Western Ukraine and the Russians: a tangled story. Have no illusions - the west and east of Ukraine are different countries

Artem Davidenko, Vasyl Mykhailyshyn, for "Khvyli"

How many theories do you know about why Russians are not very liked in Western Ukraine? If you look hard enough, you can find many explanations. Most of them differ from each other primarily in the flight of imagination of the authorsand the main villains, but it is unlikely that any of them will be able to surpass the theory about the Austrian General Staff.

In short, Austria wanted to weaken its dangerous neighbor, the Russian Empire, which became especially reasonable for Vienna during the First World War, when both countries were separated from each other. different sides front lines. And what could be better thought of than to undermine the foundations of the unity of the Romanov Empire - to quarrel"brotherly peoples" , the pillars on which the Russian state is based. Without thinking for long, the insidious Austrian General Staff began to implement a cunning plan and came up with the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian culture, and the word “Ukraine” itself. True, history does not tell how the cunning Habsburgs managed to teach a language invented only yesterday to millions of people. And how it happened that this same language has been used for a long time in worship, in literature and folklore, no one explains either.

There are many similar pseudoscientific theories and all of them are good only upon superficial acquaintance. Ukraine and Ukrainians were “invented” by everyone: Poles, Germans, Freemasons, Jews, Americans. But, however, always with one goal - to destroy Russia and quarrel “brotherly peoples”. Of course, they know nothing about these plans either in Warsaw, or in the Masonic lodges, or in Tel Aviv, Berlin or Washington. Ukrainians will also laugh at these theories - even their grandmothers’ grandmothers sang lullabies to their children in Ukrainian. Therefore, these stories can afford the luxury of claiming to be scientific only in one country.

Today, thousands of Russians travel to Western Ukraine on business and as tourists and, imagine, they return home safe and sound, and even take with them fresh positive impressions. But you can’t argue with the facts - according to opinion polls, it is in Western Ukraine that the largest number of people consider Russia to be an unfriendly state, it is here that the number of supporters of the EU and NATO is steadily growing, and it is here that nationalist parties with anti-Russian rhetoric have the greatest support. The situation was the same before the events of 2014.

So what's the deal? Why do Western Ukrainians “dislike” Russians so much? If you discard all pseudoscientific theories and arm yourself with facts, the reasons will seem much more prosaic than intricate fiction about the insidious Austrian General Staff. This issue is quite complex and one article will not be enough to cover all its problems. We'll try give simplified in presentation, but at the same time not answer that simplifies the facts.

To this end, we will briefly go through the history of Western Ukraine as part of Austria-Hungary, Poland and the USSR in search of an answer to the question of when and why the image of the Russians as an enemy was formed, with whom Western Ukraine had the most tense relations and why in 1939 Lviv met Red Army with flowers.

Western Ukraine within the Austrian Empire

The phenomenon of “Western Ukraine” in its modern borders appeared after three sections of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the 18th century. Galicia, Northern Bukovina and Transcarpathia became part of the Austrian Empire, all other Ukrainian lands became part of Russia. This division was finally consolidated after the defeat of Napoleon in Europe and the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

Western Ukraine as part of states 1815-1914

At that time, the national identity of Ukrainians was just emerging. If you had a chance to ask a resident of Galicia who he is, you would hardly hear “Ukrainian.” Most likely “Rusyn” or “Uniate” or even “local”. Approximately the same would have happened in the rest of the territory of modern Ukraine (replace only “Uniate” with “Orthodox”). You will be surprised, but you would have heard something similar in Europe - in Germany, Italy and even France. Decades will pass before states build a unified education system and, accordingly, a national mythology.

It was much more difficult for Ukrainians, because they did not have a state and no one created a single national mythology. This was done by separate, multidirectional circles of intellectuals. The most influential were the Moquophiles (Russophiles) and the Narodniks (not to be confused with the Narodniks in the Russian Empire). Muscovophiles saw the future of Western Ukrainians in alliance with Orthodox Russia, Narodovtsy - in the Ukrainian (Rusyn) autonomy, which should be created in Galicia.

Both trends did not arise simultaneously. Muscovophiles have been active since the very beginning of X 9th century. Their ideas of unity with Orthodox Russia were understandable to the majority of the population, who then identified themselves primarily on religious grounds. Greek Catholicism, which was then professed by the majority of Ukrainians in Galicia and Bukovina, was opposed to the Catholicism of the Poles, and accordingly, sought support from Orthodoxy. Muscophiles even began a movement to de-Latinize the Greek Catholic Church in order to bring it as close as possible to the Orthodox Church.

But in the 1860s, a new movement began to gain popularity - the Narodovtsy. It appeared as a response to the activity of Muscovophiles and promoted completely different ideas. The Narodovites also advocated the unification of all Ukrainians in one state - independent Ukraine.

And here we cannot fail to mention another problem that Western Ukrainians immediately encountered. After all, not only they considered Galicia theirs; the Poles claimed their rights to it. And let’s say right away that the positions of the Poles were much stronger - after all, they made up the majority of the intelligentsia, the administrative apparatus, and in general, could boast of centuries-old state traditions.

Both Muscovophiles and Narodivists saw the Poles as their main opponents. The Poles could not allow either the annexation of Galicia to Russia, which the Muscovophiles demanded, or national Ukrainian autonomy, which the Narodivists sought. Therefore, a paradoxical, but at the same time logical situation arose: Western Ukrainians considered the enemy not the Austrians, as the main “enslavers,” but the Poles, with whom they essentially shared the same fate of a people without a state. For example, an indicative fact: during the so-called “Spring of Nations” in 1848, a revolution broke out throughout the Austrian Empire, the Poles Same began a national uprising in Galicia. Ukrainians behaved like a conservative force that advocated the preservation of the Austrian Empire. It is here that the roots of the theory about the Ukrainian nation as the brainchild of the Austrian General Staff grow. In fact, everything was much simpler - the Ukrainians could not allow the Poles to strengthen in Galicia and therefore supported a force that could restrain this strengthening.

The influence of the Poles increased even more after the transformation of the Austrian Empire into the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867 after defeat in the Austro-Prussian War. The monarchy weakened and the Polish aristocracy in Galicia took advantage of this, reaching top level autonomy for the crown region. Of course, it was the Poles who played first fiddle in his political and economic life.

This led to the strengthening of the national movement of Ukrainians in Galicia. In the 1890s, the Populists created the majority of political parties. Muscophiles lost their popularity over time. Some compromised themselves with espionage and subversive activities paid for by Russia, others switched to Ukrainian national democratic positions. By the beginning of the First World War, the Populist movement, organized into political parties, dominated the political life of Western Ukrainians.

First World War

During the First World War, Muscovophiles again expanded their activity. True, now as an openly subversive trend of collaborationists, Austria-Hungary could well call them “invented by the Russian General Staff.” Created by Muscovophiles in August 1914, the “Carpatho-Russian Liberation Committee” openly campaigned for the surrender of Galicia Russian army, and during the occupation of the region by Russia in September 1914 – June 1915, he actively collaborated with the occupation authorities. After the Austro-German offensive in May-August 1915, the Muscovophiles were either interned in the Thalerhof camp by the Austro-Hungarian authorities or fled east along with the retreating Russian army.

But the best vaccine against Muscophilia in Galicia was the actual policy of the occupation authorities in 1914-1915.

