Constrained Choices: The Galician Jewish Political Establishment’s Relations with the West Ukrainian Republic

• In Event: National Emancipation and the Attainment of Group Rights: Perspectives from Early 20th-Century East-Central Europe

Abstract

This paper will examine the relations of the East Galician Jewish National Council (ZhNRada), the representatives of the Galician Jewish population within the West Ukrainian People’s Republic (ZUNR), with the West Ukrainian state from ZUNR’s inception in November 1918 until the Polish conquest of Galicia in July 1919. It will focus on the ways in which the ZhNRada sought to balance its pursuit of a fully emancipated Galician Jewish community with national-personal autonomy in a Ukrainian state under the realities dictating the Rada’s declared policy of neutrality in the Polish-Ukrainian War. This study thus complicates traditional historiography on ZUNR that has emphasized the tranquil existence of Galician Jewish political life in the revolutionary West Ukrainian state.

Author

• Danylo Leshchyshyn, Northwestern U