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1 Poland and Ukraine against the background of changes in Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
Roman Szul
Relations between Poland and Ukraine as independent states have a short history, starting in 1991, but the history of Polish–Ukrainian relations is long, dating back to the tenth/eleventh centuries. Until the second half of the nineteenth century, when the contemporary notion of Ukraine and Ukrainian nationalism emerged, these were relations between Poland and Poles, and Ruthenian states and Ruthenians. Over most of this 1,000-year period, owing to Poland's eastern expansion over the fourteenth–sixteenth centuries, smaller or greater parts of present-day Ukraine belonged to Poland or political formations dominated by Poles (the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Galicia as part of the Habsburg empire). The main differences separating Poles and Ruthenians/Ukrainians were religion (Roman Catholic vs Orthodox or Greek Catholic) and social status (in Ukraine Poles used to be gentry and aristocracy, while Ruthenians were mostly peasants). Contacts between the two groups contributed to their linguistic and cultural rapprochement, but rivalry and periodic outbreaks of conflict produced a considerable distrust and prejudice, leading to Polish–Ukrainian conflicts after World War I and during World War II and directly afterwards. From World War I Poland emerged as an independent state with a numerous Ukrainian minority; World War II and its consequences shifted the Polish eastern border westwards, and ethnic cleansing and migrations practically eliminated minorities on both sides of the border, which became the border between Poland and the Soviet Union. Ukrainian aspirations towards an independent state failed twice, but Ukraine survived as a 'republic' within the USSR. The collapse of the Soviet block in 1989 and of the USSR itself in 1991 gave full independence to Poland and brought about independence to Ukraine, something welcomed by some of its inhabitants but only tolerated by others. Both countries decided to build a democratic political system and a free market economy. However, different internal and international conditions at the starting point and thereafter produced different results. Poland, which was almost homogeneous in terms of culture, language and political desire to join the West, and began with some elements of a market economy and a clear idea how to reform the economic and political system, became, with the support and encouragement of the West, a member of NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004; it had a relatively stable democracy and a prosperous economy, although not without social and political tensions. Ukraine, torn between its Ukrainian-speaking, nationalistic and pro-European west and its Russian-speaking, nationally indifferent and Russian-orientated east and south, could not decide over its geopolitical course and lacked determination to carry out substantial economic and political reforms. Besides, the protracted economic decline of the 1990s, with only modest recovery after 2000, and the chosen method of privatization, which produced a small number of very rich 'oligarchs' and political corruption, generated a disintegrated and frustrated society. These circumstances were conducive to severe political crises. The last one, in 2013/14, brought about bloodshed, a dramatic change of president, the annexation of Crimea by Russia, revolt in two eastern regions supported by Russia and the war, and also a declared victory of the pro-European orientation. The independence of Ukraine and economic reforms in Poland and Ukraine led to an intensification of cross-border contacts which, however, slowed down after Poland's access to the EU, as the border became less permeable. Since Ukraine's independence in 1991 Polish–Ukrainian political relations have improved. Poland was the first country to recognize Ukraine as an independent state, supporting its pro-European aspirations and 'advocating' for it in the EU. A recent surge of patriotic (nationalistic) sentiments in Ukraine and what is considered in Poland as the glorification of perpetrators of genocide on ethnic Poles during World War II may, however, lead to a deterioration in Polish–Ukrainian relations.
Polish–Ukrainian relations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
The present Polish–Ukrainian border, as an international border, exists from the end of World War II (1944, with small corrections in the early 1950s). Initially it was a border between Poland (People's Republic of Poland) and the Soviet Union –or, in another words, between Poland and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR) as part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). With the breakdown of the USSR in 1991 and the emergence of the Ukrainian SSR as an independent state called simply Ukraine,1 this border became the border between Poland and independent Ukraine (as a matter of fact, Poland was the first country to recognize Ukrainian independence).