Firstly, the Russians actively fought against the Greek Catholic Church. Local priests were removed from worship, arrested and expelled. In particular, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, was also expelled. In their place, Orthodox priests were sent from Russia, and church parishes were forcibly transferred to Orthodoxy. During the occupation in Galicia, from 86 to 113 priests of the Russian Orthodox Church worked in parishes.

Secondly, the practice of taking hostages has become common. Mainly representatives of the elite of society were taken hostage - bankers, entrepreneurs, cultural figures, and intellectuals. Most of them were accused of espionage and sent to the Russian hinterland to live in settlements.

When the Russian army retreated, an order was issued to resettle the male population of Galicia to Russia so that men could not be mobilized into the Austro-Hungarian army. Although this measure could not be implemented on a large scale, more than 100 thousand men in 1915 ended up in the territory of Volyn, controlled by the Russian Empire.

Such a policy canmay not seem very tough - for us, who from history courses know about mass executions, concentration camps, gas chambers and other delights of totalitarian regimes. But for people in Western Ukraine in 1914, this was all new. Therefore, the majority of people have lost sympathy for the Russians.

It is obvious that the People’s people, who immediately supported Austria-Hungary from the beginning of the war, gained much greater favor with the Austrians, as well as popularity among the Galicians. The authorities allowed and welcomed the creation of Ukrainian national units (Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen). Here, too, the legs of the Russian propaganda myth about the Austrian General Staff are growing - they say they created an army of Galicians to fight against the “brotherly people”. In fact, the Austrians limited the patriotic zeal of Western Ukrainians. More than 10,000 Ukrainians responded to the call of the people from the Main Ukrainian Rada to form the Legion, but it was allowed to create a unit of only 2,500 people. Again, the Poles interfered, who used all their influence in the empire to limit the number of " Ukrainian army».

The Sichovykh Riflemen Legion successfully fought at the front and never experienced a shortage of volunteers to make up for losses. In July 1917, in the battle near Konyukhi, the Legion, almost in its entirety, was captured. Paradoxically, this defeat opened a new page in the glorious history of the Streltsy - namely, their participation in the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917 - 1921.

Ukrainian revolution

In February 1917, a revolution broke out in Petrograd. The people are tired of constant shortages, unnecessary deaths and impoverishment. Emperor Nicholas II abdicated the throne, power was in the hands of the provisional government.

But the paradox was that the revolution, which began as a protest against the war, did not put an end to the war itself.In July, Russia's last great offensive in World War I began, named after the head of the Provisional Government, the “Kerensky Offensive.”. It was during this offensive that the Sich Riflemen were captured.

At this time, a revolution also began in Kyiv, but with a national tint. In March, the Ukrainian Central Rada began its work under the leadership of history professor Mikhail Grushevsky. The leaders of the Rada were very careful in their ambitions - they did not fight for an independent Ukrainian state, but only for the national-territorial autonomy of Ukrainians as part of a “democratic federal Russia”. They also decided not to create a Ukrainian army - they were going to live in peace with Russia. Separate armed detachments from former front-line soldiers were created with great difficulty by the strength of enthusiasts.

History has punished the Central Rada for this mistake. In October 1917, the Bolsheviks came to power under the slogan “Freedom for the peoples!” begin to build a new empire. In December, the Reds captured Kharkov and proclaimed the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic - with an eye on all of Ukraine.

But let's return to the Sich Riflemen. After the proclamation of the Ukrainian People's Republic in November 1917, Western Ukrainian prisoners of war were released and they formed the Galician-Bukovinian kuren of the Sich Riflemen. Since December, he found his permanent commander - Yevgeny Konovalets, who providedsupply, training and ideological spirit of the archers.

It was the policy of the Central Rada that led to the fact that the small kuren (about 400 people) was almost the most combat-ready unit in the Ukrainian army in January 1918 . They resisted the Reds, who were advancing on Kyiv, suppressed the Bolshevik rebellion in Kyiv, and guarded the Central Rada after the evacuation from the capital.

After the hetman's coup in April 1918, Konovalets and many streltsy went underground and returned to the arena of the Ukrainian revolution only in November, under the banners of the Army Directory of the UPR. They remained faithful to it until the final defeat of the Ukrainian revolution in 1921.

Meanwhile, a revolution was also brewing in Galicia. In October 1918, it was clear to everyone that Germany and Austria-Hungary would lose the war. Everywhere in the empire, national movements arose in support of the independence of their peoples from Austria. The Ukrainians were no exception either - in November, the centurion of the Sich Riflemen Vitovsky with a small detachment captured key buildings in Lviv, hanging a yellow-blue flag. The same thing happened in other large cities of Western Ukraine. The Western Ukrainian People's Republic (WUNR) was proclaimed, which was supposed to extend to the territory of Galicia and Northern Bukovina.

But again the Poles interfered. They began actively building their state, and of course did not forget about Galicia, which they considered theirs. After stubborn resistance, the Ukrainian Galician Army, and with it the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, was defeated until June 1919. The military retreated across the Zbruch River, where they joined the UPR Army, which was then fighting off the Bolsheviks and Whites.

The Ukrainian Galician Army managed to fight both in alliance with the Ukrainian People's Republic (July-November 1919), and together with the whites of A. Denikin (November 1919 - January 1920), and even as part of the Red Army (January - April 1920). But there was never any alliance with the Poles - until the end of the Ukrainian revolution of 1917-1921, the Galicians considered the Poles their main enemy. Warsaw anti-Bolshevik Pact between the leader of the UPR Symon Petliura andHead of the Polish-Lithuanian CommonwealthGalicians perceived Józef Pilsudski as treason on the part of Kyiv.

Second Polish Republic

The First World War was not only the last gasp of the four great empires - Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, German and Russian - but also gave birth to new countries. This fate did not spare the Poles, who had long dreamed of their own state. In 1918, one of the points of the Paris Peace Conference, at which the fate of the post-war world was decided, provided for the creation of a Polish state - the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

But the creation of new countries then raises one of the most painful issues for all states – the issue of borders. It was, of course, necessary to take advantage of the unique historical moment and gain as many territories as possible in the chaos that reigned then. And given the fact that especially the border lands in Europe are ethnically heterogeneous, there were more than enough reasons to seize part of the territories from a neighboring state.

The first head of the revived Poland, Józef Pilsudski, also understood this, saying that Poland’s borders in the West depended on the decisions of the Entente (the coalition led by France and Great Britain that won the First World War), and the borders in the East depended on itself. oh Warsaw s. As a result, the Poles defeated the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, repelled the Bolshevik offensive and consolidated their position in these lands, as they thought, forever.

Western Ukrainians found themselves in new political realities - now they are citizens of Poland, and the capital of their new homeland is Warsaw. But not only Ukrainians found themselves hostage to the Polish dream of their own state, since 30% of the population of Poland were not Poles - 15% were Ukrainians, and the remaining 15% included Belarusians, Germans, Lithuanians, etc. Taking these facts into account, the national question in the Second The Polish Republic, of course, could not but be relevant.

Officially in Poland, the right of Ukrainians to realize their interests through local government bodies was secured, and the rights of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and Ukrainian language. But it never came to fruition. And although Poland in the early 1920s. and seemed outwardly to be a democratic state, one of the leitmotifs of its national policy was the assimilation of the Ukrainian population.

It all started in 1921 with the adoption of the Constitution, which did not provide for national minorities the scope of rights and freedoms that they initially expected. A year later, parliamentary elections were to take place, which almost all Ukrainian parties, as well as the clergy, called for a boycott. The Polish government saw this as nothing more than subversive activities of Soviet Ukraine and began to zealously arrest Ukrainian politicians.

