The Ukrainian-Polish Defensive Alliance, 1919-1921: An Aspect of the Ukrainian Revolution

Michael Palij. The Ukrainian-Polish Defensive Alliance, 1919-1921: An Aspect of the Ukrainian Revolution. Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1995. viii, 391 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $44.95, cloth.

Perhaps, the clearest evidence of Michael Palij's admirable efforts to reconstruct Ukrainian-Polish relations during the revolutionary period is the fact that the endnotes, bibliography and index compose almost half of his book. In that not too distant past, difficult for the younger historians to recall, when Ukrainian and Polish archives were closed to foreigners, Palij did almost all imaginable to get around the silent archives, compiling an exhaustive list of published sources on his topic. Thus, his finished work is not only the first attempt at a comprehensive history of the Petliura-Pilsudski alliance and will also serve as a great bibliographic resource on many aspects of the Ukrainian Revolution and Ukrainian-Polish relations in particular. Unfortunately, Palij's very thorough research is the most laudable aspect of this book.

Palij understands the revolutionary period which followed the collapse of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires exclusively as a clash amongst nations: "The renascence of Russian power threatened both Ukraine and Poland; hence, the more farsighted leaders of those nations realized that only by combining forces could they resist occupation by Soviet Russia. Ukrainian-Polish political collaboration culminated in the Ukrainian-Polish alliance of 1920" (p. 1). Even though he discusses at various points in his story the conflicts amongst the political leaders of both nations-Petliura vs. Vynnychenko and Pilsudski vs. Dmowski-Palij holds fast to the idea that the agreement between Petliura and Pilsudski was "The Ukrainian-Polish Alliance."

While such an approach may have been understandable at a time when many Ukrainians were struggling for a truly independent state, this reviewer hopes that we, as Ukrainian historians, can now move beyond such a narrow framework. For especially in the revolutionary period in Ukraine, there was so much more going on besides "The National Struggle": Reds, Greens, Whites, anarchists, SRs, peasants, tiny village republics, violence, anarchy and Jewish pogroms, to name a few. By focusing on those self-proclaimed national leaders, Petliura and Pilsudski, Palij pushes aside all of those other individuals, ideas and movements, competing for people's allegiance, so that we read only about "Ukraine" and "Poland" versus "Russia." This approach ignores the overwhelming majority of the populations of all these nations. I take Ukraine as the example I know best. As recent research on the civil war has shown (i.e., Graziosi, Brovkin), throughout this period most of the inhabitants of Ukraine did not consider their choices only between "Ukraine" and "Russia." In fact, it is even questionable that most of the inhabitants, who were after all illiterate peasants, thought in national terms at all. Having spent the past two years researching the countryside in Ukraine during this period, I could provide reams of evidence to support the contention that during this tumultuous period most peasants were concerned above all with their own plots of land and obtaining more of them. At times, they were willing to fight for that piece of land, even though quite often they did not have the time or livestock to work it. But beyond their village and volost', most peasants were not willing to venture. Beyond acquiring land, pasture, forest and inventory, most of them were not very much interested in the politics of the revolutionary period, and those who were had many different ideological trends from which to chose. The peasantry as a rule thought and behaved in understandably very local ways. Hence, it is very unlikely that Simon Petliura could possibly be said to have represented "the Ukrainian people," let alone sign an agreement with Poland on the people's behalf. The problem with an exclusively nationalist approach to history is that it ignores all those people, whom I would certainly consider Ukrainians, but who did not "struggle for the nation." And in doing so, we lose much of the richness and tragedy of Ukraine's history.

Even remaining within the nationalist paradigm, there is a rather large problem with Palij's presentation of his admirable research efforts. Palij argues that the UkrainianPolish Alliance, sealed by the Treaty of Warsaw in October 1919, was a necessary and logical step in the national struggles of Poland and Ukraine for their existence against a quickly reborn and expansionist Bolshevik Russia. And yet, this reader found it very difficult to find much of use in that alliance or treaty, especially to the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR). As Palij admits, the Treaty of Warsaw was anything but mutual. UNR leader Simon Petliura ceded Eastern Galicia to the Poles in order to gain Right Bank Ukraine, at the expense of the support of most Galician Ukrainian troops, who had just lost a bitter war to Petliura's new ally, Jozef Pilsudski. Left-Bank Ukraine was not even mentioned in the treaty. The joint Polish-Ukrainian invasion brought the UNR forces back to Kyiv, but not for long. Polish military authorities proved reluctant to tolerate, let alone encourage the creation of new UNR military forces, so necessary to defend the fledgling government against the Red Army. Moreover, after UNR troops had fought loyally alongside the Poles for most of 1920, the Polish government signed the Treaty of Riga (18 March 1921) with Soviet Russia, recognizing an "independent" Ukraine under the control of the third-time installed "Ukrainian" Soviet government.

Finally, Petliura's hope that the Polish alliance would provide a bridge to the Entente proved quite unfounded. Thus, it does not appear to me that the Treaty of Warsaw was so much an "Alliance" as a temporary act of convenience for the Poles and an act of desperation for Petliura. And so, I was left to wonder at the possible consequences of Palij's concluding remark: "The Treaty of Warsaw is a symbol of an historical current in Polish-Ukrainian relations that may well assert itself again" (p. 202), Let us hope that Ukrainians and Poles can find more positive and fruitful symbols than the Treaty of Warsaw on which to base their future, mutual relations.

Mark Baker, Harvard University