A Nation Divided: Ukraine’s Post-WWI Territorial Fragmentation
In the turbulent interwar period between 1918 and 1939, Ukraine emerged as Europe’s largest stateless nation, its territories brutally carved up among four neighboring powers. The Bolshevik-controlled Soviet Union claimed central and eastern Ukraine, incorporating it in 1922 as the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic. Meanwhile, western lands fell under Polish, Romanian, and Czechoslovak rule following the 1921 Treaty of Riga and decisions at the Paris Peace Conference. This geopolitical dissection created competing centers of Ukrainian identity that would shape the nation’s twentieth-century trajectory.
The Dniester River marked the boundary with Romania, while Volhynia and Podolia became contested borderlands with Poland. Though the Allied Powers recognized these divisions, Soviet Russia persistently challenged them, setting the stage for future conflicts. Each governing power developed distinct strategies for managing their Ukrainian populations – ranging from forced assimilation to temporary accommodation – creating a laboratory of competing national projects across Eastern Europe.
Competing Visions: Communism vs Nationalism in Ukrainian Identity
The interwar years witnessed an ideological battle for Ukraine’s soul between two dominant movements. Soviet Ukraine promoted a unique brand of national communism that combined socialist revolution with nominal cultural autonomy. Meanwhile, in Polish-controlled Galicia and Volhynia, a more radical Ukrainian nationalism took root, rejecting both communist internationalism and pre-war liberal democratic approaches.
This ideological competition produced hybrid forms like national communism, where Ukrainian Marxists attempted to reconcile socialist ideals with national liberation. The Soviet version, institutionalized through the Ukrainian SSR, offered a paradoxical combination of linguistic and cultural revival within an increasingly centralized political system. Across the border, Galician nationalists developed an exclusionary ethnic nationalism that prioritized nationhood above all other values, including democracy and individual rights.
Soviet Experiment: The Promise and Peril of Ukrainization
The early Soviet period witnessed a remarkable cultural experiment known as korenizatsiia (indigenization), launched at the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923. This policy promoted local languages and cultures as part of a strategy to consolidate Bolshevik rule in non-Russian regions. In Ukraine, this translated into an ambitious Ukrainization campaign that transformed education, publishing, and government administration.
By 1932, Ukrainian-language newspapers soared from 30% to 92% of total publications. University instruction in Ukrainian jumped from 33% to 58% between 1926-1929. Even industrial centers saw surprising changes – 75% of speeches to miners were delivered in Ukrainian by 1932. This cultural renaissance created a new phenomenon: Russian-speaking Ukrainians who identified ethnically as Ukrainian while primarily using Russian, speaking a mixed Surzhyk dialect that became a linguistic bridge between communities.
However, the campaign faced inherent contradictions. The Communist Party itself remained predominantly Russian – in 1922, only 24% of Ukrainian Communist Party members were ethnically Ukrainian. Figures like Education Minister Mykola Skrypnyk championed Ukrainization against resistance from both local Russian cadres and Moscow. The policy’s success remained geographically uneven, making limited headway in eastern industrial cities like Kharkiv, where Ukrainian speakers only grew from 24% to 32% of the population despite massive efforts.
The Galician Crucible: Nationalism Under Polish Rule
Polish-controlled Galicia presented a stark contrast to Soviet Ukraine’s experience. Home to about 4.4 million Ukrainians, this region became the incubator for radical nationalism after hopes for Western-backed autonomy faded following the 1923 Ambassador’s Conference decision. Polish policies systematically disadvantaged Ukrainians – the 1924 Lex Grabski law restricted Ukrainian-language education, while land reforms favored Polish settlers. By the 1930s, Galicia had 58 Polish high schools compared to just 6 Ukrainian ones.
This repression fueled the rise of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in 1929, which combined underground resistance with terrorist tactics. Led by figures like Yevhen Konovalets and the young Stepan Bandera, OUN gained notoriety through assassinations like the 1934 killing of Polish Interior Minister Bronisław Pieracki. Bandera’s courtroom declaration that Ukrainian independence justified “sacrificing not just individual lives but hundreds and thousands” encapsulated the movement’s radical ethos.
Borderland Experiments: Alternative Models in Volhynia and Beyond
Other regions developed distinct approaches to the Ukrainian question. In Volhynia, Polish governor Henryk Józewski – a former ally of Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura – pursued a unique “Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation” policy. Unlike in Galicia, he permitted Ukrainian schools and supported a Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent from Moscow. This created a moderate Ukrainian identity loyal to Poland, though it ultimately failed to stem nationalist sentiment.
Romania implemented similarly divergent policies across its Ukrainian territories – welcoming Petliura’s veterans in Bessarabia while aggressively Romanizing Bukovina’s Ukrainians. Meanwhile, in Czechoslovakia’s Transcarpathia, democratic freedoms allowed communist parties to flourish among impoverished Ukrainian peasants, though the region remained divided between Rusyn, Ukrainian, and Russian identities.
The Soviet Turn: From Piedmont to Pompeii
By the late 1920s, Stalin’s regime began retreating from Ukrainization, viewing it as a threat to Soviet unity. The 1929 show trial of the fictitious “Union for the Liberation of Ukraine” marked this shift, targeting intellectuals like Serhii Yefremov and Volodymyr Chekhivsky. The Great Famine of 1932-33 and subsequent purges destroyed the Ukrainian communist elite, transforming Soviet Ukraine from a potential “Piedmont” of national liberation into what historian Serhii Plokhy calls a “Pompeii” of buried aspirations.
This reversal had international repercussions. The Soviet model had briefly attracted Ukrainians abroad with its combination of modernization and nominal national rights. However, Stalin’s terror discredited communism as a vehicle for Ukrainian emancipation, leaving radical nationalism as the primary alternative in western Ukraine.
Legacy of Division: How Interwar Fractures Shaped Modern Ukraine
The interwar period bequeathed a divided legacy that continues to influence contemporary Ukraine. The east-west cultural divide hardened during these decades, with Soviet Ukraine developing a distinct identity from Galicia’s nationalist tradition. The massive population transfers and border changes created demographic patterns that persist today.
Perhaps most significantly, this era established the competing paradigms of Ukrainian identity – the civic, multilingual model rooted in Soviet Ukraine versus the ethnic, Ukrainian-centric vision from Galicia. These fault lines would reemerge after 1991, as independent Ukraine struggled to reconcile its dual inheritance from both the Soviet Ukrainization experiment and the nationalist resistance movement.
The interwar years thus represent not just a story of repression and resistance, but a crucial formative period when modern Ukrainian identity took shape under extraordinary pressures. The decisions made and roads not taken between 1918-1939 continue to echo in Ukraine’s ongoing search for unity and purpose.