D 651 .U6 P5 Copy 1 Protest of the Ukrainian Republic to the United States Against the Delivery of Eastern Galicia to Polish Domination. WASHINGTON, D. C. 19 19 /A-^'i' c>^\fyv^^ Protest of the Ukrainian Republic to the United States Against the Delivery of Eastern Galicia to Polish Domination. PUBLISHED BY FRIENDS OF UKRAINE 345 MUNSEY BUILDING WASHINGTON, D. C. 19 19 WxR ;8 1920 UKRAINIAN MISSION Washington, D. C. December 8, 1919. The Honorable, The Secretary of State, Department of State, Washington, D. C Sir: I have the honor, as the representative in the United States of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic, to submit for the consideration of the Government of the United States the following statement of facts and of the at- titude of my Government and its people concerning the decision of the Allied and Associated Powers, recently announced in the newspapers, according to which the Ukrainian (Ruthenian) or Eastern portion of the re- cent Austrian Province of Galicia has been placed for twenty-five years under a so-called mandate of the Polish Republic. At this point I desire to make perfectly clear the territorial sovereignty (based on historical and ethni- cal grounds) of my Government. In 1917, after the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Government of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic was established in that portion of Southern Russia which from time im- memorial has been inhabited predominantly by the Ukrainian People; and after a temporary overthrow by the German military force was reestablished. In the latter part of 1918, the Ul^rainians of Eastern Ga- licia (also predominantly Ukrainian and anciently, prior to the Polish conquest, integrally attached to the Ukrainian People as a whole) set up an independ- ent repubUcan government of Western Ukraine; and in January, 1919, the Ukrainian National Council, in its capacity as legislative body for the Western Ukrainian (formerly Eastern Galician) territory, proclaimed the union of all the Ukrainian territories of old Austria-Hungary with those of former Russia under the Ukrainian Peoples Republic. The Government of the Ukrainian Peoples Repub- lic consented to this union, and under that name claims independent sovereignty of all the Ukrainian territories herein mentioned. Concerning the so-called mandate over Galicia re- cently granted to the Polish Republic, I am under the disadvantage of being unable to obtain authentic offi- cial announcement or publication of its details, but must rely upon the apparent authenticity of an Asso- ciated Press dispatch dated at Paris, November 21, 1919, in which it is stated that the Supreme Council has agreed to grant Poland a mandate over Eastern Galicia. The dispatch states : ''By the terms of settlement, Poland is to be the mandatory for twenty-five years, which is be- lieved to be long enough time to secure immediate peace in the troubled territory. ''At the end of twenty -five years the league of nations will have the right to decide how Galicia 's future is to be determined, or whether a plebiscite will be held. But, the Poles say, in twenty-five years they will have had time to reconcile the race differences and give an effective administration, which they believe wall vnn over the Ruthenian ■lopulation and reconcile them to Polish sover- eignty. "Under the agreement, Galicia is to have a cer- tain amount of autonomy, and Eastern Galicia will in a way be federated with Poland. Lemberg and several other cities of considerable size in the territory will be affected by the settlement." Inasmuch as this problem of the disposition of East- ern Galicia involves the life, liberty and happiness of over 5,000,000 people (more than 65% of whom are Ukrainians), and vitally affects the present and future relations between the Ukrainian and Polish peoples of Europe, which number 37,000,000 and 19,000,000 re- spectively, you will, I am confident, appreciate the supreme importance which my Government and its people attach to a righteous solution of this problem. If this solution be based not upon the fundamental principles of natural right and justice, but upon other considerations, nothing can follow but a continuation of century-old strife and the injustice and misery inci- dent thereto. It is the opinion of the Government and of the people I have the honor to represent, that the above-men- tioned decision of the Supreme Council is neither righteous nor reasonable; that it will not lead to reconciliation, peace, liberty and happiness, nor to the foundation and perpetuation of a strong and stable Poland; but, on the contrary, that it will lead to con- tinued strife and warfare and to the continuation of oppression of the Ukrainian people ; and that it creates the same conditions that indubitably led to the down- fall of the old Polish Empire and will as inevitably lead to the downfall of the new Polish Republic. For all these reasons my Government is constrained to protest most emphatically against this delivery of the Ukrainian people to their ancient and modern oppress- ors, the Poles. Happily it is not necessary for me to persuade you of the justice of the principles of liberation, solf-doter- mination and self-government of peoples. You know, you believe in and you are governed by these princi- ples. But having to deal with an immense number of international problems it would not be strange for you