Despite the short history of the relations between Poland and Ukraine as two sovereign states, Polish–Ukrainian relations have a much longer, and very complicated, history. This was a history of relations between two ethnic groups (Polish and Ruthenian/Ukrainian) and between a state (Poland) and an ethnic group (Ruthenians/Ukrainians). To understand the nature of Polish–Ukrainian relations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries it is necessary to look back to more distant events. Probably the first relevant event was the settlement (in ancient or early medieval times) on the territory of present Poland and Ukraine of two groups of the Slavic people – let's call them Western Slavs and Eastern Slavs (or Ruthenians, in their and other languages: Rusins). If there were no other factors strengthening this divide, differences between the two groups would have disappeared. These 'other factors' were the establishment of states – Poland (by the Western Slavs) and Kiev Ruthenia or Kiev Rus (by the Eastern Slavs) in the early Middle Ages – and the adoption by them of different varieties of Christianity (western, or Catholic, Christianity in Poland, and eastern, or Orthodox, Christianity in Ruthenia). The border between Poland and Kiev Ruthenia was, by and large, in the present Polish–Ukrainian borderland, although sometimes it was more to the west and sometimes more to the east of the present borderline (see Figure 1.1).
Another event of extraordinary importance was the crisis and disintegration of Kiev Ruthenia in the thirteenth century and the incorporation of a part of it in the fourteenth century by Poland. The eastward expansion of Poland (alone or as the stronger partner in the common Polish–Lithuanian state called the 'Commonwealth of the Two Nations') continued in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to encompass most of present-day Ukraine (apart from Crimea and the Donetsk–Luhansk region).
Figure 1.1 Poland and Ruthenia in the twelfth century
Source: Krzysztof Łoboda, on the basis of IGiPZ PAN (1997),
The incorporation of Ruthenian lands into Poland had far-reaching consequences. Perhaps the most important were Polish rule in Ruthenian lands and the Polonization (adoption of the Polish language, Catholic religion and Polish customs and identity) of the local Ruthenian aristocracy, as well as the immigration of non-Ruthenians (peasants speaking western Slavonic – 'Polish' – dialects and confessing Catholicism, as well as Jews, Germans and others, usually merchants or craftsmen) to Ruthenian lands. As a result of these processes a social structure was formed within Ruthenian lands consisting of peasants speaking eastern Slavonic (Ruthenian) dialects and confessing Orthodox religion at the bottom, and an aristocracy speaking Polish (already a unified prestigious language) and confessing Catholicism at the top, with various groups in the middle (among others, very numerous were Jews). It is important to note that the term 'Polish' (e.g. 'Polish nation') meant 'aristocratic' or 'noble'. Peasants speaking western Slavonic dialects and confessing Catholicism (future 'Poles') had no idea of being 'Polish'. The word 'Ukraine' (in Polish 'ukraina'; a similar word exists in contemporary Russian: 'okraina') at that time meant 'far-away lands', 'distant periphery', as from Krakow, Poznan or Warsaw it really was a distant periphery. In contemporary Polish, as in other Slavonic languages, 'Ukraina' is only the name of a country, 'Ukraine'.
