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previous: Chapter 13 This webpage reproduces a chapter of Twentieth-Century Ukraine by Clarence Manning published by Bookman Associates New York, 1951 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 15

 p124  XIV

Ukraine on the Eve of World War II:
The Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine

Early in the thirties the shadow of another world war began to fall over Europe. Just as the Italo-Turkish War and the Balkan Wars of 1912‑13 had heralded the cataclysm of 1914, so the disturbances in Manchuria, in Ethiopia and in Spain forecast a new struggle. Adolf Hitler was gaining strength almost daily, while the Stalinists were purging their ranks and preparing themselves for a new step in the development of world Communism.

Under these threats the United States, Great Britain and France seemed singularly asleep. The confidence in an uninterrupted peace that had emerged with the signing of the armistice in 1918 seemed unshaken by even the clearest intimations that all was not well. The great depression had destroyed the optimism of the twenties. Totalitarianism in its several forms, Fascism, Nazism and Communism, was raising its head and daring to question all of those postulates that had been accepted for centuries by civilized Europe. Yet no one took the threat seriously.

We have seen how Ukraine was faring under its new masters. It had no accepted spokesman. On the surface of events, it was growing apart. The Ukrainians in the Ukrainian Soviet  p125 Republic, those living under Poland and those in Carpatho-Ukraine and Romania were being subjected to different influences, to different systems of law and administration and to different economic conditions. How was it possible to speak of a Ukraine?

Abroad the Ukrainian émigrés were divided. The old Ukrainian National Republic still maintained a shadowy existence. Petlyura was killed by a Soviet agent in 1926 and the head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalities, (Colonel Konovalets), was murdered by Soviet agents in 1938. The various political factions which had remained from the old organizations, the followers of Hetman Skoropadsky and new groups which had arisen under younger leaders continued abroad their verbal jousts. Each group was sure that it had the ear of the people and a program that would save the national spirit.

Yet, as events showed, there was a deepening of Ukrainian consciousness during these years. There was a steadily increasing consensus of opinion as to the significance of Ukraine, its importance to the world, and the essential nature of its possible contribution to humanity. Much of this was due to under­ground activity led by the Ukrainian nationalists, much of it was barely conscious to the people who shared it. But it existed and that was the main thing.

It would have been well for the democratic world, had it attempted to evaluate all of these new currents of thought. The Western mind still kept the same logical presuppositions that it had twenty years earlier. Despite mounting evidence of the tyrannies and outrages of the Soviet system and of world Communism, liberal opinion still believed that the Soviet leaders did not mean what they said or were in their own way trying to introduce a new and better form of democracy. Western leaders strained to draw some line of distinction between the tyrannies of Hitler and those of Stalin, so as to condemn the one and condone the other. Some put their faith in the old thesis of the unity and contentment of all  p126 peoples within the old Russian Empire. Some apologists for Kerensky and the Provisional Government turned to a glorification of the Communists as maintaining the old Russian idea. Others, anti-Communist, cherished the hope that the Provisional Government or something similar would return. Lovers of peace were afraid of annoying the Soviet government by uttering aloud what they privately believed. In fact public opinion was as averse to recognizing the facts of Soviet life as they were of suspecting Hitler of aggressive intentions and acting upon their feelings.

Yet the fear of a new war and the part Ukraine would play in it opened the way for the Communists and their allies of the popular fronts to revive all the old accusations against the Ukrainian independence movement. The mere fact that some of the leaders had taken refuge in Berlin (when all other capitals were closed to them) was enough to prove that the entire movement was Nazi-inspired, even though these leaders had appeared on the national stage long before Hitler had even begun to write his script. During the period just before the outbreak of World War II, when there were already hidden contacts between the two totalitarian systems, it became fashionable once again to damn the Ukrainians.

It was just at this moment that an enlightening episode occurred in Carpatho-Ukraine. Following the dismemberment of Czecho­slovakia after the Munich meetings in 1938, that republic was reorganized on a federal basis and, on October 11, for the first time, Carpatho-Ukraine was able to organize the diet which it had been promised in 1919 and 1920. Almost immediately the regional Prime Minister Andrew Brody was arrested by the Czechs on the charge that he was trying to unite the entire area with Hungary. He was succeeded by Monsignor Voloshyn but the new regime was handicapped by the decision of Hitler and Mussolini to transfer to Hungary the area surrounding the two principal cities of the region, Uzhorod and Mukachevo. This left a truncated Carpatho-Ukraine and its government was forced to take up its abode in  p127 the little town of Hust.⁠1

Disheartening as this was, the Ukrainians set to work with a will to construct even this small semi-independent state. For the first time since the fall of the Ukrainian National Republic, they might dream of something that they could call their own. Ukrainians of all groups made their way from the various countries to this new center. Trained veterans of the wars of 1918‑20 came to prepare a new Ukrainian army, even though the possibilities of getting modern equipment were non-existent. Professional men of every kind gathered here and the little town during the winter was a hive of industry.⁠2

Ukrainians in the United States sent aid to the new state, when they were allowed, and were prepared to establish formal contact with its leaders, but the representatives were prevented from arriving. The British refused to take any notice of the new state.