The aggressiveness of Polish policy towards Western Ukraine is explained primarily by Warsaw’s uncertainty in its ability to retain these territories, the population of which until recently fought with those who are now their government. The situation really did not develop towards a peaceful scenario. The policy of polonization (implantation of Polish culture and language) and the distribution of land in regions with a predominant Ukrainian population to Polish military personnel caused protests among the Ukrainian population, including against military service.

But against the backdrop of worsening Polish-Ukrainian relations and with the direct support of the USSR, the Communist Party of Western Ukraine (KPZU) operated in Poland. Sympathy for the Soviet Union and the idea of ​​joining the USSR enjoyed good popularity in the 20s, but almost completely disappeared after news of forced collectivization, mass repressions and the Holodomor in the Ukrainian SSR. And the leaders of the KPZU themselves were later almost all recalled to the USSR and sentenced to death penalty on fabricated cases.

But it was not the communists alone who presented the ideas of resistance to the Poles - Ukrainian nationalist organizations began to emerge in Poland, as well as in neighboring Czechoslovakia and Austria. For example, in 1920, the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) was created in Prague, headed by Yevgeny Konovalets, the core of which was made up of former Sich Riflemen. The organization was engaged in sabotage and subversive activities and political assassinations, among which is an unsuccessful attempt on the life of Jozef Pilsudski. As a response, 5 thousand people were arrested and the authorities began to pursue the so-called “pacification” policy, searching Ukrainian villages in search of “UVO militants.” In response to these actions, the nationalists switched to tactics of individual terror, emphasizing both their anti-Polish and anti-Bolshevik orientation.

For example, the attempt by OUN member M. Lemik on the life of a Soviet consulate employee O. Mailov was widely publicized - the former’s goal was to protest during the trial against the Soviet Union’s hushing up of an artificial famine in Ukraine.

But the OUN was not the only one that represented the political interests of Ukrainians. For example, the most popular was the Ukrainian National Democratic Association (UNDO) of anti-communist and democratic persuasion, which set as its goal the creation of a Ukrainian state, but rejected violence as a method of achieving goals. However, the actions of both Ukrainians and Poles only inflamed an already difficult situation, making it even more difficult through attempts to enlist the support of external players. The potential for conflict increased, and the positions of both sides became more and more radical.

On September 1, 1939, German troops invade Poland from the West, and 17 days later the Red Army invades the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the East. The young Polish state, which barely had time to celebrate its twentieth anniversary, found itself squeezed between a rock and a hard place.

Division of Poland between the Third Reich and the USSR

But what was a tragedy for the Poles was, not without reason, considered by the Ukrainians of Poland as a new historical chance, which fate does not often like to throw away. A month after the start of hostilities, they already found themselves in new political realities that could change, as it seemed then, their lives for the better.

Today this may seem like a fantastic scenario, but Lvov welcomed the Red Army with joy. Twenty years of extremely difficult relations with the Poles and the arrival of “brothers and Soviet Ukraine” created an atmosphere of hope for long-awaited changes for the better, although most of The intelligentsia was extremely skeptical about this turn of events.

Red Army in Lvov, 1939

Red Army in Lvov, 1939

Lviv residents welcome the Red Army

The music played for a while

The euphoria passed quickly. Stage one – culture shock. The unkempt-looking “liberators,” who found themselves outside the USSR for the first time, greedily bought goods that were in short supply in the Union, causing justifiable surprise to the local population. Not only “capitalists hostile to the working class,” but also ordinary people suffered from expropriation and frequent cases of robbery; and public use by families Soviet officers night "ducks" as containers for milk and nighties as evening dresses became the talk of the town throughout the occupied territory.

Stage two is the legalization of annexation. Of course, it was necessary to cement the new borders with the will of the local population, which the Soviet regime always did well. On October 22, 1939, elections were held in which, according to official statistics 93% of the population took part and 91% supported the proposed candidates. Formed People's Assembly Western Ukraine in a single impulse thanked Stalin for the “liberation” and turned to the First Secretary of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Nikita Khrushchev with a request to officially include the territory of Western Ukraine into the Ukrainian SSR.

Petition for the admission of Western Ukraine to the Ukrainian SSR

People's Assembly of Western Ukraine

Stage three – repression. The first to be deported were former Polish officials and police officers. One of the most famous events for its tragedy occurred in the spring of 1940 - in the forest near Katyn (Smolensk region), the NKVDists shot more than 20,000 Polish soldiers. The turn of the Ukrainians came: the activities of organizations not controlled by the councils were stopped, political parties were liquidated, and all those who, in the opinion of the Bolsheviks, could pose any danger were persecuted. The only major political force in opposition to the Bolsheviks remained the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which was forced to go underground.

There is no trace left of past gratitude to the “liberators.” Prisons were filled at a rapid pace, forced collectivization was carried out, death sentences were imposed, and in less than two years hundreds of thousands of people were taken to Siberia - the exact number of their victims is not known to this day. Details Stalin's repressions began to be investigated back in the 80s, when a mass grave of NKVD victims was discovered near Kiev near the village of Bykivnya. But even today no one can say for sure how many were killed then, or how many of these “Bykiven” are located throughout Ukraine.

Victims of Soviet atrocities

The arrival of the Germans

Soviet power in Western Ukraine did not last long - just two years later, on June 22, 1941, the Third Reich attacked its former ally, with whose help it had recently redrawn the borders of European states. A few weeks later, Western Ukraine was completely occupied by the Wehrmacht. At first, many Ukrainians greeted the Germans with joy - even before the Third Reich attacked the USSR, thousands of people from Western Ukraine were forced to flee to Nazi-occupied Poland. In addition, Ukrainian nationalists pinned their hopes on the Germans for the revival of the Ukrainian state and initially saw them as allies in the fight against the communists and Poles.

On June 30, 1941, the German Nachtigal battalion, consisting mainly of Ukrainian nationalists, took Lviv together with Wehrmacht units. On the same day, the Act of Restoration of Ukrainian Statehood was proclaimed on Market Square in the presence of the general public and church representatives. But these plans ran counter to the German vision of the future of Ukraine, and therefore, already on July 5, many OUN leaders, including Stepan Bandera, were arrested and some were shot.

The Germans gave a clear signal that the creation of a Ukrainian state, even a union one, is not part of their plans. When Nachtigal learned about the arrest of the OUN leaders, the military demanded their release, for which the battalion was recalled from the front to the rear, and was soon disbanded. The future commander-in-chief of the UPA, Roman Shukhevych, managed to avoid arrest, and most of the Nachtigal soldiers later formed the backbone of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).

So, in 1941, it became clear that neither the Poles, nor the communists, nor the Nazis promised anything good to the Ukrainians, however, hopes for an independent state still smoldered. There were also people ready to fight for them. Repressions against the civilian population by the German occupation administration led to the creation of local self-defense units, whose No. 1 enemy was the Nazis.

The process of creating armed units to fight the Germans was led by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. From disparate groups in Volyn and Galicia, self-defense units began to be created, which united in 1943 into the UPA known to us. Before the Bolsheviks came to these lands, the UPA took part mainly in battles with the Nazis, setting itself the goal of complicating, and ideally ending, the exploitation of Ukrainian villages by the Germans.

