Polish Expansion into Ukraine

Despite the Lithuanians’ impressive gains in Ukraine, it was Polish expansion that would exert the more lasting and extensive impact on the Ukrainians. The man who initiated it was Casimir the Great (1310–70), the restorer of the medieval Polish monarchy.

The aggrandizement of Ukrainian lands did not proceed as smoothly for the Poles as it did for the Lithuanians, however. No sooner had Casimir returned to Poland than the willful Galician boyars, led by Dmytro Detko, asserted their rule over the land. Unable at the time to launch another incursion, Casimir was forced to recognize Detko as the effective ruler of Galicia. In return, the latter recognized, in a perfunctory and limited fashion, the Polish king as his overlord. An even greater threat to Polish aspirations in Galicia and Volhynia were the Lithuanians. Because Lubart, the son of Gediminas, was the son-in-law of the deceased Galician ruler, Boleslaw, the Volhynian boyars recognized the young Lithuanian prince as their sovereign in 1340. Thus, when Detko died in 1344, the stage was set for a confrontation between the Poles and Lithuanians for control over Volhynia and Galicia.

For more than two decades, the Poles, aided by the Hungarians, fought the Lithuanians, with whom most of the Ukrainians sided, for control over Galicia and Volhynia. Unlike the interprincely conflicts that were familiar to the inhabitants of the old Rus’ lands, this one had a new and disturbing dimension. Proclaiming themselves to be “the buffer of Christianity,” the Poles, partly from conviction and partly in order to gain papal support, represented their push to the east as a crusade against the heathen Lithuanians and the schismatic Orthodox Ukrainians. This view of their non-Catholic enemies as being morally and culturally inferior boded ill for future relations between the Poles and Ukrainians.

In 1349, after a particularly successful campaign, Casimir gained control of Galicia and part of Volhynia. Finally, in 1366, the war ended with the Poles occupying all of Galicia and a small part of Volhynia. The rest of Volhynia remained in Lithuanian hands. But even at this point the Polish grip on their huge Ukrainian acquisitions – consisting of about 200,000 people and approximately 52,000 sq. km, an increase of close to 50% in the holdings of the Polish crown – was not secure. In the above mentioned pact with Louis of Hungary, Casimir had agreed that if he should die without a male heir, the crown of Poland and the Ukrainian lands would revert to Louis. In 1370, Casimir died, leaving four daughters but no son. Now the Hungarians moved into Galicia. Louis appointed Wladyslaw Opalinski, a trusted vassal, as his viceroy and installed Hungarian officials thoughout Galicia. However, what the Poles lost through dynastic arrangements, they regained in the same way. In 1387, two years after she became the queen of Poland, Jadwiga, the daughter of Louis of Hungary, finally and definitely annexed Galicia to the holdings of the Polish crown.

Initially, the Poles were careful about introducing changes among their new subjects. Casimir referred to Galicia as “the kingdom of Rus’,” just as its last native rulers had done.

In 1375, a Catholic archdiocese was founded in Lviv. Meanwhile, monasteries, especially those of the Franciscan and Dominican orders, proliferated throughout the land. They served a rapidly growing Catholic population that consisted of Polish, German, Czech, and Hungarian noblemen who received land grants in Galicia and of German townsmen that the Polish monarchs had invited to help to develop the cities. Many of the Galician boyars adopted the faith of their Polish peers, especially after 1431, when they received equal status with the Polish nobles. By the mid 15th century, when Galicia was reorganized into the Ruthenian (Rus’) wojewodstwo or province of the Polish kingdom and Latin became the official language of the land, there were few remainders left of the once proud Rus’ principality of Galicia.

The Polish acquisition of Ukrainian lands and subjects was a crucial turning point in the history of both peoples. For the Poles, it meant a commitment to an eastern rather than the previously dominant western orientation, a shift that carried with it far-reaching political, cultural, and socioeconomic ramifications. For Ukrainians, the impact went far beyond the replacement of native rulers by foreigners: it led to the subordination of Ukrainians to another people of a different religion and culture. Despite certain positive effects produced by this symbiosis, eventually it evolved into a bitter religious, social, and ethnic conflict that lasted for about 600 years and permeated all aspects of life in Ukraine.