Curzon Line

For other uses, see Curzon.

The Curzon Line was put forward by the Allied Supreme Council^[1] after World War I as a demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and Bolshevik Russia and was supposed to serve as the basis for a future border. In the wake of World War I, which catalysed the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Empire disintegrated in the ensuing Russian Civil War. Several countries, including Poland, used this occasion to declare their independence. Hostilities erupted when Polish and Bolshevik troops, approaching from opposing directions while taking over the territories of Ober Ost from the retreating German troops, met in the city of Masty.

The Allied Supreme Council tasked the Commission on Polish Affairs with recommending Polish eastern borders. The Allies forwarded it as an armistice line several times during the war, most notably in a note from the British government to the Soviets signed by Foreign Secretary George Curzon. Both parties disregarded the line when the military situation lay in their favour and it did not play a role in establishing the Polish-Soviet border in 1921. Instead, the final Peace of Riga (or Treaty of Riga) provided Poland with almost 135,000 km² (52,000 sq mi) of land that was, on average, about 250 km east of the Curzon line.

With minor variations, the Curzon line lay approximately along the border which was established between the Prussian Kingdom and the Russian Empire in 1797, after the third partition of Poland, which was the last border recognised by the United Kingdom. Along most of its length, the line followed an ethnic boundary - areas west of the line contained an overall Polish majority while areas to its east were inhabited by Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Jews, and Lithuanians.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Its 1920 northern extension into Lithuania divided the area disputed between Poland and Lithuania. There were two versions of the southern portion of the line: "A" and "B". Version "B" allocated Lviv to Poland.

The line was a geopolitical factor during World War II, when Joseph Stalin successfully pressed for its use as a Polish-Russian border. Throughout the war until the Teheran Conference, the British Government did not agree that Poland's future eastern border should be moved west to the Curzon Line; but Churchill's position changed after the Soviet victory at the Battle of Kursk.^[7] Following a private agreement at the Tehran Conference, confirmed at the 1945 Yalta Conference, the Allied leaders Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Stalin issued a statement affirming the use of the Curzon Line, with some five-to-eight kilometre variations, as the eastern border between Poland and the Soviet Union.^[8] When Churchill proposed to add parts of East Galicia, including the city of Lviv, to Poland's territory (following Line B), Stalin argued that the Soviet Union could not demand less territory for itself than the British Government had reconfirmed previously several times. The Allied arrangement involved compensation for this loss via the incorporation of formerly German-held areas (the Recovered Territories) into Poland. As a result the current border between the countries of Belarus, Ukraine and Poland is an approximation of the Curzon Line.

History

At the end of World War I, the Allies agreed that an independent Polish state should be recreated from territories previously part of the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire. The thirteenth of US President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points included the statement "An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea..." Article 87 of the Versailles Treaty stipulated that "The boundaries of Poland not laid down in the present Treaty will be subsequently determined by the Principal Allied and Associated Powers." In accordance with these declarations, the Allied Supreme Council tasked the Commission on Polish Affairs with proposing Poland's eastern boundaries in lands that were inhabited by a mixed population of Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Belarusians.^[9][10] The Commission issued its recommendation on April 22; its proposed Russo-Polish borders were close to those of the 19th-century Congress Poland.^[10]

Lighter blue line: Curzon Line "B" as proposed in 1919. Darker blue line: "Curzon" Line "A" as proposed by the Soviet Union in 1940. Pink areas: Former pre WWII provinces of Germany transferred to Poland after the war. Grey area: Pre WWII Polish territory east to the Curzon Line annexed by the Soviet Union after the war.

The Supreme Council continued to debate the issue for several months. On December 8 the Council published a map and description of the line along with an announcement that it recognized "Poland's right to organize a regular administration of the territories of the former Russian Empire situated to the West of the line described below."^[10] At the same time, the announcement stated the Council was not "...prejudging the provisions which must in the future define the eastern frontiers of Poland" and that "the rights that Poland may be able to establish over the territories situated to the East of the said line are expressly reserved."^[10] The announcement had no immediate impact, although the Allies recommended its consideration in an August 1919 proposal to Poland, which was ignored.^[10][11]

Polish forces pushed eastward, taking Kiev in May 1920. Following a strong Soviet counteroffensive, Prime Minister Władysław Grabski sought Allied assistance in July. Under pressure, he agreed to a Polish withdrawal to the 1919 version of the line and, in Galicia, an armistice near the current line of battle.^[12] On July 11, 1920 Curzon signed a telegram sent to the Bolshevik government proposing that a ceasefire be established along the line, and his name was subsequently associated with it.^[10]

