| History of Ukraine |
|---|
 |
 Ukraineportal |
Upon the outbreak of World War I, Ukraine was not an independent political entity or state. The majority of the territory that makes up the modern country of Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire with a notable far western region administered by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the border between them dating to the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
Towards the latter 19th century, both the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires attempted to exert their influence on the adjacent territory on the tide of rising national awareness of the period as borders did not undermine the ethnic composition of Europe. The Russian Empire viewed Ukrainians as Little Russians and had the support of the large Russophile community among the Ukrainian and Ruthenians population in Galicia. Austria, on the contrary, supported the late-19th century rise in Ukrainian Nationalism.[ citation needed ] Western Ukraine was a major standoff for the Balkans and the Slavic Orthodox population it harboured.[ citation needed ]
A Balkan war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia was considered inevitable, as Austria-Hungary’s influence waned and the Pan-Slavic movement grew. The rise of ethnic nationalism coincided with the growth of Serbia, where anti-Austrian sentiment was perhaps most fervent. Austria-Hungary had occupied the former Ottoman province of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which had a large Serb population, in 1878. It was formally annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908. Increasing nationalist sentiment also coincided with the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Russia supported the Pan-Slavic movement, motivated by ethnic and religious loyalties and a rivalry with Austria dating back to the Crimean War. Recent events such as the failed Russian-Austrian treaty and a century-old dream of a warm water port also motivated St. Petersburg. [1]
Religion also played a key role in the standoff. When Russia and Austria partitioned Poland at the end of the 18th century, they inherited largely Eastern-rite Catholic populations. Russia went to great lengths to revert the population to Orthodoxy, at times forcibly (as took place in Chelm) [2]
The final factor was that by 1914, Ukrainian nationalism had matured to a point where it could significantly influence the future of the region. [3] As a result of this nationalism and of the other main sources of Russo-Austrian confrontations, including Polish and Romanian lands, both empires eventually lost these disputed territories when these territories formed new, independent states according to Ivan Rudnytsky.
The Russian advance into Galicia began in August 1914. During the offensive, the Russian army successfully pushed the Austrians right up to the Carpathian ridge effectively capturing all of the lowland territory, and fulfilling their long aspirations of annexing the territory.
Ukrainians were split into two separate and opposing armies. 3.5 million fought with the Imperial Russian Army, while 250,000 fought for the Austro-Hungarian Army. [4] Many Ukrainians thus ended up fighting each other. Also, many Ukrainian civilians suffered as armies shot and killed them after accusing them of collaborating with opposing armies (see Thalerhof internment camp). [5]
During World War I the western Ukrainian people were situated between Austria-Hungary and Russia. Ukrainian villages were regularly destroyed in the crossfire. Ukrainians could be found participating on both sides of the conflict. In Galicia, over twenty thousand Ukrainians who were suspected of being sympathetic to Russian interests were arrested and placed in Austrian concentration camps, both in Talerhof, Styria and in Terezín fortress (now in the Czech Republic).
The brutality did not end with the end of the First World War for Ukrainians. Fighting actually escalated with the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The revolution began a civil war within the Russian Empire and much of the fighting took place in the Ukrainian provinces. Many atrocities occurred during the civil war as the Red, White, Polish, Ukrainian, and allied armies marched throughout the country. [5]
There were a couple of attempts during this period when the Ukrainians successfully established their own state. One was with the capital in Kiev and the other in Lemberg, but neither one of them gained enough support in the international community and they both failed. [5]
The 1919 Treaty of Versailles secured the borders of Ukrainian land after those of other European countries. In the West, Galicia and western Volhynia were left to Poland. The Kingdom of Romania gained the province of Bukovina. Czechoslovakia secured the former lands of Austria-Hungary, Uzhhorod and Mukachevo. The remaining central and eastern Ukrainian provinces were left to the brotherly Soviet Union. As a result of World War I and the Russian Civil War, Ukrainian nationalists looked on as their attempt to attain statehood crumbled in favor of other countries' territorial expansion when 1.5 million had died in the recent fighting. [5]
With the end of World War I the Ukrainian national movement went underground.
