Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Ukrainians in Poland, by M. Felinski. 1931

Population Statistics. Ruthenian Nonsynonymous With Ukrainians. Austrian-Driven 1918 Polish-Ukrainian War. Bilingual Schools

Much of what is published in the West on this subject is slanted towards a Ukrainian nationalist-separatist pan-Ukrainian view. This book provides somewhat of a counterbalance. However, it is no apologist work: The Polish author faults Poles when they were wrong. For instance, he cites the work of A. Krysinski, a Polish scholar who affirmed the premise that the 1921 census overstated the percentage of Poles in Eastern Galicia (39.1%). Krysinski revised the actual percentage to 33.1% (and 29.7% if six western districts–presumably including Lwow and environs–are deducted). (pp. 25-28).

However, by any measure, the territories had a mixed population. Thus, to say that Eastern Galicia was “Ukrainian” was just as incorrect as saying that it was “Polish”.

UKRAINE ORIGINALLY A GEOGRAPHIC, NOT ETHNONATIONAL TERM

The term Ukraina was first used in the 16th century, and had a geographical (“borderland”), not ethno-national, connotation. Moreover, it was then restricted to the territories near Kiev and eastward. (p. 19). The peoples called themselves Ruthenians, and were thus called by others.

RUTHENIAN IS NOT (NECESSARILY) AN OUTDATED SYNONYM OF UKRAINIAN

Fast forward to the 20th century. Ukrainian had by then acquired an ethno-national connotation. However, Ruthenian did not simply become an archaic synonym of Ukrainian. Some of Poland’s Ruthenians (e. g., the Ruthenian Agrarian Party) considered themselves a separate nationality, not a branch of either the Ukrainians or the Russians. (p. 23). [Marian Widomski, my childhood Scoutmaster, once told me that he knew a man before the war who had told him: “I am a Polish Rusyn. Don’t you dare call me a Ukrainian!”]

THE AUSTRIANS AND THE 1918 POLISH-UKRAINIAN WAR

Michael Baczynski, a Ukrainian deputy in the Seym (Polish parliament), does not treat the 1918 Polish-Ukrainian War as an attempted Ukrainian war of liberation: “It is a historical fact that the fighting which took place in 1918 [against the Poles] was forced on the Ruthenian people. It was not the expression of the people’s will; it resulted from the machinations of certain individuals, Ukrainian-Galician politicians, who were at the disposition of Austria.” (p. 73).

Furthermore, unlike some Ukrainian writers, Baczynski does not share the rosy view of Ukrainian life as part of the Austrian empire as compared with later life as part of Poland: “The Ruthenian people, exhausted by the long years of the World War, crushed by Austrian persecutions, and ruined materially and financially, would never have agreed to a war with Poland…” (pp. 74-75).

MOST KRESY UKRAINIANS WERE NOT ANTI-POLISH

Contrary to its usual portrayal in the west, continued Ukrainian separatism was far from universal, and may have been a minority viewpoint. Despite the murders of several prominent anti-separatist Ukrainian political leaders, and the call by Yevhen Petruszewycz for Ukrainians to boycott the 1922 elections to the Polish Seym, a noticeable fraction of eastern Galicia’s Ukrainian population defied the boycott. (p. 47).

POLISH-LANGUAGE SCHOOLS, IN UKRAINIAN-MAJORITY AREAS, WERE NOT ACTS OF POLISH CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

Perennial Ukrainian complaints about Ukrainian schools becoming converted into bilingual schools, by Polish government policy, are ironic in view of the fact that Polish schools were also converted into bilingual schools. The purpose of this policy was to ensure that everyone spoke Polish, as well as another language that was common in the area. So the conversion of Ukrainian schools into bilingual ones was no more a suppression of the Ukrainian language than the conversion of Polish schools into bilingual schools, as criticized by certain Polish nationalists, had been an attempt to suppress the Polish language! (pp. 128-134).

[I personally knew ethnic Poles, from the Kresy, who could speak Ukrainian because it was “forced” on them in the Polish-government-sponsored bilingual schools!]

DEMANDS FOR A UKRAINIAN UNIVERSITY

The Ukrainians wanted the establishment of a Ukrainian university. Progress in this direction had been made in the form of the foundation, in 1930, of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Warsaw, where future professors would be trained. (p. 135). [Poles were reluctant to have it built in Lwow (Lviv) because it would become a focus for separatist-minded Ukrainians.]

POLISH GOVERNMENT PUSHES BACK AGAINST SEDITIOUS UKRAINIANS

The Polish government’s abolition of the Ukrainian Scouts (Plast) owed to the fact that this organization had departed from Scouting, had become infected with seditionists and separatists (p. 141), and had unmistakably played a major role in separatist arson and sabotage. (p. 146, 165). In fact, separatist violence tended to occur in those locations where the Plast, Luh, Sokil, and Proswita were well organized.

The Ukrainians were hardly reacting to “oppression” In fact, the chief participants in separatist violence were not the poor and downtrodden, but secondary and university students and teachers. (p. 164). The separatist violence, a desperate move to reverse Polish-Ukrainian cooperation, and a means of scoring political points on the international scene, was sponsored by the UWO (Ukrainian Military Organization), which was financed and directed from Berlin. (p. 156, 161).

The much-maligned Polish “pacification” of 1930 was a long-delayed reaction against the UWO and its separatist violence. Many villages were searched, and thousands of weapons and explosives were found and confiscated (see table on page 169). When owners were uncooperative, their properties had to be broken into by force, and disheveled in search for weapons. [Propaganda photos in the west, on “Polish atrocities in the Ukraine”, showed the disheveled properties, but not the reason for the dishevelment.]

“NONETHNOGRAPHIC BOUNDARIES” ARE NOT UNJUST, AT LEAST NOT NECESSARILY

[The reader should remember the fact that the existence of a local ethnographic majority does not in itself entail separatism. The French-majority regions of Switzerland are loyal to German-dominated Switzerland, and do not demand either a separate French-Swiss state, or annexation of their region by France.]

THE ORGANIZATION OF UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTS (OUN) WAS CLEARLY FASCIST

Felinski (p. 158) described the recently-founded OUN as fascist. Writing this in 1931, he could not have been influenced by the OUN-Nazi collaboration, or by the OUN-UPA genocide of Poles, because these events were still a decade or more in the future.