Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia
On the basis of a secret clause of the
These, added to other posterior territorial gains from Romania, resulted in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic gaining 131,000 square kilometres (50,600 sq mi) in area, and increasing its population by over seven million people from 1938 to 1941. Eastern Galicia and Volhynia were the regions that contributed the most to this.[3][4] Some other Polish territory also invaded by the Soviet Union was given to Soviet Belarus.
History
According to
Immediately after entering Poland's territory, the Soviet army helped to set up "provisional administrations" in the cities and "peasant committees" in the villages in order to organize one-list elections to the new "People's Assembly of Western Ukraine". The
Soviet policies in the newly annexed territories
Law and order
A week after the start of
On 14 December 1939, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine adopted a resolution "On the payment of pensions to pensioners of the former Western Ukraine (О выплате пенсий пенсионерам бывшей Западной Украины)" which in the first months in Lviv alone left over 4,300 residents without pensions (those included former police servicemembers, civil officials, judges, "cult servants").[10] The majority of those pensioners lived the rest of their lives in shelters for the infirm and disabled.[10]
For the Red Army and its servicemembers, law and order in occupied Lviv was a merely a formality.[10] Pogroms, rape, robberies, and unreasonable executions became an everyday occurrence.[10] The military shot prisoners as well as civilians.[10] Looting spread.[10] The unlawful incidents became so big a problem that the 6th Army prosecutor Nechyporenko was forced to write a personal letter to Stalin asking to intervene and stop the atrocities.[10] Special brutality was noted against priests and bishops; in particular, the Chekists (members of Cheka) made bishop Symon walk naked on the streets of Kremenets towards a local prison hitting him with rifle stocks on the way.[10]
Government and administration
The lands annexed by the Soviet Union were administratively reorganized into six oblasts similar to those in the rest of the Soviet Union (Drohobych Oblast, Lviv Oblast, Rivne Oblast, Stanislav (later known as Ivano-Frankivsk) Oblast, Tarnopil Oblast and Volyn Oblast). The civilian administration in those regions annexed from Poland was organized by December 1939 and was drawn mostly from newcomers from eastern Ukraine and Russia; only 20% of government employees were from the local population. It was falsely assumed by many Ukrainians that a disproportionate number of people working for the Soviet administration came from within the Jewish community. The reason for this belief was that most of the previous Polish administrators were deported, and the local Ukrainian intelligentsia who could have taken their place were generally deemed to be too nationalistic for such work by the Soviets. In reality, most positions were staffed by ethnic Ukrainians from the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, in the eyes of many Ukrainians the Jews came to be associated with Soviet rule, which contributed to rising anti-Jewish sentiments.[11] The Polish language was eliminated from public life, and Ukrainian became the language of the government and the courts.[3] All Polish institutions were abolished, and all Polish officials, civil servants, and police were deported to Siberia or Central Asia.[12]
Ukrainian organizations not controlled by the Soviets were limited or abolished. Hundreds of
Education and healthcare
Due to the sensitive location of western Ukraine along the border with German-held territory, the Soviet administration made attempts, initially, to gain the loyalty and respect of the Ukrainian population. Healthcare, especially in the villages, was improved dramatically.
Land reform
In the annexed territories, over 50 percent of the land had belonged to Polish landlords while approximately 75% of the Ukrainian peasants owned less than two hectares of land per household. Starting in 1939, lands not owned by the peasants were seized and slightly less than half of them were distributed to landless peasants free of charge; the rest were given to new collective farms.
