A Book Discussion | Myron Korduba’s Diary, 1918–1925
27 January 2022
The next session of the book discussion series organized by the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research and CIUS Press will be devoted to the newly published diary of Myron Korduba (1876–1947). Discovered a quarter of a century ago, until now the diary has been utilized by only a small circle of scholars. The over 600-page text has recently been published in the series Ukraine. Europe: 1921–1939.
Myron Korduba’s “Diary 1918–1925” is a unique eyewitness source to the period of the “Liberation Struggles” of 1917–1921 and the subsequent years. It was then that the status of the former Eastern Galicia that had been the core of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic established in November 1918 was decided in the international arena. The author was a well-known historian, a student of Mykhailo Hrushevsky, a political and civic leader, and one of the most active organizers of the Ukrainian (Underground) University, serving as a lecturer and dean. The Korduba diary casts light on the international context around the question of Eastern Galicia as well as the internal affairs—the activities of the Governing Board and Wider Governing Board of the Ukrainian National Council (Rada), contacts with the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR), attitudes toward the alliance between Józef Piłsudski and Symon Petliura in 1920, and views of the Bolsheviks. The diary is especially valuable as an insider’s view of the organization of the “state within a state,” the functioning of the Ukrainian quasi-state institutions that emerged after the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918–1919. Among these institutions were the military structure and political institutions: the Board of Advisers and the Commission of Eleven of the National Committee of the Ukrainian National Labor Party (UNTP), a conspiratorial political structure that directed the action of the boycott of the elections to the Polish Sejm and Senate in November 1922.
The participants of the discussion will focus on the significance of Korduba’s diary for reconsidering the history of Galicia and Bukovyna in the first quarter of the twentieth century and the international role of the government-in-exile of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic. The diary is also central to understanding the development of Polish-Ukrainian relations in the interwar period.
The discussion will take place online on ZOOM and on the livestream of CIUS. Simultaneous translation will be provided in English and Ukrainian.
Participants include Jan Jacek Bruski (Jagiellonian University), Ola Hnatiuk (Kyiv Mohyla Academy and Warsaw University), Oleh Pavlyshyn (Ivan Franko National University, Lviv). The session will be moderated by Frank Sysyn (University of Alberta).