The eastern portion of Europe and the end of WWI

The end of WWI resulted in significant changes concerning the political boundaries of Central, East, and South-East Europe. Because of the extent of these changes and the new regional wars over land distribution that erupted in several mini-regions in the eastern portion of Europe, it was to take around five to six years before new borders between the states were finally established and stabilized at least up to 1938.

The political transformation of the eastern portion of Europe after 1918 was a direct result of the collapse of both the German Second Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the last months of 1918, as well as due to the unsettled western borders of the ex-Russian Empire (collapsed 1917) which was involved in the revolution and civil war. Most of the boundary changes in this half of Europe after WWI were direct result of decisions reached by the Entente powers (Allied and Associated Powers during WWI) at the Paris Peace Conference that began in early 1919, resulting in five peace treaties, named after the castles outside Paris where they were finally signed. Each of these peace treaties was dealing in part, but in some cases entirely, with states in Central Europe. For instance, Poland was in a post-WWI military-political conflict with West Ukrainian nationalists over the land of East Galicia.

The state borders of post-WWI Poland were decided by the Paris Peace Conference by three means: 1) Through decisions of the Council of Ambassadors; 2) Plebiscites held under Entente direction; and 3) By the result of the war with West Ukraine and Bolshevik Russia.

Concerning Poland, the final settlement of its eastern borders became the most complex. In fact, the first boundary problem became Galicia or more precisely East Galicia where Poles went to open war with Ukrainians. On November 1st, 1918, when the rule of Austria-Hungary finally collapsed in the region, local Ukrainian nationalistic leaders proclaimed the independence of the West Ukrainian National (People’s) Republic. This new state claimed the whole of East Galicia (eastward from San River with Lwów) to be Ukrainian, followed by North Bukowina and Carpathian Rus’.

However, these territorial claims were immediately challenged by local Poles who fought for Galicia to be united with post-WWI Poland. The result was a Polish-Ukrainian War that lasted from November 1918 until the summer of 1919, when the Galician-West Ukrainian military detachments were expelled from East Galicia which finally became part of the interwar Poland.  

East Galicia and Central Powers

Before WWI, the land of East Galicia was included in Austria-Hungary (Austrian part) having mixed ethnic composition (as did a majority of the provinces of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy). East Galician population before WWI was almost 5 million: a majority of it was “Ukrainian” (3.1 million), Poles (1.1 million), and Jews (620,000) followed by several small ethnolinguistic communities. The Ukrainians (whatever this ethnic term meant at that time) had population domination in the countryside (villages), but the towns and cities were inhabited by Polish and Jewish majorities. Vienna’s generally tolerant policy towards national minorities resulted in Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish political and national organizations existing side by side in peace.

Ukrainian national organizations have been struggling to defend their ethnic-regional autonomy and to strengthen Ukrainian national identity among the local Slavic people. However, the reality on the ground was not so favourable for Ukrainian national propaganda because, regardless of the intelligentsia accepting Ukrainian ethnolinguistic identity, an overwhelming number of the peasantry (majority of the population of East Galicia) was unaffected by Ukrainian national identity propaganda.

Further, both ethnic Poles and Jews had clear domination over the areas of education, culture, regional economy, and civil administration. The Poles regarded the city of Lwów /Lvov /Lemberg /L’viv (the crucially important settlement in East Galicia) as one of the most important cities of Polish culture and nation following Cracow, Warsaw, and Wilno /Vilnius.

During WWI, the Central Powers, especially Germany, supported Ukrainian national identity, nationalism, and national goals – all directed against Russia and Russian national interests. On February 9, 1918, in Brest-Litovsk, the peace treaty between the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire) was signed with Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR) - Brotfrieden in German (“Bread Peace”). It ended the war in East Galicia and recognized the sovereignty of the UPR.

By this peace treaty, the victorious Central Powers promised Ukraine some territories which included the Kholm region (populated by a Polish-speaking majority). There was also a secret initiative to transform the provinces of Bukovina and East Galicia into a crownland of Austria-Hungary (Austrian part), but the plan became extremely problematic as the Poles opposed it and insisted on the indivisibility of the whole of Galicia in which they would have dominance. Thus, for the Poles, the pro-Ukrainian policy of the Central Powers during WWI and especially in 1918 was not only anti-Russian but even more anti-Polish. Therefore, due to the policy of Berlin regarding the Ukrainian Question in 1918, the interethnic conflict between Poles and Ukrainians became unavoidable.

