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Poland was partitioned in the 18th century, contested by rival imperial powers through the 19th, invaded by the Nazis and Soviets in 1939 and occupied by the latter for nearly 50 years, during which Stalin and his Communist henchmen murdered the Poles greatest war heroes and maintained a stifling grip on political, social and economic life.

That is the tragic history of my homeland. (And I didnt even touch on the devastating Swedish invasion of the 1600s. Yes, the Swedes.) Yet the Poles also have a glorious history, and among our most glorious moments remains the Battle of Warsaw, whose centenary we mark this month. Exactly 100 year ago, the Poles, then newly independent, achieved a startling victory over the fierce and fanatical Bolsheviks and, in the process, saved the West from Communisms advancing forces.

It should be the task of the political writers, wrote the English diplomat Edgar Vincent DAbernon in 1930, to explain to European opinion that Poland saved Europe in 1920.

Perhaps Im wrong, but I suspect the average European or American adult wouldnt have the first idea what this sentence refers to. The great historian of Poland Norman Davies remembered that, as a history student at Oxford, he never heard a word about the Polish-Soviet War; it had no place on the intellectual radar screens of British historians.

Its generally forgotten that before Stalin encouraged the Bolsheviks to pursue a policy of socialism in a single country, they had had more international ambitions. We staked our chances on world revolution, said Lenin in 1920, and while he thought much of this revolution would arise from spontaneous working-class enthusiasm, he and his followers werent above using military muscle to bring it about.

By the later months of 1919, the Soviets had pushed westward into Eastern Europe, exploiting the retreat of the Germans in World War I to overpower local independence movements and proclaim Soviet republics in nations like Latvia and Belarus.

Meanwhile, the brooding, heavily bewhiskered Polish strongman Jozef Pisudski sought to establish an alliance of independent states in the region to withstand the fury of the new Soviet juggernaut. Allied with Ukrainian independence fighters, Pisudski sent Polish troops into Ukraine.

With the Red Army still occupied by its own (Russian) civil war, the Poles reached Kiev. Under the brilliant and brutal Russian military leader Mikhail Tukhachevsky, however, the more powerful Bolshevik troops drove the Poles back and into their homeland. The Bolsheviks were jubilant. The Marxist revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin fantasized about taking the war right up to London and Paris. Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the feared Soviet security agency, believed the working masses of Warsaw were awaiting the arrival of the Red Army.

Whether the Red Army would have reached London is arguable. But it would at least have posed a serious threat to a World War I-battered Germany, France and England. Mercifully for Europe, a Polish counterattack threw the Bolsheviks into chaos. The Red Army had been weakened by poor decision-making from Stalin and others; the Russians had also underestimated the patriotism, determination and intelligence of the Poles, who, with the assistance of American friends, forced them back and then cut off their escape route.

The Soviets sued for peace and miserably abandoned their dreams of overpowering Europe. Lenin deeply lamented the loss. We remember the battle as the Miracle of Vistula, for the river that flows through Warsaw.

The Miracle on the Vistula is a reminder of the Wests enduring debt to an underdog nation too often betrayed by the great powers. But it also teaches a universal lesson: namely, that there is glory in standing up to overwhelming odds and in sacrificing oneself for a greater cause.

Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, a Polish member of the European Parliament since 2004, played a central role in Polands accession to NATO and the European Union as a state minister in the 1990s.

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100 years ago, Poland saved the West from Communism - New York Post