World War I technically ended on November 11, 1918 with Germany agreeing to the Allies' terms for an armistice but did not conclusively end all fighting. The vacuum in Central Europe created by the collapse of the German, Austria-Hungary, and Russian empires provided the l opportunity for the now-ungoverned ethnic groups to create independent countries dreamed of for centuries, self-determination as defined by Wilson's Fourteen Points. The different ethnic groups are interspersed with no unequivocal "this is X, that is Y" boundaries, therefore defining international borders is equally ambiguous. Disagreements could lead to war between these new counties.
Poland was perhaps the strongest and most stable of the newly-emerged countries and used its strength to (re-)define borders to its advantage. The Polish-Ukrainian War was a conflict between Poland and Ukraine over eastern Galicia, formerly part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, each side claiming Galicia as inhabited primarily by Poles or Ukrainians. And for this they went to war.
[Overlapping the Polish-Ukrainian war was the Ukrainian War of Independence or Ukrainian-Soviet War against the nascent Soviet Union which resulted in Ukraine incorporated into the Soviet Union. Sound familiar?]
In the August 1919 edition of International Conciliation, Miroslav Sichinsky opined his understanding and thoughts on Galica. This paragraph grabbed my attention.
In 10 districts: 75% to 90%
In 12 districts: 67% to 75%
In 16 districts: 60% to 66%
In 8 districts: 50% to 60%
In 2 districts: 41% to 50%
In these districts, of course, the Jews are counted as Poles. If they were not, the Poles would number less than twenty-five per cent of the inhabitants.
My first thought when reading this was Wow, Poland wanted more Jews to increase the Polish percentages in Galicia. I wondered but did not understand the In these districts, of course, the Jews are counted as Poles. But some further researched on Sichinsky is that he was Ukrainian, pro-Soviet, and therefore likely biased in his views. He authored a book on the subject, perhaps the International Conciliation piece from the book. So now I question the objectiveness of the article (and may have to re-evaluate the political bias of International Conciliation itself).
More research required.
