Canadian Slavonic Papers

Western between the Wars Author(s): John-Paul Himka Source: Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 34, No. 4 (December 1992), pp. 391-412 Published by: Canadian Association of Slavists Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40869428 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 03:32

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Recentdevelopments in Ukrainehave continuedto underscorethe persistent importanceof regionalismin thatcountry. The westof Ukrainestill exhibits a political complexion unmistakablydistinguishable from the norm in the republic. Although all regions of Ukraine voted in favour of national independencein thereferendum of 1 December1991, the percentage voting "yes" was highestin thewest. In thewestern oblasts of Ivano-Frankivskand Ternopil over98 percent of thosewho voted supported independence (compared to 90 per cent in Ukraine as a whole). During the presidentialelections, held simultaneously,only in thewestern part tended to supportthe former dissidentViacheslav Chorno vil overthe former Communist Leonid Kravchuk.1 Butcurrent events only serve as a reminderthat regionalism is "a keyfeature of Ukrainianhistory."" The purposeof theinterpretive essay thatfollows is to examine a crucial component of historical Ukrainian regionalism- the experienceof WesternUkraine in the interwarperiod. The approachto the problemdiffers from that of related studies by treating all theUkrainian-inhabited territoriesthat found themselves outside the USSR in the interwarera and comparingthe individual experiences of thesmaller subunits within the larger region.The studyexamines, in turn,the nuances of thepolitical geography of WesternUkraine, the policies of Poland, and Czechoslovakiatowards theirUkrainian minorities, economic and social developments,and thechanging WestUkrainian .

THEPOLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF INTERWARWESTERN UKRAINE The conceptof "WesternUkraine" is notentirely a staticone. As a validunit of historicalanalysis it firstappears in the late eighteenthcentury, when the Habsburgmonarchy added (1772) andBukovina (occupied 1774, annexed 1787) to its collectionof territories;already part of the collectionwas the Ukrainian-inhabitedregion of Transcarpathia(depending on how one counts,it had been Habsburgsince as earlyas 1526 or as late as the earlyeighteenth

1 PeterJ. Potichnyj,"The Referendumand PresidentialElections in Ukraine," CanadianSlavonic Papers 33.2 (1991): 123-38. 2 David Saunders,"Modern Ukrainian History," European History Quarterly 21.1 (1991): 85.

Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes Vol. XXXIV, No. 4, December 1992

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century).3Of course, one can also read back certain featuresunifying Western Ukraine prior to the 1770s, such as the culturallyformative influence on all three regions of the medieval Rus' principality,later kingdom, of Galicia and , as well as the presence of the Carpathianmountains, which was much more than a matterof mere geology (hence the Russophiles' preferredname for - Western Ukraine Caipathian Rus'). Still, in the centuries prior to their incorporationinto the Habsburg monarchy,the threeregions had experienced such disparate political histories- Galicia as part of Poland, of - Moldavia, and Transcaipathia of Hungary thatthere is littlevalidity in treating them then as a historicalunit. The incorporationof Western Ukraine into the Habsburg monarchywent hand in hand with the destruction of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1772-95) and the absorption of all the rest of Ukrainian territoryinto the , so that at the turnof the nineteenthcentury all Ukraine was divided between the Habsburgs and the Romanovs, with the latterenjoying by farthe lion's share. Perhaps the real key to understandingWestern Ukraine is to thinkof it as a unityby negation, as those Ukrainian territoriesnot under Russian rule. In the nineteenthcentury, the age of the national revival,the Ukrainiansunder Russian rule were stunted in their national development by legislation aimed at suppressing a Ukrainian national identity(the prohibitionof the use of the in print,schools or administration)as well as by the long absence of basic civic liberties. In the Habsburg monarchy,Ukrainians were much freerto develop theirnational culture and political life, although, to be sure, after 1867 the Ukrainians in Transcaipathia, in the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary,lived under conditions similar to those of tsaristRussia as far as the developmentof theirnationality was concerned.4 The exclusion fromRussia, in addition to its entirelypositive aspects with relation to national development,also had a negative side, since this meant that

3 A note on terminology:Galicia, as an Austrianprovince, had about as many Poles as Ukrainians; the west was largely Polish, the east largely Ukrainian. Similarly,Bukovina had about as many Romaniansas Ukrainians;the northwas largely Ukrainian, the south largely Romanian. In , which will be discussed later,the Ukrainianswere a minority.Generally when referringto these regionsI mean only theirUkrainian-inhabited portions. 4 On the stateof the Ukrainiannational movement in the Russian empireand in Galicia, see Ivan L. Rudnytsky,"The UkrainianMovement on the Eve of the First WorldWar," in Essays in Modern UkrainianHistory (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1987) 375-88. On Transcaipathia,see Ivan Zeguc, Die national-politischenBestrebungen der Karpato -Ruthenen 1848-1914, Veröffentichungendes Osteuropa-InstitutesMünchen, 28 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz,1965).

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Western Ukraine was also separated from the greater part of Ukraine, the heartland with its Cossack traditions.Perhaps this separation lay at the root of the great identitycrisis that racked Western Ukraine from the middle of the nineteenthcentury, i.e., the oftenbitter internal conflict over whetherthe Eastern Christian, Eastern Slavic inhabitantsof Galicia, Bukovina and Transcarpathia were Ukrainian,Russian or merelyWestern Ukrainian (Ruthenian or Rusyn).5 With the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918 and the defeat of the Ukrainiannational revolution in 1919-20, WesternUkraine did not disappear as a valid historical unit. Although divided between three of the Habsburg monarchy's successor states (Galicia became part of Poland, Bukovina part of Romania and Transcarpathia part of Czechoslovakia), the West Ukrainian territorieshad in common their exclusion from the Russian political sphere, which in the interwarera was even of greaterimportance than it had been in the nineteenthcentury. The bulk of Ukraine became the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, a constituentpart of the USSR. Between the wars it underwentsome of the most radical socio-economic changes known to history,and in the 1930s it experienced systematic,extensive terrorthat threatened to eradicate Ukrainian national culture completely. Ukrainian territoriesoutside this maelstrom of destruction formed a unit whose common denominatorwas the survival and indeed, despite oftendifficult conditions, the growthof a Ukrainiancivil society. The exclusion fromRussian rule throughoutthe period of national revival as well as throughthe years of the most virulentStalinism lent a certaincultural commonality to Western Ukraine even after its incorporationinto the USSR duringthe Second World War. The remnantsof thisWestem-Ukrainianness could still be felt decades later, especially in Galicia6 (Lviv, Temopil and Ivano- Frankivsk oblasts; Transcarpathia is now the Transcarpathian[Zakarpats'ka] oblast, Bukovina is Chernivtsioblast). Western Ukraine between the wars was somewhat bigger than it had been under the Habsburg sceptre,because certainUkrainian-inhabited territories from the formerRussian empire were incorporatedinto Poland (especially Volhynia and Polissia) and Romania (Bessarabia).

5 This problemforms the centrepieceof Paul RobertMagocsi, The Shapingof a National Identity: Subcarpathian Rus' 1848-1948 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard UniversityPress, 1978). See also Ivan L. Rudnytsky,"Carpatho-Ukraine: A People in Searchof TheirIdentity," in Essays 353-73,and John-PaulHimka, 'The Formation of National Identityin SubcarpathianRus1: Some Questions of Methodology," Harvard UkrainianStudies 2.3 (1978): 374-80. 6 Roman Szporluk, "West Ukraine and West Belorussia: Historical Tradition, Social Communication,and LinguisticAssimilation," Soviet Studies 31.1 (1979): 76-98.