Curzon's July 1920 proposal differed from the December 19 announcement in two significant ways.^[13] The December note did not address the issue of Galicia, since it had been a part of the Austrian Empire rather than the Russian, nor did it address the Polish-Lithuanian dispute over the Vilnius Region, since those borders were demarcated at the time by the Foch Line.^[13] The July 1920 note specifically addressed the Polish-Lithuanian dispute by mentioning a line running from Grodno to Vilnius (Wilno) and thence north to Daugavpils, Latvia (Dynaburg).^[13] It also mentioned Galicia, where earlier discussions had resulted in the alternatives of Line A and Line B.^[13] The note endorsed Line A, which included Lviv and its nearby oil fields within Russia.^[14] This portion of the line did not correspond to the current line of battle in Galicia, as per Grabski's agreement, and its inclusion in the July note has lent itself to disputation.^[12]

On July 17, the Soviets responded to the note with a refusal. Georgy Chicherin, representing the Soviets, commented on the delayed interest of the British for a peace treaty between Russia and Poland. He agreed to start negotiations as long as the Polish side asked for it. The Soviet side at that time offered more favourable border solutions to Poland than the ones offered by the Curzon line.^[15] In August the Soviets were defeated by the Poles just outside Warsaw and forced to retreat. During the ensuing Polish offensive, the Polish government repudiated Grabski's agreement with regard to the line on the grounds that the Allies had not delivered support or protection.^[16] At the March 1921 Treaty of Riga the Soviets conceded^[17] a frontier well to the east of the Curzon Line, where Poland had conquered a great part of the Vilna Governorate (1920/1922), including the town of Wilno (today Vilnius), and East Galicia (1919), including the city of Lviv, as well as most of the region of Volhynia (1921). The treaty provided Poland with almost 135,000 km² (52,000 sq mi) of land that was, on average, about 250 km east of the Curzon line.^[18][19] The Polish-Soviet border was recognised by the League of Nations in 1923 and confirmed by various Polish-Soviet agreements. Within the annexed regions Poland founded several administrative districts, such as the Volhynian Voivodeship, the Polesie Voivodeship, and the Wilno Voivodeship.

As concerns possible expansions of Polish territory, in history Polish politicians traditionally could be sub-divided into two opposite groups advocating contrary approaches: restoration of Poland based on its former western territories one side and, alternatively, restoration of Poland based on its previous holdings in the east on the other. During the first quarter of the 20th century a representative of the first political group was Roman Dmowski, an adherent of the pan-slavistic movement and author of several political books and publications^[20] of some importance, who suggested to define Poland's eastern border in accordance with the ethnographic principle and to concentrate on resisting a more dangerous enemy of Polish nation than Russia, which in his view was Germany. A representative of the second group was Jozef Pilsudski, a socialist who was born in the Luthuanian Vilna Governorate annexed during the 1795 3rd partition of the Polish-Luthuanian Commonwealth by the Russian Empire, whose political vision was essentially a far reaching restoration of the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Because the Russian Empire had collapsed into a state of civil war following the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Soviet Army had been defeated and been weakened considerably at the end of World War I by Germany's army, resulting in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Pilsudski took the chance and used military force in an attempt to realise his political vision by concentrating on the east and involved himself in Polish-Soviet War.

World War II

The terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 provided for the partition of Poland along the line of the San, Vistula and Narew rivers which did not go along Curzon Line but reached far beyond it and awarded the Soviet Union with territories of Lublin and near Warsaw. In September, after the military defeat of Poland, the Soviet Union annexed all territories east of the Curzon Line plus Białystok and Eastern Galicia. The territories east of this line were incorporated into the Byelorussian SSR and Ukrainian SSR after staged referendums and hundreds of thousands of Poles and a lesser number of Jews were deported eastwards into the Soviet Union. In July 1941 these territories were seized by Germany in the course of the invasion of the Soviet Union. During the German occupation most of the Jewish population was deported or killed by Germans.

