controlled by the Polish government. Thus in 1929 they allowed the
organization of a Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Warsaw in the hope
that it would outshine the Shevchenko Scientific Society of Lviv, and
that it would not develop the national and political consciousness that
there would be in an organization in Lviv, where the entire historical
tradition was permeated with the old struggle between the Ukrainians
and Poles.
There was no open attempt to destroy the various Ukrainian political
parties which were able to elect members of the Diet. These parties
represented all points of view, from conservatives to socialists, and
their members had the same general treatment as members of the Polish
parties. Yet their growth and functioning were hampered rather by
administrative restrictions than by downright and open dissolution.
There was no attempt to deny the Ukrainian character or traditions
except in so far as the Poles argued that they were Polish citizens and
therefore should develop Polish culture rather than their own national
usages.
The Poles were obsessed with the idea that there might develop a strong
movement for joining their brothers in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.
It is true that during the period of Ukrainization there did spring
up a certain amount of reciprocity but this remained purely on an
intellectual plane. Bad as conditions were in Poland, the Ukrainians
showed no desire, except in the case of isolated Communists, to join
their brothers and become their companions in misery. Communists were
conspicuously absent in the Ukrainian organizations, for the iron veil
which grew up around the boundaries of the Soviet Union had separated
families and villages, and the few refugees who succeeded in crossing
into Poland did not give encouraging pictures of life under the Soviets.
The Poles were even more suspicious of the Ukrainian Orthodox than
they were of the Greek Catholics. They endeavored to form a Polish
Orthodox Church but this remained either Russian or Ukrainian speaking
and never was coordinated into an efficient whole, for it reflected
the differences of the Orthodox in the different provinces. However,
in 1938, in a tactless move the Poles seized over a hundred Orthodox
Churches and closed them on the pretext that they had once been Uniat
and that therefore they were not properly in Orthodox hands. Such an
act, which drew the protest of Metropolitan Sheptitsky, only succeeded
in antagonizing both the Uniats and the Orthodox against the Poles and
in bringing the two religious groups closer together. It was another of
the many mistakes that were made in the handling of the problem.
It goes without saying that the policy of avoiding a clearcut
settlement of the Ukrainian question reacted badly on the general
position of Poland, for it created the tendency among the Ukrainians to
seek for foreign support. At first they found this in Czechoslovakia,
which gave refuge to the anti-Polish forces among the Ukrainians. Later
some factions tended to look toward Germany for refuge and help.
In 1934 some of the conservative Ukrainians made an attempt to
“normalize” their relations with the Poles and to take a more active
part in the life of the country. Again these attempts really came to
nothing, for the Polish government used them as a sign of Ukrainian
weakening and felt that they did not require mutual concession. As
a result the Ukrainians received little actual relief and this in
turn only called out renewed terrorist attacks, renewed attempts at
pacification and the closing of Ukrainian institutions.
Despite all of these bitter political feuds, the Ukrainian population,
even during the years of depression, continued to solidify its position
in the state. Its co-operative organizations increased in numbers, in
capital and in membership. They became steadily more important and that
progress that had been noted during the last years of Austro-Hungarian
rule proceeded at an even more rapid tempo. The self-consciousness
that had come to the Ukrainians through their attempt at independence
made them more aware of their role and influence in the country and
especially in their special areas than they had been before the War.
Attempts to divide them into Ukrainians and Ruthenians on the ground
of religious and economic differences fell upon sterile soil. By 1939
the Ukrainians of the West were in a much better position than they had
been at any time in the past.
The situation in Western Ukraine aroused grave anxiety on the part of
many sincere friends of Poland as the hour for the Second World War
drew near, It presented many elements of danger to the Polish state
and this danger was magnified by the policy that was adopted by every
political party among the Poles. It seemed impossible for them to
realize that conditions had changed with the abolition of serfdom. That
same controversy which had broken out in the days when Galicia was
still subject to Austria-Hungary continued as a mutual feud, especially
in such areas as Lviv, where there was a large Polish as well as a
Ukrainian population.
The Poles fanned the flame of discord by their policy of antagonism
and by their inability to see the justice of any of the Ukrainian
demands. The restored Polish republic continued on the fatal path of
the seventeenth century by overemphasizing on the one hand a supposed
desire of the Ukrainians to join the Soviet Union as they had joined
Russia earlier, and on the other, by underestimating the strength of
the entire Ukrainian movement. They turned their attention and gave
their confidence only to those people who had been completely Polonized
and they ignored the long and unbroken struggle for equal rights
which the Ukrainians had been carrying on for centuries in the old
Poland, under the rule of the conquerors and later. An isolated and
non-Communist Western Ukraine might have been brought into a Poland
constructed on federal lines, but it could not feel happy as part of
a unified state in which it was treated as inferior in every way and
which was openly working for its complete absorption. After the failure
of the Ukrainian Republic, the Poles regarded the question as closed,
and their very insistence upon this only intensified that opposition
which they fought constantly and affected to ignore. As a result
Western Ukraine remained as a sore in the body politic of Poland,
instead of becoming an element of strength and just as in the past, so
in the present, the feud worked out to the marked disadvantage of both
sides.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
_CARPATHO-UKRAINE_
The fate of Carpatho-Ukraine was quite different. It was represented
in the negotiations that led up to the formation of the Republic of
Western Ukraine, but when the Western Ukrainian armies were forced
eastward by the Poles, the district was left isolated and the various
groups came together and decided upon union with Czechoslovakia.
