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Ukraine—Between Poland and Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Extract

The three years of struggle and attempted negotiations between Poland and the Soviet Union over the readjustment of their frontiers were concluded by a two-fold decision. Thanks to Moscow, Poland was given a government which readily consented to give up both the Western Ukraine and White Ruthenia, territories occupied by Poland after the First World War; now they become parts of the Soviet Union. On the motion of Viacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Ukraine was accepted as a member of the world organization, the United Nations.

The first event means that after six hundred years, Poland has withdrawn her claim to an extensive tract of land which she ruled at times as far east as the River Dnieper and beyond. Polish ambitions to control the Ukrainian and White Ruthenian lands and to assimilate these two peoples culturally in order to make them an ethnographic Polish entity, with some exceptions of course, failed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1946

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References

1 The Russian reactionary historian Basil Shulgin in his article Kiev, Mother of Russian Towns” (The Slavonic and Eastern European Review, Vol. XIX, 1939, 1940),Google Scholar quoted these subtle words of Tolstoy, but he failed to derive the right conclusion from them. Nevertheless, even Shulgin noted that while “Kiev was a part of Europe, Moscow long remained a negation of Europe.”

2 Cf. “The Meaning of ‘Russia and ‘Ukraine’” by Czubatyj, Nicholas D.. The Ukranian Quarterly (Vol. I, 4, 09, 1945).Google Scholar

3 Shelukhin, , Ukraine (Prague, 1938), p. 194Google Scholar and others.

4 Cf. the statement of Cardinal Tisserant, secretary of the Congregation for the Oriental Church: “For the Ruthenians the matter is reduced to this dilemma: Either schism or martyrdom; and martyrdom means arrest, deportation into Asia, prison, forced labor, death.” (New York Times, March 2, 1946).—ED.