The Ukrainian-Polish Defensive Alliance, 1919–1921

Description

Michael Palij introduces the English-language reader and students of history to a relatively little-known aspect of the revolutionary upheavals that engulfed Ukraine, Poland, and Russia after the First World War. He presents the biographies of two national leaders—Symon Petliura of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and Józef Pilsudski of Poland—before focusing on those country’s military conflicts, diplomatic relations, and subsequent alliance against their common enemy, Soviet Russia. Dr. Palij acquaints us with the details of the military and diplomatic history of Ukraine and Poland in the years 1919–21.

He recounts the war of 1918–19 in Galicia between Poland and the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic and the competing political conceptions of Poland’s role in Eastern Europe. After providing a thorough discussion of the Treaty of Warsaw and the resulting anti-Bolshevik military alliance between Petliura and Pilsudski, the author proceeds to a detailed examination of the joint Ukrainian-Polish military offensive against Soviet Russia, the causes of its failure, and the subsequent Soviet offensive in Poland and its defeat. The author presents the Ukrainian perspective on Poland’s betrayal of Ukraine with the aim of securing its position vis-à-vis Russia. Negotiations leading up to the Soviet-Polish Treaty of Riga and the treaty itself are elaborated.

The study concludes with a description of the last phase of the Ukrainian military struggle for independence from Russia, Ukrainian émigré efforts to continue the struggle in the international diplomatic arena, Petliura’s assassination by Samuel (Shalom) Schwartzbard in Paris, and the trial and acquittal of his assailant. Dr. Palij’s monograph is based on years of meticulous research in the published sources, most of them in Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian. The book also contains an impressive 120-page bibliography. The Ukrainian-Polish Alliance will be of great value not only to students of Eastern Europe, but also to anyone who wants to understand the situation there today.