In discussing the activity of the UTsK on occupied Polish territory, it is essential to also mention, albeit briefly, how Polish authorities – the exile government reconstituted in Paris and later London and its underground apparatus in the GG – perceived the Kubiiovych Committee while approaching to solve the Ukrainian question.
545 Edward Kubalski, Niemcy w Krakowie..., 142.
546 Sachuk, Na bilomu koni…, 34-35.
547 Kosyk, Rozkol OUN…, 46.
548 Knysh, B’ie dvanadsiata..., 151-154.
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After 1939 the Polish state ceased to exist as an independent entity following its conquest, partition and extralegal means by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. However, a government-in-exile was reconstituted, initially in Paris (and Angers) and later in London, according to article 24 of the 1935 constitution. As such, it mimicked the prewar state structure: a president served as figurehead with some executive powers while governing power was vested in the executive represented by the prime minister and council of ministers.
Polish armed forces which fought alongside allied forces in the west were also reconstituted and under the supervision of the commander-in-chief.549 The exile government’s connection with occupied Poland came at two levels: civilian and military. The activity of the former was coordinated by the Government Delegate for Poland; the latter by the commander of the clandestine armed forces – the Home Army (Armia Krajowa – AK).550 Whereas the exile government was officially recognized by the allies, it was not the only representative claiming to speak for the Poles. After 1942 Polish and Soviet communist partisans germinated; leading to the creation of rival underground civilian and military representations.
For the Polish exile government, solving the Ukrainian question equated to a definitive position concerning the future shape of Poland’s postwar eastern border and would be a test-case determining the extent of Polish influence in East-Central Europe. To avoid the mistakes of their predecessors, General Władysław Sikorski, prime minister and commander-in-chief of Polish armed forces, announced the equality of all minorities in postwar Poland.
Concerning the importance of reaching an understanding with the Ukrainians, analysts urged to develop a policy toward cooperation especially when the fate of Poland’s prewar eastern territories would be decided by force. Without joint cooperation, analysts feared “foreign elements” would turn Poles and Ukrainians against each other in efforts to assume dominance those territories.551 However, this left-out an important topic for discussions and negotiations – revising the territorial status quo ante bellum of the Riga Treaty.
549 Eugeniusz Duraczyński, Rząd polski na uchodźstwie 1939-1945. Organizacja, personalia, polityka (Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza, 1993), 35-105; Stefan Korboński, The Polish Underground State: A Guide to the Underground 1939-1945 (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1981), 14-70. For a broader examination into the exile government during and after the war, see the collected essays in Zbigniew Błażyński (ed), Władze RP na obczyźnie podczas II wojny światowej 1939-1945 (London: Polskie Towarzystwo Naukowe na Obczyźnie, 1994). The government-in-exile constituted a political coalition comprised of the Polish Peasant Party, the Polish Socialist Party, the Labor Party, and the National Party. Ministries in the exile government included:
internal affairs, information and documentation, foreign affairs, treasury, industry and trade, and social welfare.
The council of ministers also included many ministers without portfolios. For an understanding into the role of couriers between the exile government and the underground in occupied Poland, see the first-hand recollections:
Jan Karski, Story of a Secret State (Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 2014) and Jan Nowak Jeziorański, Kurier z Warszawy (Kraków: Znak, 2014).
550 Chodakiewicz, Between Nazis and Soviets..., 181. Previously the AK was known as the Union of Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej).
551 PISM, Council of Ministers – Archive of the Prime Minister (CM-APM), folder PRM.36, Stan sprawy ukraińskiej w chwili obecnej, September 6, 1940. Sikorski was skeptical toward a project drawn-up by the Komitet Ministrów dla Spraw Kraju which suggested, besides a promise to resepct the rights of the Ukrainian minority in postwar Poland, building an independent Ukrainian state at the expense of the USSR. Furthermore, the project stipulated that in the event a future Ukraine decided for federation with Poland, a border correction would be made to benefit the Ukrainians. According to Partacz, this was viewed by Sikorski as a return to the Piłsudskite politics of federalization. Partacz and Łada, Polska wobec ukraińskich dążeń…, 18-19.