In 1944 the Soviet armed forces recaptured eastern Poland from the Germans. The Soviets unilaterally declared a new frontier between the Soviet Union and Poland (approximately the same as the Curzon Line). The Polish government-in-exile in London bitterly opposed this and at the Teheran and Yalta conferences between Stalin and the western Allies, the allied leaders Roosevelt and Churchill asked Stalin to reconsider, particularly over Lwów, but he refused. During the negotiations at Yalta, Stalin posed the question "Do you want me to tell the Russian people that I am less Russian than Lord Curzon?"^[21] The altered Curzon Line thus became the permanent eastern border of Poland and was recognised by the western Allies in July 1945.

When the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, the Curzon line became Poland's eastern border with Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.

Ethnography to the east of the Curzon Line

Mother tongue in interwar Poland, based on 1931 census.

The ethnic composition of these areas proved difficult to measure, both during the interwar period and after World War II. A 1944 article in The Times estimated that in 1931 there lived between 2.2 and 2.5 million Poles east of the Curzon Line.^[22] A similar contemporary estimate (under 2.5 million Poles) was given by historian E. H. Carr.^[23] According to historian Yohanan Cohen's estimate, in 1939 the population in the territories east of the Curzon Line gained via the Treaty of Riga totalled 12 million, consisting of over 5 million Ukrainians, between 3.5 and 4 million Poles, 1.5 million Belarusians, and 1.3 million Jews.^[24] During World War II, politicians gave varying estimates of the Polish population east of the Curzon line that would be affected by population transfers. Winston Churchill mentioned "3 to 4 million Poles east of the Curzon Line".^[25] Stanisław Mikołajczyk, then Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile, counted this population as 5 million.^[26]

Ukrainians and Poles formed the largest ethnic groups. Ukrainians and Belarussians outnumbered Poles in the combined southern sections. Other Eastern Slav groups such as the Rusyns and Belarusians were often included as Poles in the statistics^{[citation needed]}. Encouraged by the Polish resettlement policies^{[citation needed]}, much of the urban population were either ethnic Poles or Polish speaking Jews, while the rural population continued to speak Ukrainian or Belarusian. As a result, the countryside was Belarusian or Ukrainian in character, whereas the cities had a Polish flavour.

Around the beginning of the 20th century Ukrainians and Belorussians had formed the plurality populations in the rural regions of the Kresy, where some towns, in particular Lviv and Vilnius had Polish majority. After the deportation of Poles and Jews in 1939–1941 (see Polish minority in Soviet Union) and the Holocaust the Polish population in the territories had decreased considerably. The cities of Wilno, Lwów, Grodno and some smaller towns still had significant Polish populations. After 1945, the Polish population of the area east of the new Soviet-Polish border was in general confronted with the alternative either to accept a different nationality or to emigrate. According to more recent research, about 3 million Poles lived east of the Curzon line, of which about 2.1 million^[27] to 2.2 million persons^[28] died, fled, emigrated or were expelled to the newly annexed German territories. The area today is almost entirely Belarusian (in the north)^{[citation needed]} or Ukrainian (in the south). Despite the emigrations and expulsions, there were about 500,000 Poles in Belarus in 2000 (5% of the Belarus population).^[29] The cities of Vilnius, Grodno and some smaller towns still have significant Polish populations. Sapotskin remains almost entirely Polish to this day.

Ethnicity west of the Curzon Line

West of the Curzon line the Polish population was generally predominant in urban centres, especially the cities but not in the rural districts. A significant Belarusian rural population was incorporated into modern Poland around Białystok. A similar situation existed with the Ukrainian population around Chełm. The extreme south had a large rural Ukrainian population also. Much of the Ukrainian population was forcibly resettled scattered in the new Polish "recovered territories" of Silesia, Pomerania, Lubusz Land, Warmia and Masuria after World War II in a military operation called Operation Vistula.

See also

• Oder-Neisse line
• Molotov Line
• Spa Conference
• I Saw Poland Betrayed by Arthur Bliss Lane
• Revision of borders of Poland (1945)
• 1893 Afghanistan’s Durand Line
• 1914 India-China McMahon Line
• 1947 India-Pakistan Radcliffe Line

