Читать книгу Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Fascist - Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe - Страница 26

During the 1920s the Ukrainians in Soviet Ukraine were exposed to the policy of Ukrainization, which strengthened the use of the Ukrainian language and promoted Ukrainian culture in public life. With the beginning of Sovietization in the early 1930s, this policy changed entirely. The collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union was the major cause of an artificial famine, resulting in the deaths of 2.5–3.9 million people in Soviet Ukraine in 1932–1933. In terms of national consciousness, the Soviet authorities tried to turn Ukrainians into loyal Soviet citizens, causing the unformed Ukrainian identity of the former Russian Ukrainians to blur further with Russian and Soviet identity.[159] Of all the states where Ukrainians lived, it was in Czechoslovakia that the small Ukrainian minority enjoyed the most liberal treatment. The authorities there allowed various Ukrainian schools, and three postsecondary colleges: the Ukrainian Husbandry Academy and the Ukrainian Technical and Husbandry Institute in Poděbrady, and the Ukrainian Free University in Prague. This was an unusually liberal policy toward a minority in Eastern Europe at this time. In Romania and Poland, Ukrainians were exposed to a policy of assimilation—a common phenomenon in the new, unstable, and predominantly authoritarian Eastern European states.[160]

Because the political myth of Stepan Bandera first manifested itself in the Second Polish Republic, it is imperative to elaborate on the political circumstances in this state, in particular on the complicated relationship between Poles and Ukrainians. It is also crucial to describe the role played by the OUN in Polish-Ukrainian relations, particularly when it was led by Stepan Bandera, who thereby became the symbol of the Ukrainian struggle for independence.

In 1918 Poland was established as the Second Polish Republic. Its founders regarded this state as a successor to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795), which they referred to as the First Polish Republic. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a premodern and very heterogeneous state ruled by the Polish nobility. During the last three decades of the eighteenth century, it was partitioned by the Habsburg Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, consequently disappearing from the map of Europe. The territory of the Second Republic was smaller than that of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but its population was still very heterogeneous. Ethnic Poles constituted up to 65 percent of the population of the Second Republic, and the remainder consisted of national minorities, including Ukrainians, Jews, Germans, Lithuanians, Byelorussians, and Russians. Both the Little Treaty of Versailles—signed between minor powers and the League of Nations in 1919—and the constitutions adopted in Poland in 1921 and 1935, guaranteed all citizens of Poland the same rights and treated them as equal before the law. In reality, however, the national minorities in the Second Republic were frequently discriminated against, at political, social, educational, administrative, and cultural levels, or were even treated as second class citizens.[161]

The Ukrainian nationalists and their illegal organizations were not the only Ukrainian political bodies in the Second Republic, but they gained increasing support during the interwar period. The major Ukrainian political party in Poland was the Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance (Ukraїns’ke Natsional’no-Demokratychne Ob”iednannia, UNDO), which was founded in 1925. The UNDO considered Polish rule over western Ukraine to be illegitimate, but it participated in the parliamentary elections, respected the rules of democracy, and its leader Vasyl’ Mudryi was the deputy speaker of the Polish Sejm between 1935 and 1939. The UNDO wanted to establish a Ukrainian state but rejected terror and illegal subversive activities for that purpose. It supported the Ukrainian cooperative movement and wanted to improve the cultural, political, and social situation of Ukrainians in Poland. In terms of ideology it combined democracy with nationalism and cooperated with the political parties of other national minorities. Its main Ukrainian rival was the Ukrainian Socialist Radical Party (Ukraїns’ka Sotsialistychno-Radykalna Partiia, USRP).[162]

Poland was a predominantly rural country, whose political situation was unstable. Parliamentary democracy was endangered by various populist and authoritarian parties, such as the nationalist and antisemitic Endecja. Because of the threat of this movement, Józef Piłsudski—one of the main founding fathers of the state, and leader of the Sanacja (sanation) movement—seized power in May 1926 by means of a coup d’état. He introduced a military dictatorship, combining socialism with romantic traditions and the type of moderate nationalism known in Poland as patriotism. Piłsudski stayed in power until his death in 1935, after which the regime moved to the right.[163]