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It is difficultto say how manyWest Ukrainiansthere were betweenthe wars, because the censuses of most interwarEast Europeans states were notoriouslyinaccurate. According to officialPolish statistics,there were 3,898,431Ukrainians in Polandin 1921 and 4,441,622in 1931,accounting for about 14 percent of Poland's totalpopulation.7 These figuresare certainlytoo low and Ukrainiandemographers argue thatthere were five to six million Ukrainiansin Poland in 1931.8 Abouttwo thirdsof the Ukrainianslived in Galicia (thepalatinates [województwa] of Lviv,Ternopil and Stanyslaviv);the restlived mainly in thepalatinates of Volhyniaand Polissia, although there were also Ukrainianpopulations near Chetm (Kholm) in theLublin palatinate and in theLemko region in theWestern Carpathians (Cracow palatinate).9 There was also a Ukrainiancolony in the Polish capital of Warsaw,but thisconsisted primarilyof Petliuristémigrés from Ukrainian territories that had fallenunder Sovietrule rather than of WestUkrainians proper. Romanianstatistics, likewise not very reliable, recorded 582,1 15 Ukrainians in the countryin 1930, about 3 per cent of Romania's total population.10 Ukrainiandemographers put the figurehigher, at about a million.11The majorityof the Ukrainianslived in Bukovina,but therewere also Ukrainian populationsin Bessarabia(especially near Khotyn and Akkerman [Bilhorod]) and, muchsmaller ones, in theMarmure§ region. Accordingto the relativelycredible official statistics of Czechoslovakia, therewere 461,849 Ukrainians(Ruthenians, Rusyns) in thecountry in 1921 and 549,169 in 1930, accountingfor 3-4 per cent of the total populationof Czechoslovakia.12Over 80 percent of theUkrainians lived in theprovince of SubcaipathianRus' and over 15 percent lived in theadjacent Pre§ov region in the provinceof Slovakia13(the divisionof Transcarpathiainto Subcaipathian Rus1and thePresov regionwas an innovationof theinterwar era). Therewas

7 JosephRothschild, East CentralEurope betweenthe Two WorldWars (Seattle: Universityof WashingtonPress, 1974) 36. 8 VolodymyrKubijovyö [Kubiiovych]estimated 5,902,000 Ukrainiansin Poland in 1931. WesternUkraine withinPoland 1920-1939 (Ethnic Relationships) (Chicago: Ukrainian Research and InformationInstitute, 1963) 26. In a recent monograph,a prominentPolish scholarestimated that there were about 5.1 or 5.2 millionUkrainians in Poland in 1929. RyszardTorzecki, Kwestia ukraiñska w Polsce w latach 1923-1929 (Cracow: WydawnictwoLiterackie, 1989) 11. 9 Mirostawa Papierzyríska-Turek,Sprawa ukraiñskaw Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej 1922-1926 (Cracow: WydawnictwoLiterackie, 1979) 20. w Rothschild,East CentralEurope 284. 11 D. Prutsk'yi,"Ukraintsi u 'Velykii Rumunii,'"Nova hromada (Vienna) 1.3-4 (1923): 16, estimatedthat there were 900,000 Ukrainiansin Romaniain 1923. 12 Rothschild,East CentralEurope 89. 13 Magocsi, Shapingof a NationalIdentity 354.

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:32:57 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WESTERN UKRAINEBETWEEN THE WARS 395 also a sizable Ukrainian colony in Prague which, like the one in Warsaw, consisted largelyof Ukrainianpolitical émigrésfrom outside WesternUkraine. In sum, the total Ukrainian population of Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia in 1930-31 was just over five and a half million according to officialstatistics, but the actual numberof West Ukrainiansmay have been more on the order of seven million. For comparison,the population of Soviet Ukraine at this time, also a subject of some controversy(but fordifferent reasons), was over thirtymillion, of whom over threequarters were Ukrainians (according to the 1926 census, therewere 23,218,860 Ukrainiansin the UkrainianSSR).14 Like much of East Central and Eastern Europe, Western Ukraine was a palimpsest of political culturesreflecting the past fortunesof various conquerors. Parts of WesternUkraine, for example, had known Lithuanianand Turkishrule, although reminiscences of these were no longer relevant by the twentieth century.The heritagesof Polish and Moldavian rule were also not particularly relevant to West Ukrainian political culturein the twentiethcentury, since they were eclipsed by and subsumed into the dominant cultures of the Polish and Romanian states thatincorporated much of WesternUkraine between the wars. However, there were threepolitical culturesjust below the historicalsurface of WesternUkraine thatcontinued to affectdevelopments in the interwarera. These were the political legacies of Austria,Hungary and Russia. The former Austrian territoriesof Galicia and Bukovina undoubtedly demonstrated the highest levels of national consciousness in all of Western Ukraine. This was a directresult of Austrianpolicy. In the period of enlightened absolutism, an imperial decision to educate the Greek Catholic clergy created a Ukrainian intelligentsia in Galicia (this process, however, bypassed largely Orthodox Bukovina). In 1848 the peasantry,who made up the overwhelming majorityof the Ukrainianpopulation of Galicia and Bukovina, was emancipated fromserfdom. Perhaps most crucially, fromthe 1860s until 1914 the Austrian Ukrainians alone had the rightto publish Ukrainian periodicals, to formlegal Ukrainian voluntary associations, including political parties, and to attend educational institutionsin theirown language. This produced the most literate, mobilized and self-assuredUkrainian population of the firsthalf of the twentieth century. The level of national consciousness was, however,higher in Galicia thanin Bukovina, largely because of the long-standinginfluence of and rivalrywith the well developed Polish national movement. The rivalry, and consequent intensificationof nationalconsciousness, reached a culminationafter the collapse