The expansion of Poland in Ruthenian lands took place in several waves. The first significant and lasting expansion was, as mentioned above, in the fourteenth century, and was at the expense of the Principality of Galicia-Volhynia (known also as the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia and Kingdom of Ruthenia). This principality emerged at the end of the twelfth century from the disintegration of the Kiev Ruthenia and consisted of territory within the present Polish-Ukrainian borderland. Its capital cities were Halych (which gave the Latin name of the part of the principality – Galicia), now a small town in the Ukrainian Carpathian mountains; Chełm (now a town in Poland); Volodymyr Volynsky or Włodzimierz Wołyriski (which gave the other part of the name – Volhynia), now in Ukraine; and Lviv/Lwów/Lemberg, now a large city in western Ukraine. One of rulers of this principality, Danylo or Daniel, was in 1253 crowned by a pope's envoy as 'King of Ruthenia'. It is worth mentioning that in 1256 this ruler founded Lviv, a city that would play an extraordinarily important role in Polish–Ukrainian relations. In its century-and-a-half history Galicia-Volhynia was seldom a fully independent state, being the subject of rivalry between Poland, the (Grand Duchy of) Lithuania, Hungary and the Tatars. It is worth noting that it enjoyed good relations with the Principality of Mazovia, then independent; now its territory (including, for instance, Warsaw) is part of Poland. The last ruler of Galicia-Volhynia, Boleslaw Jerzy II, was son of the Mazovian prince Trojden. After the death without issue of the last ruler of Galicia-Volhynia, it was divided between Hungary, Poland (the main part, with Halych and Lviv) and Lithuania (Volhynia). The part incorporated into Poland became known as 'Red Ruthenia' and was a separate territorial administrative unit.
From the point of view of future historical events, some elements of the heritage of Galicia-Volhynia should be stressed. First, the very name 'Ruthenia' and its status as a separate territorial unit facilitated the preservation of the feeling of being something different from the rest of the Kingdom of Poland and thus preserved a separate identity among its Ruthenian inhabitants. It should be stressed. however, that identification with Ruthenia did not always exclude identification with Poland as a larger polity. Second, the memory (continuous or reconstructed) that Lviv was established by a Ruthenian king gave Ruthenians/Ukrainians, during their conflict with Poles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the moral argument to treat this city as theirs. Third, the emperors of Austria, who inherited from the kings of Hungary the claims and the title 'King of Galicia', used this to justify their participation in the partitioning of the Commonwealth of the Two Nations (Poland ) at the end of the eighteenth century. To confirm their claims they gave the new territory the historic name 'Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria'.
At the time that Poland incorporated Red Ruthenia, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania incorporated the northern part of the Principality of Galicia-Volhynia and expanded further south-eastwards, encompassing many Ruthenian principalities, including Kiev, the capital city of the ancient Kiev Ruthenia. This expansion was alleviated by the fact that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was regarded as another Ruthenian principality, as its rulers and their administration spoke Ruthenian and used (old-)Ruthenian (in fact, a mixture of living Ruthenian and Church-Slavonic) as a chancellery language, once used in Kiev Ruthenia, and the vast majority of its inhabitants were Ruthenians and Orthodox. On the other hand, incorporation by the Grand Duchy was regarded as a kind of protection against Tatars. In such a way the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in a sense re-established the old Kiev Ruthenia, although now its political centre was far away from Kiev, in Vilnius/Wilno/Wilna. After initial rivalry, Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania established friendly relations and, by the end of the fourteenth century, they established a personal union when a Lithuanian prince, Jagiełło (Jogaila), was offered the Polish throne (beforehand, he was baptized as Christian and Catholic; by his baptism he received the name Władysław); at that time the same rulers were Polish kings and Lithuanian grand dukes. Almost two centuries later, the two countries established a real union called the 'Commonwealth of the Two Nations' (1569) by an act known as the Lublin Union, as it took place in this Polish town. The two parts of the Commonwealth – the Crown of Poland (also simply 'the Crown') and the Grand Duchy (of Lithuania) retained many elements of their legal, economic and political systems, including separate armies.
From the point of view of future Polish–Ukrainian relations, the shift of the border between the Crown of Poland and the Grand Duchy accompanying the Lublin Union was very important. The southern part of the Grand Duchy, including Kiev, was then incorporated into the Crown of Poland. In such a way Ruthenian lands found themselves in two state organisms: Poland in the south and Lithuania in the north (Figure 1.2).