With the transition of the territories of Western Ukraine under the control of the USSR, the UPA switched to the fight against the communists, who again showed the local population what deportations, collectivization and mass repressions were. The memory of the recent crimes of the Bolsheviks rallied thousands of people in the UPA, ready to prevent at any cost a repetition of the tragedy of 1939-41. The rebels organized acts of sabotage, and they targeted everyone who collaborated with the Bolsheviks - heads of village councils, workers of district party committees, local activists and others. And the support of the local population for the actions of the UPA and their general hatred of the Bolsheviks made life significantly more difficult for the occupiers.

Western Ukraine as part of states since 1945

To combat the rebels, special groups of the NKVD were created, the so-called agent combat groups (ABG). The main tactics of the ABG was to carry out provocative actions under the guise of the UPA - disguised NKVDists killed people, looted and burned houses in order to discredit the insurgent movement.

What now?

After the Second World War, Germany underwent a full course of denazification - the Nuremberg trials and subsequent courts punished Nazi criminals, in the post-war years the Germans were all possible ways democracy was instilled, and the German economic miracle was one of the proofs that economic progress does not require the strong hand of a dictator. To prevent a relapse into dictatorship, the German Constitution even included Article 20, which enshrines the right of Germans to rebel against a government that is destroying the democratic foundations of Germany. The payment of reparations to the injured parties once again showed an admission of guilt and demonstrated a desire to somehow atone for it, and the apogee of this policy was, of course, gesture personally affected his from the Nazis in German Wow Chancellor Willy Brandt , who knelt in front of the monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Thanks, among other things, to repentance and atonement, Germany today is associated primarily with progress and economic power, and not with the terrible events of World War II.

A more ambiguous situation has developed today in Ukrainian-Polish relations. If we do not take into account the openly biased and radical positions of some both Polish and Ukrainian historians, who blame exclusively the other side for all troubles, Ukraine and Poland as a whole manage to take the path of reconciliation, although so far without any particular results. Also in In the second half of the 90s, a symbolic reconciliation of the two peoples was carried out by the then presidents Kuchma and Kwasniewski, But At the personal level of perception of the conflict, this changed little. Today, after a many-year break, the dialogue between the Ukrainian and Polish Institutes of National Memory has resumed regarding the most acute and controversial aspects of bilateral relations. After all, objective history is history written by two sides.

A completely different situation has developed with Russia. Neither Beria nor Stalin are alive now, they collapsed and Soviet Union. But, unfortunately, imperial thinking, imperial mythology, pain for the “lost power” and rehabilitation of the killers of millions of people not only live in today’s Russia, but are also successfully cultivated. Realizing that part of the population of Ukraine did not find a new identity after the collapse of the Union, the Russian propaganda machine began to offer them its own, imposing myths about the “three fraternal peoples,” “holy Rus'” and the “Russian world.” This matter cannot be done without creating an image of the enemy - “decaying West”, “aggressive NATO”, “vile State Department”. At the Ukrainian level, the top three “enemies” include Mazepa, Petlyura and, of course, Bandera. And the stronghold of all these “alien and hostile” ideas to Ukrainians is Western Ukraine, which has learned the tragic lesson of the 20th century better than all other parts of our country. about our Russian “brothers” and certainly said goodbye to her Soviet past earlier than others. And while we are trying to find ourselves in this new world, in Moscow they are talking about the aggressiveness of Lvov while the “little green men” are occupying Crimea. By shelling the cities and villages of Donbass, Western Ukrainians in Russia are called Banderaites, fascists and Russophobes. And “mourning those killed in the civil war in Ukraine” a new column of Grads is being sent from Moscow across the border. It's all so Russian.

The First World War brought the national question onto the agenda with particular insistence. Slogans of freedom of peoples and the right to self-determination were used by both sides. On January 5, 1918, US President William Wilson, in his annual message to Congress, delivered a program for a peaceful settlement of the situation in Europe after the end of the war, which dealt with the right of nations to self-determination. This right should be applied primarily to the Habsburg Empire - Austria-Hungary.

October 1, 1918 p., When the autumn session of the Imperial Parliament began in Vienna, its deputies began to speak out in favor of concluding an immediate peace with the Entente. This issue was closely related to the existence of an empire in one form or another. On October 7, 1918, the Polish Regency Council issued a Manifesto to the Polish people, in which it proclaimed the creation of an independent Polish state in all lands inhabited by Poles. The creation of an inter-party government and preparations for elections to the Legislative Diet were announced.

The emergence of the Polish government pushed the Ukrainian government to take active action. On the initiative of the Ukrainian Parliamentary Representation and the People's Committee of National Democrats, members of both chambers of the imperial parliament from Galicia and Bukovina held a joint meeting on October 10. E. Levinky, on behalf of parliamentary representation, proposed convening a national constitution and exercising the right of national-state self-determination. Meanwhile, on October 16, the imperial manifesto was published, according to which Austria-Hungary was to become a federal state. The manifesto authorized the formation of national councils, which were supposed to act as representatives of the people's will before the central government. So, the ongoing Ukrainian preparations for the convocation of constituents have acquired a legal basis.

October 18 at People's House A meeting of representatives of the Ukrainian lands of Austria-Hungary took place in Lvov. They were attended by 69 people, including 26 ambassadors to the imperial parliament from Galicia and Bukovina, two members of the imperial chamber of gentlemen, 21 ambassadors from the Bukovina and Galician diets, representatives from the political parties of Galicia (Ukrainian National Democratic Party, Ukrainian Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Bukovina, Christian Social, etc.). The most famous people of the region were represented - Metropolitan Sheptytsky, Bishop G. Khomishin, Vice-President of the Austrian Parliament Y. Romanchuk, Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliamentary Representation E. Petrushevich, Chairman of the People's Committee of the UNDP K. Levitsky, writer V. Stefanik, Chairman of the UNDP of Bukovina Vasilkov and etc.

Representatives from Transcarpathian Ukrainians were unable to arrive in Lviv and reported in a letter that Hungarian Ukraine stands in solidarity with Galicia and wishes to become part of the Ukrainian state.

The assembly was constituted as the Ukrainian National Council (UNRada) and declared itself authorized to express the will of the Ukrainian people for self-determination and the formation of a national state. National Democrats predominated in the VN Rada, which predetermined the moderate-centrist character of Western Ukrainian parliamentarism. Cornet distinguished it from eastern parliamentarism - painted in socialist colors.

The Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliamentary Representation, E. Petrushevich, was declared the Chairman of the Unradi. UNRada adopted a “Proclamation” declaring the entire Ukrainian territory of Austria-Hungary a national state.

Meanwhile, the Habsburg Empire was disintegrating. On October 19, the Czech National Council declared the independence of the Czechoslovak region. On October 21, German national assemblies spoke out in favor of creating an independent Austro-German state. On October 19, UNRada decided to create delegations of ambassadors of the Austrian parliament, regional diets and one representative each from political parties: in Vienna, headed by E. Petrushevich, in Lvov, with K. Levitsky, and in Chernivtsi, headed by Popovich. They had to take power from the Austrian officials.

When it became known that the Polish Liquidation Commission was going to take power in Lviv on November 1, the Lviv delegation decided not to wait for either the general meeting of Unradi (scheduled for November 3) or the state act from Vienna on the transfer of power. Centurion D. Vitovsky was appointed chairman of the Military General Commissariat and assured of the readiness of the troops for an armed uprising and seizure of power. October 31, in the afternoon D. Vitovsky and the Ataman of the Sichs Streltsy S. Goruk sent orders to the district military commands to seize power no later than night.