On February 12, 1939, elections were held for a diet. This held its first meeting on March 14, 1939, formally installing Monsignor Voloshyn as president.

In the early spring Slovakia was induced to declare its independence of the Czechs and was taken under the protection of the "Führer." This completely isolated Carpatho-Ukraine and rendered impossible any connection with Bohemia and Moravia. Voloshyn then declared the complete independence of the state.

His only hope of salvation was to receive at least beneficent support from the Germans, for the region was surrounded by enemies. There was little to be feared on the west, where Slovakia was already struggling with her own problems. Romania too was relatively disinterested. Poland was, as we might expect, openly hostile. She had no desire to see an independent Ukrainian state, no matter how weak and helpless, lest it prove too great an attraction for the Ukrainians living under her own rule.⁠3 Hungary was even more violent. That country had never been reconciled to her territorial losses of 1918 and the present moment seemed highly favorable for the  p128 restoration of her own borders in the Carpathian region. Ever since the fall of Benes, the Hungarian government had been making plans for further action. It had been fairly well armed by the Germans and could expect to defeat the Carpatho-Ukrainians, with their rifles and antiquated weapons.

On March 14, the same day that the German troops set out for Prague, the Hungarian government ordered the withdrawal of all Czech troops from Carpatho-Ukraine and invaded the province with a demand that the new government submit. When Voloshyn, trusting to the indirect assurances he had already received from the German government, appealed for help, he was coldly informed that the Germans were no longer interested.

The tragedy soon followed. The little Carpatho-Ukrainian army composed of the Riflemen of the Carpathian Sich was attacked by the Hungarian army with modern weapons. Opposition was futile but it took several days before the resistance of the mountaineers, fighting on their own terrain for their homes and liberty, was crushed. There were numerous executions of officials who fell into the hands of the Hungarian army. Voloshyn and some officials escaped to Romania and safety.

There is much mystery about this episode. It seems fairly certain that for many years Hungary had maintained contact with certain Hungarian elements in Carpatho-Ukraine and had been engaged in fomenting discontent against the Czechs. They had followed the same policy in Slovakia. After the Munich appeasement, German influence had replaced the Hungarian and the German leaders had tried to get control of the Ukrainian movement in the province.

We knew that Hitler had long cast covetous eyes at Ukraine, for he realized as the Allies had never done that it was the key to the Russian problem. He realized as Allies had never done the strained relations between the Ukrainians under Polish rule and the Polish government. An independent Carpatho-Ukraine would serve as a magnet to draw first the other Western  p129  Ukrainians and then the oppressed people in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. Apparently he had made this clear even as late as the beginning of March, 1939, to Voloshyn and the leaders who were trying to find a way out of the impasse in which the Ukrainians had been placed by the collapse of Czecho­slovakia. He gave Voloshyn to understand that he did not wish Poland and Hungary to have a common border, and he fostered the opposition between Carpatho-Ukraine and her neighbors.

Why, then, at the first moment of an attack by Hungary did he abandon the new state? One word would have held back the Hungarian army. He certainly did not do so in order to promote better relations with the Poles against whom he continued to intrigue. The only obvious answer is that already by March, 1939, the negotiations were under way between Hitler and Stalin which were to become public a few months later and under which Western Ukraine was to fall into the hands of the Communists. It adds a strange footnote to the negotiations between the Western Allies and Stalin, which were checked because none of the states between the two giants were willing to admit the Red army as saviors, for they well knew what the end would be.

There was another result of the collapse of Carpatho-Ukraine. Until this time it was confidently bruited about in many Polish and pro-Polish circles that the German attack on Poland would be preceded by an uprising in Western Ukraine. This was part of the Polish plan to present the Ukrainian movement as one made in Germany. The incident in Carpatho-Ukraine proved to the Ukrainians that they could not rely upon Germany. It emphasized once again the same unfortunate truth that had been made so clear in 1918 — i.e.,  that Germany was not interested in Ukrainian liberty, that the Allies refused to understand the situation, and that, fighting against overwhelming odds, the Ukrainians would have to solve their own problems or be overcome.

With the Hungarian conquest of the new state, conditions reverted  p130 to 1918. The region was reorganized as Ugro-Rus. The new institutions that had come into being between the wars were abolished. Ukrainian schools were closed. In short the region went back to Hungary as shorn of privileges as it had been during the preceding centuries.⁠4

During the next months the fate of Carpatho-Ukraine was overshadowed by the better-understood events taking place in Prague, as the German armed forces wiped out the Second Republic and reshaped the area into the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Even the formation of the Republic of Slovakia under German protection received little notice. Diplomats came and went, news­papers were filled with accounts of the conferences leading up to World War II, and there was little space or inclination to discuss the heroic struggle of these mountaineers and the part their fate was to play in the tragedy of the world and of the continent of Europe.

---

The Author's Notes:

1 Seton-Watson, op. cit., pp374 f.

2 Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, pp862 ff.

3 See Hrushevsky, op. cit., p571.

4 Seton-Watson, op. cit., p379.

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