• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 953 0

and its superb Renaissance buildings, should go to Poland. The rich little duchy of Teschen, though, on the western edge, was to lead to a costly clash with the new state of Czechoslovakia. And the eastern half of Galicia was much more difficult to sort out. As in the north, the cities were Polish, the countryside most decidedly not. Lvov was a Polish island, as was Tarnopol (Ternopol) even farther east. Overall, Poles made up less than a third of the population, and Jews, who might or might not see themselves as Polish, about 14 percent. The great majority were Catholic Ukrainians— Ruthenians, as they were sometimes called to distinguish them from the predominantly Orthodox Ukrainians of the old Russian empire. The Ruthenians, Dmowski told the Supreme Council, were a long way from being ready to rule themselves. They needed Polish leadership and Polish civilization. And, although Dmowski did not mention it, Poland also wanted the oilfields near Lvov. When Lloyd George hinted at this, Paderewski was outraged. Poles had been badly wounded defending Lvov against Ukrainian and Bolshevik forces. “Do you think that children of thirteen are fighting for annexation, for imperialists?” His eloquence had little impact; only the French were sympathetic.43

It was not clear where the Ruthenians belonged. Language and culture drew them east, toward their fellow Ukrainians; their past within the Austrian empire, and their religion, drew them west. In November 1918, one faction of Ruthenians had declared their independence from Austria-Hungary and formed a union with the Ukrainian republic in Kiev, which, unfortunately, promptly came under attack by local communists and Russian Bolsheviks. The Ruthenian delegates who managed to get to Paris by the spring of 1919 could not say what they wanted.44

In Galicia the declaration of independence marked the start of fighting with the local Poles in Lvov. The fighting spread as Polish and Ukrainian reinforcements came in, and the confusion deepened as Reds and Whites of both nationalities joined their own battles. The Allies tried, with little success, to arrange cease-fires. “It is very difficult,” said Wilson in May, “for us to intervene without having a better understanding of our position vis-à-vis the Ukrainians or the Bolsheviks who are besieging Lemberg [Lvov].” The Poles did their best to drag out the armistice negotiations while they strengthened their position. This caused much annoyance in Paris, but the problem for the peacemakers was to enforce their will, once they had decided what that was.45

“I only saw a Ukrainian once,” commented Lloyd George. “It is the last Ukrainian I have seen, and I am not sure that I want to see any more.” As far as Ukraine itself was concerned, none of the Allies supported its independence. Both the British and the French, after all, still hoped for a single Russia under an anti-Bolshevik government. But they agreed that East Galicia, as the possession of a defeated enemy, ought to be settled by the Peace Conference. Lloyd George argued that self-determination required the wishes of the local inhabitants to be consulted. In grabbing East Galicia, Poland was doing exactly what they had all fought the war to prevent. “It fills me with despair the way in which I have seen small nations, before they have hardly leaped into the light of freedom, beginning to oppress other races than their own.”46

After much fighting on the ground and much arguing in Paris, it was settled that Austria would hand over East Galicia to the powers for disposal, perhaps to Poland, or, as the British preferred, to Russia or even Czechoslovakia. The Poles, already deeply suspicious of the British government, were enraged. The cream of Warsaw society, who had been invited to a dance at the British ambassador’s house just before Christmas in 1919, showed their contempt by eating the dinner but refusing to take to the dance floor. Carton de Wiart, head of the British military mission, went white with fury and told his hostess, “I should throw the whole lot out of the house if I were