Birth in Lviv in 1926: Polish or Ukrainian nationality?

Hello everyone!

Just a quick question that I'm hoping someone can help me answer: my boyfriend's grandmother was born in Lviv in July 1926. Was Lviv a part of Poland or Ukraine in 1926?

If Poland, would she still be considered a Polish citizen? And by that, I mean, would she be able to claim Polish citizenship by her birth?

There was no Ukraine as an independent state in 1926 so there was no Ukrainian citizenship. Lviv (or Lwow as it was then called) is in Ukraine which then was part of the Polish State.

Also, she or he can apply for Ukrainian residency and have the right to obtain it (according to the Ukrainian Law, if not changed very recently). At that time (1926) a part of the Western Ukraine with Lviv was under Poland and the main part was the Ukrainian Socialist Republic, a part of the USSR.

Hi.....I am trying to get some information on this situation. If a baby was born around 1916 in the town of Lvov (Lwow) would the birth certificate be from Polish records? Also, would there have been any advantage of saying you were born there when possibly not? Are there present day records of births in Lvov? Thank you for any advice or direction in this matter as it's such a tangled mess to sort through.

Well 1916 it was the WWI. Those territories have seen some fighting between Russia and Austria - Hungary.
The birth certificate if survived would be stated according to religion. If a person in question was a Catholic you should look into records of the Catholic church from those territories', if not you should look accordingly.

By the way a city of Lwow.


Not in Poland. You're the only person who can answer that.

This is an interesting question. As a rule records should be kept in the place where they were created, so the place where you should search is today's town of Lviv (Ukraine).

I have no idea under whose control Lvov (Lemberg) was in 1916; the Polish state did not exist at the time, so a possible answer is it was under Austrian control or under the tsarist Russia's control as at one time during the WW1 the Russian army advanced deep into the Austrian territory of Eastern Galicia and occupied Lvov.

My grandmother was born near Lvov (definitely a city with a gorgeous train station) in 1900 and was considered Austrian. My mother was born in the early 1930's (had to escape with parents to avoid relocation to Siberia) and was considered Polish.

This is a question of race and nationality.
If your grandmother spoke Polish and had Polish parents.She was Polish.
But as Poland didn't exist at the time, she could not have Polish nationality.
Does that make her any less Polish?
I don't think so.

Ethnicity

What is the difference?

diffen.com/difference/Ethnicity_vs_Race

Before it was L'viv, of course, it was Lwow, and before that, Lemberg under the Hapsburgs:-)

And before Lemberg it was Lwów and before that ..

As for being born in Austria, it's because it must have been before 1918 so under the Austrian partition (Habsburgs or whatever), then it was Polish until the difficult times of WW2.

Thanks for the explanation.

I've just come here to find out something similar. My grandfather passed away when I was 7, and I was always told he was polish, spoke polish had a polish name, etc. However I've recently been informed he was born in Lviv, which would mean he was born in Ukraine. He was born 16/06/1918 (the year could be either side).

No, he was born in Austria-Hungary in a place that became Poland when was 5 months old and then became part of the Ukrainian republic of the Soviet Union in 1944 and then indpendent Ukraine in 1991 (and that's the simple version, it's actually much more complex).

How old was he left Europe and where exactly did he leave from?

@mafketis
I was told he left 'Poland' during WWII

dude if you don't know that much (i.e. was he Polish or not) why do you ask some strangers on a random Internet forum?

What it is to you anyway?

so my grandfather war born in Lwow some time before 1945 (i believe in 1936, but between 1929-1945, and his entire family comes from there as far as we can track. what nationality does that make him?

@Irenka

Pre-39 Polish nationality, if after then Soviet nationality.

Unknown nationality, but he'd have been a Polish citizen when he was born.

In modern American usage 'nationality' refers more to citizenship than anything else. The same way "an X national" means "a citizen of X".

Before 1939 - a Polish citizen. Don't know about his ethnicity though. He could be Polish, Ukrainian, Jewish or maybe someone else. What was his name and surname?

@Paulina
his surname was Kublicki-Piottuch and my mother says her grandmother (his mother) was either half Russian or fully Russian. He left Lwow with a sister and his mother and settled in West Poland in around 1950.

This is a Polish surname:

pl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Kublicki

I guess this surname could have Ukrainian roots, since it probably comes from the name of the village/town Kublicz (Kublich in English) in Ukraine.


Piotuch is a Polish surname:

genealogia.okiem.pl/powstanies/index.php?nazwisko=Piotuch

Does your family come from the nobility?

I'm not sure if we are from the Piotuch nobility because there is no exact record tracing to it. My mother thinks it's likely that at one point, or some branch of the name was the Russian 'Kublitsky-Piottukh' because we have found links to some ancestors with that surname, but they are very distant and they resided in Russia and maybe in a town in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth.

My mother's paternal cousin managed to trace a distant line to Kyiv when it was part of the Russian Empire.

We may have a connectio to the Ogiński family, but unsure about that

Do you, mean nobility or szlachta?

Originally it's Polish, not Russian. Your family may have lived on lands that were Russian empire at some point, but this surname is Polish, not Russian.

Check this out:

pl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kublicki

"Kublicki (or Pietuch, sometimes Piotuch) - Polish noble coat of arms, family crest of formely a Lithuanian family, known in połockie lands since the 16th century and later in rzeczycki lands, a variation of Prus III coat of arms. According to S. Uruski in the połockie lands there was also a family of Kublicki with Ostoja coat of arms."


I think that's where your family comes from - the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the partitions the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ceased to exist and part of it's lands was taken by the Russian empire.


Nobility is the English word for "szlachta". "Szlachta" is a general term in Polish for all "ranks" of nobility: magnates, aristocracy, nobility, gentry or whatever:

pl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szlachta

"Szlachta" is also translated as "gentry", but judging by it's meaning that would be "szlachta zaściankowa" in Polish, I think.

Stanisław Kublicki's coat of arms/family crest was an old crest Ostoja and I'd say he defenitely belonged to "szlachta", rather than "szlachta zaściankowa". I don't know about Piotuch, but in that link I posted there are Polish insurrectionists fighting against Russia listed with surname "Piotuch" and one "Kublicki-Piotuch" - all of them are described as "szlachcic" (nobleman), so it looks like during the partitions that family still belonged to "szlachta" (nobility or gentry in thier case - I don't know).

Hi, I was wondering if you happen to have information related to Adrian Polocarp Kokodzey, or his family in general. His family immigrated from Poland to Ukraine Poltava in the late 1800s. according to my mother they were nobles. Adrian took a violin course in France. He was killed during collectivization in 1925. Thank you.