In the Second Polish Republic: Ukrainians as a minority

Ukrainians constituted what was without doubt the largest minority living within the borders of the Polish interwar state. According to the general census of 30th September 1921, the accuracy of which had been queried, nearly 3.9 million of the inhabitants of Poland declared Ukrainian nationality, which made up 14.3% of the country's total population. The real percentage of Ukrainians has been estimated at around 15–16%. Most of the Ukrainians, who had formerly been Austrian subjects, lived in the the three voivodeships of Eastern Galicia, Lwow, Tarnopol, and Stanisławow, dubbed Małopolska Wschodnia (Eastern Lesser Poland) in the official nomenclature, a name disseminated and promoted for obvious reasons of propaganda. Ukrainians were in the majority in this region, but there was also a vibrant local Polish community. The Poles, who were predominant in the municipalities, especially in Lwow itself, were also in the majority in a couple of powiat districts in the east of the province. According to the 1921 census they accounted for over 39% of the population of Eastern Galicia.

The situation was different in the part of Poland that had belonged to the Russian Empire before the First World War. Here the Ukrainian population was concentrated in Volhynia and the southern part of Polesia, and accounted for nearly 70% of the total population of these territories. The percentage of the Polish inhabitants was decidedly lower than in the eastern part of Galicia, amounting in most powiat districts to less than 20%. Smaller Ukrainian enclaves were located in the voivodeships of Lublin and Krakow. In the latter region this count involved the Lemko people, many of whom dissociated themselves from Ukrainian national movement. An unsettled, fluctuating or indeterminate sense of national identity could be observed among the inhabitants of Polesia, especially in the stretch along the Ukrainian-Belarusian ethnic border zone, where people tended to call themselves “locals” rather than opt for a specific ethno-nationality. Over 90% of the Ukrainians were peasants – not surprisingly, in view of the classically agricultural nature of the areas they inhabited. It should be added that most of the land was in Polish hands, which meant that more often than not ethno-national antagonism was coupled with a social conflict.