pawian
24 Oct 2024
History / Poles should apologise to Ukrainians first [337]
Interviewer: Father Walerian Meysztowicz claimed that right-bank Ukraine - Kiev, Podolia, Volhynia - was like Sicily in Italy. Both of these lands were the most backward regions of their countries. The material disparities here were unimaginable. In the mid-19th century, 7,000 representatives of the Polish landed gentry owned 3 million "souls" aka peasant slaves.
Daniel Beauvois: Such a comparison is absolutely right. It was a world that the Poles from Warsaw simply despised. It was probably nowhere as bad as here. Until the eve of the Bolshevik revolution, the relations between the village and the manor were not regulated and there was nothing normal about them...
At the end of the 19th century, land began to bring in greater profits, so every inch of it counted. Polish landowners evicted everyone they could, and the land was leased to colonists - Germans and Czechs, because they paid more than local Ukrainians.
Let`s look at some of the French historian`s opinions, step by step.
Interviewer: Father Walerian Meysztowicz claimed that right-bank Ukraine - Kiev, Podolia, Volhynia - was like Sicily in Italy. Both of these lands were the most backward regions of their countries. The material disparities here were unimaginable. In the mid-19th century, 7,000 representatives of the Polish landed gentry owned 3 million "souls" aka peasant slaves.
Daniel Beauvois: Such a comparison is absolutely right. It was a world that the Poles from Warsaw simply despised. It was probably nowhere as bad as here. Until the eve of the Bolshevik revolution, the relations between the village and the manor were not regulated and there was nothing normal about them...
At the end of the 19th century, land began to bring in greater profits, so every inch of it counted. Polish landowners evicted everyone they could, and the land was leased to colonists - Germans and Czechs, because they paid more than local Ukrainians.