Western Ukrainian National Republic

Western Ukrainian National Republic (Західно-Українська Народня Республіка; Zakhidno-Ukrainska Narodnia Respublika, or ЗУНР; ZUNR). A nation-state established on the Ukrainian ethnic territory of former Austria-Hungary on 9 November 1918 by the Ukrainian National Rada in Lviv. The Constitution of 13 November 1918 determined its name and defined the territory of the ZUNR as that which encompassed the Ukrainian regions of the Austrian crown lands of Galicia and Bukovyna and the Transcarpathian Szepes komitat, Sŕos komitat, Zemplén komitat, Ung komitat, Bereg komitat, Ugocsa komitat, and Máramaros komitat (see Maramureş region). A Ukrainian government took power on 1 November 1918 in Galicia (see November Uprising in Lviv, 1918), on 6 November in Bukovyna, and on 19 November in Transcarpathia. The governments in the last two territories were short-lived. In spite of the Ukrainian-Polish War in Galicia, 1918–19 the government of the ZUNR held out longest in eastern Galicia.

The Ukrainian National Rada, a legislative council, was the state's ruling body before the calling of the Constituent Assembly of the ZUNR. The State Secretariat of the Western Ukrainian National Republic was its executive branch. Its power was eventually transferred to the Dictatorship of the Western Province of the Ukrainian National Republic.

On 1 December 1918 the State Secretariat of the Western Ukrainian National Republic concluded a preliminary agreement with the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic on the union of the two Ukrainian states. The agreement was approved by the Ukrainian National Rada on 3 January 1919 and by the Directory on 22 January. The union was proclaimed in a special proclamation of 22 January. Thenceforth the ZUNR assumed the name Western Province of the Ukrainian National Republic. But the union was not fully implemented: the government bodies of the ZUNR continued to operate separately (see Dictatorship of the Western Province of the Ukrainian National Republic). When the government of the Ukrainian National Republic recognized Polish rule in Ukrainian territory west of the Zbruch River, the ZUNR government rejected its policies completely.

In July 1919 Poland occupied most of the territory of the ZUNR and tried to get Entente recognition for its rule in Galicia. Although the Supreme Council of the Paris Peace Conference representing the Entente instructed Poland on 25 June to occupy Ukrainian Galicia temporarily, it recognized Galicia's special status. On 20 November it drafted a treaty with Poland on the autonomy of eastern Galicia under the higher administration of Poland for 25 years, but the Poles rejected that treaty. The Conference of Ambassadors of the great powers of the Entente finally recognized (12 March 1923) the Polish occupation, albeit with the provision that eastern Galicia was to remain autonomous.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lozyns'kyi, M. Halychyna na myrovii konferentsiï v Paryzhi (Kamianets 1919)
———. Halychyna v rr. 1918–1920 (Vienna 1922; repr, New York 1970)
Levyts'kyi, K. Velykyi zryv (Lviv 1931)
Wehrhahn, Torsten. Die Westukrainische Volksrepublik: Zu den polnisch-ukrainischen Beziehungen und dem Problem der ukrainischer Staatlichkeit in den Jahren 1918 bis 1923 (Berlin 2004)
Kuchabsky, Vasyl. Western Ukraine in Conflict with Poland and Bolshevism, 1918–1923 (Edmonton–Toronto 2009)
Pavlyshyn, O. Ievhen Petrushevych (1863–1940) (Lviv 2014)

Vasyl Markus, Matvii Stakhiv

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]