Representations of Józef Piłsudski’s Eastern Policy in Soviet Historiography and Political Discourse During the Interwar Period

The article examines the formation and evolution of Soviet historiography of Józef Piłsudski’s Eastern policy during the interwar period. The study aims to identify the specific features of the transformation of the political discourse of the Polish-Soviet War into an official historiographical canon, as well as to determine the impact of changes in Soviet nationality policy and ideology on the interpretation of the Polish-Ukrainian alliance of 1920 and Poland’s Eastern policy. The source base of the research consists of works by Soviet historians, military theorists, party officials, and publicists of the 1920s-1930s, materials from the contemporary periodical press, party documents, and modern historiographical studies. The article traces the main stages in the development of the Soviet interpretation of the Polish-Soviet War and demonstrates the mechanisms of its gradual ideological transformation. It argues that early Soviet historiography was characterized by a relative plurality of interpretations, broader use of documentary evidence, and attempts at a comprehensive analysis of the military campaign. By the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, however, it became increasingly subordinated to the requirements of Stalinist historical policy. The study shows how the Polish-Ukrainian alliance was consistently interpreted as an instrument of Polish expansion, a means of legitimizing intervention against Soviet Ukraine, and evidence of the “counter-revolutionary” nature of the Ukrainian People's Republic. Particular attention is devoted to the evolution of interpretations of the Ukrainian question, representations of the anti-Bolshevik insurgent movement, the role of the Cheka-GPU security organs, and changes in historical terminology resulting from the transformation of Soviet nationality policy. The article demonstrates that political journalism, propaganda, and academic historiography functioned as interconnected components of a unified mechanism for constructing official historical memory. It concludes that interpretations of Józef Piłsudski’s Eastern policy were determined primarily by the current ideological needs of the Soviet regime, while their evolution reflected broader changes in the political context, shifting approaches to the Ukrainian question, and the gradual establishment of the Stalinist model of historical narrative.