Russia and Poland in the geopolitical plans of the Western powers in the early twentieth century
The article presents the results of the study of the geopolitical plans of the Western powers towards Russia and Poland after the First World War. On the basis of the analysis of historical documents the author came to the following conclusions: the plans of the leading Western powers (the USA, Great Britain and France) were aimed, on the one hand, at the maximum weakening of the Soviet Russia; on the other hand, they provided for the alienation from Russia of a number of its territories, as well as the creation of the socalled «sanitary cordon» around the weakened Russian state in order to prevent geopolitical revenge by Russia. In these plans of the Western powers, the Polish state, which was revived after the First World War, took almost a leading place, as the winning countries (the USA, Great Britain and France) relied on Polish nationalism and tradicionally complicated relanions between Poland and Russia. In order to strengthen the pro-Western sympathies of the Western countries for the revived Poland, it was planned to transfer to the Poles a considerable part of the lands that were part of Russia before the First World War (mainly Belorussian and Ukrainian), which met with a fair indignation of both the Belorussian and Ukrainian peoples.