Anti-Semitism and ethnic conflicts are on the rise in Europe. After the end of the Yugoslavian war, you would think that all Europeans should have learned a lesson, but no. Instead it looked like FYR Macedonia was on the brink of civil war, the Turk Cypriots and Greek Cypriots won't unite again, the anti-Jewish mentality is growing all over the world, The European Union is growing eastwards, but as it grows it sharpens it’s borders to those outside and except creating Fortress Europe, it’s the ground for much irritation in some east European countries.
And this all seems like a never-ending downward spiral. But what can make two different ethnicities, nationalities or religions dislike each other so much it can eventually bring them to war?
Let's take a look on the long time conflict between the Ukrainians and the Polish.


A Short Brief Of History
Lately, the two countries Poland and Ukraine have turned away from each other and are facing their worst crisis for years. This conflict is very old, and originated during the 17th century when the Ukrainian national hero Bohdan Chmelnitskij (though Polish out of origin) lead a farmers uprising against their Polish landlords. Then the conflict laid latent for years until the Russian revolution 1917 that brought unrest in all of Ukraine. And when the First World War ended by year 1918 with the creation of the Polish state, a border conflict soon established itself between the new Polish state and Ukrainian Nationalist and the Bolsheviks. The Ukrainian nationalistic anarchists, Narodniks, rose up against the Bolshevik state forming in Petrograd, and this army of Narodniks was responsible for pogroms against the Jewish population, and in some locations Polish landlords were thrown out from their lands, but what exactly happened is uncertain because it happened on Russian land in a time when the country was in full civil war. And the situation did not improve in year 1919 after that the Polish leader, Josef Pilsudski, decided to cross the Russian border with the intention to create a “Great Poland” containing a great bit of Ukraine. After the famous battle by the river Wisla, not far from Polish capitol Warsaw, the Soviets were forced to sign a peace treaty in Riga year 1921 that gave Poland a great bit of former Russian soil, and most of this land was in Ukraine.

Under New Masters
When the Soviet stabilised itself and Stalin came to power, the Ukrainian nationalists were discontented living under the control of foreign powers, and mostly under the Polish. The Ukrainians were treated like second-class citizens, and another reason that they felt alienated from the Polish society was the fact that the Ukrainian was mostly orthodox Christians, while the Polish were Roman Catholics, and the Ukrainian language is much closer to Russian than to Polish. Because of this, Ukrainian nationalist created the OUN in year 1929, with the goal to fight the Polish bureaucracy and the “Polonization” of the Ukraine and in the end fight for an independent country. By the year 1939, Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union invaded Poland and split it between themselves. The Soviets soon began to move the people around and sent thousands of Polish to the east while replacing them with Russians in order to assimilate Poland as a part of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, in the part of Poland that was occupied by Germany, two influential guerrilla movements were formed, Armia Krajowa and Armia Ludowa (AK and AL). AK was a nationalistic movement while the AL was a communistic movement. However, the German invasion of Soviet in 1941 intensified the conflict. All of Poland and all of Ukraine came under German occupation and at first the Ukrainians welcomed the Germans and helped them, but soon they understood that the Nazis were no keener on letting them rule themselves than the Soviets or Polish were.

Full Carnage – Civil War and Ethnic Cleansing
And it's here that everything went to hell. The Russians were eager to fight the Germans, and thus created their own partisan groups. The Ukrainians finally decided to fight the occupants, but they weren’t so eager to get under Soviet or Polish occupation again, so therefore they created the Ukrainskaja Postanska Armija (UPA). Basically, there were four different anti-German movements in the same place. Today it's impossible to find out who started the civil war, but what is known today is that it was extraordinary brutal. The Ukrainians burned down Polish villages and killed their Polish villagers, and as a response, the Polish burned down Ukrainian villages and killed the Ukrainian villagers. The Ukrainians also engaged the Russian, but information about that is sparse and hard-found. Something should also be mentioned about the Jewish armed resistance groups operating in Poland, Byelorussia and Ukraine; however, they were not directly involved in the Polish-Ukrainian Conflict. By year 1944, when the tides of war had changed once more and the Russian armies were heading west through Ukraine and Poland, a bizarre situation took place. Advancing Russian forces accusing them for treason sometimes executed AK groups in Poland, but some AK groups were in fact armed by the Russians and even given tank and air support in order to fight and kill of the UPA groups hiding in the woods of eastern Poland/Western Ukraine. This “secret war” continued on after the end of the Second World War, and probably ended sometime 1947 or 1948. However, The UPA was engaged in an armed conflict with the Red Army sporadically until sometime 1952 or 53, when the UPA lost all possibilities to conduct field operations against Russian forces.

After The War – The Amnesia
Barbara Rogozinska, born and grown up in Poland, says that the war wasn't something you talked about. In schools and everywhere public, the official version was that all the people of eastern/central Europe and the Soviets were brothers and were all fighting together against the Germans during the war. Some people whispered about it, but the most people forgot about the war. After world war two, the Polish borders were moved to the west, thus taking ground from the Germans and giving to Poland who in the meantime lost land to Soviet in the east. After the fall of the Berlin wall, the truth about the ethnic cleansing have finally become known for a great amount of people living in Poland and Ukraine. This new openness about our common past has created new strife, because the people can finally talk openly about what happened to them both sides have started accusing each other for committing war crimes against unarmed civilians.

Another Day, Another Vendetta
After the first of may 2004, when Poland became part of the European Union, the Polish and Ukrainian governments have pushed for the E.U. to discuss the possibility for Ukraine to enter the European Union, and the Polish and Ukrainian governments made a trade agreement about a pipe-line leading oil through the Ukraine and into Poland, but lately, the situation has taken a new turn. Ukraine says that they don't want to co-operate with Poland and building the pipeline, instead it's going to be built into Russia. Also, Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia and Kazakhstan have lately created a free-trade zone between their countries, linking their economy in such a way that some western analysts consider this the creation of a new Soviet Union. What will happen in the future is unknown. When Poland entered the European Union, their eastern border became the border of the Union, and therefore the security on the Polish-Ukrainian border have been lifted to new heights. One of the main ethnic minorities in the Ukraine is Polish, and these are mostly those who were on the wrong side of the moved border after world war two. But many people living in western Ukraine earns their money mostly through making business in Poland. Basically, by buying wares in Ukraine and take them to Poland they can make a profit on selling them. But with the new border regulations, the passage of the border is much more difficult today than it was a year ago, and that will probably encourage them to take a more pro-Russian stance and step away from more friendly relations with Poland.

Daniel Westman
© 1997-2004 Freeway
Writers: Daniel Westman (sp06-28@park.se), or (polska_87@hotmail.com).
HTML by: Joakim Stroem (te05-02@park.se).