This document provides an overview of the situation facing Ukrainian minorities in Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia in the interwar period between World Wars I and II. It discusses the political, cultural, educational, and religious policies of these states that aimed to promote assimilation of Ukrainians and limit their rights. In Poland, there was an antagonism between the government and Ukrainians, who faced restrictions on their language and faced policies designed to favor Poles over Ukrainians. Underground nationalist groups like the Ukrainian Military Organization engaged in terrorist activities to resist Polish rule. Overall, the document outlines the challenges faced by Ukrainian minorities under foreign rule in the interwar period.

1. Didkovska Valeriia
Ukrainian Minorities in the Interwar
Period
31/10/2012

2. Table of Contents
 Ukrainian Minorities
Poland
Romania
Czechoslovakia
 Issues
Political
Cultural
Religious

3. Ukrainian Territories:
 The Soviet Union - most of Ukraine;
 Poland - Galicia, Volhynia, Pollisia (western part
of Ukraine);
 Romania – Bukovina, Bessarabia, Maramures
(South-West part of Ukraine);
 Czechoslovakia – Subcarpathian Rus (North-
West part of Ukraine).

4. The right of national minorities equality before
law, to maintain their own schools and use their
own language in public life were guaranteed by:
Treaty of Versailles (1919)
Treaty of Riga (1921)
National constitutions
"free intellectual development, the
use of their national language, and
the exercise of their religion"

5. POLAND

6. Polish State Policy Towards National
Minorities:
 More tolerant and less assimilationist approach
advocated by Józef Piłsudski
 Assimilationist approach
advocated by Roman Dmowski and Stanisław Grabski
(National Democratic movement).
 Most influential political force in the new postwar state was the National
Democratic movement. The last promoted the idea of a unitary nation-
state. Peoples other than Poles (Lithuanians, Belarusans, Ukrainians)
should be assimilated into the Polish nationality. Linguistic assimilation was
considered to be a major factor for "unifying the state."
Polish Minister for Religion and Public Education in 1923 and 1925–1926,
wrote that "Poland may be preserved only as a state of Polish people. If it
were a state of Poles, Jews, Germans, Rusyns, Belarusians, Lithuanians,
Russians, it would lose its independence again"; and that "it is impossible to
make a nation out of those who have no 'national self-identification,' who call
themselves 'local'(National Democratic movement).

7.  The Eastern part of Poland inhabited 5 million
Ukrainians (about 13% of all population in
Poland).
 Ukrainians were the largest national minority.
 In the early 1920s, the antagonism between the
Polish State and the Ukrainian population (mostly
in Eastern Galicia where the national as well
political and economic consciousness was
advanced) remained strong. Ukrainians refused
to recognize themselves as subjects of alien rule
for many years to come.

8. Educational policy:
 Provincial school administration based in L’viv (functioned in
Austria-Hungarian empire) was abolished. Since then all
decisions were to be made in Warsaw.
 The plan to establish Ukrainian university in L’viv (this demand
was fulfilled before WWI by Ausrtro-Hungarian authorities) was
eliminated by the Polls.
 Polonization in L’viv high educational establishment. Head
positions were possessed by polish professors.
 Higher education was mostly accessible only to Polish citizens.
 Polish administration closed many of the popular Prosvita
Society reading rooms (the number of these rooms reduced
more than three times (from 2879 in 1914 to 843 in 1923).
 According to the law passed in 1924 the use of Ukrainian
language in governmental agencies was banned.
 According to the law passed in 1924 bilingual schools were
organized. The numbed of Ukrainian unilingual schools lessened
rapidly.

9. Oppositions Movement:
 Establishment of Underground Ukrainian University in
L’viv – self-proclaimed illegal humanitarian university
giving education in the Ukrainian language.
 Ukrainian professors were required to take a formal
oath of allegiance to Poland; most of them refused
and left the university in early 1920s.
 Plast National Scout Organization of Ukraine (simply
Plast) – movement which popularized Ukrainian
culture among youth, inculcating youth with a
Ukrainian national identity.

10. Ukrainian Church:
 The Polish policy in Ukraine initially aimed at keeping
Greek Catholic Galicians from further influencing
Orthodox Volhynians.
 Greek Catholic church flourished (Greek Catholic
Theological Academy was established in L’viv,
theological and scholarly journals were published).
 Two "revindication campaigns" were held. The aim
was to deprive the Orthodox of those churches that
had been Greek Catholic before Orthodoxy was
imposed by the tsarist Russian government.
 Many Ortodox churches were closed, destroyed or
converted into Roman Catholic churches.

