From the very outset of the European crisis in 1938, Ukrainian territories were involved in developments that led to the eruption of the continent’s second great conflict in the twentieth century - World War II. Transcarpathia was the first region to be affected. This was because it was part of Czechoslovakia, a country upon which Hitler’s Germany had territorial designs.
Germany and the ‘new order' in Europe
The outbreak of World War II did not come as a surprise. Europeans who had lived through World War I and experienced the implications of the peace treaties signed between 1919 and 1920 soon realized that they had at best arranged a truce, and that sooner or later war would break out once again. The treaties associated with the Paris Peace Conference in one sense had been punitive measures directed against those empires on the losing side of the conflict - Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Ottoman Turkey. Postwar Ottoman Turkey had been deprived of its non-Turkish inhabited areas, Austria-Hungary had ceased to exist entirely, and Germany and, to a large extent, the Hungarian state left over from the old Habsburg Empire both felt that their respective national territory and ability to function as viable states had been seriously impaired by the peace treaties. Two-thirds of Hungarian territory had been given to neighboring states (the Treaty of Trianon), with large Magyar minorities left in Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Austria. Germany had lost the Industrialized provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to France and certain territories to Poland. Most detrimental, from Berlin’s viewpoint, was the fact that Germany had been saddled with huge war reparations and the occupation of its own rich industrial Ruhr area by French troops (the Treaty of Versailles).
During the 1920s, Europe’s old and new states had tried to make the best of the postwar political order through bilateral agreements as well as through multilateral negotiations at the recently established international body known as the League of Nations. By the 1930s, however, the hardships caused by the world economic depression had led to the eventual breakdown of serious efforts at peaceful
Solutions to Europe’s problems. Instead, the revision of the post-World War I treaties became the primary goal of Germany, Hungary, and, to a lesser degree, Italy, with the result that before long the nineteenth-century system of alliances based on power politics had been reactivated. Under its new leader Chancellor Adolf Hitler, who came to power in 1033, Germany became the leader among those states in Europe (Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria) which favored a revision of the existing territorial order.
Hitler attained power not through any revolution, but rather as an appointee of the German nationalists, who thought they could manipulate him for their own ends. But Hitler, as the leader, or Fuhrer, of the popular National Socialist German Workers’ party - Nazi party for short - had his own agenda for Germany. In January 1033, he accepted the appointment as chancellor of Germany and then proposed new elections, which two months later garnered his Nazi party a slight majority in the parliament {Reichstag). Almost immediately (27 March), Hitler claimed dictatorial powers for himself and set Germany on a new course. Taking advantage of modern totalitarian political techniques and a masterful use of demagoguery, Hitler and his Nazi supporters proceeded to eliminate all political opposition through intimidation and, often, brutality. Traditional elements of local German autonomous federalism were abolished, the press and the arts were placed under strict controls, and the already well developed Nazi theory of racial superiority was implemented, its primary target being the Jews, who were stripped of their citizenship in 1035 and placed under increasingly severe legal and socioeconomic restrictions. Thus, within a few years of his coming to power, Germany’s new leader, the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, had become the undisputed dictator of the country.
Hitler promised to build a new German empire, this time a third empire, or Third Reich, a successor to the Holy Roman and Hohenzollern empires which was to last a thousand years. Germany began to rearm, and with a new selfconfidence Hitler directed his attention to France. He denounced the clauses of the Treaty of Versailles on disarmament (1035) and marched into the Rhineland (1036), which was supposed to remain a demilitarized zone between Germany and France. Hitler also sought new allies, especially Italy’s fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, with whom he established the so-called Rome-Berlin Axis (1036), and Spain’s fascist leader. General Francisco Franco, whom he aided in that country’s civil war (1036-1030). Outside Europe, Germany signed an alliance with Japan that was directed against the Soviet Union (1036).
Central to Hitler’s plans for a new Germany was territorial expansion to ensure that the German people had enough Lebensraum, or ‘living space.’ Eastern Europe and Ukrainian lands in particular were earmarked as the area for the future German Lebensraum. The first step, however, was to deal with Germany’s immediate eastern neighbors, and by 1038 Hitler was ready to move. The drive for German expansion was expressed in the slogan Heim ins Reich, which in effect called for the unification of all ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) into one fatherland.
