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Poland Recovery of Statehood
In 1917 two separate events decisively changed the
character
of the war and set it on a course toward the rebirth of
Poland.
The United States entered the conflict on the Allied side,
while
a process of revolutionary upheaval in Russia weakened and
then
removed the Russians from the Eastern Front, finally
bringing the
Bolsheviks (see Glossary)
to power in that country. After the
last Russian advance into Galicia failed in mid-1917, the
Germans
went on the offensive again, the army of revolutionary
Russia
ceased to be a factor, and the Russian presence in Polish
territory ended for the next twenty-seven years.
The defection of Russia from the Allied coalition gave
free
rein to the calls of Woodrow Wilson, the American
president, to
transform the war into a crusade to spread democracy and
liberate
the Poles and other peoples from the suzerainty of the
Central
Powers. Polish opinion crystallized in support of the
Allied
cause. Pilsudski became a popular hero when Berlin jailed
him for
insubordination. The Allies broke the resistance of the
Central
Powers by autumn 1918, as the Habsburg monarchy
disintegrated and
the German imperial government collapsed. In November
1918,
Pilsudski was released from internment in Germany,
returned to
Warsaw, and took control as provisional president of an
independent Poland that had been absent from the map of
Europe
for 123 years.
Data as of October 1992
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