Footnotes

1. ^ R. F. Leslie, Antony Polonsky (1983). The History of Poland Since1863. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521275019. http://books.google.com/?id=0tYVKUsnw9IC&pg=PA135&dq=Pilsudski+coup+1919+lithuania. 
2. ^ Zara S. Steiner (2005). The Lights that Failed: European International History, 1919–1933. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198221142. http://books.google.com/?id=rJ9JJIVmFpkC&pg=PA149&dq=curzon+line+ethnographic. 
3. ^ Anna M. Cienciala; Wojciech Materski (2007). Katyn: a crime without punishment. Yale University Press. pp. 9–11. ISBN 9780300108514. http://books.google.com/books?id=SyimWfkx0-MC&pg=PA9. Retrieved 3 February 2011. "It also happened to coincide with the eastern limits of pedominantly ethnic Polish territory." 
4. ^ Aviel Roshwald (2001). Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, 1914–1923. Routledge. ISBN 9780415178938. http://books.google.com/?id=ef0wXYsJATwC&pg=PA162&dq=curzon+line+ethnographic. 
5. ^ Joseph Marcus (1983). Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919–1939. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9789027932396. http://books.google.com/?id=82ncGA4GuN4C&pg=PA15&dq=curzon+line+ethnographic. 
6. ^ Sandra Halperin (1997). In the Mirror of the Third World: Capitalist Development in Modern Europe. Cornell University Press. ISBN 9780801482908. http://books.google.com/?id=0lULSVxl9VYC&pg=PA41&dq=curzon+line+ethnographic. 
7. ^ Rees, Laurence (2009). World War Two Behind Closed Doors, BBC Books, pp.122, 220
8. ^ "Modern History Sourcebook: The Yalta Conference, Feb. 1945". Fordham University. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1945yalta.html. Retrieved 2010-02-05. 
9. ^ Richard J. Krickus (2002). The Kaliningrad question. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 23. ISBN 9780742517059. http://books.google.com/books?id=sDOUZEEnHFUC&pg=PA23. Retrieved 25 January 2011. 
10. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Manfred Franz Boemeke; Manfred F. Boemeke; Gerald D. Feldman; Elisabeth Gläser (1998). The Treaty of Versailles: a reassessment after 75 years. Cambridge University Press. pp. 331–333. ISBN 9780521621328. http://books.google.com/books?id=zqj-oHp4KsgC&pg=PA331. Retrieved 25 January 2011. 
11. ^ Arno J. Mayer (26 December 2001). The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. Princeton University Press. p. 300. ISBN 9780691090153. http://books.google.com/books?id=gveBKGhmskAC&pg=PA300. Retrieved 27 January 2011. 
12. ^ ^{a b} Piotr Stefan Wandycz (1962). France and her eastern allies, 1919-1925: French-Czechoslovak-Polish relations from the Paris Peace Conference to Locarno. U of Minnesota Press. pp. 154–156. ISBN 9780816658862. http://books.google.com/books?id=1sdNeCpDhyYC&pg=PA154. Retrieved 26 January 2011. 
13. ^ ^{a b c d} Eric Suy; Karel Wellens (1998). International law: theory and practice : essays in honour of Eric Suy. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. pp. 110–111. ISBN 9789041105820. http://books.google.com/books?id=Nv6CuZ-AcoYC&pg=PA111. Retrieved 4 February 2011. 
14. ^ Anna M. Cienciala. "Lecture Notes 11 - THE REBIRTH OF POLAND". University of Kansas. http://web.ku.edu/~eceurope/hist557/lect11.htm. Retrieved 2011-01-26. 
15. ^ E.H. Carr (1982). The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923 (A history of Soviet Russia), volume 3 , p.260, Greek edition , ekdoseis Ypodomi
16. ^ Michael Palij (1995). The Ukrainian-Polish defensive alliance, 1919-1921: an aspect of the Ukrainian revolution. CIUS Press. pp. 134. ISBN 9781895571059. http://books.google.com/books?id=2T9zYXqL56AC&pg=PA134. Retrieved 27 January 2011. 
17. ^ Henry Butterfield Ryan (19 August 2004). The vision of Anglo-America: the US-UK alliance and the emerging Cold War, 1943-1946. Cambridge University Press. p. 75. ISBN 9780521892841. http://books.google.com/books?id=uRGu4C1FgKsC&pg=PA75. Retrieved 3 February 2011. "A peace was finally concluded and a boundary, much less favourable to Russia than the Curzon Line, was determined at Riga in March 1921 and known as the Riga Line." 
18. ^ Michael Graham Fry; Erik Goldstein; Richard Langhorne (30 March 2004). Guide to International Relations and Diplomacy. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 203. ISBN 9780826473011. http://books.google.com/books?id=Z5ndamBABdIC&pg=PA203. Retrieved 3 February 2011. 
19. ^ Spencer Tucker (11 November 2010). Battles That Changed History: An Encyclopedia of World Conflict. ABC-CLIO. pp. 448. ISBN 9781598844290. http://books.google.com/books?id=SWBkx0UlgMAC&pg=PA448. Retrieved 3 February 2011. 
20. ^ Roman Dmowski: La question polonaise. Paris 1909, in French, translated from the Polish 1908 edition of Niemcy, Rosja a sprawa polska (Germany, Russia and the Polish Question, reprinted in 2010 by Nabu Press, U. S. A., ISBN 978-1-141-67057-4).
21. ^ Serhii Plokhy (4 February 2010). Yalta: The Price of Peace. Penguin. pp. 190. ISBN 9780670021413. http://books.google.com/books?id=0wOKfjnXdAUC&pg=PT190. Retrieved 3 February 2011. 
22. ^ The Times of 12 January 1944; cited according to Alexandre Abramson (Alius): Die Curzon-Line, Europa Verlag, Zürich 1945, p. 45.
23. ^ Jonathan Haslam (23 November 2000). The vices of integrity: E.H. Carr, 1892-1982. Verso. p. 109. ISBN 9781859842898. http://books.google.com/books?id=bBpLFKl6X_0C&pg=PA109. Retrieved 4 February 2011. 
24. ^ Yohanan Cohen (1989). Small Nations in Times of Crisis and Confrontation. SUNY Press. p. 63. ISBN 9780791400180. http://books.google.com/?id=aN96TB0RUB8C&pg=PA63&dq=curzon+line+12+million. 
25. ^ Winston Churchill (11 April 1986). Triumph and Tragedy. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 568. ISBN 9780395410608. http://books.google.com/books?id=M_6cljKX0uUC&pg=PA568. Retrieved 25 January 2011. 
26. ^ John Erickson (10 June 1999). The road to Berlin. Yale University Press. pp. 407. ISBN 9780300078138. http://books.google.com/books?id=6UaU6ZLqK4UC&pg=PA407. Retrieved 25 January 2011. 
27. ^ Kühne, Jörg-Detlef (2007). Die Veränderungsmöglichkeiten der Oder-Neiße-Linie nach 1945 (2nd ed.). Baden-Baden: Nomos. see footnote no. 2. ISBN 9783832931247.  (German)
28. ^ Alexander, Manfred (2008). Kleine Geschichte Polens (2nd enlarged ed.). Stuttgart: Reclam. p. 321. ISBN 9783150170601.  (German)
29. ^ "Migration News - Eastern Europe". University of California, Davis. http://migration.ucdavis.edu/MN/more.php?id=2193_0_4_0. Retrieved 2008-06-17. 

