Udział radykalnej lewicy wychodźczej w procesie bolszewizacji wojskowych Polaków w Rosji

Abstract

Trends in the activity of this part of Polish military movement which gathered around the Main Committee of the Association of Polish Military Men of the Left (Komitet Glówny Zwiazków Wojskowych Polaków Lewicy), were created by liberal-democratic groups and individual fractions of the emigrants' left. The strength of this influence did not result from any formal connections between political and military structures. It was rather based on personal relations. Numerous members of the Main Committee were also activists of emigrants' fractions. Sections of the Polish Socialist Party - Left (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna - Lewica), groups of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (Socjaldemokracja Królestwa Polskiego i Litwy) and the Polish Socialist Union (Zjednoczenie Socjalistyczne Polskie), which were coming into being right after the February Revolution, immediately established contacts with Polish soldiers scattered in the Russian army and with those already serving in the Polish Rifle Division (Dywizja Strzelców Polskich). Revolutionary indoctrination of military men aimed at torpedoing plans to establish Polish military forces of a pro-allied profile, and, in the further perspective, at using this Bolshevism influenced human matter while creating the Red Polish Army (Czerwona Armia Polska). Social democrats and both fractions of socialists co-created a fraction of the radical left in the Main Committee. Before 7 November 1917 it had cooperated with liberal democrats, blocking enlargement of Polish corpses. After the Bolshevik coup d'etat, when Bolsheviks reoriented their military policy and tried to include the structures of the Main Committee into the process of organization of eastern formations, liberal democrats started following the path of confrontation with the emigrants' radical left. Leaders of the radical left, having realized that through agitation only it would not be possible to eliminate the influence of liberal democrats on the head office of the association, found it indispensable to turn for help to political and administrative factors. The influence of the radical left on the Main Committee was a significant factor contributing to the establishing of the Commissariat for Polish Affairs (Komisariat do Spraw Polskich). This institution functioned, as one of the sections of the People's Commissariat of Nationalities (Komisariat Ludowy do Spraw Narodowosciowych). This basis enabled conducting activities aiming at first at the takeover of the control over the headquarters of the radical left and, eventually, their liquidation. The conclusive confrontation between both fractions took place at the Second Congress of the Military Left (II Zjazd Lewicy Wojskowej). During the congress, in the days 11-19 November 1917, there was a battle over the souls of the left-oriented military Poles. Thanks to the support of people's commissars, the radical emigrants' left triumphed.