PRECONDITIONS OF THE VOLYN CONFLICT

We have often raised the issue of extreme necessity of consolidation among East European nations in the face of threats, which carries the modern world. Of course the emergence of such kind of alliance isn't beneficial to some forces and it is quite predictable, that they do their best to prevent it to be founded, in particular through speculation at all sorts of provocative topics of the past.

By adopting a recent "resolution on the Volyn tragedy" the Polish Parliament touched upon the theme of restoration of historical justice, however, for some reason it has been silent about the reasons that led to this tragedy. Ukrainian authorities are silent to.

After the occupation of East Galician and West Volynian lands the Polish authorities launched a policy aimed at deukrainisation and polonisation of social and political life in these lands as well as purposeful destruction of Ukrainian education and culture in the regions to achieve further ethnographic and cultural domination of Poles over Ukrainians - indigenous population. 

Immediately after the end of the Polish-Soviet war Jozef Pilsudski appealed to the Polish government to require that "the gained land has to be passed into the hands of those who made it Polish."

December 17, 1920, the Polish Parliament adopted the law on providing of a land property for the Polish military through founding of colonist settlements in the regions of Vilna, Bialystok, Novohrudska, Polissya and Volyn. Under this law a new reserve land was created for the military colonists - 45 hectares for each military.

The law provided creation of settlements for military of particular cavalry regiments. According to the project the settlements had to be created on the model of the Ukrainian cossack stanitsas on the basis of free provision of land for the military officers. Was planned that the military colonists will become a reserve for their regiments in future. They were liable for military service with their own horse, arms and ammunition.

Such military settlements had been founded mainly around the county-level cities, along the railway tracks and nodal stations. According to the Volyn Regional Administration there were 3159 farms of the Polish colonists in the region in the early 1930's. (Bankowicz-Sitauer I. Osadnictwo wojskowe // Roczhik Wоłynski. – 1933. – S. 517.)

We can judge on further scale of colonization at least from the fact that only in the Ternopil region the Polish occupational government had planned to found 40 thousand of such military settlements on the land, which was planned to be expropriated from Ukrainian farmers. In perspective this would increase the number of Poles in 200 thousand people in the region with previous eviction of the indigenous Ukrainian population from their native lands.

Taking into account the above mentioned it looks quite natural, that the colonization of Ukrainian lands by Poland caused to escalation of conflict between the natives and aliens. As the result the policy of polonisation caused the farmers of Galicia and Volyn to oppose the occupiers to defend their land, culture and folk. 

by Serhiy Chaplygin