11. Land reform:
 The land reform designed to favor the Poles in mostly Ukrainian
populated areas.
 For example, while the carrying out the agrarian reform
(agriculture was the dominant element in the economy of
Poland’s Ukrainian lands, so the agrarian question was most
pressing). By the 1938 800 thousands hectares were
redistributed, but not in favor of Ukrainian peasants. About
40%of lands Volhynia and Polissia had been awarded to
veterans of Poland’s war for independence, in eastern Galicia
much land had been given to Polish peasants from the western
provinces.
 About 80% of Ukrainian peasants owned less than 5 hectares of
land that is considered to be insufficiently to provide family with
necessary amount of food.
 20% of population lost their homes and farm during WWI and got
no government support to rebuilt it.

12. Political Life:
Legal (Political parties, Political Oraganizations)
Illegal (Ukrainian Military Organization, West Ukrainian
government-in-exile)
Among Illegal bodies the most influential were:
• The Ukrainian Military Organization.
• The West Ukrainian government-in-exile.

13. Ukrainian Military Organization
 Tough policy was encountered with an underground war
(1919-1922) fought by the nationalistic movements
concentrated around Yevhen Konovalets (first the
Ukrainian Military Organization, latter the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists — OUN since 1929).
 That was the most influential right-wing organization on the
Ukrainian political scene in Poland.
 In fact, UVO was not a political party, but an activist of the
national movement – the secret army of the Ukrainian
state fighting for national rights and independence (terrorist
methods such as sabotage, killings, and repudiations were
used).

14. Purposes of UVO:
 Mobilization of the Ukrainian society;
 To sabotage the occupiers and spread fear across the
administration and the Polish citizens in Eastern
Poland.
 In 1930’s OUN became a highly disciplined underground revolutionary
movement dedicated to the overthrow of Polish, Romanian and Soviet
rule on Ukrainian territories and to establish Ukrainian Independent
state.
 Ideological leader of the movement was Dmytro Dontsov. He believed
that to achieve this aim, an aggressive will and the ability were to take
action, preferably under the direction of e strong leader, were needed.
That idea was translated by OUN into terroristic activity.
 The OUN’s purpose: to destabilized the situation in Poland until
the government finally collapsed.
 (OUN opposed UNDO and other political parties which worked through
legal channels. Legal political parties and other groups, as well as still-
prestigious Greek Catholic metropolitan Andrei Steptets’kyi, publicly
denounced the terrorist activities of OUN).

15. Western Ukrainian Government-in-exile:
 Western Ukrainian state (1918-1919) an
independent state in eastern Galicia.
 During World War I efforts were made to create
an independent and united Ukrainian state.
 Soon after the West Ukrainian People’s Republic
defeat by the Polish Army, eastern Galicia was
incorporated into a newly reborn Polish state.

16.  In July 1919 the West Ukrainian People's Republic established a
government-in-exile in the city of Kamianets-Podilskyi (they tried
to negotiate with international community to recognize WUPR as
independent state. But in fact territories were under the polish
government).
 In 1923 it was decided that eastern Galicia would be
incorporated into Poland
"taking into consideration that Poland has recognized that in regard
to the eastern part of Galicia ethnographic conditions fully deserve
its autonomous status.“

17. National movement was represented
by set of organizations:
 The Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth
 The League of Ukrainian Nationalists
They had orientation according to which the
Ukrainians should seek the inspiration in the
Ukrainian history, culture and tradition.

18. Political parties in Polish Ukraine:
 Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance (UNDO) – as ideological descendant of
prewar Ukrainian National Democratic party stood for proclaiming independent
Ukrainian state. But in difficult circumstances of polish domination hoped to
obtain positive changes for Poland’s Ukrainians through legal means. It was
strongest party in both the Sejm and the Senate was UNDO.
 Ukrainian Social-Radical party – favored the introduction of socialism, but not of
the Marxist variety.
 Communist party of West Ukraine (KPZU) – was an autonomous branch of
Polish Communist party. Since 1924 the party functioned underground.
 Russian Peasant party and Russian agrarian party – drew their support from the
Old Ruthenian and Russophile cultural institutions.

