The February revolution in Russia became perhaps the most important milestone in the solution of the Polish question. On March 27 (14), 1917, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies adopted an appeal to the "Polish people", which said that "the democracy of Russia … proclaims that Poland has the right to be completely independent in the state and international relations."
The last Tsarist Foreign Minister Nikolai Pokrovsky, like all his predecessors, adhered to the formula “the Polish question is an internal affair of the Russian Empire” to the end. At the same time, he was ready to use the proclamation of the Polish kingdom on Russian lands by the central powers as an excuse to replace his French and British colleagues. However, he simply did not have time for this, and the Imperial Foreign Ministry did not have time to take into account the Americans' point of view either. The famous statement by W. Wilson, made in January 1917, when the president spoke in favor of the restoration of "a united, independent, autonomous" Poland, the tsarist government decided to take as a given, "fully meeting the interests of Russia."
How the Provisional Government defined its position is already stated in these notes. On March 29 (16), 1917, his appeal "To the Poles" appeared, which also dealt with an independent Polish state, but contained some very significant reservations: it must be in a "free military alliance" with Russia, which would be approved Constituent Assembly. In accordance with the position of the Provisional Government, a certain dependence of the restored Polish state was needed in order to exclude the danger of its transition to positions hostile to Russia.
The decisions of the Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government freed the hands of England and France. They were no longer bound by the obligation to Russia to regard the Polish question as Russia's internal affair. Conditions arose for its international discussion and solution. In Russia, the Polish Liquidation Commission was already created to settle all issues of Polish-Russian relations and the organization of an independent Polish army began. Taking into account this decision of the Russians, French President R. Poincare in June 1917 issued a decree on the creation of the Polish army in France.
However, even after pushing aside the Russians, it was impossible to manage the solution of the Polish question without a new ally - the North American States. Moreover, the American president, with energy that surprised the Europeans, took up the issues of the post-war world organization, without waiting for the American troops to actually get into action. The fact that the American administration is preparing a certain large-scale act, which will later be simply called "14 points", the closest adviser to President Wilson, Colonel House, has repeatedly hinted to European politicians with whom he regularly contacted.
The Polish question was initially absent from the famous "14 points". In general, President Wilson initially planned something like the 10 commandments, avoiding specifics, but was forced to expand them to 12. However, when difficulties arose with Russia, at the suggestion of E. House, he agreed that the American "charter for peace" should say and about Poland. As a result, she gets the "unlucky" 13th point, and the very fact of the separation of the Polish question forever made Woodrow Wilson the idol of the Poles. A hundred years earlier, Napoleon Bonaparte had received approximately the same adoration from the Polish gentry.
… Between organized peoples there cannot and should not be such a peace that does not proceed from the principle that the government borrows all its just powers only from the will of the people and that no one has the right to transfer peoples from one state to another, as if they were were just a thing.
If you take a separate example, then I can argue that everywhere statesmen agree that Poland should be united, independent and independent, and that henceforth to those peoples who lived under the rule of a state professing a different faith and persecuting others, even hostile to these peoples, the goal that all these peoples should be provided with freedom of existence, faith, industry and social development … (1).
With these words, the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, practically for the first time during the war, outlined his vision of the "Polish question" in his address to senators. Only Polish historians continue to dispute the initiative of Colonel House in the very formulation of the Polish question, believing that the Polish lobby in the United States did much more for this.
No, the author is not going to challenge the authority of Ignacy Paderewski or Henrik Sienkiewicz, especially since they have always actively interacted with the French elite, whose representatives also reminded President Wilson of Poland. Strategically, the desire of the same France to recreate Poland is all the more understandable - it is not bad at all to drive a wedge between Russia and Germany, weakening two "eternal" rivals at once, it is difficult to come up with something better. At the same time, for the French, almost the main thing is not to allow Poland itself to become really strong, because God forbid, it will turn into another European headache.
Wilson himself did not even hide his irritation at the proclamation of the "Kingdom of Poland" by the central powers, but he was not at all going to take it seriously. The Habsburg empire in America has already been given up, but they still thought about the Hohenzollerns … If they only knew who would eventually replace Wilhelm II.
However, Berlin and Vienna at that time still did not give up their attempts to enlist the support of the Poles for the implementation of their plans. In September 1917, they created a new State Council, a Regency Council and a government. These bodies were dependent on the occupation authorities, were deprived of freedom of action, nevertheless, they laid the foundation for the formation of the beginnings of the Polish administration. The response from Russia, which could have been delayed due to the sharply aggravated contradictions within the country in the fall of 1917, followed unexpectedly quickly. Having come to power in Russia, the Bolsheviks already on November 15, 1917 published the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, which proclaimed "the right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination up to separation and formation of an independent state."