The ideas of the population on this point were somewhat hazy. They
envisaged a situation where they would form a state within a state,
possessing practically complete autonomy, very similar to the position
of Hungary in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In this connection they were
also influenced by the Slovaks, who had dreams of holding a similar
status. On the other hand, the Czechs certainly thought of a unified
state of the same general type as France and it was the Czech ideas
that were carried out in practice.
On the whole the population of Carpatho-Ukraine was far more
undeveloped politically and nationally than were the other sections.
There were practically no schools in the area and what schools there
were conducted instruction in Hungarian. The Hungarian government also
had been extremely effective in imbuing the educated classes of its
minorities with the idea that their future depended upon merging their
own interests with those of the dominant Magyars. As a result there
were few, outside of the clergy, who had any vital understanding of the
cause of the people.
Besides that, the Ukrainian revival in these northern Hungarian
counties had not progressed as far since 1848 as it had among the
other sections of the Ukrainian people. While there was an active
Ukrainian group in the area, there were also many people who insisted,
contrary to all philological and cultural facts, that their language
was an archaic dialect of Russian and they looked to Russia for all
improvement in their status. This was particularly true of the Orthodox
in the area, even though their bishops were still nominally dependent
upon the Patriarch of Constantinople who retained the same vague powers
of control that he had in mediaeval Kiev. Many of these people, even
when they desired to be free of Hungarian control, still treasured some
sort of belief that they should be attached to Russia and refused to
consider merging their lot with that of the other Ukrainians.
Economic conditions were very bad and the mountainous nature of the
country was responsible for difficulties in communication between the
various mountain valleys, which formed the headwaters of the rivers
flowing down into the Hungarian plains to the south. Many of the
younger men and women emigrated or at least went down to Hungary as
seasonal laborers and the relations with the northern slopes of the
Carpathians were rather weak.
With such a background, effective organization was very difficult
and the Czechs, although they signed a definite agreement with the
representatives of the Carpatho-Ukrainians to grant the country as much
autonomy as was consistent with the unity of the state, did not hurry
themselves to apply this. On the contrary, they took the attitude that
the people would fall of necessity under the control of the Hungarians
and the Jews if they were allowed to handle their own affairs, and they
sent large numbers of Czechs into the area to carry on the essential
government services. There was at times a Carpatho-Ukrainian governor
but his powers were severely limited by the Czech officials who
surrounded him.
At the same time the Czechs opened large numbers of schools in the
area and they did much to spread literacy among the population. It is
certain that during the first ten years of Czech control, the people
of the area were far better off than at any time under Hungary. Yet
the improving conditions could not fail to increase the national
consciousness of the people. It was the Czech hope that when a new
generation, educated in Prague, came into the important offices of
the region, they would be completely satisfied with their position in
Czechoslovakia and that any separatist feelings would be assuaged.
The increase of literacy had another effect upon the people. In the
past many had been content to talk their own dialect without any
thought of grammatical accuracy. Village differed from village and
there were the same differences that had appeared earlier throughout
Ukraine when the first writers were adopting and working out literary
Ukrainian. It became evident that the old ambiguous situation would
pass away. The children in school read Shevchenko and Franko and
the other Ukrainian authors and the general trend was to develop
Carpatho-Ukraine along the same general lines. This displeased many of
those people who had a sentimental attachment to Russian. They tended
to gravitate toward the use of true Great Russian and many of them fell
under Communist influence.
Thus, the period between the Wars was one largely of intensifying the
national feeling in the country and one of considerable material and
intellectual improvement and development. On the whole there were
relatively few of those disorders which had marked the liquidation
of the Republic of Western Ukraine by Poland. Yet tensions continued
to increase, especially after 1925 when the reforms in Hungary by
Jeremiah Smith, acting as financial representative of the League
of Nations, forced the return to the area of many of the former
Hungarian-sympathizing Carpatho-Ukrainians who had been able to
establish themselves in white collar jobs in Hungary. They tried to
recover their old position in the community but were prevented by the
Czech authorities, and so they began an underground campaign to win the
country over to its former rulers.
