Традиційна культура українців – переселенців з Холмщини (на матеріалах усної історії)

Abstract

The Kholm Land (Chelm Land) is located to the east of the river Vepr to the Western Bug. From an ethnographic point of view, it is part of Volhynia. In the south it borders with Sokal region, in the west – with Lublin region, in the north – with Pidlasie. The Ukrainian population lived in this territory from ancient times. During the Middle Ages the Kholm Land was the part of the Galician-Volhynian state, and subsequently became part of the Polish Kingdom (from 1569 – the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). After the division of Poland from 1772–1795, the economic and cultural life of the Ukrainians of the Kholm Land developed within the framework of the Habsburg monarchy. Her authorities tried to weaken the oppression of Ukrainians in the province to consolidate their influence on these lands: German and Ukrainian languages were studied in local schools. After the Vienna Peace (1809) the Kholm Land was in the Warsaw Principality, which was subject to the Russian Empire. It was the beginning of quite strict polonization and russification of Ukrainians in the region. In 1912, the Ukrainian districts were isolated in the separate Kholm province of the Russian Empire. Much of the suffering and misery of the Ukrainians of the Kholm Land brought the First World War. Russian troops, retreating, destroyed villages, and most people evacuated deep into the Russian Empire – up to Kazakhstan. In June-July 1915, the Ukrainian population of Bilhoray, Tomashiv, Zamostia, Kholm, Hrubeshiv and other counties was almost forcibly displaced. The remaining estates gradually populated the Poles. Kholmshchans from different regions of Russia and Ukraine returned to their region during 1918–1925. After the Soviet-Polish war in 1919 the Kholm Land was on the borders of the Second Polish Republic. Polonization of the Ukrainians of the Kholm Land was to a certain extent hampered by the international obligations of national minorities, signed by the Polish state in Versailles in 1919. However, in the 1930s, especially in 1937–1938, Ukrainian villages in Kholm Land were subjected to rigorous polonization. Ukrainians suffered from violence made by criminals from various Polish formations in the 1940s. In March 1944 the majority of Ukrainian villages of the Kholm Land were burned down. The Ukrainian population of the region was physically exterminated. On September 2, 1944, an agreement on the mutual relocation of Ukrainians from Poland to Soviet Ukraine, and Poles from Western Ukraine to the Polish Republic was signed between the governments of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and Poland. Ukrainians of the Kholm Land did not want to move from their parents’ land. But massacre was too cruel both from the side of the Poles and from the side of Soviet power. According to incomplete data, in 1944–1946, 482,880 people were evicted from the Ukrainian lands, which were transmitted to Poland, to the territory of the USSR (mainly in the southern regions). Those Ukrainians who escaped from the mentioned resettlement actions or were in mixed marriages, in 1947 – during the Operation “Vistula”, were forcibly transferred to the western lands of the Polish Republic. This article contains some recorded recollections of the Ukrainians, born in Kholm Land, who in the 1940s fell victim to Polish aggression and had to move from their “small” motherland to Lviv region (directly to Lviv, Sokal and other cities). Based on oral accounts, it highlights the tragic pages of the ethnic history of Chelm Land residents, as well as the peculiarities of their traditional everyday culture (calendar and family rituals, folk nutrition etc) and their adjustment to the new land.