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Throughout the war, the exile government made worthwhile attempts toward contacting Ukrainian circles with the intent of coming to terms with them in order to prevent another possible Polish-Ukrainian war. Jerzy Giedroyc, the later publisher of the literary-political journal Kultura who served as secretary to the Polish ambassador in Romania (from September 1939 to November 1940), made contacts with Ukrainians there with the hope of finding allies. Even though Polish-Ukrainians meetings were held, they were often theoretical with little actual results.552 Jerzy Stempowski, essayist and literary critic who fled to Hungary and Switzerland before collaborating with Giedroyc and Kultura after the war, offered to use his contacts among Eastern Galician Ukrainians as a basis for concerted talks by the exile government.553
Attempts were also made to collaborate with pro-Polish Ukrainians – Petliurite émigrés representing the Ukrainian National Republic-in-exile. After the occupation of Warsaw, where the UNR-exiles were centered, a reorganized UNR émigré government in Paris around former Prime Minister Viacheslav Prokopovych – who automatically assumed the mantle of UNR-exile president – and a Ukrainian Committee. The group quickly made contacts with exile Poles who continued to subsidize them, albeit in a limited capacity. In exchange, they expressed loyalty toward the anti-Hitler coalition and engaged in talks to create a Ukrainian military unit under either French or Polish command in the west.554In the GG, the Polish underground also entered into talks with Ukrainians in order to reach a common consensus however with little concrete results.555 Among the three main Ukrainian political trends in the GG – the OUN, UTsK, and Greek Catholic Church – a Government Delegate for Poland report noted there was no sign of an organizational factor which could play a leading role in Ukrainian matters.556
552 Bruski, “W kręgu spraw prometejskich i ukraińskich....” in Giedroyc a Ukraina..., 72-90. By the fall of 1939, Giedroyc made contacts with many Ukrainians in occupied Poland, including Vasyl’ Mudryi and Volodymyr Kubiiovych. According to Bruski, Giedroyc played a prominent role in attempting to move Mudryi from occupied Poland to Paris. He also aided in issuing a Polish passport to Dmytro Dontsov – formally a Polish citizen – who came to he embassy in the spring of 1940. Polish exile circles also had plans to exploit Dontsov in a pro-Polish role. Actual results of Polish-Ukrainian talks in Romania consisted of Polish help in publishing and distributing Ukrainian-lanugauge newspapers and leaflets. In February 1941, Giedroyc left Bucharest for Istanbul in mid-February 1941 alongside personnel of the British embassy.
553 Stempowski, W dolinie Dniestru..., 132-135; 250.
554 Partacz and Łada, Polska wobec ukraińskich dążeń niepodległościowych..., 19-41; 58-67. The pro-Ally, anti-totalitarian position of the UNR exiles was evident in a September 1, 1939 article appearing in their official newspaper Tryzub: “In attacking Poland, the German Reich exposed Europe and the world to the dangers of suffering, ruin and misery. Regardless of the development of events, Ukrainians know perfectly well where their place is in this terrible and decisive global drama… We stand on the side of France, England and Poland.
Standing by their side we know that we will fight for the defense of truth and justice, for the right of our people to owning an independent state…”
555 Polish underground talks and negotiations with Ukrainian in ccupied Poland is best discussed and examined extensively in Czesław Partacz, “Próby porozumienia polsko-ukraińskiego na terenie kraju w czasie II wojny światowej” in Polska-Ukraina: trudne pytania vol. 5 (Warszawa: Karta, 1999). A brief episode of collaboration between the AK and UPA occurred after the war. Here, see Grzegorz Motyka and Rafał Wnuk, Pany i rezuny.
Współpraca AK-WiN i UPA 1945-1947 (Warszawa: Volumen, 1997).
556 “Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne Piotra Jarockiego (“Wojnickiego”) (September 29, 1943)” in Archiwum Adama Bienia. Akta narodowościowe (1942-1944), eds. Jan Brzeski and Adam Roliński (Kraków: Księgarnia Akademicka 2001), 294.