The conflict

In the autumn of 1918, during the collapse of the Danube Monarchy (Austria-Hungary), several ethnic groups made plans for the creation or re-establishment of their own (united) national states after the war. The Polish politicians in Galicia wanted to include the whole of Western and Eastern Galicia into the united national state of the Polish people. However, the Ukrainian political workers from West Galicia opposed this Polish idea and on the night of November 01, 1918, organized a coup.

Helped by Ukrainian national units, they succeeded in occupying Lvov and other cities in East Galicia and proclaimed the West Ukrainian People’s Republic as an independent Ukrainian state. The Poles of Lvov (a majority of the city) were taken by surprise, but organized a military defense (including schoolchildren), and soon expelled Ukrainian forces from the biggest part of the city. Nevertheless, in other cities of East Galicia, the Ukrainians had the greatest success, except in the city of Przemysl /Peremyshl. Polish troops made advances in other cities in the western portions of East Galicia, but Poland failed in several attempts to resolve this Polish-Ukrainian conflict by arbitration. Thus, before Poland proclaimed independence on November 11, 1918, the war between Polish and Ukrainian forces already was going on over East Galicia and its most important city, Lvov.

The Polish armed forces expelled the Ukrainian military from Lvov on November 22, 1918. However, Lvov was under siege including constant firing by the Ukrainian military until April 1919. However, immediately after the Ukrainian forces were driven away from Lvov, there were pogroms against the Jews (nearly 80 people died). The local Poles accused the Jews of supporting the Ukrainian side regarding the destiny of Lvov. The Jewish paramilitary units being armed by the Ukrainian side were accused of anti-Polish policy in the city.

During the war between the Polish and Ukrainian forces over East Galicia in 1918-1919, the Polish side was gradually winning. For the Ukrainian side, the crucial problem was that the West Ukrainian political-military leaders failed to mobilize the biggest part of the Ukrainian peasantry for their cause as the peasants were more involved in their economic interests rather than the political interests of existence.

Another question was how much they felt themselves as “Ukrainians” at all, to fight against the Poles. In such a situation, to attract the peasants to the Ukrainian cause, the Ukrainian nationalists made some social-economic slogans and promised the peasantry an agricultural reform after the war – distribution of land (as propagated by the Russian Bolsheviks at the same time). Moreover, the Ukrainian nationalists used all means of force to mobilize the peasants of West Ukraine for the Ukrainian military to fight Poles in East Galicia.

The mediation by Entente

In 1919, the Entente powers attempted to mediate in this Polish-Ukrainian war to bring the war to an end as quickly as possible for the post-war peace conference in Paris and around castles. Their priority was to fight against Russian Bolshevism and the Polish-Ukrainian War was weakening European forces against the potentially aggressive policy of the Bolsheviks who at that time supported all kinds of left revolutions in Central Europe. The war on the borders with Bolshevik Russia was preventing the creation of a united anti-Bolshevik Polish-Ukrainian front that could block eventual aggression of Europe by Lenin’s Red Army.

The first practical move by the Entente forces for peace between Ukrainian and Polish militaries was in February 1919 when a special French-led military commission negotiated both a truce and a demarcation line between Poland and Ukraine. According to this proposal, the city of Lvov and the oil region to the south around Boryslav had to go to Poland. Around two-thirds of East Galicia would be included in West Ukraine.

The Entente’s commission also decided that the West Ukrainian People’s Republic was a failed state, not a viable one. The real reason for this conclusion was the fact that the East Galician independence movement was based on an extremely tiny stratum of intelligentsia without mass support, especially in the countryside. The Ukrainian nationalists and politicians tried to attract the local peasants of East Galizia by promising agrarian reforms and the houses and castles of Lvov. However, the West Ukrainian national fighters lost control over the peasant movement they had themselves inspired.

The Polish leaders involved in the conflict accepted (half-heartedly) the piecemeal conditions required by the Entente Commission. But the Ukrainian leaders rejected the same conditions and ended the previously agreed Polish-Ukrainian truce. Thereafter, the Ukrainian armed forces started a new offensive on March 10, 1919, to occupy the city of Lvov, which collapsed in ten days. That became the turning point in the 1918-1919 Polish-Ukrainian War over East Galicia and made a final border between newly re-established Poland and newly to-be-formed Ukraine. Nevertheless, from mid-March 1919, the Poles took military and political initiatives over the Ukrainians, as it became obvious that the Ukrainian side would lose the war against Poland concerning East Galicia and the city of Lvov.

