Activities of Pavlo Shandruk in emigration in Poland (1921–1939)

Abstract

Abstract. The goal is to comprehensively investigate the military and political activities of General Pavlo Shandruk in interwar Poland, who during 1927–1936 headed the General Staff of the Ministry of Military Affairs (MIA) of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) on its territory. The activities of General P. Shandruk unfolded along the lines of the Polish concept of Prometheus, aimed at the dismemberment of the Soviet Union into individual national states with the prospect of their unification into a federation with the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Ukrainians from Petlyur were the main driving force in the implementation of the Promethean plans for the recovery of Poland, and the General Staff of the Ukrainian People's Republic, headed by General Pavel Shandruk, was developing the strategy and tactics of the participation of the military emigration of the Ukrainian People's Republic in the upcoming war with the Soviet Union. Scientific novelty. In this publication, an aspect of the military and political activity of Ukrainian general Pavlo Shandruk, unknown in modern historiography, is revealed, namely his participation in the international Promethean movement under the auspices of Poland. Uniting in its ranks the Azerbaijani, Georgian, North Caucasian, Cossack and other emigration centers that were forcibly located on the territory of Poland and the whole world, the Polish authorities under the leadership of Y. Pilsudski assigned the main role in the confrontation with the Soviet Union to the Ukrainian Petliur emigration. In this context, the activities of General Pal Shandruk, who was the Chief of the General Staff of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, developed. The mentioned topic is not the first time actualized in modern historiography and disclosed on the basis of documents and materials from foreign archives. Conclusions. As a result of the defeat of the Ukrainian national liberation struggle, Pavlo Shandruk and other military commanders of the UNR army moved to the territory of their recent ally, Poland. Once in the internment camps, they continued to prepare for the upcoming confrontation with the USSR. In this struggle, they found support from the power structures of Poland, led by the Head of State Yu. Pilsudski. After his departure from power, the formation of anti-Soviet emigration began in line with the Polish concept of Prometheus, aimed at the formation of separatist movements and the disintegration of the USSR into separate national states. In this regard, during 1927–1936, the General Staff of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, whose chief was General Pavlo Shandruk, developed its activities on the territory of the Second Republika Srpska. The main task of this conspiratorial and allied Polish Army cell was the organization of the Ukrainian Petlyur emigration as the main strike force, aimed at being used in the war between Poland and the USSR. The efforts of General P. Shandruk were aimed at the implementation of these tasks, as a result of which, during the mentioned period, relevant sections of the General Staff of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic were formed on the territory of Poland with all the necessary attributes, in particular with intelligence and counter-intelligence. However, the development of the situation in the USSR and the international situation in the world proved the utopian nature of the Polish plans for the revival of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth "from sea to sea", and in this regard, the concept of Prometheus was not implemented. However, the activity of General P. Shandruk, who remained faithful to the traditions of the Warsaw Pact of 1920, deserves attention in the context of studying the traditions of Polish-Ukrainian military cooperation.