Making of Modern Ukraine 14
Poland's Ukrainian Question
If you are a recent subscriber: I am sending out each weekend a couple of lectures from my class “The Making of Modern Ukraine,” which Yale has kindly made generally accessible. All of the lectures are available all of the time at the links below, as video or as podcast. In these weekend posts, I am adding a very short summary as well as the assigned readings and relevant terms. Thanks for coming along!
This lecture is concerned with Polish-Ukrainian relations. Much of what is now western Ukraine was, between the world wars, part of Poland. As we know from previous lectures, the connection between Ukrainian lands and Poland is ancient. These connections continue, in various economic and cultural forms, even during the period (1795-1918) when there was no Polish state. We are concerned here with the period 1918-1939, when Poland had been established as a modern nation-state, in which Ukrainians now figured as a national minority. This was a new configuration, and it was much influenced by Ukrainian memory of greater freedom under the Habsburgs and by the contemporary challenge of the Soviet Union, where most Ukrainians now lived. There was a good deal of Ukrainian-Polish strife in this period, but also some important examples of cooperation and mutual learning, some of which are quite relevant today.
The video is here and the podcast version is here or here.
Reading:
Rudnyts'kyi, "Polish-Ukrainian Relations: The Burden of History"
Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War, entire
Terms:
Roman Dmowski, Józef Piłsudski
National Democrats, PPS (Polish Socialist Party)
Russo-Japanese War
Entente
Treaty of Riga March 1921
Józef Piłsudski
Gabriel Narutowicz
Galicia Galicja Halychyna ---Volhynia Wołyń Volyn
UNDO Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance
OUN Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
KPZU Communist Party of West Ukraine
Operation Trust
maskirovka
Henryk Józewski
Volhynian Experiment
Prometheanism
Jerzy Niezbrzycki
Dekulakization
"Dizzy with success"