Competing Visions of Ukrainian Statehood: Poland’s Eastern Policy and the Polish-Soviet War of 1920
Date and Time
Location
A lecture by Vitalii Borymskyi, HURI Research Fellow and Research Fellow at the Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
Moderated by Megan K. Duncan Smith, Programs Manager at HURI
Attendees are invited to enjoy an informal lunch.
About the Lecture
The lecture explores the political and ideological dimensions of the Polish–Soviet War of 1920 through the lens of Ukraine’s struggle for statehood. It examines how competing Polish political camps – the federalists around Józef Piłsudski and the National Democrats led by Roman Dmowski – offered radically different visions of Poland’s eastern policy and of Ukraine’s place within it. The talk shows how the short-lived Polish–Ukrainian alliance of 1920, though intended to create a buffer against Russia, was undermined by conflicting territorial ambitions and mutual distrust. It also analyzes Ukrainian, Soviet, and Russian responses to the alliance and to the subsequent Riga Peace Treaty, which effectively partitioned Ukraine. By tracing these debates and outcomes, the lecture highlights how the war of 1920 was not only a military confrontation but also a struggle over the meaning of Ukrainian statehood – a struggle whose echoes continue to shape political thought and Polish–Ukrainian relations to this day.
About the Speaker
Vitalii Borymskyi is a historian specializing in Polish–Ukrainian and Russian–Ukrainian relations. He is a Research Fellow at the Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He obtained his Ph.D. in History from Bohdan Khmelnytsky National University of Cherkasy and has held research fellowships at Nicolaus Copernicus University, the University of Warsaw, and Jagiellonian University. His work has been published in The Polish Review, East European Politics and Societies, and Acta Baltico-Slavica, among other journals. He received the Jerzy Giedroyc Award (2016) from the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Kyiv for his doctoral dissertation and the L. Krzyżanowski Award (2023) from the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America for the best article of the year.
Vitalii’s current research explores interpretations of Józef Piłsudski’s Eastern Policy within Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian political thought, combining approaches from intellectual history and the study of political imagination.
This event is organized by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute as part of the Ukraine Study Group public event series.
Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access should contact HURI Programs Manager, Megan K. Duncan Smith, at least two weeks in advance of the session.
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