Hitler first turned to German-speaking Austria, which he annexed in March 1038. This act was in clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles, although it did Not take place without the cooperation of pro-Nazi elements in Austria itself. Hitler’s next move was directed against Czechoslovakia, which, in the German dictator’s colorful phrase, was poised like a dagger (reflecting the shape of that country’s western borders) at the heart of Germany. All along the edges of this so-called dagger lived a German minority, which, according to the Czechoslovak census of 1930, numbered over 3.2 million persons. These were known as the Sudeten Germans (from the Sudeten Mountains, which covered part of the territory inhabited by Czechoslovakia’s German minority), and their unification with the German fatherland became Hitler’s new goal. As in Austria, the call for unification was supported from within by most of the Sudeten Germans, but unlike Austria, the government of democratic Czechoslovakia - officially a Slavic state - was opposed to any designs on its territory. Czechoslovakia had allies in Britain and France, who since 1919 had considered this new state a buffer against German expansion in the east. The Soviet Union was also allied with Czechoslovakia as part of its own mutual defense pact with France. Knowing this, Hitler prevailed on British and French leaders to join him and his Italian ally, Mussolini, to discuss the Czechoslovak crisis at Munich, on 28-29 September 1938.
The result was the Munich Pact of 30 September 1938, whereby France and Britain agreed to Hitler’s demand for acquisition of the German-inhabited Sude-tenland of Czechoslovakia’s western provinces, Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia. What was left became the so-called rump state of Czechoslovakia, which was transformed into a federal republic. This meant that during the first week of October 1938 both Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus' (Transcarpathia) were finally granted their long-awaited autonomy.
Hitler’s remarkable success during the 1930s in consolidating his authority within Germany and in obtaining his initial foreign policy goals against France, Austria, and Czechoslovakia - without firing a shot - convinced many people, especially in east-central Europe, that the German model, with its authoritarian fascist system led by one leader {Fiihrer), represented the political wave of the future. It is not surprising, therefore, that by the end of the decade most east-central as well as western European countries, whether or not they were allies of Germany, became one-party national dictatorships led by a Hitler-like leader. In the ‘new order’ in international relations, Germany was allied with Italy and Spain and was becoming increasingly attractive to Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey, each of which favored territorial revision. On the other hand, Germany was opposed by France, Britain, and their allies in eastern Europe - Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia - all of which hoped to maintain as long as possible the territorial status quo. The Soviet Union had a reciprocal defense treaty with Prance, but it was intimidated by Germany’s success in foreign affairs and therefore hoped to reach some kind of accommodation with the Nazi leader.
Among Germany’s newest European allies, Hungary was to reap the first rewards. Less than six weeks after the Munich Pact, a conference was held in Vienna (2 November 1938) which resulted in the further dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. This time territory was detached from that country’s eastern provinces - Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus' (Transcarpathia). Although the
Hungarians wanted much of Slovakia and all of Subcarpathian Rus', they had to be content with only the Magyar-inhabited southern regions of these two provinces, which included Transcarpathia’s two major administrative and cultural centers, Uzhhorod and Mukachevo.
Although reduced in size, Subcarpathian Rus', like Slovakia, functioned as an autonomous unit within the federated second Czecho-Slovak republic. Transcarpathia’s first cabinet (six members) was appointed by Prague on ii October 1938, on the basis of recommendations made by local leaders. The cabinet was dominated by Transcarpathian Russophiles (under Premier Andrii Brodii), but dissolution came abruptly two weeks later (26 October) when the Czecho-Slovak government accused its leading members of being Hungarian and Polish agents (respectively, Brodii and Stepan Fentsyk). In consequence, Prague turned to the Ukrainophiles, and a new cabinet was formed, headed by the respected Greek Catholic priest and educator Avhustyn Voloshyn and the popular interwar parliamentary deputy luliian Revai.
