Canadian Slavonic Papers Poland and the Ukrainian Problem, 1921-1939 Author(s): BOHDAN BUDUROWYCZ Source: Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 25, No. 4 (December 1983), pp. 473-500 Published by: Canadian Association of Slavists Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40868197 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 19:35 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Canadian Association of Slavists and Canadian Slavonic Papers are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 19:35:37 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ARTICLES BOHDAN BUDUROWYCZ Poland and the UkrainianProblem, 1921-1939 "The Polish people have to realizethat their attitude towards the minori- ties will determineto a largeextent the fateof Poland. ThereforeI regardall manifestationsof hatredand impatiencedirected against the minoritiesas blundersfor which Poland, sooner or later,will have to pay."1 These memorablewords were uttered in thePolish Sejm on 24 Janu- ary 1938,not by a minoritydeputy or bya representativeof the opposition, but by General Felicjan Slawoj-Skladkowski,the PrimeMinister of Po- land and Ministerof the Interior. Indeed, the minority problem was one of themost urgent and perplexingissues facing the Polish Republic during the interwarperiod. Basically,there were two approachesto theproblem of nationalmi- noritiesin Poland,both of them developed before the end ofWorld War I.2 The firstof them,elaborated chiefly by National Democratic theoreticians and knownas theprogramme of incorporation,was based on the slogan "Poland for the Poles." It denied the politicaland culturalrights of the non-Polishminorities, regarding them as second-classcitizens, who were eitherto be Polonized (in thecase of theUkrainians and Belorussians)or (as in the case of the Jews)completely isolated from Polish society.The second conception,known as the federalistprogramme, later associated largelywith Józef Püsudski, favoured resolving the problem by a spiritof 1. Skladkowski'sspeech to the Committeeof Ways and Means (Komisja Budzetowa)of the Sejm, SprawyNarodowosciowe, XII, no. 1-2 (1938), 97. 2. For a detailed discussion of these conceptionssee Roman Wapinski, "Z dziejów tendencjinacjonalistycznych: Ο stanowiskuNarodowej Demokracji wobec kwestiinarodowej w latach 1893-1939,"Kwartalnik Historyczny, LXXX, no. 4(1973), 817-44,and his "Endecja wobec kwestiiukrainskiej ibialoruskiej,"in Slowianiew dziejachEuropy (Poznan, 1974),pp. 301-8,and NarodowaDemokracja 1893-1939(Wroclaw, 1980); J. Lewandowski,Federalizm, Litwa i Biatorusw poli- tyceobozu belwederskiego(Warsaw, 1962); and M. K. Dziewanowski,Joseph Pü- sudski:A EuropeanFederalist, 1918-1922 (Stanford, Calif., 1969). A concisesum- maryof these two approaches is given by Andrzej Chojnowskiin his excellent study,Koncepcje polity ki narodowosciowejrzqdow polskich w latach 1921-1939 (Wroclaw, 1979),pp. 18-26. This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 19:35:37 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 474 I Canadian Slavonic Papers December1983 toleranceand coexistence.Assuming an identityof interestsamong all the nationalitiesof pre-partitionPoland, the supporters of this idea advocated the resurrectionof the old Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth in its his- toricborders of 1772,but in a modernized,federalist form. The various nationalitieswere expected to join thisfederation voluntarily on theun- derstandingthat, given a democraticsystem, such a structurewould auto- maticallyguarantee the rightsof all the non-Polishnationalities. Whenthe Polish-Sovietconflict of 1919-20ended in a stalemate,the hopes of thefederalists had to giveplace to a morerealistic but, in many ways,less satisfactorysolution. As the resultsof the 1921and 1931cen- suses show,over 30% of thepopulation of thereconstructed Polish State consistedof non-Poles.3However, since the two largestterritorial minori- ties- the Ukrainianand the Belorussian- wereconcentrated in the area east of the riversBug and San, the term"national minority"could, as AndrzejChojnowski points out, have been moreappropriately applied to the Polishpopulation in thatarea, whichamounted to only37.8% of the total.4This linguisticand ethnicdiversity was, in thewords of Hans Roos, "theresult of a compromisebetween the concept of a nationalunitary state and a supranationalfederal state."5 The frontierestablished by theTreaty of Riga in March 1921failed to leaveenough Ukrainians and Belorussians