14 Bohdan Krawchenko,Social Change and National Consciousnessin Twentieth- CenturyUkraine (London: Macmillan,1985) 48.

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:32:57 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 396 JOHN-PAULHIMKA of Austriain 1918-19 whenGalician Ukrainians waged an armedstruggle for independenceagainst the Poles. The Hungarianlegacy was sharedby all theUkrainians of Transcarpathia: theUkrainians of SubcarpathianRus' and thePresov region in Czechoslovakia as well as those of the part of the formerMaramaros county that went to Romaniainstead of to Czechoslovakia,the Marmure§ region. Here Ukrainians had experiencedthe benefits of Austrianenlightened absolutism, since here too Greek Catholic seminariansattended institutions of higherlearning; the Ukrainiansof theseregions were also liberatedfrom serfdom in 1848.However, theHabsburg monarchy's constitutional reforms of the1860s exerted a negative effecton theUkrainian nationality in Transcaipathia,which became part of the autonomousHungarian portion of theAustro-Hungarian monarchy. The Magyar gentiythat controlled Hungary in thewake of theCompromise (Ausgleich) of 1867 did little to spread elementaryeducation, resisted even modest democratizationof thepolitical system and stroveto Magyarizethe Ukrainians underits rule. The resultwas a Ukrainianpopulation almost without a national intelligentsia,a largely illiterate peasant folk without a clear sense of national identity.What nationalconsciousness did develop underthe unfavourable conditionsof Hungarianrule was not unequivocallyUkrainian in orientation. Most oftenit took the formof Russophilism,i.e., identificationwith the Russiannation, or whathas beencalled Rusynophilism,i.e., a purelylocal or at moststrictly West Ukrainiannational consciousness. In Galicia and Bukovina, alreadyby thebeginning of theinterwar era theoverwhelming majority of the Ukrainianpopulation considered itself Ukrainian,i.e., part of the larger Ukrainiannation which inhabited also DnieperUkraine and whichwas distinct fromthe Russian nation (and thePolish and othernations). Subcarpathian Rus' only developeda Ukrainianconsciousness in the interwarera, by theend of whichthe Russophile and Rusynophilecurrents had still not disappeared; and the Presovregion remained predominantly Russophile and Rusynophilethroughout theyears between the wars. The thirdpolitical legacy was thatof Russia, whichaffected Volhynia, Polissia and the Chetm regionin Poland and Bessarabia in Romania. Here enlightenedabsolutism had broughtno benefitto theUkrainian nationality and the peasantryremained enserfed over a decade longerthan in the Habsburg monarchy,i.e., until 1861. The Valuev and Ems decreesof 1863 and 1876 prohibitedthe use of the Ukrainianlanguage in publication.Even when Ukrainian-languagepublication was permittedas a resultof therevolution of 1905,Ukrainian-language education was not.In anycase, tsaristRussia did little to educateits populationin any language.The Ukrainianpopulation in these regionshad even lowerliteracy rates than the Ukrainians of Transcaipathia.(In

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Polish Galicia, 29 per cent of Lviv palatinate,39 per cent of Ternopil palatinate and 46 per cent of Stanyslavivpalatinate were illiteratein 1921; in Volhynia and Polissia, however, the respective rates were 69 and 71 per cent. In Romania, Bukovina was 34 per cent illiteratein 1930, while Bessarabia was 62 per cent illiterate. Subcarpathian Rus' was 50 per cent illiteratein 192 1).15 The former Russian sectors of interwarWestern Ukraine displayed a low level of Ukrainian national consciousness, with a significantpercentage of Ukrainians identifying themselves on the census as merely "locals" (tutejsi) in Polish Polissia or as Russians in Romanian Bessarabia. These borders beneath borders figured in the Ukrainian policies of the interwarPolish and Romanian régimes. Both sought to undo certain featuresof the previous Austrian régime. Both the Poles and Romanians, for example, repealed many of the laws thathad protectedUkrainian rights in education and administration.The lack of national rightsfor Ukrainians in the formerRussian territorieswas exploited by both régimes. The Polish governmentin particular developed a consistentpolicy of isolatingthe formerRussian territoriesfrom the formerGalicia, separating them by the so-called Sokal border.16Although this policy is generallyassociated withthe name of HenrykJózewski, who served as 17 voivode of Volhynia from 1928 to 1938, the policy in fact goes back before Józewski to the very firstyears of Polish rule in the region (concessions offered to Ukrainian politicians outside Galicia if they refrained from joining the Galician Ukrainians1boycott of the parliamentaryelections in 1922).18 This isolation of formerlyRussian fromformerly Austrian territories was a cardinal point in the Polish regime's Ukrainian policy; in fact, for all their outward devotion to the Catholic church, the Polish authoritiespreferred to hinder the diffusionof Greek Catholicism into predominantlyOrthodox Volhynia, Polissia and the Chelm region lest the Galician-based church,which had become firmly identified with the Ukrainian national movement, change the political complexion of the regions.19

!5 Rothschild,East CentralEurope 44, 285, 92. 16 The namederives from the town of Sokal on theBuh river.For moreon theSokal border,see A. Zieba's articleunder that title in Encyclopediaof Ukraine,5 vols., ed. VolodymyrKubijovyõ (Toronto, Buffalo, London: Universityof Toronto Press, 1984-93). 17 The voivode leftinteresting memoirs: Henryk Józewski, "Zamiast pamietnika," ZeszytyHistoryczne 59 (1982): 3-163; (1982): 65-157; 63 (1983): 3-75. There is a recent Polish monographon the Volhynianpalatinate: Wlodzimierz Medrzecki, WojewództwoWoiyrískie, 1921-1939. Elementyprzemian cywilizacyjnych, spolecznychi politycznych(Wroclaw: Zaklad Narodowyim. Ossoliñskich,1988). 18 Ivan Kedryn, Zhyttia-podii-liudy. Spomyny i komentari (New York: Chervona kalyna, 1976) 126-27. 19 Torzecki,Kwestia ukraiñska w Polsce 319-22.

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STATE POLICIES TOWARDS UKRAINIANS The policies of the Polish and Romanian governmentstoward theirUkrainian minorities were basically similar: assimilatory. This is not surprising consideringthe similarityof the two statesas theyemerged after the FirstWorld War. Both were distendedstates that had acquired by conquest and to some extent by diplomacy much more territorythan they could integrate.Poland extendedfar enough to the west that it managed to ingest a German minorityof over a million (about 4 per cent of the total population, 1921). Althoughthis particular minoritywas to figureso prominentlyin Poland's destructionin 1939, it was but a fractionof the minoritypopulations thatPoland absorbed in its eastward expansion- Lithuanians, Belarusians, Ukrainians and Jews.20Even by its own count, which greatly downplayed the size of national minorities,Poland was only 69 per cent Polish. Romania, in the aftermathof the Great War, acquired Bukovina and Transylvania fromAustria-Hungary and Bessarabia fromRussia. The result was a countrythat, again by its own not unimpeachable count, was only 72 per cent Romanian in 1930. Although only about two thirdsof both Romania and Poland were composed of citizens of the state nationality,both states constituted themselves as centralized national states and devoted their energies in the years between the wars to the assimilationof national minorities (the Jewish minorityconstituted a partial exception, since both the Romanian and the Polish régimes by the late 1930s came to prefermere persecutionof the Jews withouttrying to assimilate themto the state nationality).21 Both states took pains to reworkadministrative-territorial boundaries so as to integrateand assimilate Ukrainian territories.The autonomythat Galicia had enjoyed under Austria, and which the Polish state had promised the Western powers in 1919 and 1922 that it would maintain, was unceremoniously abolished,22and Galicia in any formdisappeared as an administrativeunit. The

20 Two usefuland complementarysurveys of nationalminorities in interwarPoland are: Stephan Horak, Poiana and Her National Minorities,1919-39: A Case Study (New York: VantagePress, 1961); JerzyTomaszewski, Rzeczpospolita wielu narodów (Warsaw: Czytelnik,1985). For an excellentbrief survey of theUkrainian question in particular,see Bohdan Budurowycz,"Poland and the UkrainianProblem, 1921- 1939," Canadian Slavonic Papers 25.4 (1983): 473-500. For a thoughtfulsurvey of the relevant literature,see Hans-JürgenBömelburg, "Die polnisch-ukrainischen Beziehungen 1922-1939: Ein Literatur-und Forschungsbericht,"Jahrbücher flir GeschichteOsteuropas 39 (1991): 81-102. 21 For a well researched,exceptionally balanced study of thenationality policies of the various Polish governments,see Andrzej Chojnowski, Koncepcje polityki narodowosciowejrzçdów polskich w latach 1921-1939 (Wroclaw,Warsaw, Cracow, Gdansk:Zaklad Narodowy imienia Ossoliiiskich, 1979). 22 See Stepan Ripetskyj, Ukrainian-Polish Diplomatic Struggle 1918-1923 (Chicago: UkrainianResearch and InformationInstitute, 1963).

