Nobility Polish Kresy Landowner Myth Zoltowski

Border of Europe, by Adam Zoltowski. 1950

Polish Nobility Landlords Half-Truth. Early Eastern Galician Ukrainian Separatism. Minorities Treaty Special Separatist Rights For Jews

This work provides a good deal of information about Poland’s eastern half, which was confiscated by the Soviet Union in 1939 (and reaffirmed in 1944). Zoltowski discusses the history of the Kresy. For instance, the 1831 insurrection against tsarist Russia had been instigated by young generals such as Chrzanowski. (p. 99).

POLISH NOBILITY LANDLORDS HALF-TRUTH

Both Ukrainian-separatist propaganda and Communist propaganda emphasized the “Polish landlords” in the Kresy. This was only marginally true. In the Kresy, the vast majority of Polish, as the vast majority of Ukrainian, farmsteads were small. “Large” farmsteads, or “estates”, defined as covering an excess of 125 acres, were only 22% of agricultural holdings in Polesia, down to 11.1% of holdings in Volhynia. (p. 257).

MINORITIES TREATY: SPECIAL, SEPARATIST RIGHTS FOR JEWS

The author discusses minority issues in the new Polish state. For instance, the Minorities Treaty, which required the Polish state to fund special schools for its minorities, effectively led to a Balkanization of Poland that included no less than six different kinds of Jewish schools. (p. 323).

POLAND ON THE CUSP OF REGAINING HER INDEPENDENCE

Zoltowski touches upon the politics around WWI, after which Poland regained her independence. General Ludendorff, born in Poznan, was consistently and thoroughly anti-Polish. (p. 163).

A SHORT HISTORY OF POLISH-RUTHENIAN (UKRAINIAN) RELATIONS

As recently as at least 1848, the eastern Galician Ukrainians and Jews sided with the Poles in championing the restoration of Poland to independence. (pp. 140-141). The first stirring of eastern Galician Ukrainian separatism came at about this time, when some Ruthenian priests and intellectuals, centered at Lwow’s Cathedral of St. George (St. Yur), gave ear to pro-Russian Panslavist doctrines. (p. 146). Early Ukrainian intellectuals such as Taras Shevchenko thought in terms of cultural and social, not political, matters. In 1868, Prosvita was founded. By now, Ukrainian separatism was in full bloom, including demands that Poles be driven beyond the San River. In 1894, Michailo Hruszewskij wrote his history of the Ukraine. He had been strongly influenced by the anti-Polish historian Vladimir Antonovitch. (p. 156). Ukrainian separatism grew more fervent, culminating in the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918, which Zoltowski describes in considerable detail.

The author characterizes Austrian influence behind anti-Polish Ukrainian actions, an attempt to preserve the tottering Austrian rule, as follows: “Promises of leading Austrian and Hungarian statesmen, made in the early stages of the World War to Ukrainian leaders, concerning the division of Galicia and the incorporation of its eastern part with Ukrainian territories conquered from Russia, are fairly well established facts…” (p. 182). Zoltowski points out that, with the connivance of the Austrian Staff, the eastern Galician Ukrainian forces had mustered from 40,000 to 50,000 well-armed men. (p. 189).

The division of Ukrainophones into Ruthenians and Ukrainians was no Polish invention. Nor was Ruthenian simply an archaic synonym for Ukrainian. Ukrainophones living in post-WWI Poland had the opportunity to express their self-identities in the 1931 Polish census, with the term Ruthenian lacking the separatist and pan-Ukrainian connotation of the term Ukrainian. In Volhynia (Wolyn), practically all the people in question declared themselves Ukrainians, but in the provinces of eastern Galicia, the Ukrainophones split their Ukrainian/Ruthenian self-identifications in a subequal to 2:1 ratio. (pp. 287-288).

Although the Polish authorities favored bilingual schools in which Poles had to learn Ukrainian no less than Ukrainians had to learn Polish, it is untrue that there were no Ukrainian schools. Zoltowski cites numbers of various kinds of Ukrainian schools. (p. 300).

Perennial Ukrainian complaints about the Polish authorities refusing to allow a Ukrainian university are disingenuous. Actually, Poles had suggested Stanislawow (now Ivano-Frankovsk) as the site of a Ukrainian university, but the Ukrainians insisted that it must be in Lwow (Lviv). Poles, mindful of the Ukrainian violence in Lwow before 1914, did not want a Ukrainian University in Lwow because it would become a focus of renewed Ukrainian separatism. Apart from the proposed site at Stanislawow, the Poles allowed Ukrainian chairs at universities in Lwow, Krakow, and Warsaw. (p. 303).