not to be entirely familiar with the history and present status of the Polish-Ukrainian disputes. And possibly it may not be obvious to you how contradic- tory is the above-mentioned decision of the Supreme Council of the Allied and Associated Governments to the program of a democratic peace as pronounced by the President of the United States and by yourself. The very fact that the mandate over Eastern Galicia given to Poland is limited to twenty-five years is a recognition that the Polish title is doubtful ; but if we further examine the question under consideration in the light of information accessible to everyone we will find that Poland's claims are entirely mthout founda- tion if we are to be guided by the American ideas of peace adjustment. No less strongly, however, am I convinced that even the arguments of the balance of power and of the necessity of subordinating democratic considerations to the programme of a great and strong Poland do not in the least justify the placing of Ukrainian East- ern Galicia under Polish rule. To prove this I take the liberty of quoting from American and other authorities and of submitting this protest to your impartial study. In the name of jus- tice and humanity, at this time when imperialistic passions and bolshevist diseases threaten to destroy the fruits of the great victory over European autocra- cies, I urge you not to ignore the moral issues in- volved in the struggle for the Liberty and Unity of Ukraine. In his programme of peace, announced on January 8, 1918, President Wilson laid down, among other propositions, the two following: *^X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safe- guarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development." "XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories, in- habited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic indepen- dence and territorial integrity should be guaran- teed by international covenant." (Italics sup- plied.) And in his Mt. Vernon speech of July 4, 1918, the President said: "These are the ends for which the associated peoples of the world are fighting and which must be conceded before there can be peace. "II. The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrange- ment, or of political relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement hy the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own ex- terior influence or mastery." (Italics supplied.) The Ukrainians have always accepted and now stand upon these ideas as part of their own demands and expectations. And even the present leader of the new Polish State, Mr. Paderewski, acknowledged and supported the justness of the same. Follo^ving the mass meeting of the oppressed nationalities of central Europe held in Carnegie Hall, September 15, 1918, Mr. Paderewski not only supported but signed and personally pre- sented to President Wilson a resolution of the meet- ing, which was in part as follows: ''Resolved, That since the majority of the in- habitants of Austria-Hungary, to wit: Poles, Czecho-Slovaks, Ukrainians, Roumanians, Jugo- slavs and Italians, have been unjustly and cruelly governed by a ruling minority of Germans and Magyars, we demand the dissolution of the present Empire and the organization of its freed peoples according to their own will." (By ''The present Empire" was meant Austria- Hungary.) I beg to invite your attention to what is indisputable, namely, that racially, linguistically, geographically, economically, in religious discipline, ceremony and government, and so far as political and national con- sciousness is concerned. Eastern Galicia is not Polish, but is overwhelmingly Ukrainian. It is an integral part of Ukraine proper and the bulk of the Eastern Galician population has always been bitterly opposed to union with Poland and has always striven for in- corporation with the main body of Ukraine, from which it had been separated by force of arms. Western Galicia is Polish, and as clearly belongs to Poland as Eastern Galicia belongs to Ukrainia. West- ern and Eastern Galicia were never united (even when Eastern Galicia was under Polish domination before the final partition of Poland) until they were united, by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, into one province under the new name of Galicia ; and thenceforward the Austrian Government permitted the Polish land-hold- ing nobility to govern, to exploit and to oppress the Ukrainians of the eastern portion of the province in exchange for the support of the Poles in the Austrian parliament. According to the International Encyclopedia, the entire Austrian province of Galicia (western and east- ern) contained, in 1910, 58.55 per cent of Poles and 40.20 per cent of Ruthenians, which is the local name for Greek-Catholic Ukrainians. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, the former predominate in the West and in the big towns, and the latter in the East. According to official statistics of the Austrian pro- vincial government of Galicia, prepared and published by leaders of Polish political parties, there were, in 1900, in Eastern Galicia, 65.10 per cent Euthenians, 21.2 Poles, and 12 per cent Jews. The Ukrainian claim embraces only 48 Eastern dis- tricts, where their population is greatly preponderant. Official statistics in 1900 show that the percentage of Ukrainians in these 48 districts stood as follows : In 10 districts, 75% to 90% In 12 districts, 67% to 75% In 16 districts, 60% to 66% In 8 districts, 50% to 60% In 2 districts, 41% to 50% The real percentage of the Ukrainian population is, however, much higher, for it is a proven and well- known fact that the Polish- Austrian authorities in Lviv purposely interfered with the due process of census in order to obtain a Polish majority in the country. According to Arnold J. Toynbee: ''The Viennese government purchased the support of the Polish group in the Parliament, abandoning the Euthenians polit- ically to Polish exploitation." (The New Europe, by Arnold J. Toynbee, London, 1916, pp. 81-84.) According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica: ''The Ruthenians are under an alien yoke, both politically and economically." See also ''The New Map of Europe," by Herbert Adams Gibbons, the well-known American student of eastern European affairs, Chapter on Galicia; J. A. Cole's ''The Ground Work of East Central Europe"; and an article in ''Geographical Teacher" (Vol. 8, 1915- 16, p. 356), by A. Bruce Boswell, Research Fellow in Western Slav History, University of Liverpool. As a native of Galicia, I know that there is not a single Ruthenian group, party or publication, from the Conservative Cathohcs to the Social Democrats, which advocates or would agree to a union of Eastern Galicia with Poland as against a union with Ukraine and in my whole life I do not remember a single instance — so sharp is the cleavage between those two nationalities — where a Ruthenian, not to say publicly but even pri- vately, would express such an opinion. The Polish government has been and is aware of this sentiment. Therefore, though the right of plebis- cite has been finally granted by the Poles to the Ger- mans on the Polish-German frontiers, repeated offers on the part of Ukrainians to hold a plebiscite under Allied supervision in Eastern Galicia have been firmly rejected. Both before and after the formal proclama- tion in January, 1919, by the duly elected representa- tives of Eastern Galicia (Western Ukraine) of its union with the Ukrainian Peoples Republic, the Poles were not willing to agree to settle this issue by a gen- eral vote of the people concerned. This opposition it- self indicates its reason. The Poles feared a popular vote. They preferred bullets to ballots. They con- quered Eastern Galicia by a superior army of invasion and they hold the occupied territory in subjection only by military force. 8 It is apparent that some principle of international conduct which was not the American one was in oper- ation when the Supreme Council decided upon a Polish mandate in Ukrainian Galicia. It might be the prin- ciple of historic possession or the belief in the political expediency of such a settlement. But neither can bear the test of critical examination. It is true that from the end of the Fourteenth Cen- tury to 1772, Eastern Galicia (or, as it was known at that time, Little Russia or Ruthenia), was ruled by Poland. It must not, however, be forgotten that it fell under the domination of the Polish Kings only after the bitterest struggles, and that its Ukrainian popula- tion has strongly resisted, for nearly six centuries, up to the present time, all the attacks and all the oppres- sions of the Polish feudal regime, maintaining its lan- guage, its religion and its nationality. While the peas- ants in Poland bore the burden of servitude without protest the UT^rainian population of Galicia strongly contested the right of the free-holders and repeatedly broke into open revolt. The clergy, the burgeoisie and the gentry, all were combatting the rule of the Polish imported aristocracy, which never succeeded in con- ciliating the native population. The Ukrainians of Galicia, because of their hatred of Polish dominion, be- came a substantial factor in the great uprising which was started by the Eastern or Cossack Ukraine against the Polish State in 1648, and which, according to most Polish historians, was the main cause of Poland's weakening and partition. ( See Bruckner, Bobrzynski, Zakrzewski.) The Ukrainian-Polish antagonism did not abate but, on the contrary, increased after the Polish partition, when in 1772 the territory presently known as Eastern Galicia, together with the Duchy of Cracow, Zator and 9 Oswiecim, the present Western Galicia, became an Aus- trian province. Then for the first time in history those two countries were united into one administrative unit under the new name Gahcia. This was done by the Hapsburgs solely for their selfish dynastic aims. It was the policy of their arbitrary government so to or- ganize the provinces of their empire as to have in each province at least two nationalities, to be played against each other and prevent either from achieving self-gov- ernment. The Ukrainians on every occasion demanded that Galicia, the largest province of Europe, number- ing 8,000,000 people, be again divided into its natural components, the Western Polish, and the Eastern Uk- rainian. The Polish leaders opposed and succeeded in defeat- ing this plan through a secret agreement with the late Emperor Francis Joseph I, made in the seventies of the last century, by which they pledged permanent sup- port to the dynasty in its policies of suppression of the other nationalities of Austria-Hungary and received full control of the provincial government of Galicia. This is shown incidentally by the demand of the Allied Powers for the extradition of the present Polish Min- ister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Bilinski, formerly Aus- tro-Hungarian Minister of Finance and Governor of the annexed province of Bosnia, who is charged with responsibility for the great war. This agreement was characterized in the Czecho-Slovak press as the great treason to the Slav cause in Austria. Had it not been for the complete and continued support which the Pol- ish parliamentary group was giving to every admin- istration in Vienna there would have been a compact and great majority of Slavic deputies (Czech, Polish, Euthenian, Slovene and Serbo-Croat) as against the German dominant minority. 