In 1928 the Czechoslovak government reorganized the whole section as
the province of Podkarpatska Rus, but it still hesitated to grant local
autonomy and the diet that had been promised to the population and had
been persistently withheld. As a result there grew up a marked coolness
between the population and the central government in Prague, which
continued to waver between a definite support of those groups which
were conscious of their Ukrainian character and those which believed
themselves some kind of Russians. In all this the relations between the
Czechs and the Russians played a considerable part. After the signing
of a treaty of alliance between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union in
1933, the Czechs gradually lessened any support of the Ukrainophile
party and at the same time they dropped some of their more ardent
support of the Ukrainians in Prague.
Ill feeling was also generated in the province by the results of the
depression. This had struck hardest in the Sudeten German areas, where
the glass trade was especially affected. It coincided with the rise
of the Henlein party under the influence of the Nazi seizure of power
in Germany and with the strengthening of the followers of Monsignor
Andrew Hlinka in Slovakia, with their demand for full autonomy there.
Naturally all this was carried over into the province of Podkarpatska
Rus and some of those groups which had formerly leaned upon Hungary now
looked toward Germany for support.
The situation came to a head after the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia
at Munich in 1938. The immediate result was the setting up of the
so-called Second Republic, which was greatly decentralized. As
a result, for the first time Carpatho-Ukraine received the local
diet which had been promised and refused time after time during the
preceding twenty years.
This marked a new period of hope not only for the Ukrainians of
Carpatho-Ukraine but also for Ukrainians throughout the world.
Satisfaction in this was however mitigated by the fact that the
Germans, to please Hungary, had turned over to that country large
sections of the land, including the two chief cities of Uzhorod
and Mukachevo, in which the leading educational and governmental
institutions were located. The government was then compelled to meet
in Hust, a small provincial town which contained almost no facilities.
Yet despite all the hardships and the difficulties in setting up a
government, the Ukrainians were enthusiastic, for now, at last, there
was again a centre where Ukrainian life could develop freely without
undue foreign interference. The Czech officials were recalled and the
increasing autonomy of Slovakia completely isolated Carpatho-Ukraine
from Czech influence. Ukrainians from all sections of the dismembered
country flocked to Hust and were able to offer great help and
assistance to the local population. Steps were taken to organize a
small army and as in 1918 they took the name of the Riflemen of the
Zaporozhian Sich. They unfurled the blue and yellow standard of Ukraine
and it became clear to all that Carpatho-Ukraine was on the way to
becoming a free and independent state.
Under the conditions that prevailed, it was necessary for the young
state to remain on friendly terms with Nazi Germany and to seek
its protection against Hungary which was claiming the whole of its
territory. The first Prime Minister, Andrew Brody, was soon removed by
the Czechoslovak government in one of its last acts outside the borders
of Bohemia and Moravia. The power then passed to Monsignor Andrew
Voloshyn, who worked hard and steadily to make the new state successful.
Throughout the winter of 1938–9 progress went on. There were repeated
difficulties with Poland, which wished Hungary to annex the territory
so as to remove the sympathy and support which the Ukrainians of
Eastern Galicia felt for this new centre of Ukrainian freedom. Hungary
continued to press demands upon the new state. Yet President Voloshyn
had definite promises from Germany that its independence would be
safeguarded and that peace would be maintained.
Then came another of those inscrutable changes on the part of Hitler
that had so much to do with the downfall of Nazi Germany. It was
commonly believed that Hitler, in his hatred of both Communism and
Poland, would use the little state of Carpatho-Ukraine as a centre of
Ukrainian propaganda. It was thought that he would foment discontent
in Eastern Galicia, arouse a revolt there and allow the Ukrainians of
Eastern Galicia and Carpatho-Ukraine to unite. Then optimists believed
that ultimately the pressure of Germany would result in the liberation
of Eastern Ukraine and that Ukraine would again be free, even if it
was compelled to remain within the German sphere of influence. Some
Ukrainian leaders, even if they were democratic and opposed to the
principles of Nazism, saw in this the same situation that had occurred
at the time of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk when Ukraine could find no
support in any other quarter.
It was not to be. The German policy can only be understood on the
assumption that friendly relations had already been established
between the Nazis and the Communists. On March 13, at the urging
of Hitler, Slovakia declared its complete independence and this
completely separated Carpatho-Ukraine from the rest of Czechoslovakia.
On March 15, the German troops moved into Prague and on the same day
Carpatho-Ukraine formally declared its independence.
It was almost the last act of the tragedy. The day before, Hungary,
more powerful and willingly a satellite of the Nazis, sent an ultimatum
to the new government. Voloshyn appealed to Hitler to stand by his
promises to maintain the independence of the country and was rudely
rebuffed on the ground that the situation had entirely changed. Without
any delay the Hungarian troops, which had been well-armed by the
Germans, crossed the boundary of Carpatho-Ukraine and attacked Hust.