The capital (Uzhhorod) and other Magyar-inhabited regions in the south having been lost to Hungary as a result of the Vienna Award (2 November), Voloshyn established an autonomous government based in the eastern town of Khust. The autonomous Czechoslovak province was renamed Carpatho-Ukraine; Ukrainian was made the official language in government and education; and plans were laid to hold elections to an autonomous diet. To protect itself from the continuing guerrilla attacks by Hungarian irregular troops from the south and their Polish allies from the north, in November the Carpatho-Ukrainian government authorized the creation of the Carpathian Sich, a military force led by local Transcar-pathians (Dmytro Klempush, Ivan Rohach, Stepan Rosokha) but manned in large numbers by Ukrainians from Galicia, who crossed the mountains to help the small autonomous territory.
In fact, during its few months of autonomous existence in late 1938 and early 1939. Ukrainians in eastern Galicia as well as in emigre circles in east-central Europe (Prague, Vienna) and North America thought the minuscule Carpatho-Ukraine would become the Piedmont from which an independent and united Ukrainian state would evolve. Such ideas were given weight even in certain governmental circles of Nazi Germany, especially since Berlin hoped to use the Ukrainian issue to undermine its Soviet enemy in the east. To that end, the German government maintained a consulate in Khust and signed economic agreements with the Carpatho-Ukrainian government.
Hitler had more grandiose plans for eastern Europe, however, and Carpatho-Ukraine was simply too uninfluential to be a part of them. Hence, in March 1939, when Hitler decided to liquidate what remained of Czecho-Slovakia, Carpatho-Ukraine’s brief experiment with autonomy was sacrificed to larger German interests. The previous month, in February, the Carpatho-Ukrainians had elected an autonomous diet (on a one-party Ukrainian slate), but the region’s days were
The Coming of World War II 615 CARPATHO-UKRAINE, 1938-1939
--Boundary between Slovakia and
Subcarpathian Rus’, 1928-1938 000 Annexation by Hungary,
2 November 1938
Rusyn/Ukrainian lands south of the Carpathians
Boundary of Ukraine, 1995
0 25 kilometers
Scale 1 : 2 125 000
Numbered. On 15 March, German troops marched into Prague, and federated Czecho-Slovakia ceased to exist. Hitler gave the Slovaks a choice: annexation to Hungary or an independent Slovak state under German protection. Not surprisingly, the Slovaks chose statehood. Voloshyn’s government, on the other hand, was offered no choice. Hitler gave the Hungarians the green light to attack Carpatho-Ukraine. The Czechoslovak Army, still stationed in the region, retreated westward, and in the face of the advancing Hungarian Army the Carpatho-Ukrainian diet proclaimed its independence on 15 March 1939. That same day, the Hungarians reached Khust, and within a few days, after encountering stiff resistance on the part of the Carpathian Sich army, they managed to take over all of Carpatho-Ukraine. The Carpatho-Ukrainian government was forced to flee abroad, eventually spending the war years in Slovakia or in German-controlled Bohemia-Moravia. Several ukrainophile leaders or suspected sympathizers who remained at home were arrested, and Carpathian Sich military personnel were interned by the Hungarian authorities, although after a few months they were all released. Transcarpathia was once again to be ruled by Hungary, for
The next five and a half years, and although promises respecting autonomy were made, none was ever granted. In the new political environment, the ukrainophile national orientation and all its cultural organizations (Prosvita) and publications were banned. Although in theory the Hungarian government favored the idea that the East Slavic inhabitants of Transcarpathia comprised a distinct and proHungarian Uhro-Rusyn nationality, its real goal was to revive the pre-World War I policy of assimilation to Hungarian culture and national identity.
Thus, the first territorial change since World War I to provoke armed conflict in Europe occurred in Transcarpathia in March 1939. This military clash was contained within the region itself. Hitler’s next move, six months later in September 1939. was against Poland. This time the outcome was different - the outbreak of World War II.