10 The largest part of the progress of civilization in Ukrainian Galicia was achieved in direct opposition to the Polish-Austrian administration. The greatest ef- fort of the Polish provincial government was extended in the interest of a forcible Polonization of the Ukrain- ians. During the Polish-Austrian regime the princi- ples of political democracy, of popular education and of co-operative movement were ruthlessly and un- scrupulously down-trodden. These principles grew hand in hand with the Ukrainian nationalist movement with which they were identical. The Ukrainian move- ment being forbidden in the former Russian Empire, Eastern Galicia, with its political and intellectual capi- tal Leopol (Lviv in Ukrainian, Lemberg in German) became the center of the whole Ukrainian national movement, which developed with the intellectual and material forces of the whole of Ukraine, and attained greater strength under the so-called constitutional con- ditions existing in Austria after the year 1867. During this unremitting struggle against Polish dom- ination, against class legislation, electoral frauds, cor- rupt courts, denial of suffrage, administrative abuses and even religious intolerance, the Ukrainian people of Eastern Galicia builded, step by step, the solid foun- dation of its economic, intellectual and moral progress. Having established an entire system of co-operative associations, rural banks, educational societies, and private schools (higher education in public schools be- ing denied to them in many localities), and having or- ganized an academy of science in Lemberg and a strong democratic press, the Ukrainians have demonstrated the ability to govern themselves. Polish students of Galicia have testified that the level of civic and cul- tural development of the Galician Ukrainian farmer is higher than that of the Polish farmer of Western Galicia. (''Galicia," by F. Bujak, Cracow, 1908.) 11 When the Allied Powers, deciding the fate of Austria- Hungary, recognized the right of the several national- ities forming the Austro-Hungarian Empire to self-de- termination, the Ukrainian Deputies to the provincial legislature and to the Viennese Parliament, elected by general suffrage, terminated Austrian power in East- ern Galicia on November 1, 1918, at the same time pro- claiming the Western Ukrainian Eepublic in all the Ukrainian lands of the Hapsburg monarchy (Eastern Galicia, Ukrainian part of Bukovina and Ukrainian part of Northern Hungary). Later, by unanimous vote, they united, on January 3, 1919, the Western Ukrainian Republic with the Ukrainian Peoples Re- public, which had emerged from the ruins of old Russia. Against the exercise of this right of self-determina- tion has arisen Poland, attempting to conquer Eastern Galicia by force of arms. During the course of the resulting Polish-Ukrainian war the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference by its decision of March 19, 1919, ordered the two parties to make a truce and promised to ''hear the territorial claims of both sides with a view to transforming the laying do^\Ti of arms into an armistice." The Armistice Commission, instituted by the Su- preme Council under the Presidency of General Botha, proposed an armistice to the Ukrainians and the Poles with a provisional line of demarkation, which the Ukrainians accepted but the Poles refused. It will be remembered that since January, 1918, the Ukrainian Peoples Republic has been in a life and death struggle with the Bolsheviki. All available Ukrainian forces have been dispatched against the in- vaders in an effort to prevent their overrunning the country. Suddenly, in the middle of May, 1919, General Haller, 12 with a Polish army organized in America, of un-Amer- icanized Polish immigrants, began an offensive against the Ukrainians, attacking them from the rear. In this manner Poland took advantage of the critical condi- tion of the Ukraine, a newly organized state, which not only had to defend herself on two different fronts but also, as a result of the blockade, was almost devoid of munitions and supplies and was ravaged by epidemics of typhus. Prior to the recent Polish conquest of Eastern Gali- cia the Associated Press of America repeatedly re- ported that there were no Bolshevists in Eastern Gali- cia; that there was better order there than in Poland, and that the Jewish population was living in peace and harmony with the rest of the people ; while at the same time there were pogroms in Central Poland and in the Western or Polish part of Galicia. The Polish occupation of Ukrainian Eastern Galicia has the follomng facts to its record. The Ukrainian language has been barred from use in public life and the Ukrainian press has been entirely suppressed. The Ukrainian schools, public as well as private, and other educational institutions, have been closed, while the Ukrainian chairs at the Ukrainian-Polish Univer- sity of Lemberg have been abolished. Ukrainian students have been excluded from the Uni- versity in Lemberg by the decree requiring from every student a record of service in the Polish army. When Ukrainian professors attempted to organize private courses of higher education the Polish government re- fused permission. The teachers of common schools in Eastern Galicia who refused to pledge allegiance to the Polish State were sent to internment camps in Poland. 