What was Poland called before? Why did Russia invade Poland?

Poland is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of 312,696 km2 (120,733 sq mi).

Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous member state of the European Union.

Its capital is Warsaw. Other well-known cities include; Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk, and Szczecin.

Prior to World War I (WW1), Poland was a memory, and its territory was divided among the empires of Germany, Russia and Austro-Hungary.

What was Poland called before?

Before WW1, Poland was known as The Duchy of Warsaw and was replaced in 1815 with a new Kingdom of Poland, unofficially known as Congress Poland.

Why did Russia invade Poland?

Russia (known at the time as The Soviet Union) invaded Poland in 1920 because they (Soviet) intended to link the revolution in Russia with a communist revolution in Germany they had hoped for and to assist other communist movements in Europe.

The Polish–Soviet War was fought primarily between the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in the aftermath of World War I, on territories formerly held by the Russian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

There is disagreement over the dates of the war. The Encyclopædia Britannica begins its “Russo-Polish War” article with the date range 1919–1920 but then states;

“Although there had been hostilities between the two countries during 1919, the conflict began when the Polish head of state Józef Piłsudski formed an alliance with the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petlyura (21 April 1920) and their combined forces began to overrun Ukraine, occupying Kiev on 7 May.”

Some Western historians, including Norman Davies, consider mid-February 1919 the beginning of the war.

The ending date of the war is given as either 1920 or 1921.

The confusion behind the ending date is because while the ceasefire was put into force on 18 October 1920, the official treaty ending the war was signed on 18 March 1921.