ABSTRACT
The major preoccupations of Paderewski’s new government in January 1919 were in the east where chaos enveloped many areas which the Poles regarded as rightfully theirs. Lwów, threatened by Ukrainians, was the first objective. This was soon secured and by April Pilsudski’s men had taken Vilnius, a town redolent with meaning for Polish nationalists and in which, one day, Pilsudski’s own heart was to be buried. In the meantime, Poland’s Drang nach Osten had brought it into conflict with Lenin’s Soviet régime. The Russo-Polish war of 1919-21 was to be decisive for Poland and for the rest of the continent; it stopped that westward expansion of bolshevism which the statesmen of Europe feared so much.
