Polish-Ukrainian relations

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Polish-Ukrainian relations
Location of Poland and Ukraine
PolandPoland UkraineUkraine
Poland Ukraine

Polish-Ukrainian relations are the foreign policy relations between Poland and Ukraine .

history

Middle Ages and Polish-Lithuanian aristocratic republic

Khmelnytskyi Uprising

Against the resistance of the Polish-Lithuanian nobles, Bohdan Chmelnyzkyj established an independent Ukrainian Cossack state ( hetmanate ) with the seat of government in Tschyhyryn in 1648 through a treaty with the Polish king Jan Kazimierz , which quickly became dependent again in 1651 through alliances with Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Thereupon the Ukraine was divided between Poland, which received the right bank Ukraine and Russia , which received the left- bank territories. In the Russian part of Ukraine, the rise of the Russian language began in the Ukraine , while in the Polish part the long-standing polonization continued.

Galicia

The Poles in the Austrian division area Galicia had after the partitions of Poland again the possibility of their national feelings to show relatively early, especially after the autonomy granted by the Austrian government in 1867. This movement was there, not only of the urban population, but also of parts worn by the rural-peasant classes. To the same extent, however, Ukrainian nationalism also grew in the eastern parts of Galicia, whose violent and radical character was nourished by the fact that, in addition to the ethnic variant of the conflict, a social one was also added: the majority of the poor, rural population of Ukrainian nationality suffered considerably from the extensive farming population and socially conservative large landowners of Polish nationality. The conflict thus had the characteristics of a social division. The national and cultural dividing lines, hardly conscious of the majority of the population, could therefore be defined on the basis of the clearly recognizable social divide between the socio-political elite and the socially and economically declassed strata, whereby the emphasis on the national cultural independence of the Ukrainians and the idea of ​​their national independence are particularly politically explosive won. The structure of economic power went hand in hand with the distribution of political power: it was almost exclusively in the hands of the Polish nobility . In addition, both nationalities separated the denominational differences. One can therefore characterize the smoldering Polish-Ukrainian dispute as a conflict between a formerly privileged nation that refused to give up its holdings in schools, universities and political power, and an originally petty-bourgeois to peasant nation that demanded equality.

Development after the First World War

The First World War exacerbated the national differences as the warring great powers Austria and Russia exploited the Polish-Ukrainian antagonism for their respective goals, played off both population groups against each other and thus helped both to exacerbate and perpetuate the conflict. After the defeat of the Central Powers and the break-up of the multi-ethnic state Austria-Hungary , both Poles and Ukrainians strove to form national states - each at the territorial, political and economic expense of the other side. The Polish-Ukrainian war that followed the First World War was won by the Polish side.

Józef Piłsudski and Symon Petljura , Vinniza 1920

However, the Army of the People's Republic of Ukraine fought alongside Poland in the Polish-Soviet War . After the signing of the Riga Treaty , the Ukrainian soldiers were interned in Poland .

Eastern Galicia and Volhynia , located in the former Russian division - both predominantly Ukrainian in rural areas - were incorporated into the re-established Polish state. However, this decision did not lead to solution of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, but carried them directly into the young Polish state: One-sixth of the total population of the Second Polish Republic were Ukrainians .

Period of the Second Polish Republic

Overall, the quality of the living conditions of the Ukrainian minority fell behind that of the Habsburg Monarchy : the specifically Ukrainian school system was suppressed, Ukrainians gradually removed from the Polish civil service and Orthodox churches destroyed. The social conflict intensified noticeably as the land ownership of the Polish nobility and the Polish landowners was not included in the land reform of the 1920s. The consequence was a further impoverishment, especially of the Ukrainian rural population. The greatest problem between Poles and Ukrainians, however, was the endeavor of the Polish state and its nationality policy to spread or deepen Polishism through the settlement of Poles in the eastern, Ukrainian-specific areas of the country in the form of internal colonization . Where attempts to resettle Polish settlers from central Poland have been most vigorous, such as in Volhynia , the reaction of the Ukrainian population, which is more and more economically, socially, politically and culturally oppressed, has been most violent. At the beginning of the 1930s, attacks on Polish politicians and state representatives were almost the order of the day. Before that, the Ukrainian resistance and underground movement Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) had prevailed that the improvement of Ukrainian living conditions and the achievement of political goals could only be achieved by force against the Polish state. The Polish state reacted with repression measures and violent attacks against entire Ukrainian village communities. At the same time, with the help of the Polish Catholic Church, the Orthodox Ukrainians were forced to mission and their clergy deported. In return for these forms of Polish counter-violence, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the OUN first developed the idea of ​​expelling the Poles from the areas considered Ukrainian.

Second World War

The renewed partition of Poland as part of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the beginning of the Second World War with the invasion of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army led to the first deportations of Poles from their homeland. There were various waves of escape and deportation, of which the Poles were affected on the one hand around 1939/1940 in the course of the German invasion and then again in 1944/1945 in the course of the invasion of the Red Army.

In the areas of eastern Poland not only the Second World War raged, but also a bloody civil war between Poland and Ukrainian nationalists (see also massacres in Volhynia and eastern Galicia ). In January 1944 the Red Army crossed the Polish-Soviet border from 1939 again. However, it was not able to protect the Polish population in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia from attacks by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). There were also attacks by Polish nationalists on Ukrainian civilians, such as in the Pawłokoma massacre .