The fate of Poland was also discussed during the peace negotiations between Soviet Russia and the central powers in Brest-Litovsk, which began in December 1917. But all this was before the "14 points". Several times at the negotiations of the Entente and US diplomats, the so-called "Belgian option" was considered as the base for Poland, but it was clearly impassable. First of all, because there were too many Poles around the world then, even in the United States itself - several million.
The very appearance of the 13th "Polish" clause among the fourteen should not be considered in isolation from the general context of the US President's programmatic speech. And above all, because the Polish question then, with all the desire, could not be torn away from the "Russian". In this regard, Russian historians are not averse to finding contradictions both in the target settings and in individual specific decisions of the then owner of the White House. It comes to the point that someone manages to ascribe to Wilson almost the creation of a certain prototype of the future "cold war" (2).
Puritan "Wilsonism" would be the easiest and most convenient thing to regard as an antithesis to the Bolshevism of Red Russia, if not one thing. By and large, the Americans were generally indifferent to who would eventually be the master of Russia, as long as this party, or this dictator did not prevent the United States from solving its problems in Europe.
The notorious idealism, about which not even Wilson, but his adviser E. House, spoke so much, of course, is a very beautiful presentation of American intervention in the European quarrel, but one should not forget about pragmatism either. If it were not for the prospect of unprecedented profits and a real chance for the United States to become a world economic leader, the business elite, and after it the country's establishment, would never have given Wilson the go-ahead to abandon the policy of isolationism.
The American president has his own idea of the "new world" (3), and it a priori does not accept either tsarist absolutism, or the liberal "imperialism" of the Provisional Government, or the claims of the Bolsheviks for a proletarian dictatorship. Perhaps this is a manifestation of the classic Russian alarmism, but the "14 points" can be regarded as a principled response to the challenge of the Bolsheviks, who made it clear to the whole world that they were preparing a world revolution. And an attempt to disrupt or drag out the negotiations in Brest-Litovsk is already a consequence.
Woodrow Wilson, realizing that the war would be won, and quite soon, has already begun to build the world "in the American way." And if the Polish question gives this house of cards additional stability, let it be. It is clear that the colossal efforts to spread the "14 points" in Russia are by no means connected with the presence of the "Polish point" in them. The Russians would have had enough of their "own" 6th point, about which a little below.
But it is necessary to somehow restrain the growing Bolshevik influence on the world. Newspapers with their circulation then millions, leaflets, brochures, public speeches of loyal politicians - all these tools were promptly put into operation. Edgar Sisson, the US special envoy to Russia, the very one who was the first to launch the legend about German money for the Bolsheviks, inspired the president to inform the president that about half a million copies of the text of his message had been pasted in Petrograd (4). And this is only in the first ten days after Wilson's speech in Congress. However, it was difficult to surprise the inhabitants of Russian cities with the abundance of leaflets on the walls of houses, especially since the literate among them did not even make up the majority.
In principle, Wilson had nothing against the key foreign policy principles of the Bolsheviks; he was not even embarrassed by the real prospect of a separate peace between Russia and Germany and Austria. We repeat, he had no doubts about an imminent victory, protesting only against the Bolshevik tactics of relations with allies and opponents. According to the head of a rather young American state, it was impossible to count on a long-term and lasting peace until the might of the even younger German Empire, capable of destroying this world "with the help of intrigue or force", was not broken.
When the Bolsheviks, carrying out their own "peace decree", promptly seated the enemy's representatives at the negotiating table in Brest, they had to urgently respond with something. By this time, the "14 points" were almost ready. It is interesting that the US President managed to publicly express his solidarity with the new Russian government more than once before they were published. Even in his speech to Congress, which was later called "14 points" (January 8, 1918), Wilson declared the "sincerity" and "honesty" of the Soviet representatives in Brest-Litovsk. "Their concept of justice, humanity, honor," he stressed, "was expressed with such frankness, open-mindedness, spiritual generosity and such a universal understanding that cannot fail to arouse admiration of all who cherish the fate of mankind."
Now, very briefly - about the sixth point, where it was about Russia, and where the American president had to show special delicacy. First of all, the 6th point of Wilson's speech gave the Bolsheviks hope for the possible recognition of their regime, since the president emphasized Russia's right to "make an independent decision regarding its own political development and its nationality policy." Wilson also expressed guarantees of her "hospitality in the community of nations in the form of government that she chooses for herself" (5).
This is how Wilson outlined his position in preparation for his January speech in Congress. At the same time, Russia, and regardless of who is in power there, was promised not only the liberation of all lands, but also an invitation to a single world "family of nations." Even with Wilson's confidence in victory, the Eastern Front should not have fallen, at least not quickly. The fate of the West still depended on the position of the new Russia.
