1920 — Warsaw and the Crimea

CHAPTER 10 · 1920 · The Russian Revolution, 1905–1924

With the great White armies broken, 1920 brought two last acts — one to the west, one to the south. In the west, the new Poland and Soviet Russia collided over the borderlands between them. Piłsudski struck first, taking Kiev in May (one arrow), hoping to build a federation of nations between Poland and Russia. The Red Army hurled him back and kept coming: Tukhachevsky’s armies drove for Warsaw under a banner of exporting revolution — “over the corpse of White Poland shines the road to world conflagration.” For a few weeks in August it looked as if the revolution would march into Germany.

The turn: The Miracle on the Vistula, August 1920.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.