This division gave birth to two contemporary nations: Ukrainians (in Poland) and Byelorussians (in Lithuania).2 It could be said that the history of the Ukrainian nation begins with the Lublin Union.3
One of the results of Poland's eastern expansion was the emergence of a category of gentry and aristocracy that defined itself by the Latin formula (Latin was the symbolic language of the gentry and aristocracy, separating bene nati from the commons) 'natione Polonorum, gente Ruthenorum', or belonging to the Polish nation and Ruthenian people. These were people of Ruthenian origin who combined their Ruthenian identity with a larger identification with Poland or the Commonwealth. This category of people played an extraordinarily important role in the history of Poles and Ukrainians. Its detailed analysis exceeds the scope of this text, but it should be pointed out that the very existence of this category indicated that there was no contradiction between being Polish and Ruthenian, and that Ruthenians were simply a regional or ethnographic variety of Poles. The Polish national movement (the whole or its radical part) stuck to this notion practically until World War II, denying the emergence of the Ukrainian (ethnic) nation within Ruthenian society. This was one of the reasons for severe conflicts between the two nationalisms in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, during which people of 'natione Polonorum, gente Ruthenorum' had to decide whether they were Polish or Ruthenian/Ukrainian.
Figure 1.2 Commonwealth of the Two Nations (1569)
Source: Krzysztof Łoboda, on the basis of IGiPZ PAN (1997).
The Lublin Union has been subject of divergent interpretations by the parties engaged and by future national movements. Poles from the very beginning assessed it positively: the union strengthened the position of Poland, the change in the border enlarged Polish territory, and the Commonwealth itself was regarded as an extended Poland, to the point that the two names 'Commonwealth' and 'Poland' became synonyms.4 This assessment has a material justification: the expansion of Polish language, culture and political influence eastwards. Describing Lithuanian and Belarusian approaches are irrelevant from the point of view of this study. In contrast, modern Ukrainian historiography of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries assessed the union negatively, for three reasons. First, it was advantageous for Poland and Poles, and therefore it was disadvantageous for Ruthenians, predecessors of Ukrainians. For the young Ukrainian nationalism, which largely emerged in opposition to Poland and to the Polish national movement, everything good for Poland had to be automatically bad for Ukraine. Second, the union was unequal: it was a result of the pressure by the Polish side, and, besides, it put a definite end to the tradition of Kiev Ruthenia. Third, it opened the doors to inflows of foreigners – Poles, Jews, Germans – to Ukraine, who occupied leading social positions, pushing down the local Ruthenian (Ukrainian) population. Subsequently this interpretation was largely overtaken by Soviet Ukrainian historiography, playing on the anti-Polish and anti-western, anti-aristocratic and anti-bourgeois sentiments of Ukrainians. In such a way, 300 years after its conclusion, interpretations of the Lublin Union added to the emergence of Ukrainian nationalism. Nowadays, in independent Ukraine, the union is the subject of re-evaluations. It is pointed out that it was a result of a voluntary agreement of 'the equals with the equals' (and not imposed by the Polish side), that inflows of foreigners brought with them economic and technological progress, and that the position of the Ukrainian population in society was not as bad as it was presented earlier.5
Of extraordinary importance were events in the mid-seventeenth century, namely the Cossack uprising and its aftermath. Cossacks6 were a community of free people (not peasantry) composed of persons from various parts of the Commonwealth, mainly outlaws escaping from serfdom or otherwise being in conflict with the law, living in what is now southern Ukraine, out of reach of justice and royal power. They spoke a local Ruthenian dialect, although they could also speak Polish, and, more importantly, they confessed Orthodox Christianity. They formed a self-governed democratic community headed by elected ataman and carried out practically independent foreign policy, although formally their territory belonged to the Commonwealth. Some Cossacks enjoyed the status of nobles awarded by the king of Poland and accepted by Sejm (parliament). In the mid-seventeenth century the Cossacks, headed by ataman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, (or Chmielnicki, in the Polish spelling) rose against royal power for several reasons: to protest against the policy of unification of the local Orthodox church with the Catholic church (which, in fact, meant the subordination of the former to the latter), to demand greate...
