Book description
The dramatic and little-known story of how, in the summer of 1920,
Lenin came within a hair's breadth of shattering the painstakingly
constructed Versailles peace settlement and spreading Bolshevism to
western Europe.
In 1920 the new Soviet state was a mess, following a brutal civil war,
and the best way of ensuring its survival appeared to be to export the
revolution to Germany, itself economically ruined by defeat in World War
I and racked by internal political dissension.
Between Russia and Germany lay Poland, a nation that had only just
recovered its independence after more than a century of foreign
oppression. But it was economically and militarily weak and its
misguided offensive to liberate the Ukraine in the spring of 1920 laid
it open to attack. Egged on by Trotsky, Lenin launched a massive
westward advance under the flamboyant Marshal Tukhachevsky.
All that Great Britain and France had fought for over four years now
seemed at risk. By the middle of August the Russians were only a few
kilometres from Warsaw, and Berlin was less than a week's march away.
Then occurred the 'Miracle of the Vistula': the Polish army led by Jozef
Pilsudski regrouped and achieved one of the most decisive victories in
military history.
As a result, the Versailles peace settlement survived, and Lenin was
forced to settle for Communism in one country. The battle for Warsaw
bought Europe nearly two decades of peace, and communism remained a
mainly Russian phenomenon, subsuming many of the autocratic and
Byzantine characteristics of Russia's tsarist tradition. Praise for
'Rites of Peace':
'Deeply researched, elegantly written, gleaming with the political and
sexual depravity of the Congress that decided the fate of Europe,
Zamoyski's “Rites of Peace” is outstanding - a delicious, triumphant
feast of a book.' Daily Mail Adam Zamoyski was born in New York, was
educated at Oxford, and lives in London. A full-time writer, he has
written biographies of 'Chopin' (Collins 1979), 'Paderewski', and 'The
Last King of Poland','1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow', which was
a Sunday Times bestseller and 'Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and
the Congress of Vienna'. He is married to the painter Emma Sergeant.