Polish officials and politicians frequently treated the national minorities in Poland as inferior citizens or even as enemies. This only strengthened the nationalism of the Ukrainians and other national minorities in the Second Republic and exacerbated the political situation and interethnic relations.[164] As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs put it in an analytical paper, the Ukrainians were perceived as a huge problem to the Polish state: “The Ukrainian question is not as difficult to solve as the Jewish one, it is not as dangerous as the German one, but it is the oldest one, and it is the most important one because the Ukrainian population is the largest national minority in the state.”[165]

With about 5 million people, constituting about 16 percent of the entire population, the Ukrainians were the largest minority in the Second Republic. In the south-eastern part of the country, the Ukrainians constituted the majority, with about 3.5 million in the formerly Habsburg eastern Galicia, and about 1.5 million in the formerly Russian Volhynia. Some 90 percent of Ukrainians lived in villages and small towns. Cities in south-eastern Poland were mainly inhabited by Jews and Poles.[166]

The Sanacja and Endecja movements developed two separate policies toward the Ukrainians and other minorities in the Second Republic. The Sanacja followed the principle of state assimilation (asymilacja państwowa); and the Endecja, national assimilation (asymilacja narodowa). National assimilation required the minorities to become Polish and to give up their language and culture. State assimilation did not expect such cultural surrender but required loyalty to the Polish state. Such loyalty was against the interests of Galician and Volhynian Ukrainians, who neither wanted to become Polish nor to be loyal to the Polish state. As a result, even liberal and left-wing Polish politicians of the Sanacja movement, who tried to improve Polish-Ukrainian relations, never gave up the notion of teaching Ukrainians loyalty to the Polish state, in order to maintain the status quo of the Second Republic.[167]

The Little Treaty of Versailles, which obliged the Polish authorities to guarantee all its citizens equal treatment, was perceived by the majority of Polish society as an unjust interference in the affairs of the Polish state and an affront to Poland’s sovereignty. The treaty was eventually renounced by Józef Beck, the Polish minister of foreign affairs, on 13 September 1934 before the League of Nations.[168] On the return of Beck from the meeting of the League in Geneva, a “triumphal greeting ceremony” took place. Musicians played the Polish anthem “Poland Is Not Yet Lost” and children handed flowers to Beck, while a crowd celebrated his “triumphal act in Geneva.”[169]

Because of the comparatively liberal atmosphere of the former Habsburg Empire, the Ukrainians in Galicia had become more nationalist and rebellious than the Volhynian Ukrainians of the former Russian Empire. The Polish authorities therefore tried to isolate eastern Galicia from Volhynia. The governor of Volhynia in 1928–1938, Henryk Józewski, was sympathetic toward Ukrainian culture. He tried to win the loyalty of the Ukrainians by introducing policies that were liberal in respect of Ukrainian culture, allowing Ukrainians to celebrate Ukrainian national holidays and to Ukrainize the Orthodox Church, which the Russian Empire had used in the nineteenth century as a tool of Russification. Simultaneously, Józewski was combating all individuals and movements that were not loyal to the Polish authorities. Such policies had the unwanted effect of arousing Ukrainian awareness among Volhynian Ukrainians and stimulated the growth of hidden hatred against the Polish state. The policy of teaching Ukrainians loyalty to the Polish state, while allowing Ukrainian patriotism, strengthened the collective wish to live in a Ukrainian state without Polish paternalism. Unlike the nationalists in Galicia, the radical Ukrainian elements in Volhynia during the interwar period were united by communism and organized in the Communist Party of Western Ukraine (Komunistychna partiia Zakhidnoї Ukraїny, or KPZU).[170]

Ukrainians regarded the Polish state as an occupier, rather than as a legitimate authority. They not only withdrew their loyalty but also developed feelings of hatred toward Poland and Poles. Polish politicians frequently tried to induce loyalty to Poland by repressing Ukrainian national aspirations. Polish schools and the teaching of Polish patriotism were intended as important tools for the enforcement of loyalty to the Polish state among the national minorities. The “Lex Grabski,” an educational act of 1924, which was named after the Polish education minister Stanisław Grabski, dissolved many Ukrainian schools and transformed some of them into bilingual Polish-Ukrainian schools (szkoły utrakwistyczne). The number of Ukrainian secondary schools in eastern Galicia was reduced from 2,426 in 1912, to 352 in 1927, and to 144 in 1939. In eastern Galicia there was only one high school (gymnasium) for every 16,000 Poles; but at the same time, there was only one for every 230,000 Ukrainians. The number of bilingual schools—with which neither side was content—grew from 1,926 to 2,710.[171]

