Russo Polish war

• From 1919-1920, military conflict between Soviet Russia and Poland emerged from the defeat of Germany in WW1
• • The defeat sparked Poland nationalism by the recreation of an independent Polish state
  • The Bolsheviks were determined to bring what they had started into Europe
• New Poland contained extensive territories lost by the former Tsarist empire
• • Poland wanted to expand to the east into Belarus and western Ukraine.
  • Lenin saw Poland as a way to get to the west and therefor spread revolution
• The peace treaty - Treaty of Riga - was created in 1921 after the counter-attack the Red Army launched on Poland forced them back into Warsaw