References

• Borsody, Stephen. 1993. The New Central Europe. New York: Boulder, Chapter 10: "Europe's Coming Partition". ISBN 0-88033-263-8
• Nabrdalik, Bart. April 2006. Hidden Europe-Bieszczady, Poland. Escape from America Magazine. Vol. 8, Issue 3
• Rogowska, Anna. Stępień, Stanisław (in Polish) Polish-Ukrainian Border in the Last Half of the Century. (Curzon line from the historical perspective)
• Wróbel, Piotr. 2000. The devil's playground: Poland in World War II. The Wanda Muszynski lecture in Polish studies. Montreal, Quebec: Canadian Foundation for Polish Studies of the Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences.
• Byrnes, James F. Speaking Frankly. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1947, pp. 25–32. From the memoirs of James F. Byrnes, on the Yalta Conference.
• Churchill, Winston S. Closing the ring. 2nd ed. Tome 5. London: The Reprint Society Ltd, 1954, pp. 283–285; 314-317. From the memoirs of Winston Churchill.
• Churchill, Winston S. Triumph and Tragedy. 2nd ed. Tome 6. London: The Reprint Society Ltd, 1956, pp. 288–292. From the memoirs of Winston Churchill, on the Yalta Conference.
• Cromea Conference, in Parliamentary Debates. 1944-45, No. 408; fifth series, pp. 1274–1284. Winston Churchill's statement to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, 27 February 1945, describing the outcome of the Yalta Conference.

Further reading

• Bohdan, Kordan (1997). "Making Borders Stick: Population Transfer and Resettlement in the Trans- Curzon Territories, 1944–1949". International Migration Review 31 (3): 704–720. JSTOR 2547293. 

External links

• Slavic Research Center