Religious persecution
At the time of the Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia, the
Despite the various restrictions, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was left as the only remaining independent Ukrainian institution that operated openly in Ukrainian territory. Church attendance soared, and contemporary accounts described churches never having been as full as they became under Soviet rule, with long lines forming in front of confessional booths. The western Ukrainian people attempted to protect their Church from Soviet restrictions. Peasants, even among the poorest ones, were reluctant to accept land taken from the Church and offered to them, and as late as in May 1940, some villages had not yet expropriated church lands, while others distributed much of it to priests' families. Priests made homeless were taken in by parishioners. Children, who no longer learned religion in school, started obtaining religious instruction privately.[15]
The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in Volhynia faced similar restrictions to those of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church; moreover it underwent pressure to subordinate itself to the Moscow Patriarch.[4] Many Orthodox priests fled the Soviet regime, resulting in a large number of newly consecrated priests who were not necessarily fit for their duties, weakening and demoralizing the Church somewhat. The Orthodox hierarchs in western Ukraine were left alone, however.[17]
Deportations and demographic changes
Initially, the Soviet authorities deported primarily political figures as well as all Polish officials, civil servants, police, and Polish citizens who had fled from the Germans. The exact number of Poles deported to Siberia or Central Asia between 1939 and 1941 remains unknown, and has been estimated at from under 500,000 to over 1,500,000.[12][18] Additionally, tens of thousands of German-speaking people from Volhynia were also moved to German-controlled territory.[14]
In April 1940 the Soviet authorities in the annexed territories began to extend their repressive measures towards the general Ukrainian population. This coincided with the removal of Soviet troops of ethnic Ukrainian origin, who had become too friendly with local Ukrainians, and their replacement by soldiers from Central Asia.[14] The Soviet authorities began arresting and deporting anyone suspected of disloyalty to the Soviet regime. In villages, people were denounced by their neighbors, some of whom were Communist sympathizers while others were opportunists. Deportations became indiscriminate, and people and their families were deported for "crimes" such as having relatives or visiting abroad, or visiting friends while the friends were arrested. Because many of those making denunciations were perceived to be Jews, anti-Jewish sentiments among the Ukrainian population increased.[4][12] Ultimately, between 1939 and the beginning of Operation Barbarossa approximately 500,000 Ukrainians would be deported to Siberia and central Asia.[12] 100,000 Jews fleeing Nazi terror in German-occupied Poland arrived in the territories newly annexed by the USSR.[19]
Aftermath
Following the Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia, the Ukrainian SSR would gain more land following the
On June 22, 1941
The Ukrainian SSR's borders would change during the rest of World War II or shortly after it. It was given
Importance for the Ukrainian and Belarusian statehood
The Soviet annexation of some 51.6% of the territory of the
-
Nationalities in Second Polish Republic ca. 1931
-
Ukrainian SSR in 1939 after the Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia. Bessarabia, then part of Romania, is shaded as it was claimed by Ukraine's Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
See also
- Russian occupation of Eastern Galicia, 1914–1915
References
- ISBN 978-0-521-63037-5.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ Norman Davies, God's Playground (Polish edition). Second volume, pp. 512-513.
- ^ Volodymyr Kubiyovych. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 831–833 and pp.872–874
- ^ a b c d e f g Orest Subtelny. (1988). Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 455–457.
- ^ Anna M. Cienciala (2004). The Coming of the War and Eastern Europe in World War II (lecture notes, University of Kansas). Retrieved 15 March 2006.
- ISBN 0-19-820171-0. pp. 1001–1003.
- ^ Andrzej Nowak, The Russo-Polish Historical Confrontation, Sarmatian Review, January 1997, Volume XVII, Number 1. Retrieved 16 July 2007.
- ^ Paul Robert Magocsi. (1983). Galicia: A historical Survey and Bibliographic Guide. Toronto: University of Toronto Press pg. 207
- ISBN 0-7146-5132-X., pp. 29–30.
- ^ Mirror Weekly. 11 September 2015
- ^ Ukrainian Collaboration in the Extermination of the Jews during the Second World War: Sorting Out the Long-Term and Conjunctural Factors Archived 2017-02-24 at the Wayback Machine by John-Paul Himka, University of Alberta. Taken from The Fate of the European Jews, 1939–1945: Continuity or Contingency, ed. Jonathan Frankel (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), Studies in Contemporary Jewry 13 (1997): 170–189.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Paul Robert Magocsi. (1996). A History of Ukraine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press
- ^ John Armstrong (1963). Ukrainian Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, pg. 65
- ^ a b c John Armstrong (1963). Ukrainian Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 63–72
- ^ a b c d e Bohdan Bociurkiw. (1989). Sheptytskyi and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Under the Soviet Occupation of 1939–1941, pp. 101–123. Taken from Morality and Reality: The Life and Times of Andrei Sheptytskyi, edited by Paul Robert Magocsi. Edmonton Canada: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta.
- ^ Orest Subtelny. (1988). Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp.214–219.
- ^ John Armstrong (1963). Ukrainian Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, pp.192–196
- ISBN 0-7146-4783-7., p.219
- ^ Timothy Snyder. (2010). Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, pg. 127
- ^ Piotr Eberhardt (2011). "Political Migrations on Polish Territories (1939–1950)" (PDF). Monographies; 12. Polish Academy of Sciences, Stanisław Leszczycki Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization: 25, 27–29. Archived from the original on 2014-05-20 – via Internet Archive.
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ISBN 1-57181-882-0.
- ISBN 0-521-57457-9. p. 17.
- ^ Subtelny (1988), p. 487.