In 1923 Stanisław Sobiński, chief education officer for the Lviv, Stanyslaviv, and Ternopil’ (Tarnopol) voivodeships, which covered the territory of eastern Galicia, introduced a regulation forbidding the use of the term “Ukrainian,” and allowing only the use of “Ruthenian” (ruski) even in private Ukrainian high schools. Ukrainians regarded this regulation as a serious insult. On 19 October 1926 Sobiński was shot by UVO members Roman Shukhevych and Bohdan Pidhainyi.[172]

Between 1918 and 1919, the Ukrainian language was abandoned at Lviv University as a language of instruction, and all Ukrainian chairs were suspended. After 14 August 1919, only applicants who declared that they were Polish citizens could enroll at the university. For this and other reasons, many Ukrainian students boycotted Lviv University. The Polish authorities would have allowed a Ukrainian university but not in Lviv, the main city of western Ukraine. In July 1921, a secret Ukrainian university was founded. It existed until 1925 and was financed by Ukrainian organizations and the Ukrainian diaspora. Between 1922 and 1923, the secret Ukrainian university had 1,014 students and sixty-five chairs. A Ukrainian Scientific Institute (Ukraiński Instytut Naukowy) was opened in 1930 in Warsaw. It was only in 1936 that a chair in the Ukrainian language was established at Lviv University.[173]

The Ukrainian nationalists used this situation. They portrayed Polish schools as an instrument for Polonizing the Ukrainians, and turning them into “traitors to the Ukrainian nation.” An OUN leaflet explained:

The Poles want by means of schools and teachers to make you into faithful slaves, obedient and obsequious citizens of Poland; they want to teach you to hate every-thing Ukrainian and love everything Polish. They want to make you into traitors of the Ukrainian Nation. … Therefore do not allow the enemies to make you into Janissaries! Do not allow Poles [liakhy] to turn you into their obedient slaves! You should be the knights and fighters for the freedom of Ukraine! There is a great holy war before you.[174]

Similarly, Polish teachers were perceived as instruments of Polonization. Some of them were even shot at, as was the case in the village of Dubshche (Dubszcze) where a Polish teacher had replaced a Ukrainian.[175] Another popular gesture was the profanation of Polish state or national symbols, for instance flags, or portraits of such politicians and political idols of the Second Republic as Piłsudski. Such conduct sometimes provoked further violence, as at the school building in Berezhany (Brzezany) where OUN members tore down a Polish flag and threw it into a toilet. A local Ukrainian who criticized this act was found dead shortly afterwards. “Patriotic” demonstrations and other gatherings also resulted in casualties. In 1939 in Berezhany, Polish high school students organized a “funeral of Ukraine,” marching through the town with a coffin marked “Ukraine is dead.” After a few days, the bodies of two Poles who had taken part in the “funeral” were found in a river in a suburb.[176]

Although Poles made up only about 30 percent of the population of eastern Galicia and Volhynia, they still possessed more land there than the Ukrainians. In addition, settlers (Pol. osadnicy), many of them veterans of the First World War, received land in the eastern parts of the country with the objective of strengthening the Polish element in those regions. This irritated the Ukrainian peasantry, most of whom possessed little land despite their efforts for decades to obtain more.[177]

In general, Ukrainians had very good reasons to resent their Polish rulers. Even in regions with a predominantly Ukrainian population, Ukrainian civil servants were rare. The Ukrainian language was regarded by Polish officials as a substandard variety of Polish, and Ukrainian culture was perceived as inferior to Polish culture. By way of reaction to Polish nationalism and restrictions, Ukrainians withdrew from public life and formed their own organizations and cooperatives. Having completed their degrees, Ukrainians were often unable to make a career in public institutions or to find other employment, because of their ethnicity. Such people frequently ended up working for Ukrainian agricultural companies that hired only Ukrainians. To some extent the situation in the former eastern Galicia was similar to a state within a state.[178]

