THE UKRAINIAN-POLISH MILITARY AND POLITICAL UNION OF 1920 IN THE HISTORICAL MEMORY OF THE UKRAINIANS AND THE POLES

Abstract

The article deals with the issue of the formation of historical memory of the Ukrainian-Polish military and political union of 1920 in Ukraine and Poland with commemorative practices, public rituals, religious ceremonies. The main public discourses about the events of 1920 in the Ukrainian and Polish intellectual spaces are discussed.During the interwar period, the city of Lviv and the region of Eastern Halychyna were important for establishing the memory of the war as a «heroic defense against the barbarian invasion». Public rituals with the participation of Chief of State Józef Piłsudski, museum activities, religious cults consolidated the Polish people of the region around a common vision of recent history. At the same time, a heroic narrative was formed about the leaders of the Ukrainian-Polish union – Symon Petliura and Józef Piłsudski. When the Ukrainian part of society honored heroes who opposed the Bolsheviks, the Poles bowed to the defenders of the «eastern frontiers» from the Ukrainians and the Bolsheviks. In Soviet times, there was a radical change in the discourse of 1920 – the march of the Red Army became «liberating».The construction of ideologically based monuments, the renaming of streets, suppression of awkward episodes of the war, and the emphasis on its minor aspects formed a distorted image of the Polish-Ukrainian-Russian war of 1920.The democratization of Polish and Ukrainian societies in the last decade of the 20th century caused the emergence of a whole range of policies of memory and intellectual interpretations of the Piłsudski–Petliura Union of 1920. The involvement of the Polish anticommunist opposition, emigration centers, including the Paris «Kultura», and the activities of central and local authorities to organize memorials of 1920 formed a new discourse of the Ukrainian-Polish military and political union as an example of effective cooperation in the face of external threats.