The leaders of the Entente were not best pleased. They had assumed that it was up to them to grant independence to Poland. They had a provisional government in Paris ready to be installed, and they mistrusted Piłsudski. And if he had triumphed in Poland, the final shape and status of the resurrected state would depend largely on the peace negotiations about to open in Paris and the willingness of the Entente to supply everything from the food the country so badly needed to arms with which to defend itself. A compromise was quickly reached, and Paderewski arrived in Poland to take his place as Prime Minister in a coalition government, with Piłsudski as head of state and commander-in-chief.
Elections were held in January 1919 in the area of the former Congress Kingdom and Galicia, and as they could not take place in the former German provinces on account of fighting between Poles and Germans, eighteen deputies to the last imperial Reichstag were given seats in the 340-strong Polish Sejm. Six months later, elections were held there too, along with other areas, bringing the Sejm up to a strength of 432. This embarked on the laborious process of putting in place a state administration, leaving Piłsudski and Paderewski to deal with the country’s frontiers, none of which had yet been fixed.
Poland’s frontier with Germany depended entirely on the decisions reached by the Entente, and these were subject to every consideration except that of Polish reasons of state. It was only in Silesia, where an uprising against the Germans by the population proved effective, that the Poles were able to break this rule. Prussia and Pomerania were awarded to Germany, and Gdańsk was left as a free city under League of Nations administration, linked to Poland by a thin corridor through German territory. In the south-west, the new Czecho-Slovak state invaded the coal-rich area around Cieszyn (Teschen), in which Poles outnumbered Czechs by more than two to one, with the unofficial sanction of France. Poland’s frontiers with Russia, on the other hand, depended not on words uttered at Paris, but on actions in the field.
Piłsudski was convinced that a small, ethnically defined Poland would not survive long beside a Russia which possessed Belorussia and Ukraine. He also felt a strong emotional and ideological attachment to the principles of the Commonwealth, and meant to adapt them to the circumstances by creating a federal union of Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine.
But the dialogue with the Lithuanians and the Ukrainians began only after shots had been exchanged. It proved impossible to reach agreement with the Lithuanians, who were suspicious of Poland. There was more common ground with the Ukrainians, and negotiations started after the fighting over Lwów had ceased. But no solution to the problems of Ukraine, Belorussia and Lithuania could be adopted without reference to events in Russia.
In August 1918 the Bolsheviks had declared all the treaties of partition null and void—which did not mean that they were willing to see Poland reborn within its 1772 frontiers. Throughout 1918 and 1919 they were too busy fending off White offensives to bother much about the Polish frontier. Piłsudski too was worried by the successes of the Whites. Their leader, General Denikin, made it clear that he envisaged only one Russia—great and indivisible. Piłsudski certainly did not wish to see him established in Moscow with Allied backing, for then not only Poland’s eastern frontier but her sovereign status would be dependent on deals made between Moscow and Paris. Piłsudski therefore refrained from any military activity against the Bolsheviks which might help the Whites, and even made a secret pact with Lenin, in spite of urgent appeals from London and Paris that he should support Denikin.
When the Whites had been defeated, in the winter of 1919, the Bolsheviks began to prepare for exporting the revolution through Poland to Germany. Piłsudski decided that this was the moment to implement his own plans. The Bolsheviks had already flooded into Ukraine, ousting the nationalist forces of Ataman Symon Petliura from Kiev. Petliura was forced to fall back westwards, and to seek Polish protection. Piłsudski signed an alliance with him, and in April 1920 he launched an offensive into Ukraine. On 7 May Polish and Ukrainian forces marched into Kiev.