Polish-Ukrainian war and the Ukrainian Galician Army, 1918-1919
The Polish-Ukrainian war of November 1918 to July 1919 and the campaigns of the Ukrainian Galician Army have been the subject of much writing. The history of the army after 1918 is treated in general histories of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, from which it in part evolved after World War I,[520] and in five volumes of memoirs, documents, eyewitness reports, and other studies of the army’s activity between 1918 and 1920.[521]
The “November days,” which lasted from November 1 to 22, when Ukrainian military forces led by Captain Dmytro Vitovs’kyi (1887-1919) took over L’viv and then fought to maintain eastern Galicia, are treated in detail by both Ukrainian and Polish authors.
The Ukrainian view, best represented in detailed works by Oleksa Kuz’ma and Mykhailo Hutsuliak, considers these few weeks as a glorious epoch when Galician Ukrainians were, despite great odds, on the verge of achieving independence for the first time in the modern era.[522] Polish writings on the November days are even more prolific. As evident in several works, the most comprehensive of which are by Czeslaw M^czyriski, Eugeniusz Wawrzkowicz, Jozef Klink, and Rosa Bailley, the Poles consider the retaking of L’viv, begun on November 1 with an underground movement led by Captain Czeslaw M^iczyriski, as the first step toward what eventually resulted in a successful effort to bring all of Galicia together with other historic Polish lands under the scepter of a restored independent Poland.[523]Besides the November days, several other works are devoted to the changing fortunes of the Polish-Ukrainian war to July 1919;[524] the last major (Chortkiv) offensive of the Ukrainian Galician Army in early June 1919;[525] the alliance in November 1919 with the White Russian General Denikin and, because of this, the resultant trial of the unit’s commander, General Myron Tarnavs’kyi (who was acquitted);[526] and the last stage of the Ukrainian Galician Army’s existence as part of the Bolshevik Red Army (March-April 1920).[527] There are also several memoirs by participants in various Galician-Ukrainian diplomatic efforts and military campaigns from the era,[528] and a few studies on the fate of Galician-Ukrainian World War I prisoners of war in Russia. After the Bolshevik Revolution, many were released and in November 1917 formed the Voluntary Battalion of Sich Riflemen, a unit led by Colonel levhen Konovalets’ that served in the army of the Ukrainian National Republic in the Dnieper Ukraine.
However, a few other Galicians, mostly Russophiles, joined the Czechoslovak Legion, which had its own Carpatho-Russian unit that lasted from August 1918 until the following spring when it merged with White Russian armies.[529] Others joined the White Russian Volunteer Army of General Lavr Kornilov (1870-1918) in the hope of creating a democratic Russia that would include Galicia within its borders.[530] Finally, as the Soviet Ukrainian historian laroslav Dashkevych has pointed out, several leftist and socialist-oriented Galician prisoners of war took part in the Ukrainian section of the Tashkent Bolshevik party and later played leading roles in the new Turkestan Soviet Republic.[531]