A new political order emerged in Eastern Europe after the First World War as nation-states replaced the empires that had, until recently, ruled the region.
But although it had won universal acceptance, the principle of national self-determination had been applied unevenly with the result that not all nations obtained statehood. Those that did had large, restive national minorities.
Thus, during the interwar period, the nationality question remained unresolved; as tensions between dominant nationalities and disadvantaged minorities increased, it became an explosive issue. And the socioeconomic problems that had plagued the region from the age of the empires only aggravated the situation.Approximately 7 million West Ukrainians, mostly former subjects of the Habsburg empire, were the only major nationality in Eastern Europe that did not achieve independence at this time. The majority was incorporated into Poland; the rest lived in Romania and Czechoslovakia. As the target of discriminatory policies everywhere, but most of all in Poland and Romania, the West Ukrainians developed an almost obsessive desire for self-rule, which they regarded as the solution to their political, socioeconomic, and cultural problems. Because their aspirations clashed with the assimilationist policies of the states in which they lived, the politics of national confrontation dominated the lives of the West Ukrainians throughout the interwar period.