the fact that the same Pilsudski, who fought for two years on the side of the common enemy, was enough to be in the Magdeburg prison to become the most authoritative politician on this side of the front. He was even elected an honorary chairman of the 1st All-Russian Congress of Polish Servicemen in Petrograd. Both the press loyal to Poland and any event related to national issues in one way or another, regularly spoke with the obligatory greetings to “Comrade Piłsudski”.
The divorce, it seems, is final, happened already in the October days. It all started with the order of Dovbor-Musnitsky on building # 81, with which the general tried to take over the protection of the Headquarters in Mogilev. Declaring the non-interference of the Poles "in the affairs of the internal policy of Russia," the general ordered the troops "to take energetic measures, not stopping at the use of weapons."
And since at the same time the corps commander demanded the release of the commander of the Western Front, General Baluev, who had been arrested by the Bolsheviks, he was immediately enlisted as a counterrevolutionary. Direct confrontation was postponed so far, but after that the Reds could hardly count on any serious Polish contingent in the workers 'and peasants' army being created.
Among the Polish units, only the Belgorod regiment took an active part in the coup on the side of the "left", which managed to repel the attempts of the Kornilovites to settle in Kharkov, Belgorod and at several railway stations in those provinces. In the regiment, however, anarchy and disorder still reigned, he refused to join the Ukrainian troops headed by V. Antonov-Ovseenko.
Autonomous swimming
After the Bolsheviks first concluded a truce with the Germans, which later led to the signing of the Brest Peace, the Dovbor-Musnitsky corps became very dangerous for them. Instead of collapse, he was rapidly gaining strength, having already reached almost 30 thousand soldiers and officers. In addition, many began to view the Poles as the only defense against the commissars who had already begun the first repressions.
Even without prompting from Petrograd, the new front commanders, who later turned into the so-called "Western Veil", began frantically to form Polish revolutionary units. One of the right-wing Minsk newspapers sarcastically said: "Nothing new - Poles against Poles." By order of N. Krylenko, an attempt was made to arrest 19 members of the Nachpol, who ended up in Minsk, but only six were sent to prison, and even those soon fled.
The Polish commander in chief Dovbor-Musnitsky did not even think to carry out the order of the Bolshevik commander-in-chief, ensign N. Krylenko, who demanded to obey the decisions of the Leninist Council of People's Commissars on the democratization of the army. The general understood that this would lead to the collapse of the corps, and decided to wait for the convocation of the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Polish Servicemen in Minsk. The congress gathered and not only supported the command of the corps, but also recognized the Nachpol "the supreme body of the Polish military community." The public, but not the army.
The new command of the Western Front issued an order for the corps to take positions on the Russian-German front, but in the end, with the help of the Headquarters, the Poles were only dispersed away from Mogilev. Already on January 20 (7), 1918, another order came from Headquarters - to disarm and disband the corps, but it remained only on paper.
The response to the disarmament order was the actual declaration of war on January 25 (12) and the offensive by two regiments on Mogilev. The Poles took Zhlobin with a fight in the morning of the same day, but by the evening they were knocked out by the Red Guards. But Rogachev the next day the 1st Infantry Division took for a long time, they even introduced a state of siege and announced the mobilization of the Poles.
An offensive on Minsk also began, which was accompanied by the dispersal of the Soviets, the arrest of the Bolsheviks, anarchists and Left Social Revolutionaries. The headquarters of the 1st Polish division in Rogachev plucked up such courage that they even announced the revival of the Polish state within the borders of 1772. The first attempts to stop the Poles with hastily assembled revolutionary units failed, although in Molodechno, after a series of negotiations and skirmishes, the Poles were eventually forced to surrender.
All the same, there was no question of a full-scale war, negotiations were going on without interruption in various forms. Meanwhile, the Soviet government, counting on the support of the population, gave the go-ahead for the massive expropriation of land and property. The Bolsheviks also went on direct terror, shooting Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky as the main accomplice of the rebels, to which the Poles were not slow to respond with reprisals against representatives of the new government.
New "ally"
All this time, the active agitation of the "Polish brothers" did not stop, many of whom were not at all attracted by the prospect of a war with the Russians. Desertion from the corps, which was conceived as volunteer, became almost widespread, and many soldiers simply switched to red. In February 1918, the voluntary demobilization of the soldiers of the Polish Corps was announced in Mogilev and Minsk, which was carried out by the Commission on Polish Affairs, created during the first Provisional Government.
In a matter of days, the Dovbor-Musnitsky corps lost almost half of its composition, and the Bolsheviks were already pulling in new forces, including the Latvian riflemen led by the already mentioned I. Vatsetis. A series of clashes with no real result ended with the signing of the Brest Peace Treaty, when Belarus tried to play for independence, but the Germans became the real masters of the situation in the area of the former Russian Headquarters.
General Dovbor-Musnitsky, who until recently called the Germans "the main threat to the Polish cause," immediately signed an agreement with them. It did not even occur to the Germans to intern the Polish military, and the corps was simply declared neutral in the Russian-German war. At the same time, almost all the territories north of Polesie in the southeast of Belarus were transferred under Polish control. Only the Brest - Gomel railway was retained by the Germans, and the lands from Brest to Gomel were "ceded" to independent Ukraine under an agreement dated February 9.
Already on March 14, 1918, General I. Dovbor-Musnitsky submitted to the Regency Council of the Kingdom of Poland. This kingdom was hastily established in 1916 by Austria and Germany in the occupied Polish lands that were part of the Russian Empire. It took only 10 days to demobilize the corps. And the general himself, who once did not bother learning the Polish language, returned to command posts after the end of the World War and the proclamation of Poland's independence. But already in the Polish army of Yu. Pilsudski.
