Everyone knows and feels that this peace is merely an inadequate blanket thrown over unappeased ambitions, hatreds that are more indestructible than ever, and fierce, unextinguished national resentments.
Captain Charles de Gaulle, 19181
Much like the Ukrainian speakers in the Russian Empire, Ukrainians in Austro-Hungary also experienced a revolution at the end of the Great War and embraced it enthusiastically.
Like their compatriots in Russia’s southwest provinces, their fervour did not succeed in winning them power. Despite the failure to establish an independent Ukrainian state on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, the Ukrainian national movement enlarged the base of those who identified themselves as Ukrainians. The period between the end of the First World War and the start of the Second mobilized Ukrainian-speaking populations throughout Europe, especially in the USSR, Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia.By late 1918, the Central Powers had no hope of winning the war “to end all wars.” On 31 October 1918, a group of Ukrainian officers and Sich Riflemen seized control of Lemberg (Lviv/Lwow), Galicia’s capital. On 1 November, the Ukrainian National Council (Ukrains’ka Narodna Rada), a newly constituted body representing the Ukrainians of Austria- Hungary, proclaimed the creation of the West Ukrainian National Republic (ZUNR), two weeks before the establishment of the Polish Republic.2 According to these political leaders, ZUNR would unite Eastern Galicia with Northern Bukovina and Transcarpathia in a densely populated area of about 70,000 square kilometres (27,027 square miles), containing a total population of approximately six million. Ukrainians constituted nearly two- thirds of its population, Poles 17 per cent, Jews 13 per cent, Hungarians 2 per cent, and Romanians 1 per cent.3
The leaders of the new Polish Republic demanded the restoration of “historic Poland” (in its pre-1772 borders, which included not only Galicia but also Right-Bank Ukraine) and disputed the ZUNR’s claims.
In light of this irreconcilable conflict, Eastern Galicia became one of the most contested areas of the former Habsburg Empire as both the Poles and Ukrainians took up arms to defend their cause. Lviv/Lwow and the Drohobych (Drohobycz)-Boryslav oil district emerged as the most important centres of the Polish-Ukrainian War. By successfully exploiting this oilfield, Austria-Hungary had become the third-largest oil-producing state in the world by 1909, accounting for 5 per cent of the world’s total production, just behind the United States (61 per cent) and Russia (22 per cent).4 Without this oilfield, both the Polish Republic and the ZUNR would remain backward, impoverished states, if they survived at all.At the end of November 1918, Polish troops took Lviv/Lwow, but failed to gain control of the oilfield from the Ukrainians until May 1919. ZUNR’s government fled to Ternopil/Tarnopol, then Stanyslaviv/Stanislawow, but managed to merge, however temporarily, with the Ukrainian National Republic on 22 January 1919. In the chaos of the overall Eurasian civil and national wars, this alliance soon collapsed.
In early 1919 the Western Ukrainians on their small territory possessed a numerically greater military capacity (with approximately 100,000 men) than the new Polish state, with its much larger territory and greater population. But as reinforcements from France arrived, the Polish army grew quickly and numbered 300,000 by the end of the summer.5 By mid-July 1919, Poles occupied all of Eastern Galicia, at the cost of approximately fifteen thousand Ukrainian and ten thousand Polish lives.6 Senior ZUNR officials, headed by Evhen Petrushevych, fled to Vienna, where they created a government-in-exile.7
Polish victory on the battlefield, however, did not guarantee permanent control of Eastern Galicia. Fearing Soviet Russia’s revolutionary appeal throughout the world, the victorious Allied Powers became concerned about the Polish-Ukrainian War and resolved, however reluctantly, to implement Woodrow Wilson’s (not Lenin’s) vision of national self-determination in East Central Europe. To negotiate the borders of the new states established in this area, Allied diplomats had to make sense of the frenzy of claims, counterclaims, and half-promises they received after January 1919.
Throughout the negotiations, most of the American delegates at the Versailles Peace Conference remained confused about the complexities of the nationally mixed areas of East Central Europe. While the British criticized the creation of a “Greater Poland,” the French strongly supported a resurrected Poland containing Eastern Galicia, claiming that “Poland would suffer more than Ukrainians from losing East Galicia.”8This position prevailed at Versailles. Western ignorance of Eastern Galicia and Poland’s military victory over the ZUNR helped the Polish delegation’s propaganda campaign succeed. Although Polish diplomats admitted that Ukrainians constituted 58.6 per cent of the population of Eastern Galicia, socio-economic factors nullified their “right” to national self-determination. Over 60 per cent of its population, they claimed, remained illiterate and poor, making Ukrainians incapable of managing their own affairs. They, in short, remained politically immature and potential supporters of the Bolsheviks.9
These claims fell on fertile ground. Infected with an exaggerated fear of Bolshevism, the victorious Allies strengthened the newly created states of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, and enlarged the size of Romania. According to the calculations of the negotiators, these four states would protect Europe’s eastern flank against a resurgent Germany and the “Bolshevik plague.”10
The Allies desired to create a new bulwark against Soviet Russia and Germany in East Central Europe. They favoured the Polish cause, and France emerged as one of new Poland’s most enthusiastic supporters. France, which owned majority shares of Poland’s petroleum industry, fused its economic and political interests, and planned to surround Germany with strong states allied to the home of “liberty, equality, and fraternity.”11
Despite the total mobilization of the Ukrainian population against the Poles, the ZUNR soon disintegrated.
Shortly after the leaders of the Polish Republic won the public relations war in Paris, the Allies supplied military forces which secured Eastern Galicia, Volhynia, and Belarusan territories for the new state.Other majority Ukrainian-speaking territories met the same fate. With the mobilization of national identities during the war, the post-war political settlements did not bring peace. In light of the hostile international situation after 1918 and the Great Depression after 1928, the Ukrainian question within the USSR, Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia represented not just four separate domestic issues, but a single transborder issue involving all the major European states, even those without significant Ukrainian minorities. Many Ukrainians who participated in the struggle for independence viewed their defeat as a personal and collective humiliation. They fought to reshape the ruins of collapsed imperial structures in the name of national, political, social, and economic equality. Their failure forced them to live in a world shaped by others.12 Very few accepted the structural reality of the time: that international conjunctures were not yet in place for an independent Ukraine to emerge. For most, it was easier to believe the first interpretation than the second.
Despite the best of intentions, the Treaty of Versailles did not bring a just peace after the Great War. In appeasing the winners and humiliating the losers, the Allies unintentionally bolstered the emergence of Europe’s authoritarian and totalitarian regimes and their experiments with state violence in the 1920s and 1930s. They set the stage for the outbreak of an even more brutal Second World War. The culture of war “did not die with the armistice” or with the subsequent peace treaties.13