Ukraine and the Ukrainian Question in 1914–1923

Abstract

The article analyzes the development of the “Ukrainian question” during the First World War and its aftermath – a period when a new world order was emerging along with new nation-states in Central and Eastern Europe. Born in the mid-nineteenth century, the Ukrainian “national project” evolved from cultural to socio-political demands. It culminated in the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921/1923, when an independent Ukrainian state emerged. Unlike Poland and the Baltic states, Ukrainian statehood did not last long. In March 1921, the western part of Volyn was ceded to Poland. Virtually all of Greater (Dnipro) Ukraine became part of the communist USSR. In 1923, the Entente Council of Ambassadors recognized the sovereignty of the Second Polish Republic over Eastern Galicia. In addition, after the First World War, Carpathian Ruthenia was ceded to Czechoslovakia, Bukovyna to Romania, and Ukrainians, as historian Stanislav Kulchytskij aptly noted, became “the only large nation of Austria-Hungary that did not achieve its own statehood after its collapse”. At the same time, the experience of state-building in 1917–1921/1923 became crucial for the Ukrainian national movement in the twentieth century.