In Lviv, the General Command had only 1,410 riflemen and 60 foremen at its disposal. To take control of a city of two hundred thousand with a predominantly Polish population, this was not enough. It was also unknown how the Austro-Hungarian garrison would behave. At 4 a.m. on November 1, the Ukrainian armed forces began their attack. Within an hour, they had disarmed the police, interned the highest civil and military officials, and captured all the vital centers of the city. A blue and yellow flag fluttered from the town hall tower. Without losing a single shooter, the General Command brought the city under its control. Austrian and Hungarian military units declared neutrality. In total, in all regions of Eastern Galicia, the transition of power took place without armed clashes or casualties. The Austrian and Hungarian garrisons disarmed without offering resistance. The UPR established control over the territory by the end of the day on November 2.

The situation on the western border was different. On November 1, Polish troops suppressed protests by Ukrainian units in Yaroslav, Lyubachev, and Novy Sanchi. In Przemysl fighting between Ukrainian and Polish troops continued until November 12, then the Ukrainians left the city. In the Lemko region - the territory between San and Poprad, two republics arose. The center of the first was the village. Wisłok Bolshaya Sianocki district, and the second - the villages of Fliorintsi and Gladysh. The Wisłocki Republic gravitated towards Lviv, and Flyorinska (Zakhidyolemkivska) sought to join Russia.

The executive delegation of the UN Council in Chernivtsi was constituted on October 29, 1918. Even earlier, on October 25, the Ukrainian Regional Committee was formed in the city, headed by A. Popovich. The committee organized a mass meeting in Chernivtsi on November 3 (up to 10 thousand participants), which spoke in favor of the annexation of Northern Bukovina to the Ukrainian State. We were talking about the territory of four counties with predominant Ukrainian settlements, as well as the Ukrainian parts of Chernivtsi and Seretsk counties, the Ukrainian communities of Storozhynetsky, Radovetsky and Kimpolunsky districts.

The Romanian National Council was formed in Chernivtsi and declared the indivisibility of the region and its intention to annex it to Romania. And the Ukrainian Committee on November 6 was able to agree with A. Onchul, who headed the Romanian Council, on the division of Bukovina along ethnographic lines. However, the redeployment of the Sich Riflemen from Bukovina to Lvov left the region without problems in the face of Romanian aggression. On November 11, troops from neighboring Romania captured Chernivtsi. Within a week, all of Bukovina was occupied.

Meanwhile, on November 9, the UN Rada approved the composition of the government - the Provisional state secretariat. K. Levitsky became the chairman of the government presidium and state secretary of financial affairs. L. Tsegelsky was appointed State Secretary of Internal Affairs, V. Paneyko of foreign affairs, S. Golubovich of legal proceedings, D. Vitovsky of military affairs, S. Baran of land, S. Fedaka of food. At the same meeting of the UPR, after a long discussion, at the proposal of V. Okhrimovich, the name was approved - Western State and the coat of arms in the form of a golden lion on a blue background.

On November 13, the UNRada adopted the “Temporary Basic Law on state independence of the Ukrainian lands of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.” Before election Constituent Assembly legislative power was in the hands of the Ukrainian National Council, and executive power was in the hands of the State Secretariat. The definition of the republican character of the Western state forced the members of the UNR present at this meeting to return again to the problem of the name. At the suggestion of Mikhail Lozinsky, the final name of the state was adopted - the Western Ukrainian People's Republic (WUNR).

The final stage in the formation of government bodies was the Unradi law of January 4, 1919 on the allocation of the Ukrainian Council. UNRada had its own president, E. Petrushevich, but the latter’s powers were extremely limited. The allocation became a kind of collective president with the maximum possible powers: appointment and dismissal of government members, the right to amnesty and pardon, approval of laws. The Department included 10 people: the president of the WUNR E. Petrushevich, his four deputies - L. Bachinsky, S. Vitik, A. Popovich, A. Shmigelsky, members - A. Gorbachevsky, G. Duviryak, M. Novakivsky, T. Okunev skiy, S. Yurik.

After taking control of Lviv on November 1, the Ukrainians considered the matter completely won. They began to go home, and on November 3, only 648 fighters remained in the city. This was a mistake that the Poles rushed to take advantage of. By recruiting the local Polish population, mainly students, they quickly increased their ranks. Street fighting broke out in the city, which continued for almost a month with varying degrees of success. On the night of November 22, Ukrainian troops were forced to leave the center of Lviv and settled on its northern, eastern and southern outskirts. At the end of November 1918, the Ukrainians retreated to the Podbortsy-Lisinich-Vinniki-Chizhki line.

The loss of Lvov forced the leaders of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic to first of all take up the organization of their own army, the basis for its formation was the legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, replenished with recruits. On November 13, 1918, the UNRada issued a law on mobilization. There were not enough highly qualified command personnel in the army. Therefore, it was necessary to take into the service former Austrian officers, mainly Galician Germans, who showed themselves well during the hostilities - Lieutenant Colonel A. Kravs, canceling A. Bizants, VLobkowitz, A. Wolf and others. A talented staff officer was also assigned to the service in the CAA officer M. Kakurin, general A. Grekov, colonel D. Kanukov from the former Russian army. At the beginning of December 1918, the command of the newly created Ukrainian Galician Army was taken by military general M. Omelyanovich-Pavlenko, who had been left with Great Ukraine. Russian Army Colonel E. Mishkivsky was appointed chief of staff. It was he who, in a short time, created a completely modern army consisting of three corps of four brigades each. The brigade consisted of 3-5 infantry kurens, technical and support departments. The kuren had three rifle and one machine gun hundreds. A hundred consisted of three chotas. By the spring of 1919, the army was fully formed, and its composition reached 125 thousand fighters.

At first, the battles between Ukrainian and Polish formations were local and spontaneous in nature, only in the 1st half. December 1918, when the fighting acquired a significant scale and the forces of both sides were consolidated, a Ukrainian-Polish front was formed. In February-March 1919, the UGA carried out the Vovchukiv offensive operation, the ultimate goal of which was the liberation of Lviv and access to the river line. San. The first stage of the operation, which included the capture railway Przemysl-Lvov was successfully implemented.

At this time, an Entente military mission led by General Barteleny arrived in Galicia to negotiate with the Ukrainian government. Upon request, the advance was stopped. On February 25, a truce was signed between the Ukrainian and Polish sides. The Entente mission proposed establishing the Ukrainian-Polish border along a line that was later called the “Berteleny Line.” To the Ukrainians, this line seemed incorrect, carried out in the interests of the Poles, so they rejected the proposals of the Entente mission and hostilities resumed in early March. The fights went on with varying degrees of success. The Poles managed to concentrate General Alexandrovich’s group against Ukrainian units exhausted by months of fighting, thanks to which Lvov was unblocked, and the Vovchukiv operation ended unsuccessfully for the UGA.

Since April 1919, the initiative in waging the war gradually passed to the Polish side. An important role in this turning point was played by the 80,000-strong army of J. Haller, formed from Poles in France at the expense of the Entente. In mid-May, bloody battles began at the front, the Poles were advancing, and the CAA troops were forced to retreat to the east, some of them were interned by the Czechoslovaks in Transcarpathia. At this time, Romanian troops began to capture the southeastern districts of Pokuttya.