Every year on 1 November, clashes between Poles and Ukrainians erupted in Lviv and in many other places in western Ukraine. On this date, Ukrainians commemorated the proclamation of the ZUNR, which organization had been defeated by the Poles.[179] On the night of 31 October–1 November 1928, a few weeks after Bandera moved to Lviv, the UVO tried to destroy two monuments devoted to Polish “defenders” of Lviv. In this incident, one policeman was wounded by gunshot. Ukrainian flags with the inscription “UVO” were hoisted at the university building, at the city council, and at the Union of Lublin Mound.[180] On 1 November 1928 Ukrainian nationalists also hung a banner with the letters “UVO” above the Saint George Cathedral while a panakhyda (memorial service) was being celebrated inside. After the service, a crowd tried to march to the city center and there was a shootout with the police. In revenge, Polish youth demolished the buildings of several Ukrainian institutions, such as the Ukrainian Student House and the printing office of the newspaper Dilo.[181]

The second half of the 1930s was especially unfavorable for Polish-Ukrainian relations. It was not so much the renunciation of the Little Treaty of Versailles, or the assassination of the Polish interior minister Bronisław Wilhelm Pieracki by the OUN, both in 1934, but the political changes after Piłsudski’s death that intensified the Polish-Ukrainian conflict. After his death, Polish and Ukrainian politicians who worked to normalize Polish-Ukrainian relations were marginalized, and Polish policies toward the Ukrainians became more and more repressive. In these circumstances the competition between Ukrainian and Polish nationalism increased. In October 1938 the Polish police prevented demonstrations in favor of a Ukrainian Carpathian state. In response Ukrainian agricultural companies refused to deliver butter to Lviv and other cities, and Ukrainian nationalists set several Polish farms on fire. The Polish government reacted with collective punishment, conducting punitive expeditions against Ukrainian villagers and making mass arrests. Ukrainian politicians estimated that in late 1938 about 30,000 Ukrainians sat in Polish jails.[182]

In 1939 local Polish politicians in Lublin were talking about the “extermination” of Ukrainians.[183] A German journalist who travelled to the area in the spring of that year observed that the Ukrainian population hoped that “Uncle Führer” would bring order to the area and solve the problem of the Poles.[184] In the last months before the Second World War, more and more Ukrainians participated in nationalist ceremonies. On 23 May 1939, about 500 people came to the Saint George Cathedral to take part in a panakhyda for Konovalets’. Five days later, 4,000 came to a panakhyda at the graves of Sich Riflemen, where Ivan Hryn’okh delivered a sermon. Shortly after that, another panakhyda was organized at the graves of three famous nationalists—Vasyl’ Bilas, Dmytro Danylyshyn, and Ol’ha Basarab—of whom two were executed for killing a Polish politician and one was believed to have been murdered by Polish interrogators.[185]

During the second half of the 1930s, more and more Ukrainians ceased to view the OUN as an alien and dangerous political body. At that time the UNDO and some other Ukrainian non-nationalistic parties ceased to mistrust the OUN, although they had condemned the terrorist methods of the UVO and the OUN since the early 1920s. In the late 1930s the majority of Ukrainians living in Poland began to consider Nazi Germany as a possible liberator and ally, as the OUN had done since the early 1920s. After 1939 even democratic politicians such as Vasyl’ Mudryi or Kost’ Pan’kivs’kyi, who until then had condemned violence, fascism, and nationalist hatred, began to collaborate with Nazi Germany and to view the OUN as an important “liberation force.”[186] In his memoirs, OUN member Ievhen Stakhiv observed that all Ukrainian movements and organizations, both in exile and in the Second Polish Republic, were orienting themselves toward Nazi Germany in the years leading up to the Second World War. They hoped that Germany would smash Poland and give Ukrainians a chance to establish a state. They saw nothing wrong in cooperating with Nazi Germany and were convinced that this might help them achieve their goals.[187] After the Munich Agreement on 29 September 1938, the Ukrainians tried to establish a Carpatho-Ukrainian state, in territories that had belonged to Czechoslovakia and were inhabited by Ruthenians (Rusyny), people ethnically related to the Ukrainians. The Germans ignored the requests of the Ukrainian nationalists to recognize and support the state and allowed Hungary to occupy these territories; but the disappointment of Ukrainian nationalists concerning the proposed Carpathian-Ukrainian state did not change their attitude toward Nazi Germany.[188]