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veryname Galicia disappeared fromPolish officiallanguage, and EasternGalicia, where the majorityof the Ukrainianslived, was renamed,without any historical precedent,Eastern Little Poland (Matopolska Wschodnia). Ukrainian-inhabited Galicia was divided into threepalatinates, the bordersof which were drawnup so as to encompass as many non-Ukrainiansas possible (Stanyslavivpalatinate was 70 per cent Ukrainian,Ternopil 50 per cent and Lviv 36 per cent). The Polissian palatinate was designed so that Ukrainians made up only 18 per cent of the population.23 (These figures are from the official statistics of 1921.) The Romanian "Law on AdministrativeUnification" of 1925 redrewcounty lines so as to eliminate some largely Ukrainian counties altogetherand to dilute the Ukrainian percentage in othercounties. The constitutionof 1935 did away with provinces as administrativeunits, including the provinceof Bukovina.24 Both states made a practice of hiring primarily members of the state nationalityinto the civil service. They dismantledthe Ukrainian school system that had been inheritedfrom the Austrianera and replaced it with a bilingual system in which Ukrainian was treatedas a stepchild.25They used their land reformsfor nationalist aims. When large estates were parcelled in Ukrainian- inhabited territories,much of the land was given to Polish and Romanian colonists instead of to the land-hungrylocal Ukrainian peasantry.26They gave support to the Russophile vestiges in Galicia and Bukovina, artificially prolongingtheir life spans as partof a policy of divide-and-rule. Both régimes also pursued nationalisticreligious policies. The Ukrainians in Bukovina were mainly, and in Bessarabia exclusively, of the Orthodox confession, as were most Romanians. The Orthodox church in both these regions was Romanized in the interwarperiod. In Bukovina, the Ukrainianvicar who had been nominatedfor episcopal officeduring World Wai*I was dismissed, a churchcouncil of 1921 renamed what had been known officiallyas the "Greek Orientar*church the "Orthodox-Romanian"church, and in 1925 the autonomous Bukovinian metropolis was subordinatedto the Romanian patriarch.Ukrainian clergymenwere denied higheroffice in the churchand Ukrainianaspirants to the priesthood were frequentlydenied admittanceto seminaries.27In Poland such a

23 Papierzyríska-Turek,Sprawa ukrainska 20. -4 Bukovyna. H mymtlei suchasne, ed. D. Kvitkovs'kyi,T. Bryndzan, A. Zhukovs'kyi(Paris, Philadelphia,Detroit: Vydavnytstvo "Zelena Bukovyna,"1956) 331-34. 25 On Bukovina, see H. Piddubnyi,Bukovyna. Ii mymtiei suchasne (SuspiVno- politychnyinarys...) ([Kharkiv], 1928) 141-57. 26 For a contemporaryCommunist critique of the Romanianland reform,see H. Piddubnyi [Gregori Grigorovich],Bukovyns'ke selianstvo v ¡anni (Vienna: Nove selo, 1925) 18-24. 27 Bukovyna,ed. Kvitkovs'kyi18-24.

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:32:57 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 400 JOHN-PAULHMKA powerfulvehicle forPolonization did not exist,since the Poles were Roman Catholics and Ukrainianseither Greek Catholics (in Galicia) or Orthodox (elsewhere).Still, the Polish authorities pursued a consistentpolicy of tryingto weakenthe Ukrainian national aspect in thechurches, by supportingRussophile tendenciesin the Greek Catholic churchin the Lemko regionand also by interveningin UkrainianOrthodox church life to the detrimentof Ukrainian nationalaims. By farthe most drastic action on thepart of thePolish authorities was the "revindication"(conversion into Catholic churches)and outright destructionof hundredsof Orthodox churches in theChetm region, Volhynia and Polissia in thelate 1930s.28 Perhapsthe most egregious anti-Ukrainian incident in East CentralEurope betweenthe wars was the"pacification" of the Ukrainian population of Poland in 1930,an actioncharacterized by beatings and the destruction of property, a large- scale,state-sponsored pogrom.29 The result of such policies in both Poland and Romania was the accumulationof politicalfrustration on thepart of theUkrainians, which would eventuallybe releasedin theform of political violence (terrorism) and orientation on the leading revisionistpower of the age, .However chauvinisticthe policies of the Polish and Romanian governments,it is importantto bearin mindthat they stopped short of thesystematic annihilation of theUkrainian intelligentsia and themass murderby famineimplemented by the Stalinistsin Soviet Ukrainein the 1930s. This meantthat the Ukrainian populationof Poland and Romaniawas constantlyinsulted and frustratedin its efforts,but never effectively broken. Comparing the treatment of Ukrainiansin Stalin's SovietUnion and in interwarPoland and Romania,one is remindedof Machiavelli^ dictum:"Men musteither be caressedor else annihilated;they will revengethemselves for small injuries, but cannot do so forgreat ones; theinjury thereforethat we do to a manmust be suchthat we neednot fear his vengeance." Czechoslovakiawas quitea differentcase. In 1848the leading spokesman of theCzech nationalmovement, FrantiSek Palacky, had declared that if Austria did notexist it wouldhave been necessaryto inventit. WhenAustria-Hungary did

28 A useful surveyof Orthodoxyin the Polish sectorof WesternUkraine is Ivan Vlasovs'kyi,Narys istorii Ukrains'koiPravoslavnoi Tserkvy, vol. 4: (XX st.), part2 (New York: Ukrains'kaPravoslavna Tserkva v SShA, 1966) 5-177. A recentPolish monographconcerns Polish governmentpolicy towards Orthodoxybetween the wars: Miroslawa Papierzynska-Turek,Miçdzy tradycjça rzeczywistos'ciç.Pañstwo wobecprawoslawia 1918-1939 (Warsaw:Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1989). 29 Emil Revyuk, Polish Atrocitiesin Ukraine (New York: United Ukrainian Organizationsin the United States, 1931). V.J. Kushnir,Polish Atrocitiesin the West Ukraine:An Appeal to theLeague for theRights of Man and Citizen(Vienna: Gerold, 1931).

