HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

506 MARTHA BOHACHEVSKY-CHOMIAKcitizens of the Allied states who had served in the Polish or Alliedarmies to enroll at Lviv University. 20As part of the peace settlement, however, the Allies had insistedthat the Austrian successor states, including Poland, ensure the rightsof national minorities. The Poles formally accepted the principle ofminority legislation, but procrastinated with its implementation beforeabolishing it unilaterally. Many Poles, including government officials,believed that any concessions to the minorities would not only be asign of weakness, but would indeed weaken the new state. Yet ifPoland failed to grant the Ukrainians civil rights, the Allies might notconfirm Polish claims to Galicia. Concurrently, the Poles were alsotroubled that Ukrainian students were seeking to form a university inCzechoslovakia, 21 thereby establishing a model for one in Poland and afocal point for discontented Ukrainian students there. The Polishauthorities were also concerned about the Ukrainization policy in theUkrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which allowed for a growth ofUkrainian cultural life and favorably impressed some Ukrainians inPoland.Many of the prospective Ukrainian students in Galicia were warveterans and pre-war activists. They needed a university degree toearn a living, and the Ukrainian community felt it owed its freedomfighters at least that much. Study outside the province was hamperedby lack of money and Polish unwillingness to issue exit visas.The issue of a Ukrainian university in Lviv now developed on twolevels, as the Ukrainians acted both on their own and in cooperationwith the government. The first level led to the establishment of theUkrainian Clandestine University in Lviv. Attempts to work out anacceptable solution with the Polish government moved along on thesecond level, and peaked in the negotiations detailed in the documentsappended here.As early as August 1919, when the restriction of students at LvivUniversity to loyal Poles was announced, a group of Ukrainian scholarsset out to provide Ukrainian youth with other means of highereducation. But when the Shevchenko Scientific Society planned a20Mudryi, Borot'ba, p. 77. See also Vpered (Lviv), 25 September 1919.21The Czechs, veterans of a long struggle with the Germans on the integrity ofCzech-language educational institutions, were sympathetic to Ukrainian aspirations.They helped both organizationally and financially in setting up institutionsof higher learning for Ukrainian émigrés in Czechoslovakia.