19. Romania

20.  Ukrainian population: 582,000 (official report), 1
million (unofficial data).
 During the 1920s Romanian political life was
dominated by the liberal party who's goal was to
create a centralized state (Before WWI romanian
regions such as Transylvania and Bukovina were
autonomic but today all the government became
centralized and the regional autonomies seized to
exist).
 The ukrainians in southern Bessarabia were permitted
to have their own elementary schools (120 schools)
few cooperatives and representatives in the
romanian parliament.

21. Process of Romanization of
Ukrainians:
 Previously the multinational administrative and cultural center of
Chernivtsi was transformed to a Romanian city.
 Northern Bukovina gradually started to become romanian: Romanian
schools, civic organizations and Romanian new papers were founded.
 Ukrainian elementary schools in Bukovina were actively closed (by 1927
there was not a single Ukrainian elementary school left).
 Higher educational establishments in Bukovina were teaching in
Romanian.
 The language of internal administration has become solely Romanian.
 Liturgy was conducted in romanian.
 All Ukrainian cultural societies were closed, Ukrainian newspapers were
banned and court has disbanded ukrainian from its official use.
 The department of Ukrainian subjects set up during the Austrian rule
were abolished at the university of Chernivtsi.

22. Political life:
 Ukrainians status had somewhat improved in
1928 after a new Ukrainian National party was
established in 1927 by the Ukrainian national
leader and art historian Volodymyr Zalozetskyi-
Sas.
 By the end of the decade Romanian democratic
parliament had become meaningless as soon as
the state transformed into an authoritarian
dictatorship under King Carol II who had little
sympathy to national minorities.

23. Czechoslovakia

24. Political life:
 Subcarpathian Rusyns who were simply called Rusyns voluntarily joined
the newly created Czechoslovak republic in 1919.
 Czechoslovakia’s capital, Prague, became the leading intellectual center
of Ukrainian immigrants in Europe during the interwar period.
 Czechoslovakian president Masarik appointed a governor named
Zhatkovych who tried to build an autonomy consisting of both
Subcarpathian Rusyns and Slovakian Rusyns but the immaturity of the
local habitats participating in modern democratic processes and the
influence of Greek Catholic clergy who favored a return to Hungarian
rule denied the birth of the autonomy.
 The direct rule of Prague ended in 1928 when Czechoslovakia was
divided into four provinces, one of which was Subcarpathian Rus.
Governors were appointed from the local population but de-facto
nothing changed as a Czechoslovakian vice governor was ruling the
region and thus never fulfilling most Subcarpathians political demands
for autonomy to unite all Rusyns/ Ukrainians.

25.  Although the political demands of Subcarpathian Rus were never
fulfilled the habitants of the region began participating actively in politics
and some Subcarpathians were elected to Czechoslovakian parliament
between 1924 and 1935 taking an active part in the legislative process
so the Ukrainians of Subcarpathian Rus had found it themselves in
favorable political environment.
 Ukrainian status has been improving in Czechoslovakia unlike in Poland
and Romania.
 With time according to Czechoslovak law, Rusyns were the “state
nationality” in Subcarpathian Rus and they were even enjoying their
own unique national anthem.

26. Culture:
 Between 1920 and 1923 the number of schools in
Subcarpathian Rus has doubled from 495 to 879 schools.
 A Dramatical increase in Eastern Slavic language
(vernacular Rusyn, Ukrainian and Russian) teaching
schools from 337 to 556.
 The Prosvita and Dujhnovych Society was established in
Subcarpathian Rus imitating the Galician model, setting up
branches and reading rooms through the province.
 The cultural societies were partly supported by
Czechoslovakian government.

27. Religion:
 In the 1920s a dispute between the Greek Catholic Church and
the Orthodox church escalated due to the new democratic
environment.
 The nationality question was one of the factors increasing the
rivalry between the churches.

28. Conclusions
 The newly born Polish and Romanian states
imposed aggressive policies towards national
minorities assimilating the Ukrainians.
 Polish policy evoked national resistance mostly in
Galicia providing a reason for radical aggressive
nationalistic Ukrainian bodies to be born but with no
success.
 Romanian Ukrainians didn’t pose much resistance
to the assimilation unlike Polish Ukrainians.
 Czechoslovakian Ukrainians flourished and were
able to hold their identity thanks to some
governmental support.