Papakin A. The Formation of Polish Army in Ukraine in 1917-1918.

The thesis deals with the circumstances and conditions of formation and the process of creation of Polish national military troops in Ukraine during 1917-1918. The official name of these troops was the Polish Army in Ukraine. The thesis shows there were two kinds of creation of Polish troops: in the way of polonization (replacing of non-Polish staff of troops of Russian Army by the Poles and giving them name of Polish troops) and the way of creation of new Polish troops. The formation that took place in November 1917 - February 1918 in Romanian and South-Western fronts of Russian Army was shown. Formed the 2nd and the 3rd Polish Corps soon united in the Polish Army in Ukraine, which was the part of the Polish Army in the East - actually independent Polish Army created abroad, because the most of Polish lands (Polish Kingdom) was occupied by Germany and Austro-Hungary. The process of completion of formation of these troops in 1918, the attempts to regulate the legal status of Polish troops in Ukraine and the process of disarming and disbanding of Polish troops in 1918 (after the occupation of Ukraine by Germany and Austro-Hungary) is investigated in the thesis. The place of the Polish Army in Ukraine in the struggling of Poles for independence is shown.