The 1794 Campaign for the Pacification of Poland in the Assessments of A.V. Suvorov

Abstract

Based on letters and documents by A.V. Suvorov and contemporaries’ accounts, this article examines the motivation, design, and execution of the general-in-chief’s campaign in Lithuania and Poland in the summer and fall of 1794. It demonstrates that the Polish campaign was initially conceived and brilliantly executed by the commander as part of a strategy of a massive strike, depriving the enemy of the ability to continue resistance. Historiography has presented the 1794 campaign as a chain of events, each of which Suvorov responded to with his characteristic military talent. However, the author’s study of the development of his military art revealed that, as early as the late 1770s, Suvorov had been meticulously planning his strategy for each theater of operations within the framework of his concept of “preemptively defeating” the enemy. Focusing on the commander’s original documents and letters, we discovered that he personally characterized the 1794 campaign as a deliberate and calculated “massive strike.” A study of the commander’s entire body of orders, reports, dispatches, and letters during the campaign leads to the undeniable conclusion that his actions were not random, but rather logically designed within the framework of this strategy. Its consistent application resulted in a swift and decisive victory for Russian forces, ending the war, which had threatened to drag on for years, with relatively little bloodshed and establishing peace between Russia and its allies with the remaining portion of the Polish state.