Poles and revolutionary events in Ukraine in 1917 – 1921: an outline of the history of discourse

The article is devoted to the Polish perspective of events that took place in Ukraine in 1917-1921. The purpose of the work was to show how Poles living in Ukraine wrote about these events. For the needs of the text, the most important Polish autobiographical narratives were analyzed. The text refers to the memories of Polish gentry that survived the Bolshevik revolution (Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, Elїbieta Doroїyсska, Maria Dunin-Kozicka), Polish soldiers (Eugeniusz Maіaczewski, Jуzef Dowbуr-Muњnicki) and independence activists (Henryk Glass, Tadeusz Hoіуwko, Henryk Jуzewski), Polish communists (Roman Jabіonowski, Wіadysіaw Uziembіo, Stefan Szpinger) and post-war йmigrй activists from London („Pamiкtnik Kijowski”) and Paris (Jerzy Stempowski). The main aim of the text was to show the main trends and changes taking place within the Polish discourse on the Ukrainian revolution. The result of the conducted research is the discovery of how the significant role of the event in Ukraine played for the formation of the Polish discourse on the Ukrainian lands, the so-called collective memory of Poles or even the development of Polish literature in the 20th century. The Ukrainian revolution had a fundamental impact on the development of the Polish myth of the lost eastern borderlands. The text postulates that the source texts produced by Ukrainian Poles should be used as an important perspective. They are complementing the general picture of accidents taking place in the region in 1917-1921.