Constructing the Defense of Lviv and the South-Eastern Borderlands in Polish Memoirs on the Polish-Ukrainian War, 1918-1919

• In Event: Official Narratives and Repressed Voices on the Disputed Territory of Habsburg Galicia in the Interwar Period

Abstract

The presentation will be devoted to the discursive analysis of Polish memoirs written in the interwar period and presenting the Polish-Ukrainian War for Eastern Galicia, especially to the ways in which these texts constructed a highly ideologized image of the events in the province in 1918-1919.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the dominant Polish discourse on the Polish-Ukrainian War, and in particular on the Battle of Lviv, elevated these events to the rank of turning point in the process of restoration of Poland’s independence in three respects: as a symbol of national unity, as a symbol state unification and as a role model for future generations of Poles. As a result, these battles have been perpetuated in the Polish discourse as the Defense of Lviv and the South-Eastern Borderlands and have gained the status of one of the foundation myths of the Second Polish Republic, comparable to the myth of the Miracle on the Vistula River or the myth of Piłsudski. In the process of this mythologization, Polish memoirs played a key role not only thanks to the documentation, which in practice meant the heroization of specific historical facts, but also the marginalization or exclusion of others that did not fit the ideologized image of the battles. The presentation will contrast the official, institutionalized Polish narrative on the fights for Eastern Galicia with such Polish voices that undermined or at least did not replicate the dominant discourse, remaining in the archives to this day.

Author

• Jagoda Wierzejska, U of Warsaw (Poland)