After the loss of the Drohobych oil region, the UGA was forced to retreat to the southeast and at the end of May found itself in a dead end where the Zbruch flowed into the Dniester. In addition to the Polish, there were Romanian and Bolshevik troops nearby. At this moment, obviously, the Poles believed that they had finally broken the resistance of the UGA, so they transferred several divisions of Yu. Haller’s army to the west. For a while, the fighting at the front subsided, and this allowed the Ukrainians to reorganize their army, which received a new commander, General A. Trekova. He convinced the government of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic of the possibility of carrying out an offensive operation, which later went down in history as the Chertkov offensive.

Having broken through the Polish front line at Yagolnitsa, three Galician corps launched an attack on Chertkiv-Terebovlya-Ternopil, Bugach-Berezhany and Galich. The successful offensive caused a wave of upsurge among the Ukrainian population; up to 90 thousand volunteers agreed to join the army, but due to a lack of weapons, only a sixth of them were accepted into the army. The Ukrainian offensive lasted three weeks. During this time, the Poles regrouped their forces and launched a counteroffensive on May 28, 1919. Before that, on June 25, 1919, the Supreme Council of the Entente gave Poland permission to occupy all of Eastern Galicia and withdraw its troops to the Zbruch line. The Ukrainian formations, exhausted in battle, began a retreat, which ended in mid-July 1919 with their transition to the left bank of the Zbruch, where the UGA united with the Active Army of the UPR.

Together with the army, the ZUNR wire crossed Zbruch. By that time in the structure of organs state power ZUNR experienced symptomatic changes. The government - the State Secretariat - was liquidated by the decision of the Unradi Office, executive power was transferred to the hands of President E. Petrushevich, who was declared a dictator. From this and so difficult relationships between the Directory and E. Petrushevich became even more tense. When E. Petrushevich moved to Kamenets-Podolsky, where the UPR government was located, something like dual power arose here. Both Ukrainian governments failed to reconcile their interests. This continued until November 1919, when E. Petrushevich and his inner circle went to Vienna, where they tried to appeal to the world community and to the Entente on the case of Eastern Galicia. The last government of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic ceased its activities on March 15, 1923, after the Council of Entente States recognized the actual eastern border of Poland. This meant that Eastern Galicia was finally assigned to Poland, although the Entente resolution provided for the autonomy of the Galician lands. Consequently, in the western Ukrainian lands, the attempt to build and defend national statehood failed.

On September 12, 1917, the authorities of Germany and Austria-Hungary declared independence from Russia of the Kingdom of Poland (within the borders of the Vistula provinces of Russia occupied in 1915 by German and Austro-Hungarian troops, which previously constituted the Kingdom of Poland).

According to the additional agreement of August 27, 1918 to the Brest Peace Treaty, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR on August 29, 1918 annulled all tsarist treaties on the divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which gave grounds for the Regency Council of Poland to announce on October 6 of the same year the creation of an independent Polish state within the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1772.

On October 25, 1918, a Liquidation Commission was created in Krakow, which assumed power on behalf of the Polish state throughout the entire territory of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.

On the night of November 1, 1918, units of the Sich Riflemen proclaimed the power of the National Rada in Lviv, Stanislav, Ternopil and other cities of Eastern Galicia. On November 1, the Austro-Hungarian governor in Lviv transferred power to the vice-governor, recognized by the National Rada. A large blue and yellow flag was raised above the Lviv City Hall.

On November 3, 1918, the National Rada of Western Ukraine in Lviv adopted a declaration on the creation of an independent Ukrainian state on the territory of Eastern Galicia, Bukovina and Transcarpathia - Western Ukrainian People's Republic, Article V of the Provisional Basic Law adopted on November 13, 1918 established a blue-yellow rectangular cloth as the flag of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic.

On the same day, November 3, in Chernivtsi, the Assembly of Ukrainians decided to include the part of Bukovina populated by Ukrainians into Ukraine and on November 6, 1918, power transferred to the Regional Committee of the National Rada. But already on November 11, the entire territory of Bukovina was occupied by Romanian troops (on November 28, 1918, the General Congress of Bukovina was held, which spoke in favor of joining Romania, which was officially enshrined in the law of Romania on January 1, 1919).

On November 16, 1918, the restoration of an independent Polish state within the borders of 1772 was officially proclaimed in Warsaw (this claim was enshrined in the Basic Law of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1919) and the liquidation of all local governments was announced.

On November 21, 1918, Polish troops took the city of Lviv and the State Secretariat of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic was forced to move to Tarnopol.

On December 1, 1918, in the city of Fastov, the delegation of the State Secretariat of the WUNR entered into an agreement with the Directorate of the UPR on the unification of the UPR and WUNR into single state, On December 2, the formation of the Ukrainian Galician Army (UGA) began.

On January 2, 1919, the government of the WUNR moved to the city of Stanislav (from 1962 - Ivano-Frankivsk), where the first session of the People's Council of the WUNR approved the agreement on unification with the UPR.

On January 22, 1919, in Kiev, the Directorate of the UPR approved an agreement to unite the UPR and WUNR into a single Ukrainian People's Republic(“Act of Zluki”), according to which the WUNR was renamed the Western Region of the UPR (ZO UPR) with broad autonomy. But in fact, this association remained on paper, although it was reflected on postage stamps: the Western Region of the UPR ordered two series of stamps with original designs from the State Printing House of Austria. By the time the order was executed, in May 1919, the UPR ZO had lost the territory it controlled, and the stamps were not put into circulation. Almost the entire circulation was destroyed. The stamps depict an allegory of a united Ukraine: a combination of three coats of arms - the UPR, Kyiv and Lviv and the inscription: "Ukrainian People's Republic Z.O."

After the arrival in March-April 1919 from France of the 60,000-strong Polish army of General J. Haller (“gallerchiki”), on May 2, 1919, its large-scale offensive began in Eastern Galicia, during which by the end of May, Polish troops occupied over 80% territory of the Western region of the UPR, and on July 18, 1919 the last military unit The Ukrainian Galician Army crossed the Zbruch River into the territory of the UPR (on March 14, 1923, the Council of Ambassadors of the participating states of the Paris Peace Conference officially allowed Poland to annex Eastern Galicia, which it had occupied since 1919).

During the war of the RSFSR, Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR against Poland, the 1st Cavalry and 14th Army of the Red Army of the RSFSR occupied the territory of Eastern Galicia, where on July 8, 1920, the Revolutionary Committee of Eastern Galicia was formed in Tarnopol, which, with its first decree dated 1 August 1920 "On the establishment of a socialist Soviet power in Galicia" proclaimed the creation Galician Socialist Soviet Republic.

During the Polish counteroffensive, by September 23, 1920, the existence of the Galician SSR was terminated, its entire territory was occupied by Polish troops.

According to the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921, the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR recognized the inclusion of Eastern Galicia and Western Volyn (the western part of the Volyn province of Russia) into Poland.

As part of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the territory of modern Ukraine was part of the Lviv, Lutsk, Stanislav and Tarnopol voivodeships.

In accordance with Protocol No. 7 of the decision of October 1, 1939 of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, on October 22, 1939, on the territory between the State Border of the USSR established in accordance with the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921, and the border of mutual state interests of the USSR and Germany, established by Germany -Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Border between the USSR and Germany dated September 28, 1939, elections to the People's Assembly of Western Ukraine were held. On October 27, 1939, the People's Assembly of Western Ukraine adopted the declaration "On state power in Western Ukraine" and the declaration "On the entry of Western Ukraine into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic." On November 1, 1939, the fifth extraordinary session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the first convocation adopted the USSR Law “On the inclusion of Western Ukraine into the USSR with its reunification with the Ukrainian SSR.”

