Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance - History

History

UNDO was founded at a party congress in 1925 through the merger of three western Ukrainian political parties, under the leadership of Dmytro Levytsky. It was the direct descendant of the prewar Ukrainian National Democratic Party, which had been the leading western Ukrainian political party during Austrian rule through western Ukraine's failed war of independence against Poland. The vast majority of western Ukraine's intelligentsia and clergy were members of UNDO. Prominent figures in the party included Kost Levytsky, former head of the government of the West Ukrainian National Republic, Dmytro Levytsky, who led the party for ten years, and Vasyl Mudry, who would become the speaker of Poland's parliament (the Sejm). UNDO's members controlled many of the region's Ukrainian financial, cooperative, and cultural institutions, including the principal western Ukrainian newspaper Dilo. During the elections, it obtained approximately 600,000 votes and a large majority of the Ukrainian seats in the Polish parliament. Its main competitor within the Ukrainian community, the socialist Ukrainian Radical Party, received 280,000 votes.

In 1930, in response to terrorist activities of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Poland initiated a policy referred to as Pacification, which involved mass arrests and beatings of Ukrainian activists, burning down of Ukrainian reading rooms and cooperatives, and closing of Ukrainian private schools. UNDO's representatives in the Polish parliament led the Ukrainian delegation in sponsoring a motion condemning these acts. After the motion's rejection, the Ukrainian parliamentarians appealed to the League of Nations, which reprimanded the Polish government. During the parliamentary elections of that year, the Polish government tried to deter the Ukrainian people from voting for Ukrainian parties. UNDO formed a temporary coalition with the other Ukrainian parties that won 21 seats in the House of deputies (17 of which were held by UNDO) and four seats in the Senate (3 of which were held by UNDO). Despite UNDO's presence in the parliament, anti-Ukrainian actions by the Polish state accelerated. Laws were passed which stipulated that only people who could speak and write Polish could serve as county or city officials, and four fifths of Ukrainian judges were removed from their positions or transferred to Poland proper.

By 1932, the relentless Polish pressure combined with the perception, based in part on the Holodomor and other Soviet atrocities affecting the Ukrainian population, that the Soviet Union not Poland was Ukraine's principal enemy, induced many of UNDO's leaders to seek some sort of accommodation with the Polish government. In March 1935, UNDO reached a compromise with the Polish government known as "Normalization." In exchange for UNDO agreeing to work with the Polish government, Ukrainians were guaranteed nineteen seats total in both houses of the Polish parliament, as well as the position of vice-marshal (speaker) of the Polish parliament, many Ukrainian political prisoners were amnestied, and credits were given to Ukrainian cooperatives. Russophile representation was also eliminated, and the status quo in Ukrainian schooling was maintained.

UNDO's efforts to reach an agreement with the Polish government led to fractures within the party. In 1933 a group of UNDO members led by Dmytro Paliiv left UNDO to form another party that was uncompromisingly opposed to both Poland as well as the Soviet Union. Although this new party was more nationalistic and authoritarian, it was legal and continued UNDO's opposition to the terrorism of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Because the Poles were only willing to apply concessions to Galicia, and not to Volhynia, UNDO's leader Dmytro Levytsky resigned from his post as head of the party. While not resigning from the party itself, he went into internal opposition. Levytsky was supported by many of UNDO's members and by the editorial board of the newspaper Dilo. This split incapacitated the party. Levytsky was replaced as head of the party by Vasyl Mudry, who became speaker of the Polish parliament.

During Normalization, UNDO pressed the Polish government for more substantial changes, such as cultural autonomy in western Ukraine, improvement in elementary and secondary education, a Ukrainian university, self-government, elimination of Polish colonization of Ukrainian lands, more access to administrative positions within the Polish state, and others. These demands were generally ignored by the Polish authorities, which led to a loss of credibility for Normalization among many Ukrainians. As a result, in 1938 UNDO proclaimed that Normalization had failed and that Poland opposed Ukrainian political life; it once again demanded autonomy for Poland's Ukrainian minority. At the same time, Germany's puppet government in Czechoslovakia granted autonomy to Slovakia's ethnic Ukrainian region, Carpatho-Ukraine. When in December 1938 articles began to appear in the German press supporting a Ukrainian state that would include parts of Poland, UNDO's leader informed the German ambassador in Warsaw that he saw no hopes for Polish-Ukrainian cooperation and that he hoped for German support. As a result, Poland pressed Germany to allow Hungary to annex Carpatho-Ukraine and when Hungary did so in 1939 Poland exploited Ukrainian disappointment in order to improve relations, and once again promised autonomy.

When Germany invaded Poland, UNDO declared its loyalty to the Polish state. After the Soviets annexed western Ukrainian territory, UNDO's former leader, Dr. Dmytro Levitsky, who had once been chief of the Ukrainian delegation in the pre-war Polish parliament, as well as many of his colleagues, were arrested, deported to Moscow, and never heard from again. UNDO along with all other legal Ukrainian political parties was forced by the Soviet authorities to disband. As a result, the extremist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which already had an underground structure dating to its time of conflict with the Polish authorities, was left as the sole functioning, independent, political organization in western Ukraine.