The Riflemen of the Sich fought bravely under the leadership of the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the head of which was Colonel
Andrew Melnyk, but their light weapons were useless before the heavier
guns of the Hungarians. The government with President Voloshyn, was
forced to flee to Romania and there offered to place itself under
Romanian control. The offer was refused.
The Hungarians met with severe opposition from the little army of
Carpatho-Ukraine and from the armed peasants whose knowledge of the
country served them in good stead. By the beginning of May, the
country had been pacified and brought under full Hungarian control.
Its constitution and name were wiped out, the Hungarian language was
introduced, and the Hungarian government did everything in its power
to bring conditions back to what they had been in 1918. Schools were
closed or Magyarized. Ukrainian institutions were liquidated and a new
era of oppression opened for those people who had been but a few days
before jubilant over their newly won independence.
Apparently the change of policy was connected with the plans of Hitler
to come to terms with Stalin for the division of Eastern Europe, and
the weakening of anti-Communist Ukrainian movements was part of the
larger design. Yet it had a very important result. It completely
destroyed the unnatural alliance between the democratic Ukrainians and
the Nazi Germans. It ended any lingering dreams that there might be a
real friendship between the Germans and the Ukrainians. The result was
that during the next months and years there were no further attempts
to secure German support. When in the fall of 1939 Germany attacked
Poland, there did not come any revolt in Eastern Galicia against the
Poles, despite the increasingly severe measures taken by the Polish
government, and when Germany finally attacked the Soviet Union, she
secured more aid from the dissatisfied Russians than she did from the
Ukrainians whom she had so flagrantly abandoned.
The development of Carpatho-Ukraine was then only another one of the
unsuccessful Ukrainian attempts to win liberty for at least one part of
the divided country, but it showed the growing feeling of unity that
existed amid the overwhelming tragedies of the past years. It played
a disproportionate role in the fateful year of 1939 and it emphasized
anew the important strategic position of Carpatho-Ukraine and indeed of
Ukraine as a whole in the coming struggles.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.
_THE UKRAINIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC_
The seizure of power in Russia by the Bolsheviks gave them the
opportunity to carry out their theories of government, which were
in marked variance to all previous political thought. Hitherto,
everywhere in the world there had been attempts to set up national
or dynastic governments located in definite areas of the earth’s
surface. The Soviets now cast all this into the wastebasket and in
their zeal for an international and worldwide revolution, they planned
to build a government based upon the worldwide community of interests
of the workers and peasants. In theory at least this was to be an
international government and they had high hopes that the laboring
classes of the world would rally to their standard.
It happened that Lenin, Trotsky, and also the vast majority of the
other leaders were Russian and that the seat of the government was in
Moscow, but in theory they cared very little about Russia as such.
In the first heat of their enthusiasm, they even went so far as to
recognize the equality of all the nationalities in the old Russian
Empire and allow them full self-determination and even the right
of secession. The old organization was completely wiped out and a
new structure, the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, was
established.
At this moment the Ukrainian National Republic was struggling to
its feet and the demand was growing for a declaration of complete
independence which was finally adopted on January 9/22, 1918, as we
have seen. It might have been assumed that this coincided with the
decrees adopted by the Bolsheviks and that the way was now cleared for
the development of an independent Ukraine. Yet this explanation was too
simple, for the Bolsheviks had another string to their bow and they had
already commenced to play it.
The Ukrainian Council was an organization working along democratic
lines. The Bolsheviks therefore declared that it did not represent the
workers and peasants. After their discomfiture in Kiev in December,
1917 they retired to Kharkiv and there, on December 13, proclaimed
the existence of a Ukrainian Soviet Republic which would satisfy the
conditions for a real workers’ and peasants’ government. It made no
difference to them that the leaders of this movement were not primarily
Ukrainian, that its organization had been pushed by various Russian
bands which had penetrated into Ukraine, and that its first military
support was furnished by Russian Communists.
This group appointed a Committee which became the executive body under
the name of the All-Ukrainian Revolutionary Committee on January 3,
1918. This consisted of Manuilsky, a Ukrainian who had long lived
in Russia, Rakovsky, a Bulgarian or Romanian Jew, Hrynko, and two
Ukrainian politicians, Zatonsky and Skrypnyk. They proceeded to carry
out the regular Soviet plan of organization and on February 14,
announced a federation with the Russian Soviet Republic. The Soviets
introduced members of this group at the Conference in Brest Litovsk
with the Germans and insisted that it was the true representative
government of Ukraine, but they were compelled to recognize the
regularly constituted Ukrainian government.
The question was more or less academic during the years of civil war,
when the Ukrainian government was struggling against overwhelming odds
to maintain its new-won independence. Yet in theory it was fighting
against the adherents of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, although it was
generally recognized that this was but a puppet of the Russian Soviets
and that the vast majority of the troops at its command were Russian.