Załamanie się koncepcji współpracy z Ukraińcami 1943-1945 (wybrane aspekty)

Abstract

During the war the Polish authorities, both in London and in Warsaw, strove to achieve a mutual agreement with Ukraine. They were well aware of the wrongdoings suffered by Ukrainians in the interwar period, and offered reparations. Emphasizing the impossibility of returning Eastern borderlands, they nevertheless came up with the program of strengthening the relations between Polish and Ukrainian communities living there. National minorities were offered equal political, economic, cultural and social rights (the Declaration proclaimed on March 30, 1943). The demands of the Ukrainian nationalist OUP -UPA for an independent Ukraine were rejected. Initially, the murders in Volhynia and the eastern Galicia were marginalized, and certain compromises regarding the Ukrainian demands were meant to prevent the escalation of the conflict. The official documents signaled the Polish readiness to sign an agreement with Ukrainians, promising concessions, but the offer was rejected, and Poles were still being killed. The activities of the Polish authorities were seriously tied up by the so-called large-scale politics, and they did not want to unnerve Ukrainians, which would give Stalin an excuse for intervention. In other words, lack of diplomacy in such a situation would mean that Ukrainians did not want to be part of Polish state, and should join this part of Ukraine that belonged to the Soviet Union. Still, Polish politicians were shocked by the scale of the crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists, and their determination. The political and military reactions to the problem were undertaken too late. The idea of autonomy was consistently being propagated, even despite the fact that it was rejected by Ukrainians, who were bent on setting up an “independent Ukraine”. The possibility of a compromise was further thwarted by the weakness of the Polish state in the eastern borderlands, the attitude of Germans, and scale of murders committed on Poles. After the war, mainly in the circles of emigrants, the strong eastern-borderland lobby did not want to change the borders established by the Treaty of Riga, as a result of which the agreement with the Ukrainian emigration was not possible. The ideas that were constantly propagated turned out to be no longer relevant in 1943. For most of the Poles coming from the borderlands, the claim that the Curzon Line was the only “fair” border between Poland and the Soviet Russia was not accepted. But during the discussions about the autonomy of Ukrainians and Belarusians, a new question arose: how about the rights of Poles? The Polish independent underground movement did not approve of the opinions put forward by communists. Their viewpoint reflected the social climate prevalent at the time. Some of the underground activists were part of the society excluded from the postwar reality, which was characterized by the government and borders imposed on the Polish society by other states. After the war, notably in the emigrant circles, the strong eastern -borderlines lobby did not want to change the borders established by the Treaty of Riga, which in turn was further complicated by the agreement with the Ukrainian emigration.