"The treatment that Russia will undergo on the part of its sister nations in the coming months will be a convincing test of their goodwill, their understanding of its needs" (7). But the point of view that the "14 points" could have been written under the threat of disrupting the talks in Brest-Litovsk is groundless. Even Colonel House, as already indicated, spoke of them long before Brest. The timing for speaking with 14 points does not fit well with this conclusion - too clearly it coincided with the break in the Brest negotiations.
After the United States joined the Entente, the Allies also gained confidence in victory, but the German soldiers, unlike the Russian inhabitants in Petrograd, did not care what Wilson said there. In general, the logic of his message hardly rested solely on the desire of the American president to keep Russia in the war. And the presence in "14 points" along with the 6th "Russian" point of the 13th "Polish", in fact refutes all the "good impulses" of the United States and its allies towards the new Russia.
Or maybe the whole point is in a rather common American misunderstanding of the situation in Europe? The idea of US global leadership at that time was completely new, but for Wilson himself, deliberate Pan-Americanism was hardly a priority. He seems to have been committed to a very different kind of globalism - based on a kind of "worldwide consensus." This, by the way, pretty much annoyed his chief adviser, Colonel House.
In Poland, everything, starting with the Proclamation of the "temporary" ones, and ending with the October coup and Wilson's "14 points", learned pretty quickly - no German-Austrian censorship helped. Even before the Bolsheviks removed Kerensky and his associates from the political arena, Pilsudski realized that he had put on the wrong card and was only looking for an excuse to "change course." And the German command even played into the hands of Pilsudski, when it hastened to ascribe to him all the failures in campaigning for military recruitment in the Kingdom of Poland. For propaganda against recruiting for the new (Austro-German) Polish army, Pilsudski went to prison. Mark Aldanov (Landau) quite rightly noted that the "best service" for the authorities of the new "Kingdom", and specifically - "the Germans could not render him" (8).
A little later, having gained independence, Poland was forced to reckon with the principle of nationalities proclaimed at Versailles. But this affected the definition of the northern, western and southern borders of the country, and in the east, the Poles rushed to determine the borders themselves. Fortunately, there were practically no Russians left there, only a small “western veil”, while Belarusian and Lithuanian were just beginning to form. But the notorious 13th Polish clause of Wilson did not become the basis for relations with red Russia. Both Dmowski's endeks and the Pilsudchiks, realizing that the Germans could no longer be afraid of a blow in the back from the Germans, proceeded from directly opposite positions. However, the National Democrats nevertheless decided to play it safe, right away, even before the negotiations in Versailles, proposing to the allies to reinforce Poland with "lands in the east."
It was about the annexation of by no means non-Polish Western Ukraine and Belarus, in favor of which the following argument was made: they "had to be Polonized, since they were inferior to the Poles in terms of culture and national maturity" (9). Subsequently, the demands of the leader of the "primordial fighters against Russian tyranny" Pilsudski were much more outspoken, he considered it necessary to weaken Russia by tearing off the national outskirts. Poland was later to lead a large federal state with Lithuania and Belarus - why not the revival of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth? Well, Ukraine will have no choice but to conclude a military-political alliance with such a Federation directed against Russia.
In conclusion, we recall that, according to the 13th point of the Wilsonian program, independent Poland "must include territories inhabited exclusively by the Polish population." But after Brest-Litovsk and Versailles, this postulate was simply discarded, like "spent steam". Having won a victory in the war with Red Russia in 1920, the Poles harshly and aggressively implemented the notorious version of the Pilsudskaya "takeover" of the Western Slavic outskirts.
This is evidenced by at least the results of the 1921 census, according to which in Stanislavsky voivodeship the Ukrainian population was 70%, in Volyn province - 68%, in Tarnopil province - 50%. Poles began to populate the "outskirts-Ukraine" only later. It is significant that the Polish state did not include territories in the west with a really dense Polish population - Warmia, Mazury, Opolskie Voivodeship and part of Upper Silesia. And this, despite the fact that the results of the plebiscites in these lands passed with a colossal preponderance not in favor of Germany.
Notes.
1. From the message of the President of the United States W. Wilson to the Senate on the principles of peace. Washington, January 22, 1917
2. Davis D. E., Trani Yu. P. First Cold War. Woodrow Wilson's legacy in Soviet-American relations. M., 2002. C. 408.
3. Levin N. G. Woodrow Wilson and World Politics. America's Response to War and Revolution. N. Y. 1968. P. 7.
4. G. Creel to W. Wilson, Jan. 15, 1918 // Ibid. Vol. 45. P. 596.
5. An Address to a Joint Session of Congress. Jan. 8, 1918 // Ibid. Vol. 45. P. 534-537.
6. Wilson W. War and Peace, v. 1.p. 160.
7. Ibid.
8. Aldanov M. Portraits, M., 1994, p. 370.
9. Dmowski R. Mysli nowoczesnego Polaka War-wa. 1934. S. 94.
