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The Vilna offensive was a campaign of the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921. The Polish army launched an offensive on April 16, 1919, to take Vilnius ((ポーランド語:Wilno)) from the Red Army. After three days of street fighting from April 19–21,〔 the city was captured by Polish forces, causing the Red Army to retreat. During the offensive, the Poles also succeeded in securing the nearby cities of Lida, Pinsk, Navahrudak, and Baranovichi. The Red Army launched a series of counterattacks in late April, all of which ended in failure. The Soviets briefly recaptured the city a year later, in spring 1920, when the Polish army was retreating along the entire front. In the aftermath, the Vilna offensive would cause much turmoil on the political scene in Poland and abroad. == Prelude == Soviet Russia, while at the time publicly supporting Polish and Lithuanian independence, sponsored communist agitators working against the government of the Second Polish Republic, and considered that its eastern borders should approximate those of the defunct Congress Poland. Poles and Lithuanians, on the other hand, inspired by memories of the greatness of the erstwhile Grand Duchy of Lithuania, part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, saw their borders as lying much farther east.〔 The leader of the Polish forces, Józef Piłsudski, discerned an opportunity for regaining territories that were once the part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and since then were part of the Prussian Empire, shaken by the 1917 Revolution and the ongoing Russian Civil War. In the first weeks of 1919, following the retreat of the German Ober-Ost forces under Max Hoffmann, Vilnius found itself in a power vacuum. It promptly became the scene of struggles among competing political groups and experienced several internal revolutions.〔 On January 1, Polish officers, led by generals Władysław Wejtko and Stefan Mokrzecki, attempted to take control of the city by establishing a ''Samoobrona'' ("Self-Defense") provisional government. Their aim was to defeat the Communist "Workers' Council", a rival faction within Vilnius plotting to seize the city.〔 ''Samoobrona'' rule of Vilnius did not last long. Four days later January 5, 1919, the Polish forces were forced to make a hasty retreat when the Russian Western Army marched in from Smolensk to support the local communists as part of the Russian westward offensive.〔 Vilnius, the historical capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, became part of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic and was soon proclaimed capital of the Lithuanian–Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (Lit-Bel) on February 27, 1919. The Lit-Bel became the 8th government to control Vilnius in two years.〔 During the month and a half that the Lit-Bel controlled the city, the new communist government turned Vilnius into a social experiment, testing various applications of left-leaning governmental systems on the city's inhabitants.〔〔 Józef Piłsudski, Polish commander-in-chief,〔 determined that regaining control of Vilnius, whose population consisted mostly of Poles and Jews, should be a priority of the renascent Polish state.〔 He had been working on plans to take control of Vilnius since at least March; he gave preliminary orders to prepare a push in that direction—and counter an expected Soviet westward push—on March 26.〔 One of Piłsudski's objectives was to take control of Vilnius before Western diplomats at the Paris Peace Conference could rule on whom the city, demanded by various factions, should be given to.〔 The action was not discussed with Polish politicians or the government,〔 who at that time were more concerned with the situation on the southern Polish–Ukrainian front.〔 By early April, when members of the Kresy Defence Committee (''Komitet Obrony Kresów'') Michał Pius Römer, Aleksander Prystor, Witold Abramowicz, and Kazimierz Świtalski met with Pilsudski, stressing the plight of occupied Vilnius and its inhabitants' need for self-government, Piłsudski was ready to move.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vilna offensive」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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