THE VISION OF UKRAINE THROUGH THE EYES OF A POLE – A GRADUATE OF KYIV UNIVERSITY (BASED ON THE WORK “OCHRONA GRANIC W DAWNEJ POLSCE I DZISIAJ” BY ARTUR MARUSZEWSKI)

Abstract

The article highlights the interpretation of Ukraine through the eyes of the Polish officer and statesman Artur Tomasz Maruszewski (1886–1945) – a graduate of the Imperial University of Saint Vladimir in Kyiv – through the lens of his brochure «Ochrona granic w dawnej Polsce i dzisiaj» (1936). The author elucidates how the historical narrative of 'old Poland' legitimises the modern institution of border protection and how within these boundaries the 'Ukrainian lands' emerge – as a frontier of both coexistence and threat, discipline and trust. The Ukrainian dimension in the mentioned work is present on several levels, in particular attention is paid to the geopolitical and socio-cultural. It is thus established that Ukraine as a space appears not only as a neighbour with Kyiv and Lviv, but also as a line of confrontation between regimes. For interwar Poland, it was primarily a space for interaction with the Ukrainian population and a space for competition with the Soviet state. Artur Marushevskyi, being the Voivode of Ternopil, worked directly in this environment, which gives his texts an empirical basis.

Moreover, the article focuses on key topoi in the poetics of the border. This primarily includes the historical context, as well as borders that emerge as institutions, not merely as pencil lines on a map. The vision of Ukraine in A. Marushevsky is not purely 'Warsaw' or 'Kresy'; it is informed by the university perspective of imperial Kyiv, where multinationalism and legal pluralism were part of daily experience. This provides an "internal" view of the Ukrainian space, which in interwar Poland was simultaneously a periphery and a focal point regarding state security. The article also analyses that Ukraine in the work "Ochrona granic w dawnej Polsce i dzisiaj" is depicted not as a "foreign periphery" but as a key borderland requiring special attention and interaction in almost all areas of activity.