Архіви української політичної еміграції в Польщі

Abstract

The article analyzes the composition of the Ukrainian political emigration’s archival collections in the interwar period in Poland, traces the ways of their displacements during the Second World War, and determines its current storage locations and source potential for studying the problems of the political and military history of Ukraine as well as Polish-Ukrainian relations. It is defined that after the defeat of the Ukrainian War of Independence 1917-1921 valuable political and military archives were repatriated to Poland where they were preserved in the emigration centers established by the UNR Government in Tarnow, Сzestochowa and partly in Warsaw. During the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany, the archives of the UNR Directorate were repatriated to Krakow, and eventually, they came into the possession of Soviet security services that resulted in moving the archives to the USSR. As a consequence, these archives were classified for security reasons and stored in archival special fonds. Moreover, valuable documents that describe the activity of the Ukrainian political emigration and Polish-Ukrainian relationship, particularly the relations between Symon Petlura and Josef Pilsudski, can be found in the fonds of Polish institutions, such as Archiwum Akt Nowych, Сentralne Archiwum Wojskowe, National Library of Poland / Biblioteka Narodowa in Warsaw and the National Ossolinski Institute in Wroclaw. In Ukraine, the most considerable segment of the UNR emigration collections is presented nowadays by the fonds of the Central State Archive of Supreme Authorities and Governments of Ukraine in Kyiv. These documents have an important source potential for describing the processes of the Ukrainian state formation, struggles for independence along with detailed research of Polish-Ukrainian relations during the interwar period. The author states the relevance of preparing an electronic registry of Ukrainian emigration archival collections with the characterization of the content of collections, location of their creation, transportation routes, and their current location. It would embrace the research along with including the documents to the scientific narrative.