Having finished with Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Hitler turned his attention to Poland. This time Britain and France, who now realized how they had been duped at Munich over Czechoslovakia (the negotiations have been a symbol of capitulation in the face of external threats ever since), vowed that they would stand by their other east-central European ally, Poland.
Hitler’s justification for Germany’s increasingly anti-Polish policy had to do with the Treaty of Versailles. That accord had separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany by a strip of territory known as the Polish corridor. At the northern end of this corridor was the Baltic port and free city-state of Danzig (Polish, Gdansk). Hitler considered both the Polish corridor and the Danzig city-state German territories.
Poland’s situation was even more precarious because it was bordered in the east by the Soviet Union, which itself was becoming increasingly anxious about Germany’s moves in east-central Europe. Stalin seemed ready to welcome any kind of agreement with Germany. For his part. Hitler considered Bolshevism an anathema; during the 1930s, the Nazis systematically annihilated the formerly strong German Communist movement. But a solution to the Polish question seemed to have more importance at the moment. Hence, both Stalin and Hitler put ideology aside, did a diplomatic about-face, and approved the signing, between 19 and 23 August 1939, of a non-aggression treaty. Known as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact (after the foreign ministers of each country), this German-Soviet treaty provided for (l) a trade agreement, including a two-year German credit to the Soviets for 180 million marks; (2) a ten-year non-aggression pact; and (3) a secret clause establishing a demarcation line between the new allies (along the San, Vistula, and Narev Rivers) should war break out with Poland.
Even before the German-Soviet pact was signed. Hitler had formulated plans for an attack on Poland. Assured of Soviet neutrality, on 1 September 1939 the German Army confidently launched against Poland its first full-scale military operation - a lightning attack {Blitzkrieg) consisting of aerial bombing, massive tank movements, infantry, and naval landings. This time Britain and France honored Their pledges to an ally, and both countries declared war on Germany on 3 September. World War II had begun, although the declarations of war had no effect on Hitler’s military operations. In the end, the British and French promise to intervene militarily within two weeks never came about, because despite heroic efforts at defense, the Polish armed forces were sorely outnumbered in troops and outdated in equipment, and within three weeks Poland was brought to its knees. Once again, as in the late eighteenth century, the Polish state ceased to exist.
The German successes from the west made possible a Soviet advance from the east. Beginning on 17 September and meeting little or no Polish resistance, the Soviet Red Army was able to take over most Belarusan and Ukrainian-inhabited lands and thereby ‘reunite’ them with their respective Soviet Belorussian and Soviet Ukrainian motherlands. According to a new agreement on German-Soviet spheres of influence, Ukrainian-inhabited lands east of the San and Buh Rivers (i. e., eastern Galicia, western Polissia, and western Volhynia) became part of Soviet Ukraine, and Ukrainian-inhabited lands west of those rivers (i. e., Podla-chia, the Chelm region, and the Lemko region) became part of the so-called Gen-eralgouvernement Polen, former Polish lands made part of the Third Reich.
The ‘reunification' of western Ukraine
In those territories held by Soviet troops, elections for a national assembly of western Ukraine were held on 22 October 1939. The people were encouraged to vote for a single slate of candidates who favored annexation to the Soviet Union. Four days later, under the protection of the Red Army, the assembly requested that western Ukraine be annexed to the Soviet Union. On 1 November 1939, the request was approved by the all-union government in Moscow, which assigned western Ukraine to Soviet Ukraine. The same day, Belarusan territory formerly within Poland (including part of Ukrainian-inhabited Polissia and the city of Brest-Litovsk) was assigned to Soviet Belorussia.
During the following summer of 1940, while Hitler was preoccupied with the war in western Europe, Stalin consolidated his control over the Soviet sphere of influence in eastern Europe as provided for in secret clauses of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of August 1939. Thus, in June 1940 the Soviet Union annexed the three Baltic states and created three new Soviet republics - the Estonian SSR, the Latvian SSR, and the Lithuanian SSR. In the very same month, Soviet troops marched into Romanian-ruled northern Bukovina and Bessarabia. Northern Bukovina and the southern Ukrainian-inhabited portions of Bessarabia were annexed to Soviet Ukraine. The Romanian-inhabited areas of Bessarabia were joined with the Moldavian ASSR, which was detached from Soviet Ukraine and raised to republic status as the Moldavian SSR.
