The Communist Party of Western Ukraine: The State of Research

The article discusses the current historiography of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine (CPWU), the main communist organisation in the south-eastern provinces of the Second Polish Republic. Under that name the party was established in 1923 and from 1925 to 1938 (i.e. when the party was disbanded) it possessed the status of an autonomous organisation of the Communist Party of Poland. In fact, during that period the CPWU was directly dependent on the leadership of the communist party in the USSR, which is important to note. Despite several decades of Ukraine being ruled by communists, the CPWU had not been studied satisfactorily or completely impartially by Soviet historians. The unsatisfactory state of knowledge of the CPWU deprives us of opportunities to understand the important role the party played in preparing the ground for Soviet rule, which began (with a three-year gap) in 1939