Research on the topic of the dissertation was performed during 2017-2021, within the scientific topic 16KF046-06 “Actual problems of the history of Central and South-Eastern Europe” at the Department of Central and Eastern European History, Faculty of History, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and is part of scientific plans of the department.
The dissertation is devoted to the study of the border between the Republic of Poland and the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (since 1937 – Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, UkrSSR) as a factor of political escalation and illegal migration processes between the Republic of Poland and the Soviet state during its conceptual creation (theoretical substantiation), delimitation and demarcation, actually in the context of functioning. The dissertation research subject is illegal migration on the state border of the Soviet states (Bolshevik republics of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, united in the USSR in 1922) with Poland in the 1920s and 1930s. This illegal migration or movement of goods across the state border has valuable scientific, didactic, and methodological significance. It allows us to find the reasons that led to the creation and twenty years of interwar Poland. Illegal migration also became a turning point in the history of modern Ukrainian-Polish and Polish-Russian relations. To this day, the Second Rzeczpospolita's territorial stereotypes, particularly its eastern border (the “Riga border” in Polish historiography), remain relevant, influencing the self-identification of the region's population.
The dissertation analyzed the historiography and available source base of illegal migration on the Polish-Soviet border, and methodological studies were
carried out to determine the research topic's definitive series. The dissertation uses archival sources from the funds of the Archive of New Acts (AAN), the National Digital Archive (NAC), the Central Military Archive (CAW) and the Archive of Border Services of the Republic of Poland (ASG), the Electronic Library of the US Central Intelligence Agency, resources of the National Library of the Republic of Poland and Warsaw, Jagiellonian University and Maria Curie-Skłodowska University and the Jan Dlugosz University in Czestochowa (Republic of Poland). Among the Ukrainian archives, the funds of the Central State Archive of Higher Authorities and Administration of Ukraine (CDAVO), the Central State Archive of Public Associations (CDAHO), the Central State Historical Archive (CDIAC), the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine historical archives in Lviv (CDIAL), regional archives in Ternopil, Khmelnytsky, Vinnytsia, Lutsk, Zhytomyr and Rivne, libraries of the universities of Kyiv, Lviv, Ternopil, Kamianets-Podilskyi.
