Leonard Skierski
- Birth Date:
- 26.04.1866
- Death date:
- 00.04.1940
- Extra names:
- Leonard Skierski, Леонард Скерский
- Categories:
- General, Independece fighter, Nobleman, landlord, Victim of repression (genocide) of the Soviet regime, WWI participant
- Nationality:
- pole
- Cemetery:
- Kharkiv, Memorial dedicated to Polish officers and Ukrainians, executed here by NKVD in 1940.
Leonard Skierski (April 26, 1866 - 1940; Russian: Леонард Генрихович Скерский) was a Polish military officer and a general of the Imperial Russian Army and then the Polish Army. A veteran of World War I and the Polish-Bolshevik War, he was one of fourteen Polish generals to be murdered by the NKVD in the Katyn massacre of 1940.
Leonard Skierski was born in Stopnica near Kielce in the Russian-held part of Poland, into an old Polish szlachta Calvinist family of Skierski of Puchała coat of arms. His parents were Henryk Skierski and Helena née Hassman. His younger brother Stefan Skierski became the superintendent (bishop) of the Polish Reformed Church.
Early in his youth Skierski graduated from a philological school in Kielce and joined the Cadet Corps in Voronezh. As a Protestant, Skierski was not a subject to severe laws concerning Polish Catholics serving in the Russian Army. Because of that he could advance through the ranks of the Russian Army and decided to become an officer. On September 1, 1884 he joined the Mikhailov's College of Artillery in Saint Petersburg. In 1887 he graduated in the rank of Second Lieutenant (leytenant) and started his service in the 3rd Guards Artillery Brigade. He quickly rose through the ranks and ended up as a commander of an artillery command in the rank of Colonel (since 1906).
Fight for independence
With his unit he took part in the opening stages of World War I. Already in February 1915 he was promoted to the rank of Major General and at that time he became the highest-ranking Pole in Russian armed forces. He continued his service at various posts. Since May 1917 he served as the inspector of artillery of the Russian 5th Corps. Following the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, Skierski created the Society of Polish Soldiers of the 5th Corps. His organization helped to create and fund the Polish Army in the East, a three-division strong force fighting on the side of the Entente alongside Russia and France.
Arrested by the Bolsheviks, he managed to escape to the Ukraine, where he joined the forces of Eugeniusz de Henning-Michaelis. After Austria-Hungary surrounded most of Michaelis' 3rd Polish Corps and disarmed it, Skierski yet again evaded imprisonment and fled to the countryside, where he took part in partisan operations against the Reds. It was not until 1919 that he finally crossed the Polish lines.
On May 15, 1919 he joined the Polish Army. As the Polish armed forces were lacking high-ranking officers, he was instantly promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General (Polish: generał porucznik). Already on May 30 Skierski was assigned to the 7th Infantry Division stationed in Silesia during the Silesian Uprising. The unit saw no service and after the cessation of hostilities on that front on August 10 Skierski became the commander of the 1st Rifle Division of Gen. Józef Haller de Hallenburg's Blue Army. His unit took part in heavy fights in Volhynia during the final stages of the Polish-Ukrainian War. On September 15 of the same year his unit was fully integrated with the Polish command scheme and renamed to 13th Infantry Division.
During his early days in Polish service Skierski became known as a skilled and flexible commander of infantry units, he was also highly popular among his troops. Because of that, Polish commander in chief Józef Piłsudski started to use Skierski in the most important sectors of the Polish front of the Polish-Bolshevik War. In December 1919 Skierski was withdrawn from the front and assigned to the battle-hardened 4th Infantry Division. In the spring of 1920 his unit took part in the successful Kiev Offensive, in which the Polish forces broke the Bolshevik lines and reached the city of Kiev. Since May 21, Skierski was assigned the command over a separate Operational Group (Corps) within Gen. Stanisław Szeptycki's North-Eastern Front.
On July 7, in the wake of a new Soviet offensive, Leonard Skierski became the commander of the 4th Army. He managed to withdraw his unit under heavy pressure from numerically-superior enemy and regroup it, only to take part in the Battle of Warsaw in mid-August. His army, though composed of units that have been in front-line service for months, became the spearhead of the Polish counter-offensive from the area of lower Wieprz river. In a matter of weeks Skierski managed to push the enemy back and reach the line of the Słucz River.