13 Nearly all Ukrainian leaders have been arrested and herded into camps, most filthy and unsanitary and in- fected by typhus, dysentery and other diseases. The life of those in the internment camps was made so miserable by denial of food, clothes and medical at- tention that it looked as if the Polish government de- sired to get rid of them. Those conditions became the subject of severe criticism in the Polish Diet of War- saw and of intervention on the part of Allied Missions in Poland. The Polish Diet has passed a law by virtue of which the Polish agricultural population in Poland will be able, with the help of the State, to acquire for reason- able compensation the lands heretofore held in great estates, yet the very same law attempts to preserve the great Polish landed estates in Eastern Galicia lest the Ukrainian farmers, by becoming the owners of these lands, may become economically independent. Courts-martial of Ukrainian civilians on the bare suspicion of opposition to the Polish rule, burning down of Ukrainian churches and shooting of priests, and the most inhuman treatment of Ukrainian prison- ers of war (684 prisoners of war died during a period of 30 days in a single camp out of a total of six or eight thousand) ; all these are facts which can not be denied. The following is the latest evidence of the last men- tioned horrors : "International Eed Cross Committee on Condi- tions in Polish Prison Camps, Geneva, November 2nd, (Swiss Telegraph Agency.) ''The International Red Cross Committee an- announces : "The worst news reaches us on the conditions in some Polish war prison camps. A commission 14 composed of two delegates of the International Red Cross Committee accompanied by a Major of the Sanitary Corps of the French Military Mission has visited four war prison camps at Brest Lit- ovsk, which last March contained 10,000 men, prin- cipally Ukrainians. Between the 10th and 11th day of October there were hardly 4,000 men in these camps. From the 1st to 17th of October 1,124 prisoners died. In the first part of August about 180 prisoners were dying daily. These prison camps were veritable deathbeds. The losses have been caused mainly by dysentery, ty- phus and insufficient food. Those who survived are in rags, insufficiently nourished and sleep on wooden floors without any straw or covering. ' ' This shameless policy has been somewhat modified by the Polish administration only since the foreign press has taken up the subject and when the moment approached for final decision by the Peace Conference of the future of Eastern Galicia. But to those who know the history of the Polish-Ukrainian relations in the past centuries the unscrupulous suppression of Ukrainian nationality during the present occupation is only one chapter in the history of Polish attempts to subjugate Ukraine, showing w^hat is to be expected from the Polish dominion over Ul?:rainian territory should Eastern Galicia be placed under the Polish rule not provisionally only as now, but for five, ten or twenty-five years, as reported. There is nothing to indicate that the Polish adminis- tration in Galicia will change its long established policy of extermination with regard to its Ukrainian subjects. Such change of heart has never yet happened in the history of European peoples. Neither will the Ukrain- ians change or ever cease their struggle for the liberty of their homes and the honor of their country. This incessant antagonism and strife between the 15 Polish and Ukrainian population of the Polish re- public will not prove a source of strength but of dis- union and weakness of the state. In case of war, Po- land will prove as weak an ally to its friends as Aus- tria was to Germany. Not only the Ukrainians of Galicia but those of the whole Ukraine will resent the Polish domination in Eastern Galicia, and will always strive to wrest it from Poland. The folly of attempting to build up a nation from the top, by super-imposing a government on unwilling peo- ples, has been demonstrated from the dawn of history. It is exemplified in the histories of the Polish, the Rus- sian and the Austro-Hungarian empires. The peaceful cohabitation of the Ukrainians and the Poles and the security of the peace of Eastern Europe demand that the three and a half million Ukrainians of Eastern Galicia shall not be torn away from their parental stock — the Ukrainian people. Any solution of the Eastern Galician problem made in violation of this fundamental demand can not and will not lead to the accord of the two nationalities, nor secure and perpetuate the peace of eastern Europe, and mil inevitably destroy all political combinations based on such a solution. I have the honor to be, Respectfully yours, Julian Batchinsky, Diiilomatic Bepresentative of the Uhrainian Peoples Republic. 16