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The most pressing issue which kept the Polish government and its representatives in occupied Poland from reaching any agreement with Ukrainians was the question concerning land and borders. Immediately from the outset of its constitution, the Polish exile government declared (on November 22, 1939) its war aims. These included regaining independence and emerging from the war territorially undiminished, i.e. the reemergence of a Polish state in its pre-1939 borders. Throughout the war, Sikorski, and later his successor Stanisław Mikołajczyk, underscored the inviolability of those borders. This in turn contested Ukrainian independentist desires as they viewed the Eastern Galician territories of the Second Republic as the basis for their future state.557
The underground structure and exile representatives paid close attention to the work of the UTsK; in turn keeping London abreast of its activity. One way to track UTsK thought during the war were press reports compiled from articles primarily in Krakivs’ki Visti and L’vivs’ki Visti. Often, they summarized what was considered the most important or interesting materials published. These included any examples of Ukrainian pro-German sympathies – whether expressed verbally or as seen in UTsK accomplishments.558
The general notion among Poles, especially those in the underground, toward Ukrainian collaboration with the occupier – whether German or Soviet – was equal to treason and a national betrayal particularly since the most of the Ukrainians involved were citizens of the Polish state. Ukrainian collaboration with the occupier, arguably rational from the side of those who yearned to found a state and build a nation, created the image of a pro-Nazi (or pro-Soviet) community hostile to Poland. Ukrainian actions from 1939 and 1940 were seen in the light of a disloyal internal minority seeking independence on the heels of state destruction by totalitarian powers. They were seen as a group prepared to seize the state’s moment of weakness by plotting with external enemies. Some even described them as “a Trojan horse in our own home: a fifth column – in one word, Ukrainians from 1939.”559
The GG divide and conquer policy toward the ethnic minorities only reinforced this stereotype. Any form of perceived privilege, whether it was a Ukrainian being appointed to head a village in place of a recently purged Pole or Ukrainian schools being opened where Polish ones were closed down, constituted powerful “proof” against Ukrainian elites and villagers. Thus, what Poles saw as real or imagined Ukrainian crimes caused Polish hostility.560 Bohdan Osadchuk explained the Polish opinion and view of the occupier’s pro-Ukrainian line; crystalizing in what he termed the “pro-Ukrainian betrayal myth.” He expounded
557 Partacz and Łada, Polska wobec ukraińskich dążeń…, 18; 305-333.
558 For exile government Krakivs’ki Visti press reports from 1942, see the collection in PISM, MSW, folder A.9.V/22.
559 Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations…, 156; Stempowski, W Dolinie Dniestru…, 163; Sowa, Stosunki polsko-ukraińskie..., 105; This was the opinion of Adam Zieliński who wrote to Stempowski in December 1941.
Zieliński, born in Buczacz (Tarnopol voivodship) was a Polish historian, lawyer and diplomat who worked in the Polish mission in Lisbon, Portugal during the war.
560 Chodakiewicz, Between Nazis and Soviets..., 142-143.
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that even though Ukrainians remained loyal to the state in September 1939 with no mass anti-Polish uprising breaking out then, the incidents initiated by Ukrainians in eastern and southern Poland then created a distinct image among Polish on-lookers:
Our Ukrainians are acting like traitors because they are accepting [administrative]
positions from the Germans; they are allowing themselves to be bribed. What are they creating? Schools without the agreement of Poles? By what right? After all they are our citizens! Therefore they are traitors!”561
As will be seen in more detail later, when Germans maintained tight control of ethnically-mixed regions, Polish hostility equated to scare-tactics and beatings of prominent local Ukrainian civic leaders. Killings occurred later in the war as German control over certain regions waned. When this occurred, perceived Ukrainian collaborators were targeted by the Polish underground as executing them was less likely to bring German reprisals against Polish civilians.
The Polish exile government and underground viewed Kubiiovych in terms of the leading Ukrainian Quisling in the GG who was being exploited by the Germans to deepen Polish-Ukrainian antagonisms in the hope of gaining Ukrainian autonomy.562 In his wartime diary, Edward Kubalski described Kubiiovych as a “well-known Polack devourer (polakożerca).”563 His overt pro-German position was viewed as treasonous. A report from the government's Delegate for Poland categorized him as a Ukrainian opportunist, the
“flagship man” of those circles.564 Underground reports emphasized his politics vis-à-vis the occupier: on the one hand, to gain, through German help, the most privileges possible for Ukrainians in order to assume the strongest position in all aspect of ethnic life while, on the other, assisting and aiding the occupier wherever it could be beneficial to them. Kubiiovych’s pro-German rhetoric was received and equated to Nazi propaganda; reaffirming in Polish eyes an image of him as a Ukrainian collaborator and “mouth piece” in every negative sense of the term.565
A biographical report described him as an active and bright professor and researcher who strayed off of the right, Polish path. His academic work took on political tones and, through unofficial, non-Polish materials, undermined prewar state census and population data. In frank or private conversations, the report went on, he disclosed his negative position toward the Polish state.566 Furthermore, his scholarly approach toward defining Ukrainian
561 Kerski and Kowalczyk, Wiek ukraińsko-polski. Rozmowy z Bohdanem Osadczukiem, 31-32.
562 PISM, MIiD, folder A.10.3/9, List na temat sprawy ukraińskiej, November 20, 1940; “Sprawy Ukraińsko-Polskie od września 1939 do listopada 1941 – przewidywania na przyszłość (November 15, 1941),” Armia Krajowa w dokumentach, vol. 2, 139.
