著者

吉岡 潤

出版者

北海道大学スラブ研究センター

雑誌

スラヴ研究 (ISSN:05626579)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.48, pp.67-93, 2001

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After World War II Poland experienced a drastic change in the ethno-national composition of the state as a result of the exclusion of national minorities following the shift of her frontiers. The new Polish-Soviet frontier follows quite closely the so-called Curzon line that was considered as the ethnographical borderline between Poles and Ukrainians. In consequence of this shift of frontiers most Ukrainians, the largest national minority in prewar Poland, found themselves on the territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, or Soviet Ukraine, while it is estimated that there remained as many as 700,000 Ukrainians on the Polish side. By the summer of 1947, these Ukrainians had been excluded from Polish society. The purpose of this article is to examine how the Ukrainian minority problem was settled in postwar Poland and to demonstrate the decisive role played by the Communists in this settlement. At first, resettlements of Ukrainians were carried out on the authority of an agreement on the exchange of populations concluded by the Polish Committee of National Liberation, or the Lublin Committee, with Soviet Ukraine on September 9, 1944. It was stated in the agreement that Poles and Jews who had been citizens of Poland before September 17, 1939 and were living in Soviet Ukraine could be evacuated to Poland. Correspondingly, Ukrainians living in postwar Poland could choose Soviet citizenship and move into Soviet Ukraine. Moreover, according to the agreement, the transfers were to be voluntary. In the course of the implementation of the agreement, however, the Polish authorities, the core of which consisted of Communists, set about to deport Ukrainians, abandoning the principle of free will. When the deportations were completed in the summer of 1946, a total of 482,000 Ukrainians, many of these forcibly, had left their homeland and had been deported to Soviet Ukraine. The second and "final" act of the solution of the "Ukrainian problem" in Poland was Operation "Vistula" executed by the Polish Army with Communist political support. The aim of this operation was to resettle the whole of the remaining Ukrainians including mixed marriage families in ex-German territories allotted to Poland, or the Recovered Territories, where they were planned to be dispersed so as not to form their own community. They were expected to assimilate quickly into Polish society there. Operation "Vistula" began on April 28, 1947 under the pretext that the whole Ukrainian population was collectively responsible for the assassination of the Vice-Minister of Defense by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or the UPA. By the end of July, Operation "Vistula" resettled about 140,000 Ukrainians. In this way the "Ukrainian problem" in postwar Poland was solved by force. Such thorough exclusion of Ukrainians to the extent it could be called "ethnic cleansing" can be explained by a historical factor, that is, the long-standing antagonism between the two nations. It was above all World War II which sharpened national consciousness among these ruled nations and aggravated this antagonism. Memories of the bloody conflict in Volhynia that had entangled Polish and Ukrainian civilians as well as combatants made it difficult to live together in one state. But it is important to bear in mind that the Communists were the executors of the exclusion policy. The Communists, who had seized power lacking the support from the masses, came to call themselves the defenders of Polish national interests, propagandizing the danger of "German revanchism," "Ukrainian anti-Polish armed bandits," etc. For them the settlement of national conflicts in favor of the Polish nation was one of the most effective means to legitimize their power. In the process of the establishment of their rule, they revealed an orientation to a homogeneous Polish nation-state. In this sense, Ukrainians were sort of a scapegoat. Furthermore, it can be assumed that the Communists saw signs of opposition from the Ukrainians. In spite of pressure from the Polish authorities they wished to remain in Poland while clinging to their own national identity. They demanded equal rights, national freedom and even the right to set up a Ukrainian political party during negotiations with Polish authorities on July 24, 1945. These demands seemed to have been excessive to the Communists, who were then on the way to hegemony and were building a quasi-plural party system which they would control as they pleased. The exclusion of Ukrainians was also a manifestation of the Communists' totalitarian character that would not permit the existence of opponents. And Ukrainians were one of a great many opponents at which the Communists struck a finishing blow. When the "Ukrainian problem" in postwar Poland is taken into consideration, particular attention must be given to the above-mentioned factors which were intertwined with each other. To ignore any of them would mean to miss the point of the whole structure of the problem.