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Dual Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. Austria-Hungary was a military and diplomatic alliance of two sovereign states with a single monarch who was titled both emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. Austria-Hungary constituted the last phase in the constitutional evolution of the Habsburg monarchy: it was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War and was dissolved shortly after Hungary terminated the union with Austria on 31 October 1918.
The Central Powers, also known as the Central Empires, were one of the two main coalitions that fought in World War I (1914–1918). It consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria; this was also known as the Quadruple Alliance.
Pan-Slavism, a movement that took shape in the mid-19th century, is the political ideology concerned with promoting integrity and unity for the Slavic people. Its main impact occurred in the Balkans, where non-Slavic empires had ruled the South Slavs for centuries. These were mainly the Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice.
The Treaty of Trianon often referred to as the PeaceDictate of Trianon or Dictate of Trianon in Hungary, was prepared at the Paris Peace Conference and was signed in the Grand Trianon château in Versailles on 4 June 1920. It formally ended World War I between most of the Allies of World War I and the Kingdom of Hungary. French diplomats played the major role in designing the treaty, with a view to establishing a French-led coalition of the newly formed states.
Bukovina is a historical region, variously described as part of either Central or Eastern Europe. The region is located on the northern slopes of the central Eastern Carpathians and the adjoining plains, today divided between Romania and Ukraine.
The aftermath of World War I saw far-reaching and wide-ranging cultural, economic, and social change across Eurasia, Africa, and even in areas outside those that were directly involved. Four empires collapsed due to the war, old countries were abolished, new ones were formed, boundaries were redrawn, international organizations were established, and many new and old ideologies took a firm hold in people's minds. World War I also had the effect of bringing political transformation to most of the principal parties involved in the conflict, transforming them into electoral democracies by bringing near-universal suffrage for the first time in history, as in Germany, Great Britain, and Turkey.
Galicia is a historical and geographic region spanning what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine, long part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It covers much of the other historic regions of Red Ruthenia and Lesser Poland.
The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye was signed on 10 September 1919 by the victorious Allies of World War I on the one hand and by the Republic of German-Austria on the other. Like the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary and the Treaty of Versailles with the Weimar Republic, it contained the Covenant of the League of Nations and as a result was not ratified by the United States but was followed by the US–Austrian Peace Treaty of 1921.
The West Ukrainian People's Republic or West Ukrainian National Republic, known for part of its existence as the Western Oblast of the Ukrainian People's Republic, was a short-lived polity that controlled most of Eastern Galicia from November 1918 to July 1919. It included the cities of Lviv, Ternopil, Kolomyia, Drohobych, Boryslav, Stanislaviv and right-bank Przemyśl, and claimed parts of Bukovina and Carpathian Ruthenia. Politically, the Ukrainian National Democratic Party dominated the legislative assembly, guided by varying degrees of Greek Catholic, liberal and socialist ideology. Other parties represented included the Ukrainian Radical Party and the Christian Social Party.
The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, also known as Austrian Galicia or colloquially Austrian Poland, was a constituent possession of the Habsburg monarchy in the historical region of Galicia in Eastern Europe. The crownland was established in 1772. The lands were annexed from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as part of the First Partition of Poland. In 1804 it became a crownland of the newly proclaimed Austrian Empire. From 1867 it was a crownland within the Cisleithanian or Austrian half of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. It maintained a degree of provincial autonomy. Its status remained unchanged until the dissolution of the monarchy in 1918.
The Eastern Front or Eastern Theater of World War I was a theater of operations that encompassed at its greatest extent the entire frontier between Russia and Romania on one side and Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, and Germany on the other. It ranged from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, involved most of Eastern Europe, and stretched deep into Central Europe. The term contrasts with the Western Front, which was being fought in Belgium and France.
The Polish–Ukrainian War, from November 1918 to July 1919, was a conflict between the Second Polish Republic and Ukrainian forces. The conflict had its roots in ethnic, cultural and political differences between the Polish and Ukrainian populations living in the region, as Poland and both Ukrainian republics were successor states to the dissolved Russian and Austrian empires. The war started in Eastern Galicia after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and spilled over into the Kholm (Chełm) and Volhynia (Wołyń) regions formerly belonging to the Russian Empire. Poland re-occupied the disputed territory on 18 July 1919.
