Polish 1st Corps in Russia

Polish I Corps in Russia (Polish: I Korpus Polski w Rosji) was a Polish military formation formed in Belarus, in August 1917 in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from soldiers of Polish origin serving in the Russian Army. Its goal was to defend Poles inhabiting parts of Poland under Russian partitions and support the formation of independent Poland.

The corps was formed at the initiative of the Chief Polish Military Committee (Naczelny Polski Komitet Wojskowy), a Polish faction in the revolutionary and split Russian Empire military. It was commanded by general Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki, and numbered about 29,000 soldiers. In the chaotic period at the end of World War I on the Eastern Front, the Polish I Corps fought against the Bolshevik Red Army, cooperated with the German Ober Ost forces in taking Minsk, and after acknowledging the Regency Council in May 1918, it surrendered to the German forces in Babruysk. The soldiers were given safe passage to Warsaw, where they became part of the newly created Polish Army.

In the immediate aftermath of the February Revolution, the Russian Provisional Government's obvious weakness, its half-hearted declaration of the right of nations to self-determination and Germany's promises of autonomy in occupied Poland stirred up long suppressed nationalist feelings among ethnic Poles living within the Russian Empire since the partitions of Poland. Roughly 700,000 of them were serving in the Russian military by 1917 and they began forming a Polish army to fight for a "united and free Poland" with the assent of the Provisional Government and general Lavr Kornilov of the Russian Army. In August, the newly formed Chief Polish Military Committee (Naczelny Polski Komitet Wojskowy), a Polish faction in the revolutionary and split Russian Empire, led by Władysław Raczkiewicz, appointed Dowbor-Muśnicki Commissar of the Petrograd Military District and on August 23 (Old Style) he was appointed commander of the newly formed Polish 1st Corps in Russia, being formed in Russia as part of the Entente forces, serving under the Russian Provisional Government in exchange for its support for some form of Polish autonomy or independence.

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