THE MODERN POLISH FRONTIERS 389forces.^35 In any case, Petlura's necessary recognition of Polish claims to the
western Ukraine as Pilsudski's price for the assistance of the Polish army, dis-
credited the Ataman in the eyes of his unbending compatriots. In this way,
divided within and assailed from without, the Ukrainian National state (UNR)
was ground into the dust. It lost the ability to resurrect for seventy years. At the
Treaty of Riga, Ukraine, like Byelorussia, was partitioned between the Poles
and the Soviets. In the inter-war period, Ukrainian frustration was vented with
special fury on the Poles. Since a measure of nationalist politics was tolerated in
Poland but not in the USSR, the West Ukraine became the focus for such
Ukrainian organizations that were able to operate. But nothing was gained. In
the years which preceded the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939-41, and the
German-Soviet War of 1941-5, both the Poles and the Ukrainians lost all hope
of common action against their mutual enemies. By 1939, the Ukrainian
national movement was left with only one potential ally - the Nazis: and when
Hitler revealed his hand by the bloody suppression of all independent organiza-
tions in occupied Ukraine, it was totally isolated. Those few Ukrainians who
joined the Germans in the SS Galizien Division were decimated on the Eastern
Front. One of the last secrets of the 'Last Secret' is that the survivors of the SS
Galizien were saved from deportation to the USSR and from certain death, by
virtue of their claim to be Polish citizens.^36 Those who joined the Ukrainian
Insurrectionary Army (UPA) of Stefan Bandera spent the rest of the Second
World War fighting a three-sided battle for survival in the underground against
the Red Army, the German Wehrmacht, and the Polish AK. For all their gal-
lantry, their hopeless predicament was dictated by unreal political attitudes and
by an excessive mistrust of all their neighbours. They were finally driven to
earth in 1947, and annihilated in the Bieszczady Mountains by a joint exercise
of the Soviet, Czechoslovak, and Polish People's armies.
In the sorrowful wake of so many disasters, Ukrainian attitudes towards
Poland were inevitably rather mixed. In the Soviet Union, the question could not
be openly discussed, and in People's Poland it was rarely raised in public.
Among emigre circles in the west it often provoked violent reactions condi-
tioned by pre-war, or wartime animosities. The majority of Ukrainians abroad
were raised in the old nationalist tradition, where exclusive possession of the
national territory in its maximal limits was regarded as the sole and ultimate
Good. For this reason, they still published their maps of a 'Greater Ukraine',
whose boundaries exceed those even of the Ukrainian SSR. They still com-
plained of the 'Polish occupation' of Peremishl (Przemysl) and Khilm (Chelm).
Little did they seem to realize how closely their position resembled that of their
hated Stalinist and Polish nationalist enemies. Their historians still cling in the
main to the old nationalist ideology which views the nation and its homeland as
a constant reality throughout recorded history. It is an ideology which neces-
sarily breeds resentment against those people who are seen to have offended
against the impossible, sterile, unhistorical ideal. Little did they realize how
closely they echo the official communist propagandists. In the schools of the