On June 28, 1940, Romania transferred Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the USSR. On August 2, 1940, the seventh session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the Law of the USSR “On the formation of the union Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic”, article 2 of which provided for “to include in the union Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic the city of Tiraspol and the Grigoriopol, Dubossary, Kamensky, Rybnitsa, Slobodzeya and Tiraspol districts Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the city of Chisinau and Balti, Bendery, Chisinau, Cahul, Orhei and Soroca districts of Bessarabia.” At the same time, the USSR Law “On the inclusion of the Northern part of Bukovina and Khotyn, Akkerman and Izmail districts of Bessarabia into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic” was adopted. On August 7, 1940, the Chernivtsi and Akkerman regions were formed as part of the Ukrainian SSR (March 1, 1941, renamed the Izmail region).

National symbols, incl. Lviv lion, used on banners. In particular, on the banners of the sports association "Falcon". One of the variants of the Falcon banner is shown in the figure.

Despite the fact that Ukrainians formally represent an independent ethnic group, there are still certain differences between Westerners and other representatives of Independence, and often significant ones. These differences are largely due to the influence of other countries with which different regions of Ukraine neighbor.

Language is not the same everywhere

Residents of Lvov and Dnepropetrovsk can be easily distinguished by their dialect - they place different emphasis on the same words, pronouncing them with the intonation characteristic of a particular region: “lystopaAd” and “listOpad”, for a Dnepropetrovsk resident - “we have come”, and for a Lviv resident - "We are Prively." This difference is especially noticeable when using verb forms.

The southeast of Ukraine neighbors Russia, so the Russian language is more popular there. The linguistic palette of residents of the western regions of the country is influenced by the proximity to Moldova, Slovakia, Hungary, Belarus, Romania and Poland. Accordingly, the language of Westerners is replete with words borrowed from these neighbors.

Geography influences character

According to scientists, Ukrainians belong to one anthropological type, but it is divided into several subtypes. According to the Ukrainian scientist Sergei Szegeda, the majority of “average” Ukrainians have a typical appearance, and its “shades” have long been erased historically. However, the psychotypes of residents of different regions of Ukraine still differ.

Southerners are joyful and emotional

Ukrainian psychologist Sergei Steblinsky classified the residents of Square depending on the regions in which they live.

He believes that the character of Ukrainians is seriously influenced by the climate of the area and its location. So, southerners are more joyful and emotional than others. This is noticeable at least in the example of Odessa residents. Southerners living by the sea are witty and enterprising. Moldovans, Romanians and Bulgarians are considered their distant relatives.

Westerners are irreconcilable

Residents of Western Ukraine, living in mountainous areas, have a hardened, persistent character. Highlanders are characterized by intransigence and a keen sense of justice. Outwardly, they differ most from other Ukrainians - Westerners, as a rule, are very short in stature, and their eye color is darker than that of other representatives of the ethnic group. The presumptive ancestors of people from Western Ukraine are Balkan peoples.

Averages are averaged

Residents of the central part of Ukraine have everything that is statistically average, including their appearance. In this habitat, the paths of a variety of tribes crossed at one time, and among the middle peasants there are even descendants of Turkish-speaking peoples.

The population of this area is characterized by a contradictory character, which is characterized by mood swings.

Northerners are gloomy rational skeptics

The cold climate leaves its mark on the character of the inhabitants of the northern regions of Ukraine. Outwardly, they are fair-haired, of medium height, with a massive chin and furrowed eyebrows. The inhabitants of Polesie are descendants of the northern peoples who lived during the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras.

Northerners are emotional, cheerful and determined. These are people with an active lifestyle. Upper Dnieper Ukrainians are considered descendants of the Ilmen-Dnieper peoples who once inhabited the northwestern European part of modern Russia.

Today Galicia may seem like an eternal bastion of nationalism. In the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet, this region is often associated with torchlight processions, a ban on celebrating Victory Day, as well as with deputies who fire minibus drivers for singing Russian-language songs and hang around kindergartens, demanding that children say their names in Ukrainian. Of course, such facts took place. But they are often used to spread myths and stereotypes. As a result, the winners are the forces seeking to pit Galicia and Donbass against each other, receiving dividends from the war.

The real history of this distinctive and amazingly beautiful Ukrainian region is closely connected with multiculturalism, tolerance, and the fight for social justice. Although, for political reasons, the modern “elite” does not like to remember these pages of history.

Galician way

From the Middle Ages to the 18th century. a vast region, including modern Western Ukraine, as well as the eastern and southeastern lands of modern Poland, was called Red Russia. Like every region of such a large country as our Motherland, it had its own characteristics of historical development. At the same time, the Rusyns (that is, “sons of Rus'”), as the inhabitants of the region called themselves until the twentieth century, always recognized themselves as part of the same people with the population of Naddnepryansk Ukraine.

Red Rus' has rich history, in which there was a heroic struggle of the Galician princes against the Horde and Western (Polish and Hungarian) invaders, and long-term foreign rule, as a result of which Galicia was deeply, although not completely integrated into Western civilization.

The name of the region probably comes from the group of ancient Cherven cities along the upper reaches of the Western Bug, its tributaries Guchva and Luga, and the upper reaches of the Styr. These included Cherven, Lucesk, Suteysk, Brody and others. The cities were annexed to Kievan Rus prince of Kyiv Vladimir the Great, and subsequently the Galician-Volyn principality arose here. Its creator, Orthodox prince Roman Mstislavich, was the first in Rus' to claim the titles of the Byzantine emperor - tsar (“Caesar”) and autocrat (“autocrat”).

Contrary to the widespread myth about the rural nature of Galician culture, Chervonnaya Rus has almost a thousand years of continuous urban tradition. Since ancient times, cities have been multi-ethnic. Representatives of different nations and religions lived here: Rusyns, Poles, Jews, Germans, Armenians, Czechs. The Galician princes actively invited foreign artisans and merchants to the cities, who brought the practice of city self-government - Magdeburg law.

As part of the Polish-Lithuanian state - the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - Lviv, along with Ostrog and Kiev, was one of the centers of Orthodox culture. The peculiarities of the development of Ukrainian lands determined the importance of the “Russian” (Orthodox) faith, which acted as a guarantor of the preservation of the “old-time Russian people” in the Catholic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The Orthodox Church has become synonymous with the identity of the Russian people. The fraternal movement, a local analogue of the European Reformation, actively developed here. Brotherhoods were created by Orthodox townspeople (artisans and merchants) and part of the gentry to protect the interests of the Orthodox population. They founded schools, credit unions, and printing houses.

In 1574, with money from the Lviv Brotherhood in Lviv, Ivan Fedorov published the first printed books in Ukraine in the Slavic language - “Apostle” and “Primer”.

It is curious that of all the Ukrainian bishops, only Lviv and Przemysl (Przemysl is now a city in Poland) rejected the Union of Brest of 1596, which proclaimed the unification of Orthodox and Catholics of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under the rule of the Pope.

Important feature historical path Galicia was caused by the absence of the Cossack system here, although many Galicians became Cossacks. But the Cossacks were a phenomenon of the steppe and borderland. As a result of this, Red Rus' remained under the rule of the gentry until at the end of the 18th century. was not captured by the Austrian Habsburg Empire.

