UKRAINE IN THE PROMETHEAN CONCEPTION OF JÓZEF PILSUDSKI

Abstract

The First World War, which not only led to the fall of empires and the change of state borders, resulted in unprecedented destruction and millions of victims who lost their lives or were maimed. The war also resulted in the hopes of the European peoples for changes in international relations and hopes for national statehood. Ukrainians and Poles were among those who, on the ruins of once great empires, hoped to form their own states, embodying this blow with weapons in their hands. The presented article offers an analysis of the international political situation as it arose at the end of the First World War and in the first decade after its completion, as well as reproduces the chronology and features of the formation and implementation of Promethean policy J. Pilsudski. The concept of Prometheanism was based on the foreign policy concepts of the nobility of the Commonwealth formed in previous historical epochs and was implemented during the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s by political supporters of Józef Pilsudski. The foreign policy vector of the concept of Prometheanism was aimed at the dismemberment of the Soviet Union on national grounds and the creation on its basis of a federation of democratic states under the auspices of the Second Commonwealth. The Ukrainian question occupied one of the main places in the politics of Prometheanism. The most important components of the Promethean ideology were also anti-Russian, anti-Soviet and anticommunist. Despite the fact that in the interwar twentieth century the concept of Prometheanism not only had no chance of implementation, but was not officially recognized at the state level, but it left a deep mark in Polish socio-political thought and had an impact on future Polish policy.