In late 1920 a cease fire agreement had been signed and in February 1921 Skierski had his grade confirmed. Following the demobilisation he remained in active service and became the inspector of the 3rd Army Inspectorate in Toruń. Although not a supporter of Józef Piłsudski, he was seen by the Marshal of Poland as one of the most skilled Polish officers. Following Piłsudski's May Coup d'État in 1927 Skierski was attached to the Warsaw-based General Inspectorate of the Armed Forces, where he became one of the closest collaborators of Piłsudski. On December 31, 1931 he was promoted to the rank of generał dywizji and retired from active service.
Katyn
After the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, despite having retired, he was arrested together with thousands of other Polish military personnel. He was held in Starobielsk. In April 1940, the month of his seventy-fourth birthday, he would become one of the victims of the Katyn massacre of Polish prisoners of war. Among the Katyn victims were 14 Polish generals including Leon Billewicz, Bronisław Bohatyrewicz, Xawery Czernicki (admiral), Stanisław Haller, Aleksander Kowalewski, Henryk Minkiewicz, Kazimierz Orlik-Łukoski, Konstanty Plisowski, Rudolf Prich (murdered in Lviv), Franciszek Sikorski, Alojzy Wir-Konas, Piotr Skuratowicz, and Mieczysław Smorawiński.
Source: wikipedia.org, radaopwim.gov.pl
No places
| Relation name | Relation type | Description | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | Józef Piłsudski | Idea mate, Commander | |
| 2 |  | Józef Haller | Commander |
14.02.1919 | The Polish-Soviet war started
The Polish–Soviet War (February 1919 – March 1921) was an armed conflict that pitted Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine against the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic over the control of an area equivalent to today's Ukraine and parts of modern-day Belarus. Ultimately the Soviets, following on from their Westward Offensive of 1918–19, hoped to fully occupy Poland. Although united under communist leadership, Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine were theoretically two separate independent entities since the Soviet republics did not unite into the Soviet Union until 1922.
13.08.1920 | Wojna polsko-bolszewicka: Armia Czerwona pod wodzą marszałka Michaiła Tuchaczewskiego uderzyła na Warszawę
Bitwa warszawska (pot. cud nad Wisłą) – bitwa stoczona w dniach 13-25 sierpnia 1920 w czasie wojny polsko-bolszewickiej. Zadecydowała o zachowaniu niepodległości przez Polskę i przekreśliła plany rozprzestrzenienia rewolucji na Europę Zachodnią. Zdaniem Edgara D'Abernon była to 18. z przełomowych bitew w historii świata.
15.08.1920 | Battle of Warsaw
The Battle of Warsaw refers to the decisive Polish victory in 1920 at the apogee of the Polish–Soviet War. Poland, on the verge of total defeat, repulsed and defeated the invading Red Army. It was, and still is, celebrated as a great victory for the Polish people over Russia and communism. As Soviet forces invaded Poland in summer 1920, the Polish army retreated westward in disorder. The Polish forces seemed on the verge of disintegration and observers predicted a decisive Soviet victory. The battle of Warsaw was fought from August 12–25, 1920 as Red Army forces commanded by Mikhail Tukhachevsky approached the Polish capital of Warsaw and the nearby Modlin Fortress. On August 16, Polish forces commanded by Józef Piłsudski counterattacked from the south, disrupting the enemy's offensive, forcing the Russian forces into a disorganized withdrawal eastward and behind the Neman River. Estimated Russian losses were 10,000 killed, 500 missing, 30,000 wounded, and 66,000 taken prisoner, compared with Polish losses of some 4,500 killed, 10,000 missing, and 22,000 wounded. The defeat crippled the Red Army; Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik leader, called it "an enormous defeat" for his forces.[3] In the following months, several more Polish follow-up victories saved Poland's independence and led to a peace treaty with Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine later that year, securing the Polish state's eastern frontiers until 1939.
01.09.1939 | Invasion of Poland
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War (Polish: Kampania wrześniowa or Wojna obronna 1939 roku) in Poland and the Poland Campaign (German: Polenfeldzug) or Fall Weiß (Case White) in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the beginning of World War II in Europe. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, while the Soviet invasion commenced on 17 September following the Molotov-Tōgō agreement which terminated the Russian and Japanese hostilities (Nomonhan incident) in the east on 16 September. The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland.
03.04.1940 | Start of Katyn massacre
The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyńska, mord katyński, 'Katyń crime'; Russian: Катынский расстрел Katynskij ra'sstrel 'Katyn shooting'), was a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all captive members of the Polish Officer Corps, dated 5 March 1940. This official document was approved and signed by the Soviet Politburo, including its leader, Joseph Stalin. The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, with 21,768 being a lower limit.[1] The victims were murdered in the Katyn Forest in Russia, the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the rest were arrested Polish intelligentsia the Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents, gendarmes, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials and priests".