The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

Tukhachevski, who was later to be one of Stalin’s most prominent victims, was the author of a new strategic doctrine: Revolution from without, in other words using the Red Army to carry Communism across Europe as Napoleon’s armies had carried the principles of the French Revolution. The war with Poland gave him a chance to try out his theory; the ease with which he shattered the Polish armies, and the speed of his advance into Poland seemed to demonstrate its validity. With French guidance and material help, the Poles at last succeeded in stopping the Russian offensive on the Vistula, before Warsaw, on August 14, 1920. The date deserves to be remembered in the West. “If Poland had been Sovietized,” Lenin later declared, “the whole international system established by the victory over Germany would have crumbled. France would have had no buffer to protect Germany from Soviet Russia.” The buffer that Lenin had in mind was, of course, a pro-Western and anti-Communist Poland.