Within the new territories annexed to Soviet Ukraine, the Soviet system of government and socioeconomic organization was quickly implemented. Six new oblasts were created, industry and trade were nationalized, and within a week of its election the national assembly of western Ukraine called for confiscation of the
MAP 39
Large landed estates. Before the end of 1939, about 6.7 million acres (2.7 million hectares) of land were expropriated from large landowners (mostly Poles), from former Polish state officials, and from the churches and their monasteries. Less than half this land (2.7 million acres [l. l million hectares]) was redistributed among landless rural dwellers and owners of farms of less than twelve acres (five hectares). The bulk of the confiscated land was given instead to the new Soviet-Style state farms (28 by the summer of 1940) and, especially, to collective farms, of which there were nearly 3,000 by June 1941. Although neither of the traditional Ukrainian churches was destroyed, their influence was increasingly undermined by the new Soviet authorities.
With regard to the Greek Catholic church in Galicia, the authorities tried through various administrative means to weaken the role of the institution and of its very popular leader. Metropolitan Sheptyts'kyi. The government put an end to all church publications; terminated church control of all schools, even seizing its seminaries; banned religion and religious symbols from all schools; cut off income formerly obtained from the church’s vast holdings in land and other real estate; and imposed discriminatory taxes. The Orthodox church in western Volhy-nia faced similar restrictions and was further weakened by jurisdictional disputes. Certain parishes and hierarchs came under the authority of the Patriarchate of Moscow; others became part of a reconstituted Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church initially based in the German-controlled Generalgouvernement.
The churches at least survived. Other Ukrainian institutions from interwar Poland fared much worse. All political parties, cultural organizations (including the Prosvita Society and the Shevchenko Scientific Society), cooperatives, and newspapers were abolished. Accompanying the destruction of the traditional Ukrainian organizational infrastructure was the arrest and deportation of so-called enemies of the people to labor camps in the far eastern regions of the Soviet Union. The first to be deported in late 1939 were the social elite (professionals, industrialists, bureaucrats) who had not fled westward beyond the San River to Germany’s Generalgouvernement. They were followed by two other waves of deportations (April 1940 and, especially, June 1941), which included anyone suspected of actual or potential disloyalty to the Soviet regime. Quite frequently in rural villages, individuals suspected of harboring anti-Soviet attitudes were denounced to the authorities by their neighbors. The denouncers may have been interwar members of the interwar Communist underground or simply opportunists hoping to ingratiate themselves with the new regime. That some of these pro-Soviet elements were Jews helped to reinforce the popular Ukrainian stereotype of the Soviet Union as largely the creation of a ‘Bolshevik-Jewish conspiracy’ whose goal was to destroy everything Ukrainian. Whether such a stereotype had any validity, the fact is that in less than two years an estimated half a million Ukrainians were deported from Galicia and western Volhynia to slave labor camps in Siberia and Kazakhstan.
The Soviet authorities wished to be viewed as liberators of western Ukraine from bourgeois Polish colonial rule, however, and in an attempt to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of the people they initiated a policy of ukrainianization. The bilingual schools set up in Ukrainian villages during interwar Polish rule were ukrainian-ized, as were the gymnasia in the larger towns and cities. The Polish university in L'viv, renamed the Ivan Franko University, was ukrainianized, and a branch of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences was established, both institutions being staffed by some leading non-Communist scholars from the interwar period (Ivan Kryp"iake-vych, Mykhailo Vozniak, Ilarion Svientsits'kyi).
From the Soviet standpoint, Ukrainianization also meant de-polonization. Consequently, all Polish cultural institutions in L'viv and other eastern Galician towns and cities were abolished as symbols of the feudal and bourgeois past. Aside from these institutional developments, there were also enormous demographic changes. As eastern Poland was being occupied by the Red Army in late September 1939, the initial power vacuum and calls for revenge against all symbols of Polish rule gave rise to renewed civil conflict and bloodshed between Ukrainian and Polish villagers. After order was established, the Soviet government initiated a policy of arrests and forced deportations of all potentially unreliable elements in the population.
