Germany (Treaty of Versailles)
It quickly appeared that Sazonov had received instructions not to be too hard on Germany. This was in part due to pragmatic concerns: the Russian government was not too keen on absorbing the entirety of the Polish nation: leaving some Poles (eg. Silesia) to Germany would ensure that Berlin and Petrograd remained on the same page regarding the threat of Polish independence. It would also ensure that an eventual independent Polish State would not direct its irredentism solely against Russia.
But there was another aspect to the relative leniency adopted by Russia towards Germany, and it was due to power dynamics in the entourage of the Emperor, where the Court party was coming back in force since the end of the war. The pro-German and pro-French trends of Russian diplomacy had never been entirely clear-cut, but the Court party had always been more inclined to pro-German feelings than the Country. Now that the war was over, the Empress Alexandra (born Alix of Hesse) lobbied intensively her husband in favour of Germany which, she alleged, did not deserve to be humiliated.
This war had been started by Vienna, not Berlin. The alliance with Prussia had been the cornerstone of Russian diplomacy from the aftermath of the Crimean War to the XXe century. This alliance had only been broken by the irresponsible behaviour of Austria and the clamours of Francophile liberals at home. Now was the time to re-build this friendship with the house of Hohenzollern, which would guarantee peace for the next generation. This line of thinking was quite widespread within the Court party. Rasputin was openly pro-German. The courtiers, the sycophants and the new ministers (but I repeat myself) obviously emulated pro-German sympathies
[2], now that they realized that Sazonov’s star was waning. It worked easily on the Emperor, who had always loved his dear cousin Willi, and who felt that, now that war was over, he didn’t need to bother anymore with the feelings of a liberal society who had proved treacherous during the February Uprising.
Hence in Paris, Sazonov, under strict instructions from Petrograd, took towards Germany a position markedly different from what he had aired in his discussions with Britain and France during the war
[3].
Provisions of the Treaty of Versailles:
Additionally, Germany would have to pay war reparations, and observe stringent limitations on their military forces. Sazonov insisted that, regarding Russia, these war reparations should take the form of a trade agreement highly beneficial to Russia in terms of technologies and refined goods, while France, Belgium and others opted for payments.
The question of the form of the German state divided the Allies. For France and the United-States, it was clear that not only Wilhelm should go (he had already abdicated a few days after the Armistice, in the hope of saving his dynasty), but Germany should be turned into a republic. Sazonov firmly opposed that: Tsarist Russia had no go to war to see liberal democracy spread all over Europe in its rawest form. After much haggling and American outrage, Sazonov and Kudashev managed to get the Hohenzollern through by pointing that, in any case, the powers and prestige of the German monarchy were much diminished, if not outright discredited, since the end of the war. This allowed Wilson to convince himself that, Kaiser or not, Germany would become a parliamentarian democracy. Thus the Hohenzollern were allowed to keep their throne, and Wilhelm III was grudgingly recognized as the German head of State by the Western allies.
The Fate of Poland
Incensed by the pogroms in Galicia and Kongressowka, President Wilson raised the issue of Congress Poland during the negotiations. This shocked deeply the Russian negotiators, and embarrassed the British and the French to no end (they also had to contend with vocal Polish and Jewish lobbies at home). The Russian negotiators were furious: true, during the war, prominent Panslavists like Grand-duke Nikolay Nikolayevich and Sazonov himself had aired the idea of granting some form of autonomy to “a reunited Poland”. But, if this were to pass, it would be granted by the Emperor of Russia, not decided upon by an international conference of foreign diplomats. When the news reached Russia, it raised outrage in the educated society: for once, both conservatives and liberals were scandalized that the United-States dared to suggest that the Paris Conference could deal with the fate of Congress Poland. Even prominent liberals sympathetic to the Poles’ plight, like V.D. Nabokov, categorically opposed this idea. As for the Court party, they reasoned that it was Sazonov’s fault: his talks of panslavism and Polish autonomy had led the Western powers to believe that they could freely impugn on Russia’s sovereignty: they clamoured all the more for the Foreign Minister’s dismissal.
The idea of granting autonomy to Congress Poland was swiftly put under the rug by Russia. Wilson then addressed the issue of Western Poland (ie.: Poznan, Silesia and West Prussia). There, the American president was on firmer ground, because the dominant Polish organization in these territories, close to Roman Dmowski, had bet on the Entente and had received support by all Allied countries at some point or another. In pleading for an independent Polish state carved out of Prussia, Wilson could find allies: Italy, France, Romania were sympathetic to it. As for Russia, Sazonov felt confident he could convince the Tsar to allow for an independent Poland carved out of German territories.