Lviv under the red flag

Long separation of Galicia from the rest of the territory former Rus' put the national issue on the agenda, since the Galicians were constantly threatened with assimilation. Therefore, the top of local society (priests, landowners, intelligentsia) gave priority to the national factor over the social one. At the same time, the working masses - peasants and wage workers - first of all, strived for social justice. This first appeared during the Austrian Revolution of 1848-1849.

On the night of November 1-2, 1848, a red flag was raised over the Lviv Town Hall for the first time on the territory of Ukraine. Events of 1848-1849 went down in history as the “Spring of Nations”. The peoples of France, Prussia, Austria, Italy, and Hungary came out en masse against their monarchs. People demanded the convening of parliaments, freedom of speech, assembly, and religion.

Polish caricature from 1934. Behind the wire, according to the Poles, are Ukrainian terrorists and “separatists” (From the book: Wojciech Sleszynski. Obóz odosobnienia w Berezie Kartuskiej 1934-1939

During the interwar period, the struggle for social and national rights of Western Ukrainians continued. The Ukrainian movement was represented by a wide range of political forces: from clerics and conservatives to... the Communist Party of Western Ukraine. The nascent nationalist organizations immediately chose non-parliamentary forms of struggle, including terror. During the years of Ukrainization, the idea of ​​unity with Soviet Ukraine was very popular.

World economic crisis 1929-1933 led to a sharp impoverishment of the population. Throughout Europe, conservative, reactionary and fascist forces took advantage of this, seeking to establish dictatorial regimes under populist slogans of restoring order. strong hand" The threat of fascism, which carried the gene of world war, forced progressive forces to look for a platform for unification.

On April 16, 1936, a mass anti-fascist demonstration took place in Lvov under the flag of the anti-fascist popular front, in which about 100 thousand people. The demonstration escalated into barricade fighting, during which 46 people were killed and more than 300 were wounded.

The current Shevchenko Avenue in Lviv after the battles of Western Ukrainian anti-fascists with the Polish police. April 16, 1936

In May 1936, the Anti-Fascist Congress was held in Lvov, which was attended by representatives of the intelligentsia of Poland, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. Famous writers gave anti-Nazi speeches there. Wanda Vasilevskaya, Yaroslav Galan, Stepan Tudor. The approved resolution called on the intelligentsia of Poland, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus to participate in the nationwide struggle against Nazism, to stop preparations for war, and for the free development of science and culture.

In Poland itself at that time, right-wing radical parties gained at least 20% of the elections, and the largest of them National Party (Stronnictwo Narodowe) and the National Democratic Party ( Narodowa Demokracja, or endecja) had hundreds of thousands of members. Endetsia consistently received the highest percentage of votes in Galicia in Seimas elections.

This is how the marches of the large parliamentary Polish party National took place in the 30s.

The dictator of Poland, Jozef Pilsudski, welcomed Hitler's rise to power. On January 26, 1934, a non-aggression pact was concluded between Poland and Germany

Adolf Hitler during the funeral service for Pilsudski in Warsaw, 1935.

Ukrainian anti-fascists against General Franco

Anti-fascists from Western Ukraine stood up against fascism with arms in hand three years before the start of World War II. In distant Spain, a military rebellion under the leadership of General Franco began against the young democratic republic. Fascist Italy and Hitler's Germany came to the aid of the putschists. Thousands of internationalists from all over the world went to defend the republic. Among the first to defend Madrid in August 1936 were 37 natives of Western Ukraine who worked in mines and metallurgical plants in Belgium and France.

Following them, another 180 volunteers illegally set off from Galicia and Volyn to Spain through the Carpathian Yavornik pass on the then Polish-Czechoslovak border. Even political prisoners of Polish prisons Dmitry Zaharuk and Simon Kraevsky, natives of the Ivano-Frankivsk region, escaped from their places of detention and reached Spain to help their comrades.

In the summer of 1937, a Ukrainian company named after Taras Shevchenko was formed. It was part of the 13th international brigade named after Yaroslav Dombrovsky, named after a native of Zhitomir, a hero of the Paris Commune. The ideological assets of the company were members of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, among whom was the famous journalist Yuri Velikanovych.

Soldiers of the Dombrovsky International Brigade swear allegiance to the Spanish Republic

The commander of the company named after Taras Shevchenko S. Tomashevich wrote in the brigade newspaper: “ From the point of view of combat training, the company named after Taras Shevchenko stands very highly thanks to the experience of a significant part of the comrades who had previously served military service in other armies. We have Ukrainian officers, such as lieutenants Ivanovich and Lytvyn, we have Ukrainian sergeants and corporals...

In Spanish villages and cities, a wonderful Ukrainian song is often heard - this is the company named after Taras Shevchenko. And during difficult transitions, the battalion commander turns to the Shevchenkoites: “Maybe the Ukrainians will start singing?” A powerful song sounds, and a difficult transition becomes easier».

The Shevchenkoites received their first baptism of fire in July in the battle of Brunete: the Moroccan cavalry of the Francoists was completely defeated by the Ukrainians and Poles; enemy positions near Villa Franco del Castil and Romanillos were also captured. In those fierce battles, the company lost almost half of its personnel. Later, Shevchenko’s men fought bravely near Zaragoza on the Aragonese front. In these bloody battles, company commander Stanislav Tomashevich, his deputy Pavel Ivanovich, soldiers Vasily Lozovoy, Nazar Demyanchuk, Joseph Konovaluk, Valentin Pavlusevich, Joseph Petrash and many others showed miracles of heroism. Most of them died on Spanish soil.

Soldiers of the Dombrovsky International Brigade after the Battle of Guadalajara

Historian F. Shevchenko wrote that this “ there were people full of heroism, self-sacrifice, they shed their blood, gave their lives for the bright future of humanity. The combat path of the Taras Shevchenko company in the fight against fascism in Spain is one of the best monuments to the great revolutionary poet" According to a participant in the Spanish Civil War, Soviet General A. Rodimtsev, the number of natives of Western Ukraine in the international brigades that fought against the Nazis reached a thousand people.

At the end of 1937, a newspaper in the Ukrainian language “Fight” began to be published for soldiers, which published poems and stories by Taras Shevchenko, as well as publications about him. The newspaper “News from Western Ukraine” was published for recruits in Albacete.

In December 1937 - February 1938, the Shevchenko company fought for the Sierra Quemado mountain range in a terrible snowstorm: at an altitude of 2 thousand meters, the soldiers repelled attacks during the battles for Teruel. They managed to capture a large number of Franco weapons. Brothers Polycarp and Simon Kraevskie single-handedly dealt with the machine gunners, destroying two crews and capturing their positions. In those battles, company commander Tomashevich, political instructor Demyanchuk, sergeant Sieradzsky and Polikarp Kraevsky were killed. In March 1938, the company was surrounded on the Andalusian front and managed to break through the ring four times, despite endless enemy attacks on the heights near Caspe. In those battles, commander Stanislav Voropai (Voropaev) and political instructor Simon Kraevsky fell.

For the Shevchenkoites, the war ended on September 28, 1938, when the Republican government of Spain published a decree on the withdrawal of international brigades from the country. On October 28, a ceremonial farewell to the International Brigade members took place in Barcelona; the Spaniards and Catalans showered them with flowers. And the Polish gendarmes were waiting at home for the survivors to send them to the Bereza Kartuzskaya concentration camp.

Yuri Latysh, Candidate of Historical Sciences