UPDATE: Poland marks 100 years since key victory over Russian Bolsheviks

Events were held across Poland on Saturday to mark the 100th anniversary of a key victory over the Russian Bolsheviks in the 1920 Battle of Warsaw.

President Andrzej Duda at a ceremony before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw on Saturday.

Photo: PAP/Tomasz Gzell

The landmark battle is believed to have saved Poland’s newly regained independence after the end of World War I and prevented the Bolshevik revolution from spreading into western Europe.

Many say the battle, often described as the “Miracle of the Vistula,” was one of the world’s most important.

The battle was fought from August 12 to 25 in 1920 as Red Army forces commanded by Mikhail Tukhachevsky approached the Polish capital.

Polish forces headed by military leader and chief of state Józef Piłsudski counterattacked, forcing the Soviets to withdraw.

At a square in central Warsaw named after Piłsudski, officials on Saturday attended a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to mark both Poland’s Armed Forces Day and the 1920 battle.

Bolshevik onslaught

President Andrzej Duda told onlookers: "The Bolshevik onslaught was crushing Poland at the time… Defeat seemed inevitable. Many believed that what had happened could not be reversed, that Poland would fall under the blows of Soviet Russia and the Red Army, that communism carried from the East would engulf our country and then flood Germany and all of Europe."

He added: "We won thanks to determination, thanks to faith, thanks to unbelievable, unimaginable self-denial, and also thanks to despair, thanks to the will to survive…”

Polish-Soviet war; Polish defences with a machine gun position on the outskirts of Warsaw, August 1920. Photo: [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

Polish F-16 warplanes and four US F-16s staged a fly-past in the skies above the ceremonies. The American jets were piloted by crews who are in Poland as part of their training.

On Friday, a host of top officials attended a ceremony to open a new museum in Sulejówek near Warsaw that documents Piłsudski’s life.

A military parade in Warsaw that was to have been a highlight of events marking the 100th anniversary of the 1920 battle was called off amid a spike in COVID-19 cases.

(pk)

Source: PAP/IAR