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:32:57 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WESTERN UKRAINEBETWEEN THE WARS 401 cease to exist in 1918, the Czechs in fact immediatelyset about reinventingit. Czechoslovakia consisted of Austrian Bohemia (i.e., the Bohemian Lands, including Moravia and Austrian Silesia) and Hungarian Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus1, a simplified,ethnically less heterogeneous version of the late Habsburg monarchy.Of the three successor states of Austria-Hungarythat shared WesternUkraine, only Czechoslovakia had its capital in a formerAustrian city, Prague, really Austria's second greatestcity afterVienna. Poland's capital was Warsaw, late of the Russian empire. Romania's was , a Wallachian and, before that,Ottoman-Phanariot city. The Habsburg monarchy thatthe Czechs reinventedwas firmlyguided by enlightenedPrague; therewas no equivalent of the Magyar dominationthat cast a dark shadow over half of the Dual Monarchy. In the twentyyears of Czechoslovak rule, the Ukrainians of Transcarpathiacaught up on much thatthey had missed afterthe 1860s. This is not to say that Czechoslovakia was a model state, but then neitherwas the old Austria. The Czechs had promised Subcaipathian Rus' autonomy, but postponed grantingit until the troubledtwilight of the interwarera, when Hitler began his dismembermentof the countryin the fall of 1938 (the Munich agreementwas signed 30 September 1938, Subcaipathian RusVCarpatho-Ukraine became autonomous de facto on 1 1 October and de jure on 22 November).30 The procrastinationwith regard to autonomy was one of the two issues thatsoured the Transcarpathians'attitude towards Prague. The otherwas the westernborder of the province of SubcarparthianRus', which leftso many Ukrainians outside theirown province in the Presov region of the province of Slovakia. Still, there had been no Ukrainian,or largelyUkrainian, administrative unit in old Hungary, and the creation of Subcarpathian Rus' representedan advance in that regard. Moreover, the province of Subcarpathian Rus' never disappeared as an administrativeentity, as did Galicia and Bukovina in Poland and Romania; the latter regions, furthermore,had been created as administrativeunits by the preceding Austrian régime. Finally, Prague generally respected the essential Ukrainian character of both Subcarpathian Rus' and the Presov region and recruitedlocal Ukrainians into the civil service, albeit primarilyin subordinate and auxiliarycapacities. In no sphere was the essential differencebetween the naturesof the régimes so apparentas in education. Poland had inheriteda Ukrainianelementary school systemfrom Austria. In 1924 therewere 2,151 Ukrainianelementary schools in Poland; in thatsame year, however, the Ukrainian school systemfell victim to

30 See PeterG. Stercho,Diplomacy of Double Morality:Europe's Crossroads in Carpatho-Ukraine1919-39 (New York: CarpathianResearch Center, 1971).

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:32:57 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 402 JOHN-PAULHIMKA theso-called "lex Grabski" which left only 716 Ukrainianschools in existence fiveyears later, most of therest having been converted to bilingualPolish- Ukrainianschools. Romania inherited 216 Ukrainianschools from the Austrian period;within a decade all hadbeen converted tobilingual Romanian-Ukrainian schoolsand evenpure Romanian schools. Czechoslovakia inherited almost nothingin theway of a Ukrainianschool system from the former Hungary. In the 1913-14school year there were only 34 elementaryschools in all of Transcaipathiawith some form of Ukrainian (or Russian) in the curriculum. By 1931the Czechoslovak authorities had established 425 schoolsin Subcarpathian Rus' in whichsome variant of thelocal languageserved as thelanguage of instruction;about a hundredsuch schools also existed in the Pre§ov region. As forhigher education, the Polish state reneged on itspromise to theWestern powersto establisha Ukrainianuniversity,31 closed down the pre-existing Ukrainianchairs at the University ofLviv, restricted Ukrainian attendance atthe latterinstitution in the 1920s and drove the underground Ukrainian university, whichhad flourished in the 1920s, out of existence. No Ukrainianinstitution of higherlearning was permittedin Romaniaeither and the pre-existing chair of Ukrainianlanguage at theUniversity ofChernivtsi was abolished. By contrast, Czechoslovakia,with a Ukrainianpopulation less thana tenththe size of Poland's,hosted and partially subsidized the Ukrainian Free University inPrague (1921-30)and the Ukrainian Husbandly Academy in Podëbrady (1922-35). The landreform in easternCzechoslovakia was slow,but it benefitted primarilythe local Ukrainianpeasantry;*" the land was notparcelled out to Czechand Slovak colonists. It shouldbe noted,however, that the landowners in Transcaipathiawere Magyar, while those in Galicia and Volhynia were Polish andthose in Bukovina Romanian. Hence the Polish and Romanian régimes had moreto lose, from the national point of view, than did the Czechs from the land reform. TheCzechoslovak régime did meddle in the debate over national identity in SubcarpathianRus1, shifting from a Ukrainophileto a Russophileto a Rusynophilepolicy. The latter policy, pursued in themid- 1930s, was intended to instillloyalty to the Czechoslovak state as wellas to weakensupport for the

31 Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak,"The Ukrainian Universityin Galicia: A PervasiveIssue," Harvard UkrainianStudies 5.4 (1981): 497-545. *¿ In SubcarpathianRus1 239,000 hectaresbecame subjectto distributionin 1920. By the end of 1934, however,only 57,000 hectareshad actuallybeen distributed, withthe local Ukrainianpeasantry forming the overwhelmingmajority of recipients (86 per cent). (Another36,000 hectareswere leftin the possessionof the original owners).Jos. Jirkovsky, "Pozemková reforma na PodkarpatskéRusi," in Podkarpatská Rus, ed. Jaroslav Zatloukal (Bratislava: Klub pfátel Podkarpatské Rusi, 1936) 147-48.

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:32:57 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WESTERNUKRAINE BETWEEN THE WARS 403 dynamic Ukrainian movement,which Prague viewed with increasingsuspicion. Still, the Czechoslovak governmentwas interveningin an ongoing debate carried on among the Ukrainians of Czechoslovakia themselves, not merely constructing Trojan horses, as was the case with government support of Russophilism in Poland and Romania. The religious policy of the Czechoslovak régime in Transcarpathia concentratedon the eliminationof Magyar influencein Ukrainianecclesiastical life. The authoritiespermitted the reemergenceof the Orthodox church,which was Russophile in orientation,and encouraged Rusynophilism in the Greek Catholic church. In sum, Ukrainians in Czechoslovakia lived underthe mie of law in a state that sought to guide them, educate them and retain their loyalty. The Czechoslovak state did not live up to all the hopes invested in it or to all the promises it made, but it did stop well shortof the sort of assimilatorypolicies pursued in both Poland and Romania.

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY Poland and Romania, like East Central Europe more generally, were economically underdeveloped,with larger agrarian than industrial sectors. Indeed, in the whole region only Czechoslovakia had a developed capitalisteconomy. In 1930, forexample, only 22 per cent of the gainfullyemployed males in Poland and 11 per cent of the same in Romania worked in manufacturing; in Czechoslovakia therate was 41 per cent,higher than that of Austria(33 per cent) and approaching that of Great Britain (50 per cent). Poland's and Romania's exportsconsisted largelyof foodstuffs,raw materialsand semi-manufactures(77 per cent and 99 per cent respectivelyin 1929-38); Czechoslovakia's exportswere mainly finished goods (71 per cent).33 The general poverty of Poland and Romania was shared by theirUkrainian populations, the relative prosperityof Czechoslovakia was not- Transcarpathiaremained an economic backwaterin the interwarera. The population of WesternUkraine consisted overwhelminglyof peasants. In 1921, 94 per cent of the Ukrainian population of and 95 per cent of the Ukrainian population of Volhynia lived in the countryside. The situationwas similar in Bukovina. In SubcarpathianRus' and the Presov region 83 per cent of the Ukrainianpopulation was employed in agricultureand forestry in 1930. The holdings of West Ukrainian peasants were small. In the early

33 AntonyPolonsky, The Little Dictators: The Historyof Eastern Europe since 1918 (London and Boston: Routledge& Kegan Paul, 1975) 175, 178.

