The Olevsk Borderline as the Creation of the Polish-Soviet War

Abstract

The Peace of Riga 1921 has caused substantial changes that are still commonly discussing in historical science and has become an important aspect of numerous researches due to the theme of the Polish-Soviet War’s end. It has been identified that the regional administrative structure and the whole structure of daily life of the Olevsk Borderline inhabitants have undergone a big change. This article represents the study of the consequences of the Polish-Soviet War in 1919–1920 which took its strong influence on the regional phenomenon of the Olevsk Borderline and its inhabitants in part of this. The main themes which were described in the research are the regional administrative and legal system changes in this time in the territories of Volyn’ and Polissia. We mainly focuse on the changes which led to a nascency of the Olevsk Borderline. In late 1919 and early 1920s, the Bolsheviks occupation system was established on the lands of Ukraine by a new government. That process was accompanied by great violence which meant both political internal battles in Volyn’s province during the persistence of large-scale military action. As the result of the war, this territory became a frontier area and was divided into two parts due to the diplomatic contract. Some villages and towns were integrated by Poland and others became the part of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The aggressive substance of the Soviet power had a negative impact on the population of that region. The use of complex analysis of the historical sources and the historiography revealed the consequences of the Riga Peace 1921 for the Olevsk Borderline in the early 1920s years. In particular, we show what changes occurred in both parts of the frontier after that administrative-territorial reforming processes in Soviet Ukraine and Poland. The paper includes recent results obtained by the usage of general scientific and special historical methods.