563 Kubalski, Niemcy w Krakowie..., 93.
564 AAN, Delegatura Rządu RP na Kraj (DRRPK), sygn. 202/III/193, Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne, 1943, p. 83.
565 “Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne Piotra Jarockiego (“Wojnickiego”) (September 29, 1943)” in Archiwum Adama Bienia..., 285-286.
566 PISM, MSW, folder A.9/8a, Uwagi dotyczące Włodzimierza Kubijowycza, October 6, 1943. The report also mentioned that he did not hide his hostile attitudes toward the Soviet Union.
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ethnographic territory in the GG was called into question. As one report concluded:
“Kubiiovych included within ‘Ukrainian ethnographic territory’ all Polish areas on which even a tiny Ukrainian or Ruthenian minority lived. In this way, [his] conceived ‘Ukrainian ethnographic territory’ reached practically to Białystok, Warsaw and Kraków.”567
Other notes placed him on the same level as Emil Hácha, the wartime Czech collaborator. To Kubiiovych was added the epithet “bad politician” who led the Konovalets’, i.e. Melnykite, camp in occupied Poland.568 Ukrainians such as Kubiiovych, Bandera or Mel’nyk were seen by Polish authorities as having made political compromises with the Germans; conducting a moral wrong in comparison to Poles: “…Ukrainian leaders do not show that rigid restrained, moral and political attitude that characterizes the Polish people…”569 Whereas the exile government was keen to engage in talks with Ukrainians throughout the war to reach some sort of rapprochement, members of the OUN and Ukrainian nationalists were to be chose with “great caution” because of their overt anti-Polish attitudes and collaboration with the Nazis.570 However, as will be seen later, this does not mean that the underground did not listen to OUN nationalists or Kubiiovych when approached by them.
567 PUMST, OIV, file A269/71, Ukraińska akcja na Chełmszczyźnie i Podlasiu (oraz Łemkowszczyźnie i Posaniu), November 21, 1942, p. 67.
568 PISM, MSW, folder A.9/8b, Informacje z terenu krajów nadbałtyckich w sprawach ukraińskich, November 20, 1943; “Meldunek organizacyjne i raport polityczno-gospodarczy (January 9, 1940),” Armia Krajowa w Dokumentach vol. 1, 70.
569 PISM, MIiD, folder A.10.3/12, Zagadnienie ukraińskie, November 1942.
570 PISM, CM-APM, folder PRM.88.1.3, Uwagi działu narodowościowego Ministerstwa Informacji i Dokumentacji w bieżących sprawach ukraińskich, January 25, 1942.
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Chapter 4
GG Occupation Politics, Privilege-Concessions and the UTsK
The German administration has guaranteed the Ukrainians, within the scope of possibility, wide-ranging cultural and administrative autonomy.
- Max du Prel, GG Propaganda Department head571
Du Prel’s cited comment conveys the opinion among GG civil administrators toward the Ukrainians under their authority. With the GG being Frank’s realm of law and order, this chapter begins with an examination of the UTsK legal status in the GG, especially in the context of the German divide and conquer policy. To further drive Poles and Ukrainians apart while, at the same time, catering to the sentiments of their newly-liberated Slavs, the occupier bestowed certain concessions; permitting Ukrainians greater autonomy in socio-cultural matters, ones they were previously marginalized in under the Poles, to in turn gain their loyalty but to also vent-out nationalist frustrations or angst in a controlled way.
Kubiiovych viewed these as privileges; the first step toward creating a Ukrainian social estate system consisting of nationalized clergy, a native, nationalized intelligentsia (including administrators and merchants), and a nationally-conscious peasant class for a future Ukraine. After the war, this disillusioned myth became a standard yet, as Kedryn commented, concessions were induced by the UTsK with bribes for German officials or by showering Frank with gifts during official audiences. Because Ukrainians and Germans viewed the social gains in differing ways, I have chosen to classify them according to Ryszard Torzecki’s terminology of ‘privilege-concessions;’ a term which I believe reflects their mutual collaboration and the notion of each side exploiting the other for their own gains.572 For their part, the Poles viewed any such estates as attempts by the occupier to forge a new bourgeoisie, something they deemed to be a “fake class.”573