Poland’s Policies toward the Ukrainians

Polish claims to the lands inhabited by the West Ukrainians rested on historical arguments. In the late 18th century, these territories had been part of the Polish Commonwealth and the Poles believed that they should also be part of the Polish state that emerged in 1919.

Although generally repressive, Polish policy toward the Ukrainians did have its variations. While the powerful, ultranationalist National Democrats, led by Roman Dmowski and supported by the Polish minority in Eastern Galicia, consistently advocated militantly anti-Ukrainian policies, some highly respected Poles, such as Leon Wasilewski and Tadeusz Hołowko, urged moderation and flexibility in dealing with the minorities. The central authorities in Warsaw from time to time announced concessions to the Ukrainians, but hard-line local administrators, police officials, and army commanders refused to implement them. There were also regional differences. The governor of Volhynia, Henryk Jozewski, attempted to entice Ukrainians into supporting the state by granting them limited concessions, while the government’s repressive measures in neighboring Galicia reached a high point of brutality. Finally, there was the glaring contradiction between the Polish government’s support of the Warsaw-based East Ukrainian government-in-exile (which could be useful in case of war with the USSR) and its refusal to recognize the political aspirations of West Ukrainians.

In the final analysis, however, the Polish government pursued a policy of confrontation in its dealings with the large Ukrainian minority. In 1924 the government passed a law banning the use of Ukrainian in government agencies. That same year, the openly anti-Ukrainian minister of education, Sta-nisław Grabski, introduced reforms – the notorious Lex Grabski – that transformed most Ukrainian-language schools into bilingual institutions in which Polish predominated. Ukrainians were excluded from Lviv University; its Ukrainian chairs were abolished; and the promise to establish a Ukrainian university at government expense was never fulfilled.

An especially galling feature of these early Polish policies for the Ukrainian peasantry was the colonization program. In order to strengthen the Polish presence in the eastern borderlands, in 1920 the government began to bring Polish settlers into Eastern Galicia and Volhynia. Initially, army veterans made up most of the colonists, especially in Volhynia; later, civilian newcomers predominated. Despite the fact that Galicia was one of the most over-populated agricultural regions in Europe, the Polish settlers received large allotments of the best land as well as generous financial subsidies. Those who chose not to work on the land obtained privileged positions as village policemen, postal and railroad employees, or petty officials. Ukrainian sources claim that by 1938 about 200,000 Poles had moved into the villages of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia and another 100,000 settled in the towns; Polish writers place the total number of colonists at less than 100,000. In any case, while it was too small to alter decisively the ethnic composition of the eastern lands, the influx of Polish newcomers was large enough to arouse fierce Ukrainian resentment.

Although the Piłsudski coup of 1926 ushered in a more authoritarian Polish government, there were initial indications that relations between it and the Ukrainians might improve.

Ukrainian/Polish relations deteriorated badly during the Great Depression, which struck the Ukrainian-inhabited agricultural areas especially hard. Peasants suffered not so much from the lack of employment as from the disastrous decline in their incomes resulting from a drop in demand for their produce. During these years of economic crisis, the net return per acre on small peasant landholdings dropped by 70–80%. Under the circumstances, the Ukrainian peasants’ resentment of the well-subsidized Polish colonists and the wealthy Polish landowners reached new heights. Dissatisfaction among the Ukrainian intelligentsia, and especially among its young (and unemployed) members, also grew because the few government positions that were available invariably went to Poles. Therefore, when the radical Ukrainian nationalists called for active resistance to Polish domination, they found a ready response among Ukrainian youths. The Pacification

In the summer of 1930 there was a wave of attacks against Polish property in Galicia. These usually took the form of burning the produce on Polish estates. About 2200 such acts of sabotage were recorded. The government’s response was massive and brutal. In mid September, large Polish police and cavalry units descended on the Ukrainian countryside and commenced a “pacification” campaign intended to restore order. Employing the principle of collective responsibility, armed units moved into about 800 villages, demolished Ukrainian community centers and libraries, confiscated property and produce, and beat those who protested.

Ukrainian protests to the League of Nations made the plight of the Ukrainian minority in Poland in general, and the “pacification” in particular, an international cause celèbre. But while European (and especially British) politicians condemned Polish behavior, a committee of the League of Nations blamed Ukrainian extremists for provoking the “pacification.” Although the Polish government soon quelled the disturbances, in the long run its actions only intensified Ukrainian bitterness, encouraged extremists on both sides, and made the search for constructive solutions even more difficult.