But the situation changed when, in November 1918, the Western Polish branches of the POW (
Polska Organizacja Wojskowa) decided to launch an insurrection against the German authorities, in contradiction to Dmowski’ and Paderewski’s views that the existence of an independent Polish state would be achieved solely by diplomatic means. The rationale of the November Polish Uprising was that a successful insurrection would establish the fact that Poznan, Western Prussia and Silesia were unquestionably Polish lands. This would convince the Allies to grant them independence.
The insurrection succeeded in convincing the Western Allies, but it had the opposite effect on Russia. For the Russians, who had to deal with low-level but persistent terrorist agitation in Congress Poland and Galicia, the November Uprising was like a red cloth in front of a bull: this, the Court and the Stavka reckoned, was the definite proof that any independent Polish State would be a hotbed of revolutionary and irredentist activity, contrary to the assurances of Sazonov and other panslavist diplomats. The interception of dozens of POW activists as they tried to secretly cross from Congress Poland to Western Prussia only confirmed the Russian government in their views.
The November Uprising put the Allies at loggerheads, and soon the discussions stalled, while on the ground Polish militias were clashing against German paramilitaries.
Sazonov’s standing was now close to zero in Petrograd. Trepov and Gurko managed to convince the Emperor that the solution to this crisis could not be reached through the Paris Conference. And so, in December 1918, a Russian army under general Dukhonin entered Poznan and West Prussia, crushing the West Polish National Council with effortless ease, while the Germans, with Russian approval, reasserted their authority in Silesia.
The Allies, and particularly Wilson, were outraged by this “politique du fait accompli”. The French were disquieted to see Russia and Germany collaborating together to put down the Poles. But there was little the Allies could do, and eventually they had to agree to the solution proposed by deputy Foreign Minister Kudashev: Poznan and the southern half of West Prussia would be annexed by Russia, Silesia and the northern half of West Prussia would remain German, with custom-free access to the port of Dantzig granted to Russia. Autonomy for the Poles would be granted “in due course”, of the Tsar’s own volition. On 15 December, twenty POW cadres from Poznan were tried and hung in Kovno, while dozens of others were condemned to prison or internal exile
[4].
This “coup de force” ruined the credibility of Sazonov, who had not even been forewarned of Dukhonin’s intervention. He had no choice but to resign and leave Paris a humiliated man, leaving prince Kudashev as acting Foreign Minister. Sazonov was replaced as chief negotiator by none other than Prime Minister A.F. Trepov, who wanted to dab his hand at international diplomacy. In Berlin, the Russian “coup de force” was interpreted as a sign of goodwill, and did much to lay the basis for reconciliation in the following years.
Many Poles were furious at the outcome of the Paris Conference, and joined the POW or other clandestine associations, aiming to lay the groundwork for an insurrection, should the opportunity arise. But some Poles accepted the situation with pragmatism, like ND’s leader Roman Dmowski: accused by more radical Poles of being a Russian lapdog, he argued that, now at last, the majority of the Polish lands were united within one state. Now it was time to work within the Russian empire, with tact, patience and flexibility, towards autonomy. Accordingly, he returned to Poland in February 1919 to build a new legalist political organization.
The Russian power play in Western Poland and the dismissal of Sazonov significantly deteriorated the relations between Russia and the Western powers. The arrival of Trepov to Paris didn’t lighten the atmosphere, to say the least. A vain man, Trepov had won the affection of the Tsar by playing the role of the dashing aristocratic Guard officer. He seemed to think that the same behaviour which had propelled him to power would allow him to impress and dazzle the Western diplomats. This was a profound mistake: Lloyd George, Clémenceau, Sonnino and of course Wilson took an instant dislike to Trepov. His aristocratic, cavalier and deliberately dilettante manners held no appeal to professional liberal politicians like them. As a result, the dynamic of the Paris Conference started to evolve towards distrust or even antagonism between Russia and her allies. Wilson told Clémenceau that, after the Polish affair, he was not inclined to give anything more to Russia. In private talks, Romanian and Greek diplomats complained to Lloyd George that they feared Russia’s appetites knew no bound. This deleterious atmosphere helps to explain the bitter division that arose on one of the subsequent items of discussion: Constantinople.
) running a terror campaign on the Russian territory, the autonomy arrangements must be postponed until they are hunted down and dealt with. Which means that the issue is deferred to the undefined future with the Poles themselves being blamed for the delay and with the Russian Poles who are interested in autonomy being stimulated to report and deliver the "bad guys". The same goes for the peasants whom these people would be squeezing out of food and who would be reasonably afraid of the severe retaliation measures from the Russian administration. When most of them, and especially the leadership, are eliminated, there can be a "generous" amnesty for the few remaining (good PR domestically and internationally). Government of the independent Poland is, in your TL arrangement, hard pressed not to support them out of fear of being marked as the German collaborators as well: none of the Allies is going to like people with such a label. And the Germans (and Austrians) are going to be reluctant to be associated with them because this could provide the victors with an excuse for squeezing them even further. In other words, you made them practically doomed by just few sentences. 