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1920s dwarfholdings of less thantwo hectares accounted for 14 percent of the farmsin Volhynia,53 per cent in Lviv palatinate,55 per cent in Ternopil palatinateand 68 percent in Stanyslavivpalatinate.34 Although the land reform helpedalleviate Ukrainian land hunger in Czechoslovakia,this relief was meager and short-livedand pressureon the land soon mountedagain. In the late nineteenthand earlytwentieth centuries, emigration from Western Ukraine to NorthAmerica had helpedto reducerural overpopulation and bring extra money into the region; but between the wars both America and Canada enacted legislation aimed at restrictingthe immigrationof Southernand Eastern Europeansas well as Asians.The closingof thistraditional escape routecast a pall over West Ukrainianrural life betweenthe wars. There was also no developmentof industryin WesternUkraine to absorbexcess ruralpopulation; farmsgrew smaller and smalleras theywere divided among children. The great depressionof the1930s only intensified the misery. The only aspect of Ukrainianeconomic activitythat flourished in the interwarperiod was thecooperative sector. The cooperativesof Galicia, with about 350,000 membersin 1930, were particularlysuccessful, but Ukrainian cooperativesalso existed in Volhynia,Bukovina and SubcaipathianRus'.35 Amongthe most profitable of thecooperatives was Maslosoiuz,which exported butterand otherdairy productsacross Europe. The Ukrainiancooperative movementin Poland was able to employeducated Ukrainianswho would otherwisehave been withoutjobs, to fundpublications and to supportother political and culturalactivities. The success of the cooperativemovement reflected,and was dependentupon, the mobilization of thefemale population, since in the traditionalUkrainian farmstead women had responsibilityfor the cows and poultrywhose productsconstituted the mainstayof cooperative commodities. WesternUkrainian society consisted, as alreadynoted, primarily of peasants. Theyhad only recently emerged from a naturaleconomy and they were retreating backinto it in theface of theeconomic difficulties of theinterwar era. They were less mobilethan they had been before1914, and in Galicia and Bukovinathe qualityof theeducation available to themdeclined. The citieswere largely non- Ukrainian.Polish was thelanguage of WesternUkraine's greatest city, Lviv, and non-Ukrainians- Poles, Romanians,Jews, Czechs and Magyars- formedthe majorityof WesternUkraine's urban population.

34 Papierzyríska-Turek,Sprawa ukraiñska 24, 26. Magocsi,Shaping of a National Identity355. 35 On the cooperativemovement in WesternUkraine between the wars, see Illia Vytanovych,Istoriia ukrains'kohokooperatyvnoho riikhu (New York: Tovarystvo ukrains'koikooperatsii, 1964) 315-496.

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There was a small but dynamic Ukrainian intelligentsia able to provide national leadership and develop the nationalculture. In Poland and Romania this intelligentsiawas frustratedin its advancementby the discriminatorypolicies of the régimes, which tended to exclude Ukrainiansfrom the civil service and also curtailed opportunitiesfor Ukrainians to be employed in educational and other culturalinstitutions funded by the state. There were also several thousand clergymen in Western Ukraine who enjoyed an influencequite disproportionateto theirnumber. The Greek Catholic clergyof Galicia and Bukovina and the Basilian orderin Transcarpathiatended to be nationallyconscious Ukrainians.36The Orthodoxclergy, however, was often drawn into anti-Ukrainian political orientations. The Orthodox clergy in Transcarpathia was almost exclusively Russophile, a good portion of the Orthodox clergy in Bukovina and Bessarabia succumbed to Romanization and some Orthodox churchmenin Volhynia and Polissia, particularlyhigher clergy, preferredto preservethe traditionalRussian characterof theirchurch. The secular Greek Catholic clergy in Transcarpathiatended to be Rusynophile in national orientation,sometimes witha pro-Hungarianslant as well. In Galicia Ukrainian society was highly disciplined. When Galician Ukrainian political leaders issued a call in 1922 to boycottPolish parliamentary elections, so as not to imply recognitionof Polish rule over Western Ukraine, the people obeyed; while in the mainlyPolish palatinatesof Warsaw and Poznan 84 and 87 per cent of the eligible voters took part in the elections, the participationin Lviv palatinate was 52 per cent, in Temopil 35 per cent and in Stanyslaviv 32 per cent.37Galician Ukrainiansociety was also highlyorganized. Some of the most importantorganizations were: the adult-education society Prosvita, which had 1 1,065 membersin 1925 and sponsored 2,036 reading halls with a combined membershipof 121,651; the Ridna shkola society, which, in the face of governmentharassment, established and maintainedUkrainian private schools (23 elementaryschools and 10 secondaryschools in the 1926-27 school year); the scouting organization , which had about 6,000 members in Western Ukraine when it was banned by the Polish authorities in 1930 (it continued to exist underground); and the Union of Ukrainian Women (Soiuz ukrainok) which was able to organize an impressive mass demonstrationin

36 See AndrewDennis Sorokowski,"The Greek-CatholicParish Clergy in Galicia, 1900-1939" (Ph.D. diss., U of London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 1991). -u Papierzyñska-Turek,Sprawa ukrainska135.

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Stanyslavivin 1934.38With the exception of thewomen's organization, all the associationsnamed above had beenfounded back in theAustrian period, as had been the Maslosoiuz cooperative.After Galicia, Bukovina was the most organizedof the West Ukrainianterritories. In Transcarpathiamost types of organizationsexisted in duplicateor even triplicate, because of the rivalry among the nationalorientations. Thus, forexample, two significantadult-education societiescompeted in theregion - Prosvita,with a Ukrainianorientation, and the Russophile/RusynophileDukhnovych Society.

THE POLARIZATIONOF WESTUKRAINIAN POLITICAL LIFE Whatwas trueof Europeanpolitics as a wholein theinterwar era was truealso of WesternUkraine: there was an intensepolarization between left and right and a drasticdecline by the 1930s in thesize and effectivenessof democraticand moderateforces.39 Communismfigured prominently in WesternUkraine, especially in the 1920s. WestUkrainian Communism was essentiallyof twotypes. The firsttype was thatof the formerAustrian territories of Galicia and Bukovina.In these regionsCommunism was not a mass movement,especially not among the Ukrainianpopulation, but it did exerta powerfulattraction on intellectuals. What attractedthem, besides the radical political doctrinethat sought to transformhuman relations, were the developmentsin neighbouringSoviet Ukraine.The UkrainianSoviet Socialist Republic was a state-likeentity where thestate apparatus was beingsystematically Ukrainianized in themid- 1920s and wherea vibrantUkrainian culture was beingcreated. It appearedmuch more attractivethan Poland and Romania.A numberof Galician and Bukovinian intellectualsactually emigrated to the USSR in the twenties.Aside fromthe Sovietophileintelligentsia, there were also hardcoreMarxist revolutionaries who worked in the illegal Communistparties of Poland and Romania. The CommunistParty of WesternUkraine, an autonomousunit within the Polish Communistparty, had a particularlydistinguished history.40 In 1928 it became

38 Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak,Feminists despite Themselves: Women in UkrainianCommunity Life, 1884-1939 (Edmonton:Canadian Instituteof Ukrainian Studies, 1988) 149-280. 39 Programmaticpolitical documents from interwar Western Ukraine can be found in Ukrains'kasuspiVno-politychna dumka v 20 stolitti,Taras Hunczak[Hunchak] and Roman Solchanyk [Sol'chanyk] eds., II ([Munich]: Suchasnist',1983). Ukrainian politicalparties in interwarPoland are surveyedin JerzyHolzer, Mozaika polityczna Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej(Warsaw: Ksi^zka i Wiedza, 1974) 241-53, 531-51. 40 Janusz Radziejowski, The CommunistParty of WesternUkraine 1919-1929 (Edmonton:Canadian Instituteof UkrainianStudies, 1983). Roman Solchanyk,"The