The deportations took place in three waves during the first half of 1940. Among the deportees were (1) former Polish civil servants, police, and officials; (2) villagers of all nationalities who lived along the German-Soviet demarcation line or who lived on confiscated estates; (3) small tradespeople (mostly Jews); and (4) all Polish citizens (mostly Poles) who fled to the east after the German invasion in September 1939. All in all, between 1939 and 1941 an estimated 550,000 Poles were deported from western Volhynia and eastern Galicia to Siberia and other parts of Soviet Central Asia. As a result of such demographic engineering, the urban centers and many rural areas in eastern Galicia lost their Polish character.
West of the San and Buh Rivers, the Rusyn/Ukrainian population living in the Lemko, Chelm, and Podlachia regions was incorporated into an administrative unit, the Generalgouvernement, which was an integral part of the Third Reich, or Greater Germany (Grossdeutschland). The Lemko and Chelm regions in particular became home to more than 20,000 Ukrainian refugees who had fled Soviet rule east of the San and Buh Rivers. In contrast to the Soviets, the Germans allowed existing Ukrainian institutions to function as well as new Ukrainian-language schools and a relief organization known as the Ukrainian Central Committee to be established. Headed by Volodymyr Kubiiovych, the Central Committee was based in the Polish city of Cracow, which became the center of Ukrainian life in the Generalgouvernement.
Ukrainian church life also flourished under Nazi German rule. The Ukrainian Central Committee succeeded in having forty Orthodox churches that had been seized by the Polish government during the interwar years returned to the Orthodox in the Chelm and Podlachia regions. In September 1940, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church was reestablished, with two eparchies on Ukrainian territory. The eparchy based in Chelm was headed by the newly consecrated bishop and well-known linguist Ilarion (Ivan) Ohiienko. Under Ohiienko’s leadership, the number of Orthodox parishes in the Chelm region and Podlachia increased threefold to 140. The Greek Catholic church, that is, the Lemko Administration west of the San River, received a Ukrainian apostolic administrator (Oleksander Malynovs'kyi), who tried to reverse the traditional Old Ruthe-nian and russophile cultural orientation in the region.
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), whose Galician branch had conducted a guerrilla campaign against the Poles during the 1930s, was also permitted to exist in the German-controlled Generalgouvernement. The effectiveness of the OUN was lessened considerably, however, by internal factionalism motivated by generational and ideological factors. The older leadership, based in exile in various centers throughout Europe, tended to he conservative, condemning Nazism and stressing the less authoritarian features of Italian fascism. Younger members who had remained in Galicia and who led the underground struggle during the 1930s expected in return for their sacrifices at home to be awarded leadership positions in the organization. They believed, moreover, that the models for the OUN should be found in fascist ideas and methods such as those practiced by the Nazis.
These differences came to the fore following the assassination in 1938 by a Soviet agent of the OUN leader, Konovalets'. During the succession struggle that followed, at a meeting in Rome in August 1939 the conservative leadership in exile, in an effort to neutralize the younger Galician home cadres, elected Andrii Mel'nyk as the new leader {vozhd') of the OUN. Although nearly fifty years old at the time of his election, Mel'nyk was a reputable activist who had remained in Poland as head of the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) during the 1920s. His election did not, however, appease a group of OUN members recently released from prison following the fall of Poland. They gave their support instead to the so-called revolutionary leadership headed by Stepan Bandera. All attempts to heal the rift between the two leaders failed, and by the spring of 1941 the OUN was formally split between two factions that came to be known as the Banderites (OUN-B) and Melnykites (OUN-M). The factions struggled for influence over the rank and file, and it was not long before armed conflict broke out among them. But the factional strife in the ranks of the OUN and in other areas of Ukrainian life, both in the German Generalgouvernement and in Soviet Ukraine, was soon to pale in comparison with a profoundly new development - Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union.
World History