While the “pacification” brought a semblance of order to the countryside, it did not break the determination of the young, radical nationalists to resist the Polish regime. The OUN (Orhanizatsiia Ukrainskykh Nationalistiv – Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) merely changed tactics and in the early 1930s concentrated its efforts on the political assassination of leading Polish politicians and government officials, as well as on attacks on post offices to obtain funds for its activities. The government, for its part, maintained its uncompromising stance toward the Ukrainians. It abolished self-government in the villages and placed them under the administration of Polish officials. In 1934 a concentation camp was established in Bereza Kartuzka for about 2000 political prisoners, most of whom were Ukrainians. Later that year, Poland repudiated the commitment it had made to the League of Nations to safeguard the rights of its national minorities.

These policies of the government reflected the swing to the extreme right taking place in Poland during the 1930s.

There were, however, moderates in both the Polish and Ukrainian camps who grew impatient with the continuing and fruitless Polish/Ukrainian confrontations. On the Ukrainian side, UNDO (Ukrainian National Democratic Union), the largest Ukrainian political party, emerged as a proponent of compromise. Its leaders were clearly disillusioned with OUN violence and the reprisals that it provoked against Ukrainians as a whole. They were also under pressure from the strong Ukrainian cooperative movement (which needed stability to function effectively) to work toward a rapprochment. On the Polish side, there were also indications of a willingness to compromise. In 1933 the government established the Polish-Ukrainian Bulletin, a journal that sought to emphasize the positive aspects of Ukrainian/Polish relations. Soon afterwards, the prime minister, Wacław Jedrzejewicz, publicly admitted that mistakes had been made by “both sides.” Paradoxically, the OUN’s assassination in 1934 of Bronisław Pieracki, the minister of the interior, hastened the rapprochement because, to the government’s great satisfaction, both the UNDO and Metropolitan Sheptytsky strongly denounced the act. Thus, in 1935, the stage was set for a limited agreement between the government and UNDO, which came to be known as “normalization.”

The arrangement called for the Ukrainians to recognize formally the primacy of Polish state interests and to vote for the new budget.

But “normalization” was not universally accepted by the Ukrainians. Dissident members of UNDO and other Ukrainian parties attacked the UNDO leadership for “accepting crumbs from the Polish table.” Not unexpectedly, the radical nationalists rejected “normalization” and continued their revolutionary activities. Finally, the deep-seated mistrust of Poles in Ukrainian society as a whole fueled widespread skepticism about the success of the rapprochement. Polish attitudes and actions also served to undermine “normalization.” Despite the central government’s concessions, in the eastern provinces almost every governor, county administrator, and even local police chief adhered to his own, invariably harsh, method of “handling” the Ukrainians. The officials usually had the support of the local Polish minority for this approach. Indeed, when Polish mobs demolished Ukrainian institutions, they often did so in secret collusion with local Polish officials. Polish youths, organized in the armed, paramilitary units of Strzelcy, frequently harassed Ukrainians under the guise of helping to maintain law and order. In 1938, the feared border police carried out a “mini-pacification” of areas along the Soviet border inhabited by Ukrainians.

Perhaps the most adamant opponent of “normalization” was the Polish military. As the threat of war increased in the late 1930s, the army leadership came to view the disaffected Ukrainians as a major security problem. To eliminate or reduce this problem, the army applied “divide-and-rule” tactics. In 1938 it launched a campaign to encourage the Ukrainian-speaking Hutsuls, Lemkos, and Boikos of the Carpathian highlands to view themselves as distinct peoples and not as part of the larger Ukrainian nation. Attempts were made to develop the Lemko dialect into a separate language and Lemkos were urged to convert from Greek Catholicism to Orthodoxy in order to create a barrier between them and the Galician Ukrainians. A variant of this approach was the army’s efforts to persuade the impoverished or “barefoot” Ukrainian gentry, which, except for its treasured titles of nobility, was identical to the Ukrainian peasantry, that it was both nationally and socially distinct from it.

Meanwhile, in Volhynia, Polish authorities continued their attack on the Orthodox church, the main pillar of Ukrainian identity in the region. Arguing that most of the churches in Volhynia and the Kholm region had once belonged to the Greek Catholics or Roman Catholics, the authorities transferred about 150 Orthodox churches to the latter and destroyed another 190. Thus, of the 389 Orthodox churches in Volhynia in 1914, only 51 survived in 1939. Similar pressures were applied in neighboring Kholm and Polissia regions where armed bands of colonists called Krakus terrorized the local inhabitants into converting to Catholicism and where the administration of the Orthodox church, theological training, and even sermons were conducted in Polish.