Shifting borders and resettlement of the population

Resettlement of the Polish population

The basis for the resettlement of the so-called repatriates was the cession of Eastern Poland , Eastern Galicia and Volhynia to the Soviet Union . Father of this idea was Josef Stalin , the first time in 1943 at the Tehran Conference a westward shift of Poland at Germany's expense and in favor of the USSR encouraged. At the Yalta Conference , April 4-11. February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin decided that Poland should be bordered by the Curzon Line to the east and the Oder-Neisse Line to the west. At the same time, Great Britain and the USA recognized the provisional Polish government set up by Stalin. With the Potsdam Conference from July 17 to August 2, 1945, the “transfer” of the German population from the areas ceded to Poland to Germany was finally decided “in an orderly and humane manner” .

The resettlement of the Poles from the eastern parts of the country following the Polish-Soviet border treaties took place in an area that had been permanently at war. This circumstance in particular may also have induced Winston Churchill - incidentally just like the Polish communists - to strive for a Polish nation-state without minorities in the future and therefore to give in to Stalin's insistence that Poland be shifted to the west along with a population exchange:

There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble […]. A clean sweep will be made .

Resettlement of the Ukrainian population

Between 1944 and 1946, around half a million Ukrainians were resettled from the areas of Poland that had been shifted to the west to the former Polish eastern areas.

In 1947 ethnic Ukrainians , as well as Bojken and Lemken , were forced to move from the south-east to the so-called reclaimed areas in the north and west of the People's Republic of Poland .

present

Viktor Yushchenko and Aleksander Kwaśniewski , Davos 2005
European Football Championship 2012 Logo.svg

Poland is very interested in an independent, democratic and market economy-oriented Ukraine. Poland provides bilateral humanitarian aid as well as support for the reform process in Ukraine.

On May 18, 1992 in Warsaw, the bilateral agreement on good neighbors, friendly relations and cooperation was signed by the Polish President Lech Wałęsa and the President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk , in which the common state border and the rights of national minorities were recognized as well as obvious common interests in the Foreign policy were formulated.

In 2012 Poland hosted the European Football Championship together with Ukraine .

In 2015, the state institutes for national remembrance ( IPN in Poland and UNIP in Ukraine) founded a joint historians commission for the academic review of the phase from 1939 to 1947. The commission consists of six historians from both institutes, who alternate every six months in Ukraine and meet in Poland.

literature

  • Manfred Alexander : Small history of Poland. Reclam, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-010522-6 .
  • Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg : The Polish-Ukrainian Relations 1922-1939. A literature and research report. in: Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe . New Series Vol. 39, No. 1, 1991 pp. 81-102, JSTOR 41048537 .
  • Andrzej Chojnowski: Koncepcje polityki narodowościowej rządów polskich w latach 1921–1939 (= Polska myśl polityczna XIX i XX wieku. 3). Zakład Narodowy imienia Ossolińskich, Wroclaw 1979, ISBN 83-04-00017-2 .
  • Winston S. Churchill : His complete speeches. 1897-1963. Volume 7: 1943-1949. Edited By Robert Rhodes James. Chelsea House Publishers, New York et al. 1974.
  • Norman Davies : God's Playground. A History of Poland. Volume 2: 1795 to the present. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 1981, ISBN 0-19-821944-X .
  • Piotr Eberhardt: Przemiany narodowościowe na Ukrainie XX wieku (= Biblioteka Obozu. 19). Obóz, Warsaw 1994, ISBN 83-90310-90-2 .
  • Rainer W. Fuhrmann: Poland. Manual. History, politics, economics. Completely revised and supplemented new edition. Torch bearer, Hanover 1990, ISBN 3-7716-2105-4 .
  • Ryszard Gansiniec: Na straży miasta. In: Karta. No. 13, 1994, ISSN  0867-3764 , pp. 7-27.
  • Krystyna Kersten: Polska - państwo narodowe. Dylematy i rzeczywistość. In: Marcin Kula (Ed.): Narody. Jak powstawały i jak wybijały się na niepodległość? Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1989, ISBN 83-01-09112-6 , pp. 442-497.
  • Andrej Kreutz: Polish-Ukrainian Dilemmas: A Difficult Partnership. In: Canadian Slavonic Papers. = Revue Canadienne des Slavistes. Vol. 39, No. 1/2, 1997, pp. 209-221, JSTOR 40869898 .
  • Enno Meyer: Basic features of the history of Poland (= basic features. 14). 2nd, revised edition with one register added. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1977, ISBN 3-534-04371-5 .
  • Hans Roos : History of the Polish Nation. 1918-1985. From the founding of the state in the First World War to the present. 4th, revised and expanded edition. Continued by Manfred Alexander. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1986, ISBN 3-17-007587-X .
  • Michał Sobkow: Do innego kraju. In: Karta. No. 14, 1994, ISSN  0867-3764 , pp. 57-68.
  • Ryszard Torzecki: Polacy i Ukraińcy. Sprawa ukraińska w czasie II wojny światowej na terenie II Rzeczypospolitej. Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1993, ISBN 83-01-11126-7 .

Web links

Commons : Polish-Ukrainian relations  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas Kappeler : Brief history of the Ukraine (= Beck'sche series. 1059). CH Beck, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-406-37449-2 , p. 224.
  2. ↑ Foreign Policy . Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Retrieved July 22, 2018.
  3. ^ The Ukrainian-Polish relationship in the Federal Agency for Civic Education of February 12, 2007; accessed on January 14, 2019
  4. ^ Following seven-year break Ukrainian-Polish forum of historians resumes its work. In: Ukraine Today of November 5, 2015, accessed June 1, 2016
  5. ^ Second meeting of the Polish-Ukrainian Forum of Historians in Warsaw. ( Memento of the original from June 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ipn.gov.pl archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Report on the website of the Institute of National Remembrance , accessed on June 1, 2016 (English)