Red Army Wins Polish Campaign?

Thaddeus
I know very little about the Polish Soviet war. Was the sucess of the Polish counter offensive that unexpected? While we are at it do you have any reading to reccomend on this war?

My two cents: I think the best English language account of the war is still Norman Davies 1972 book, White Eagle, Red Star (which was republished by Pimlico in 2003).
 
My two cents: I think the best English language account of the war is still Norman Davies 1972 book, White Eagle, Red Star (which was republished by Pimlico in 2003).

Really? Nobody's been able to pull anything out of the archives (any of them) since the Warsaw Pact and USSR collapsed?
 
Really? Nobody's been able to pull anything out of the archives (any of them) since the Warsaw Pact and USSR collapsed?

Admittedly it has been about 10 years since I made a concerted search for such material... One of the reasons I held off on my two cents was the hope someone might suggest something more recent. The last book (that I'm aware of) on the topic was Adam Zamoyski's 2008 book Warsaw 1920 - which was a complete disappointment.
 
My two cents: I think the best English language account of the war is still Norman Davies 1972 book, White Eagle, Red Star (which was republished by Pimlico in 2003).

Admittedly it has been about 10 years since I made a concerted search for such material... One of the reasons I held off on my two cents was the hope someone might suggest something more recent. The last book (that I'm aware of) on the topic was Adam Zamoyski's 2008 book Warsaw 1920 - which was a complete disappointment.

thanks. will have to read those. anything interesting covering the interwar years?

I offered an opinion on events frankly not that well informed on, that the Polish counteroffensive was (somewhat) unexpected success.

based only on the map, that they had been driven back from Kiev and (my understanding) the Polish plans were known to Soviets.
 
Thaddeus
I know very little about the Polish Soviet war. Was the sucess of the Polish counter offensive that unexpected? While we are at it do you have any reading to reccomend on this war?

This article by a US Army officer might interest you. It's a pity that there has been so very little research done on this particular conflict in the West. The Soviet military establishment wrote about and extensively studied the war in the early (*) inter-war period, but of course, next to none of this has ever been translated into English.

(*) In the later part of the period, attempting an honest evaluation of the war as a whole became impossible under the Stalinist regime, due of course, to the fact any such evaluation would require finding fault with the dictator's problematical behavior during the campaign. Such heresy was all but a guaranteed death sentence.
 
Really? Nobody's been able to pull anything out of the archives (any of them) since the Warsaw Pact and USSR collapsed?

Richard Harrison, author of the Russian Way of War had such access, but his work has not concentrated on the war. Much archival material certainly exists, but it simply hasn't been used much, due, I assume, to lack of interest.
 
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