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:32:57 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WESTERNUKRAINE BETWEEN THE WARS 407 the firstCommunist party to correctlyassess the danger posed by Stalinism and in the following year its leaders were expelled fromthe Cominternfor objecting to Stalinist nationality policy in Soviet Ukraine. Among the party's theoreticians was the brilliant Marxist historian and interpreterof Marx's thought,Roman Rosdolsky.41 Stalinism put an end to the popularityof Communism among Galician and Bukovinian intellectuals. In the 1930s some of the leaders of the Soviet Ukrainiancultural renaissance were killingthemselves in protestagainst Stalin's policies; many more, however,were perishingin the White Sea region and other places of punishment.The West Ukrainian intellectualswho had emigratedto Soviet Ukraine were rounded up and condemned to death. Worstof all, in 1932- 33, in connection with the total collectivization of agriculture,a man-made famine took five to six million lives in Soviet Ukraine. The infatuationwith Communism was over forthe Ukrainianintelligentsia of Galicia and Bukovina. The second type of Communism survived into the thirties.Its geographical base was Transcarpathia and Volhynia, i.e., territoriesof the Hungarian and Russian legacies, poor regions with more than the normalWest Ukrainian share of illiteracy.Here, as in WesternBelarus, Communism was a mass movement. In the last reasonably free elections of interwar Poland, those of 1928, Communistfront parties in Volhynia received 48 per cent of the vote (in Eastern Galicia theyreceived 13 per cent). In SubcarpathianRus' the Communistparty, which was legal in Czechoslovakia, received 39 per cent of the vote in 1924, while the victoriousgovernment coalition only received 40 per cent; in 1935 the Communists were still able to poll 24 per cent of the vote. In these regions not Soviet nationality policy, but the social Utopian appeal of Communism determined the loyalties of the adherents, land-hungryand poorly educated peasants. The centerof the political spectrumwas occupied by the UkrainianNational Democratic Alliance, best known by its Ukrainian acronym UNDO. It was formedin Lviv in 1925 by a union of moderate nationalistgroups. It published an excellent daily newspaper, Duo, dominated Ukrainianrepresentation in the Polish diet and enjoyed close relations with the cooperative sector and other voluntary associations, especially with Prosvita and the Union of Ukrainian

Foundationof the CommunistMovement in EasternGalicia, 1919-1921," Slavic Review 30.4 (1971): 774-94. Roman Solchanyk, "The Comintern and the CommunistParty of WesternUkraine, 1919-1928," Canadian Slavonic Papers 23.2 (1981): 181-97. 41 JanuszRadziejowski, "Roman Rosdolsky:Man, Activistand Scholar,"Science & Society 42.2 (1978): 198-210.

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Women.UNDO was theUkrainian mainstream party in Galicia. In the 1930s it began to lose theability to attractyouth, not only because mostplaces in the leadershipwere occupied,but also because its moderatepolicies provedboth ineffectivevis-à-vis the Polish régime and unsatisfyingto a new generationof frustrated,angry young men and women.In 1935UNDO embarkedon a program of "normalization,"i.e., an attemptto reacha modus vivendiwith the Polish state.This founderedbadly because the stateauthorities made no substantial concessionsto the Ukrainians.Nonetheless, and in spiteof oppositionto the normalizationfrom within UNDO itself(among the editorsof Dilo), this attemptat accommodationlingered on until1939. There was a partysimilar to UNDO in Bukovina,the Ukrainian National Party, which was foundedin 1927 and lasteduntil 1938, when all politicalparties in Romaniawere dissolved. The weeklyRidnyi krai was associatedwith the Ukrainian National Party. The so- called "national-democratic"tendency, which UNDO andthe Ukrainian National Partyrepresented, was a survivorfrom the Austrianperiod, to whichit was bettersuited. Also survivingfrom the previous era weremoderate socialist parties. The radical party,which was in factthe oldestUkrainian political party (founded 1890), was an anticlerical,agrarian socialist party based in Galicia. In themid- 19208it united with what remained of the Ukrainian socialist-revolutionary party in Volhynia to formthe UkrainianSocialist Radical Party.The radicals constituteda moreor less loyalopposition to UNDO withinGalician Ukrainian society.42Ukrainian social democraticparties were active in bothGalicia and Bukovina,as theyhad beensince before the world war. In theinterwar era social democracyin both territorieswavered betweenpro- and anti-Communist programs.43 In discussingthe moderate currents in Ukrainianpolitics, it is necessaryto mentionthat there were also WestUkrainian political activists and groupswho cooperatedwith, rather than opposed, the government parties. Because in both Romaniaand CzechoslovakiaUkrainians formed such a smallpercentage of the total population, it made some sense for Ukrainians to work within Czechoslovakor Romanianparties. This was,of course,much more fruitful and muchmore widespread in Czechoslovakiathan in Romania.The fewUkrainian politiciansin Poland whojoined theNon-Party Bloc forCooperation with the Governmentwere ostracized by their conationals.

42 See the memoirsof an interwarradical activist:Ivan Makukh,Na narodnii sluzhbi (Detroit:Vydannia Ukrains'koi vil'noi hromady Ameryky, 1958). 43 The memoirs of an interwarGalician social democrat:Antin Chernets'kyi, Spomynyz moho zhyitia(London: Nashe slovo, 1964).

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Althoughmoderate, Austrian-bom national democracy seemed to dominate West Ukrainian political life, this appearance became more clearly recognizable as a mirage as the interwarera advanced. Already in the early 1920s a new, postwar ideology- Communism- was demonstratingconsiderable dynamism and even, in the form of Sovietophilism, penetratingdeeply into the national democratic camp. In the 1930s national democracy lost even more ground to anotherspecifically postwar ideology: the nationalismof theradical right. Before turningdirectly to an account of radical-rightnationalism, it will be useful to sketchsome of the internalsources of its ideological and organizational formation.44 The leading theorist of radical-right nationalism, Dmytro Dontsov,45 took some of his ideas fromthe conservativeUkrainian right.This conservative righthad two distinguishable,but often over-lapping currents:a monarchistcurrent, associated withthe ideologue Viacheslav Lypynsky,46and a conservativeCatholic current,the outstandingrepresentative of which was Osyp Nazaruk,47 editor of the newspaper Nova zoria. Ukrainian monarchismwas an entirely postwar (or more precisely: postrevolutionary)phenomenon, while Catholic conservatismhad its predecessorsin prewarGalicia. As was the pattern elsewhere in Europe at the time,the radical rightin WesternUkraine borrowed certain ideological principles fromthe conservativeright, but was both willing and able to harness to its ideology a mass movement.The conservativeright was contentto remain a numericallylimited elite. The most importantorganizational predecessor of radical-rightnationalism was the Ukrainian Military Organization, known by its Ukrainian acronym UVO.48 After the suppression of the Ukrainian National Republic in both