During the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921, Soviet Russia and its client state, Soviet Ukraine, were in combat with the re-established Second Polish Republic and the newly established Ukrainian People's Republic. Both sides aimed to secure territory in the often disputed areas of the Kresy, in the context of the fluidity of borders in Central and Eastern Europe in the aftermath of World War I and the breakdown of the Austrian, German, and Russian Empires. The first clashes between the two sides occurred in February 1919, but full-scale war did not break out until the following year. Especially at first, neither Soviet Russia, embroiled in the Russian Civil War, nor Poland, still in the early stages of state re-building, were in a position to formulate and pursue clear and consistent war aims.
The United States of Greater Austria was an unrealized proposal made in 1906 to federalize Austria-Hungary to help resolve widespread ethnic and nationalist tensions. It was conceived by a group of scholars surrounding Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, notably by the ethnic Romanian lawyer and politician Aurel Popovici.
There was a period of revolutions and interventions in Hungary between 1918 and 1920. The First Hungarian Republic was founded from the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by Mihály Károlyi during the Aster Revolution in 1918, at the end of World War I. In March 1919, the republic was overturned by another revolution, and the Hungarian Soviet Republic was created. Unresolved conflicts led to wars between Hungary and its neighbor states in 1919. The Hungarian Soviet Republic ceased to exist after the Romanian occupation. The 1920 Treaty of Trianon in Versailles created the Kingdom of Hungary.
Various factions fought over Ukrainian territory after the collapse of the Russian Empire following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and after the First World War ended in 1918, resulting in the collapse of Austria-Hungary, which had ruled Ukrainian Galicia. The crumbling of the empires had a great effect on the Ukrainian nationalist movement, and in a short period of four years a number of Ukrainian governments sprang up. This period was characterized by optimism and by nation-building, as well as by chaos and civil war. Matters stabilized somewhat in 1921 with the territory of modern-day Ukraine divided between Soviet Ukraine and Poland, and with small ethnic-Ukrainian regions belonging to Czechoslovakia and to Romania.
Yugoslavia was a state concept among the South Slavic intelligentsia and later popular masses from the 19th to early 20th centuries that culminated in its realization after the 1918 collapse of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I and the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. However, the kingdom was better known colloquially as Yugoslavia ; in 1929 it was formally renamed the "Kingdom of Yugoslavia".
The history of Ukrainian nationality can be traced back to the kingdom of Kievan Rus' of the 9th to 12th centuries. It was the predecessor state to what would eventually become the Eastern Slavic nations of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. During this time, Eastern Orthodoxy, a defining feature of Ukrainian nationalism, was incorporated into everyday life.
On August 18, 1914, the Russian Empire invaded the Austrian Crownland of Galicia. On August 19, the Imperial Russian Army defeated the Austro-Hungarian Army, advanced 280–300 kilometers into the territory of Austria-Hungary and captured most of eastern Galicia. The principal city, Lemberg fell into Russian hands on September 3. Eastern Galicia had a population of approximately 4.8 million people.
The dissolution of Austria-Hungary was a major geopolitical event that occurred as a result of the growth of internal social contradictions and the separation of different parts of Austria-Hungary. The more immediate reasons for the collapse of the state were World War I, the 1918 crop failure, general starvation and the economic crisis. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had additionally been weakened over time by a widening gap between Hungarian and Austrian interests. Furthermore, a history of chronic overcommitment rooted in the 1815 Congress of Vienna in which Metternich pledged Austria to fulfill a role that necessitated unwavering Austrian strength and resulted in overextension. Upon this weakened foundation, additional stressors during World War I catalyzed the collapse of the empire. The 1917 October Revolution and the Wilsonian peace pronouncements from January 1918 onward encouraged socialism on the one hand, and nationalism on the other, or alternatively a combination of both tendencies, among all peoples of the Habsburg monarchy.
6^ Velychenko Stephen, "The Versailles Treaty and the Ukrainian National Republic. The American Refusal to recognize Ukrainian Independence in 1919." https://uamoderna.com/history/the-versailles-treaty-and-the-ukrainian-national-republic-the-american-refusal-to-recognize-ukrainian-independence-in-1919/.