During the night between April 14/15th, 1919, the Poles launched a fruitful attack putting Lvov outside of Ukrainian artillery fire. The Polish offensive was so successful that in May 1919, Poles took several other East Galician cities (Stanislawów in Polish or Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukrainian was then the headquarters of the Ukrainian political and military authorities).

At the beginning of June 1919, West Ukrainian military detachments were in control of only several areas of East Ukraine. The Entente Commission pressured the Polish side to stop further offensives, and bilateral truce negotiations between Poland and Ukraine were renewed. But the West Ukrainian leaders did not respect the truce agreement and started an offensive on June 07, 1919, and recaptured some areas of East Galicia from the Polish side. The Poles blamed the Ukrainians for the prolongation of the military conflict in and over East Galicia to such an extent that Entente states were compelled to send a commission to the city of Lvov to investigate serious complaints about crimes against the civil population in the city. The commission did not find relevant evidence of Polish war crimes but a lot of cases of war crimes were done by the Ukrainian side. What is of crucial importance here is the fact that the commission found a very enthusiastic reception of the Polish troops by the city dwellers as liberators against the terror of the “Ukrainian bands”.

The commission composed of the representatives of the Entente powers, proposed that the whole territory of East Galicia be occupied by Polish troops and included in the post-WWI Polish national state. The Council of Foreign Ministers in Paris on June 25, 1919, gave open permission to the Polish government in Warsaw to launch a new military offensive in East Galicia to expel all West Ukrainian military detachments from the region and occupy the same completely. It was agreed that the Haller Army (armed in France) be sent to Poland and deployed in the struggle against the communist units. For Eastern Galicia, autonomy had to be given within Poland, and the final decision on the status of East Galicia would be decided by referendum (organized by the Polish authorities).

Finally, the Polish army led by Pilsudski himself, on July 02, 1919, started its decisive military attack against West Ukrainian military troops and expelled them from the complete territory of East Galicia. Up to July 18, 1919, the forces of West Ukraine composed of some 20,000 soldiers, crossed the Zbruch River and entered the territory of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Thus, the destiny of East Galicia was decided in favour of Poland up to WWII.      

Final remarks

The war between Poland and West Ukraine (November 1918 to July 1919) took around 25,000 lives of soldiers from both sides: around 10,000 Polish and 15,000 Ukrainian. However, due to lack of sources, we can hardly estimate the losses among the civilian population. However, it was less than the overall number of soldiers lost on both sides. Another feature of this war was the fact that atrocities against the civilian population and prisoners of war were not on a large scale as compared with some other cases during WWI, for instance, Serbia which lost around 25 per cent of its population.

This war between the Polish and Ukrainian sides poisoned Polish-Ukrainian relations for decades; during WWII Ukrainians committed a large-scale genocide on the Poles (and Jews) in Galicia.

The Polish-Ukrainian dispute was over the land:

For the Polish side, the problems concerning East Galicia did not end with the military defeat of West Ukrainian armed forces in July 1919, but played a role in the inner and foreign affairs of Warsaw for the next two decades.

For the Ukrainian side, the problem was solved by Josef Stalin at the end of WWII as Soviet Ukraine annexed East Galicia. The local Poles were forced to live outside their motherland – Poland up to the present day, while Ukrainians succeeded in creating within the USSR a Greater Ukraine by annexation of land from all neighbours.

The Entente powers, concerned with the direct threat of export of the Bolshevik revolution from Russia to Europe, granted East Galicia (temporarily) to Poland, to create a stronger defense corridor against Bolshevik Russia. However, the Treaty of Saint Germain (September 1919) gave only West Galicia (westward from San River) to Poland, leaving the final resolution of East Galicia to the future.

In December 1919, the British statesman Lord Curzon proposed two possible boundary lines throughout Galicia: (1) One would serve as the southern extension of what he proposed should be the eastern borders of Poland; officially accepted as Curzon Line. (2) The variant, which was further east and included Lwów, would serve as Poland's border. However, none of these proposed solutions was accepted by Warsaw, whose annexation of all of East Galicia was, in March 1923, recognized by the Entente Council of Ambassadors.

Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic is a Research Fellow at Centre for Geostrategic Studies, Belgrade, Serbia.