Kiev Offensive (1920) - Controversies

Controversies

The mutual accusations by both parties of the conflict in violations of the basic rules of the war conduct were rampant and full of exaggerations. Norman Davies writes that "Polish and Soviet newspapers of that time competed in which could produce a more terrifying portrait of their opponent." Soviet propaganda claimed that Poles destroyed much of Kiev's infrastructure, including the passenger and cargo railway stations, and other purely civilian objects crucial for the city functioning, such as the electric power station, the city sewerage and water supply systems as well as monuments such as St. Volodymyr's Cathedral. The Poles denied that they committed any such acts of vandalism, claiming that the only deliberate damage they carried out during their evacuation was blowing up Kiev bridges across the Dnieper River, for strictly military reasons. The cathedral was not, in fact, destroyed. According to some Ukrainian sources, incidents of more controversial and not warranted by the military needs destruction in the city by the retreating Polish army have also occurred.

Accusations were made against the Soviet side as well. Richard Watt writes that the Soviet advance into Ukraine was characterized by mass killing of civilians and the burning of entire villages, especially by Budyonny's cossacks, designed to instill a sense of fear in the Ukrainian population. Norman Davies notes that on June 7 – two days after breaking Polish frontline – Budionny's 1st Army destroyed the bridges in Zhytomyr, wrecked the train station and burned various buildings; on the same day it burned a hospital in Berdychiv, with 600 patients and Red Cross nuns, and that such terror tactics were common for Budionny's Cossacks. According to The Black Book of Communism, in the pacification of Ukraine that began during the Soviet counteroffensive in 1920 and which would not end until 1922 the Soviets would take tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives.

Isaac Babel, a war correspondent embedded with the Red Army, in his diary wrote down first-hand accounts of atrocities committed by the Polish troops and their allies during their retreat (particularly notorious were the regiment of the Cossack defector Vadim Yakovlev who switched sides and became a Polish ally). The retreating Polish army instilled fear among the civilian population, especially the Jews who suffered from multiple pogroms committed by the Cossack troops. Babel also describes the murders of the Polish POWs by the Red Army troops and looting of the civilian population by Budyonny's Red Cossacks. Babel's writings became so known that Budionny himself protested against "defamation" of his troops.