44 See the special monographdevoted to this problem:Alexander J. Motyl,The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of ,1919-1929 (Boulder: East EuropeanMonographs, 1980). 45 Mykhailo Sosnovs'kyi, Dmytro Dontsov. Politychnyiportret. Z istorii rozvytkuideolohii ukrains'kohonatsionalizmu (New York: TridentInternational, 1974). 46 The Political and Social Ideas of VjaÖeslav Lypyns'kyj,ed. JaroslawPelenski {Harvard UkrainianStudies 9.3-4) (Cambridge,MA., 1985). 47 Ivan Lysiak-Rudnyts'kyi,"Nazaruk i Lypyns'kyi:Istoriia ikhn'oi druzhbyta konfliktu,"in Viacheslav Lypyns'kyi. ArkhivVII: Lysty Osypa Nazaruka do Viacheslava Lypyns'koho,Ivan Lysiak-Rudnyts'kyi,ed. (Philadelphia: Skhidn'o- evropeis'kyidoslidchyi instytut im. V.K. Lypyns'koho,1976) xv-xcvii. 48 Sribna surma. Spohady i materiialy do diiannia Ukrains'koi viis'kovoi orhanizatsii, Zbirnyk 1, Zynovii Knysh, ed. (Toronto: Sribna surma, [1963]). Zynovii Knysh,Vlasnym ruslom. Ukrains'ka viis'kova orhanizatsiia vid oseny 1922 do lita 1924 roku, Sribna surma, statti,materiialy i dokumentydo diial'nosty Ukrains'koi viis'kovoi orhanizatsii,Zbirnyk 4 (Toronto: Sribna surma, 1966). Zynovii Knysh,Na povni vitryla!(Ukrains'ka viis'kova orhanizatsiia v 1924-1926 rokakh)(Toronto: Sribna surma, 1970).

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Galician and Ukraine, the UVO continuedan undergroundwar against what it perceived to be the Polish régime of occupation. Its methods of struggle- assassinations and assaults on Polish institutionson Ukrainian ethnic territory- were to be adopted by its radical-rightsuccessor, the Organizationof Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The UVO took part in the foundingcongress of the OUN in 1929 and gave the new organizationits own exceptionallygifted and dedicatedleader, Ievhen Konovalets. Introducing these progenitorsdoes not sufficeas an explanation for the phenomenal rise of the OUN in the 1930s. So many factorsseemed to conspire to bring about its creation and subsequent popularitythat one can speak of the rise of the OUN as being (to borrowa concept fromFreud and Althusser)"over- determined." Some of the crucial factors in its rise have already been alluded to: the accumulation of political frustrationin Poland and Romania, the great depression,the damage done to the leftby Stalinismin Soviet Ukraine. To these must be added the collapse of democracy.Already at the startof the interwarera Westerndemocracy was compromisedin theeyes of West Ukrainiansbecause of what theyperceived as the hypocrisyof the Westernpowers; while proclaiming the principle of national self-determination,the great democratic powers- France, Britain, America- nonetheless ignored and opposed the aspirations of Ukrainians to independentstatehood49 and, in particular,awarded indisputably Ukrainian Galicia to Poland. Then democracies began to disappear from the whole continent- Italy startedthe trend- untilby the eve of the Second World War enervatedBritain and France were the only European powers to hold to the old faith. Throughout Eastern Europe, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, dictatorshipsemerged in the 1930s. The generationof the 1930s in Poland and Romania learned nothingin school about democraticprinciples and knew of free elections only through the tales of their impotentelders. They had lost all experience of as well as all faithin democraticvalues. Fiercely nationalistic,desperate, unencumbered by democraticscruples, the West Ukrainian youthof the 1930s could only take cheer fromthe rise of Hitler in Germany. After 1933 there existed a power in Europe, increasingly the greatestsingle power in Europe, thatwas openly revisionist,that unequivocally stood for overturningthe postwar settlementthat the West Ukrainians found so hateful.Nazi Germany, with its concept of ein Volk, ein Reich, seemed to aim at redrawing Europe's borders on the ethnic principle (which is what Hitler

49 The Westerndemocracies' lack of sympathyfor Ukrainian national aspirations emerges clearly fromAnglo-American Perspectives on the Ukrainian Question, 1938-1951: A DocumentaryCollection, ed. LubomyrY. Luciuk and Bohdan S. Kordan(Kingston, ON.: LimestonePress, 1987).

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:32:57 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WESTERNUKRAINE BETWEEN THE WARS 411 actually did until March 1939). Hitler's anti-Communist,anti-Russian and anti- Polish policies could not but appeal to the youth of Western Ukraine. OUN grew withthe popularityof Germanyamong West Ukrainianyouth. They chose to close theireyes to the anti-Slavic racism of the Nazis, althoughthey saw (and generallyunderestimated) the anti-Semitism,which ended up infectingmany of them.50 The key point of OUN' s ideology was the subordination of absolutely everythingto the goal of establishingan independentUkrainian nation-state.51 Voluntarism,irrationalism, social Darwinism and the Führerprinzip52were also ingredients in the heady ideological concoction that the nationalist youth imbibed. The young nationalistshad theirown tightdiscipline, salute, code of - conduct,banner, greeting everythingwhich went withthe radical-right political style. They had immense faith in the future,great hopes for the European cataclysmthey saw coming. They representedthe end of theinterwar era.

Western Ukraine was, in sum, in an unenviable position in the interwarperiod. Denied its rightto national self-determinationin the aftermathof World War I, it was occupied by neighbours who sought, however futilely,to assimilate it. Only Czechoslovakia was betterdisposed, but its Ukrainianpopulation was the smallest and overall the most backward. Economic development throughout Western Ukraine was at best stagnant and in some respects retrogressive. - Peasants without hope or with wild, transrationalhopes - and a profoundly frustrated,down-at-the-heel intelligentsia provided fertilesoil forthe growthof radical, twentieth-centuryideologies, firstof the left,then of the right.Although the overall environmentwas so unfavourable,and unhealthy,not all that was

50 Anti-Semitismin Ukraineis a poorlyresearched topic. It is clear,however, that anti-Semitismwas neverprominent in the platformof OUN or Ukrainiannationalism generally.In thisrespect right-wing Ukrainian nationalism differed profoundly from its Hungarian,Polish and Romaniancounterparts. 51 For a collectionof officialOUN documents,see OUN v sviilipostanov velykykh zboriv, konferentsiita inshykhdokumentiv z boroVby1929-1955 r., Biblioteka ukrains'kohopidpil'nyka, 1 (N.p., 1955). 5" "Ukrainiannationalism will build the structureand social lifeof the stateon the healthyprinciples of leadership.The foundationand personificationof thisprinciple will be the Head of State,the Leader of the Nation,as thebearer of sovereignty,the symbolof its spiritualand political unity,as its highestauthority and helmsman." "Peredmova,"Politychna Prohrama i Ustrii Orhanizatsii Ukrainskykh Natsionalistiv (N.p., 1940) 17. On the OUN's "outrightadherence to the Fiihrerprinzip"see also John A. Armstrong,Ukrainian Nationalism, 2nd ed. (Littleton,CO.: Ukrainian AcademicPress, 1980) 39.

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:32:57 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 4 12 JOHN-PAULHIMKA nurturedin WesternUkraine was tainted.A vitalself-reliance was forgedin this era thatearned over into the emigration and contributed much to theconstruction of the impressivelyorganized Ukrainiandiaspora in NorthAmerica. An exceptionallydynamic national consciousness was cultivatedin thisperiod, too, one which has not only served the diaspora well, but which contributed disproportionatelyin recent years to thesurvival and revivalof theUkrainian nationalidea in Ukraineitself.

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