Author:  Michael Szporer Michael Szporer is a Professor of Communications at University of Maryland University College and author of the forthcoming 'Solidarność- The Strike that Ended Communism' Penn State University Press, 2009

The attempt by Bolshevik Russia to export the communist revolution abroad to economically depressed Germany, and elsewhere in the West, was a direct threat to Poland. The centrality of the Polish-Soviet War [1919-21] for the future of Poland and, more importantly, for the USSR in the region, is convincing when one considers Bolshevik intentions to carry the banner of communist internationalism to the world. Bolshevik Russia’s unexpected defeat with the rout of the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw in the battle of “the Miracle of the Vistula” [August 13-25, 1920] contained the spread of Bolshevism to Germany and the rest of Europe.