on the Polish side to warrantthe creationof a federalstate, but the numbersof those two ethnicgroups were obviously large enough to de- privePoland of thecharacter of a trulynational state. Of course,this situ- ation was not unique in East CentralEurope, wherepractically all coun- triescontained substantial national minorities; nevertheless, it was one of themain causes of theinternal and externalweakness of interwarPoland, since thepolitical, cultural, social, and economicdifferences between the nationalgroups impeded the process of integration and stabilization,while 3. A convenientsummary of the returns of the 1921and 1931censuses with re- gard to nationality,mother tongue, and religiouspersuasion is givenin Werner Markert(Ed.), Polen(Cologne, 1959),p. 37. It has beenclaimed that Polish official statisticsof nationalorigin are unreliable;it is equally true,however, that the fig- uresgiven by some non-Polishsources (e.g., Stephen Horak in hisbook Polandand Her NationalMinorities, 1919-1939 [New York, 1961]) tendto overstatethe per- centageof non-Polishnationalities, putting it as highas 39% in 1931.Most Polish scholarsagree thatthe correctfigure would be somewherebetween 32 and 35%, withthe Ukrainians accounting for 15-16% and theBelorussians for 4-6%(see Choj- nowski,Koncepcje polityki, p. 6). 4. Chojnowski,Koncepcje polityki, p. 6. 5. Hans Roos, A Historyof ModernPoland (New York, 1966),p. 96. This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 19:35:37 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Vol.xxv, No.4 Poland and the UkrainianProblem | 475 thedissatisfaction of theminorities - mostnotably the Ukrainians - after thefailure of theiraspirations to independencetended to keepsome parts of thecountry in a stateof continuousunrest and agitation.It is not sur- prising,therefore, that some Polish politicians,supported by a consider- able part of public opinion,began to demand thatthe Slavic minorities westof theRiga frontierbe assimilatednot only politically but also cultur- ally and linguistically.Thus, the resurrectedPoland was on itsway to be- coming,to use Roos's phrase,"a multi-nationalstate with a uni-nationalist ideology."6 The legal statusof nationalminorities in Poland was definedand re- gulatedby provisionsof thePolish constitutions of 17 March 1921and 23 April 1935and by severalinternational agreements. The firstof thesewas theMinorities Treaty of 28 June1919, according to whichPoland assumed the unilateralobligation to assure thatPolish nationalswho belongedto racial,religious, or linguisticminorities should enjoy full civil and political rightsand receivethe same treatment, in law and infact, as theother Polish nationals.7Poland agreedfurther that any memberof the Council of the League of Nations would have the rightto bringto the attentionof the Council any infractionof these obligations.8The second international agreementwas the Treatyof Riga, whose ArticleVII stipulatedthat all personsof Russian,Ukrainian, and Belorussianorigin living on theterri- toryof the PolishState were entitled to cultivatetheir national languages, organizeand supportnational schools, practise their forms of religion, de- velop theirnational cultures,and establishfor that purpose special as- sociationsand organizations.9 Amongthe national minorities of Poland, theUkrainians were by far the most numerous.According to officialstatistics, they comprised an absolute majorityin the provincesof Stanislawów(69.8% in 1928) and Volhynia(68.4%), a pluralityin theprovince of Tarnopol(close to 50%), and a substantialproportion of thepopulation in theprovinces of Lwów (35.8%) and Polesie (17.7%). In addition,they formed a narrowwedge in thesouthern part of theprovince of Cracow and werealso concentratedin 6. Ibid. 7. "Treatyof Peace betweenthe United States of America, the British Empire, France,Italy, and Japan,and Poland," in H. W. V. Temperley(Ed.), A Historyof thePeace Conferenceof Paris, V (London, 1921), Art. 2, pp. 439-40. 8. Ibid., Art. 12, p. 442. 9. Dokumentyi materialy do historiistosunków polsko-radzieckich, III (War- saw, 1964), No. 275, p. 581. This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 19:35:37 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 476 I Revue Canadiennedes Slavistes Décembre1983 some easterndistricts of the provinceof Lublin, forming,respectively, 2.4% and 3% of the populationof thoseprovinces. They were moreover onlya partof a largerethnic entity of morethan 30 million,spreading far into Sovietterritory