DESCENDANTS OF THE NOBILITY ARE LEADERS OF THE UKRAINIAN ARMED FORMATIONS OF GALICIA OF THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE 20TH CENTURY
Authors: DZISIAK Yaroslav 
Published: December 2020

From the beginning of its historical existence, the people of Ukraine-Ruthenia appear as a people with weapons: preparing for campaigns, organizing the defense of their land, carrying out colonization measures in the reconquered territories and creating state structures that are intended to organize the socio-military potential of the people. The state structures are based on the military structure. For centuries, the socio-political elite of our people has naturally been of military origin. Thousands of years ago, for the Ruthenian warlord, as later - for the Ruthenian nobility, the Cossacks, the soldiers of the UNR army, and the Galician army, the basic life priorities were concentrated around such concepts as military glory, honor, dignity, courage, etc. Sudden death on the battlefield opened the way to immortality before the fallen warrior - to Vyrii-paradise.

Over the centuries, the persistent threat from different sides, first of all, from the nomadic steppe, dictated the military character of different social groups, not excluding the clergy. When, for some reason, the old upper classes were no longer able to perform the military-political task, it was replaced by a new militarized elite who, with renewed vigor and energy, assumed the defense functions. The Ukrainian land gave birth to elites who were capable of holding weapons. The phenomenon of social mobility existed during the Middle Ages, manifested itself in the years of national liberation competitions 1917-1920s.

The armed struggle of the Ukrainian people for independence and unity of the First World War and the post-war revolutionary events was one of the most striking pages. This was marked by the rise of national consciousness, a powerful explosion of liberation energy. In terms of the social scale and political importance, the Ukrainian National Democratic Revolution has been a phenomenon of European history, taking a prominent place in the liberation-making processes of Eastern Europe. Objective knowledge of national history is an important task not only for the modern professionals of young Ukrainians but also for Ukrainian citizens in general. Long decades of information blockade and historical fraud, which continued in the east and south of Ukraine in the years of independence, created a distorted, even anti-national, idea of ​​Ukrainians' liberation struggles.

The millennial history of peoples and the state testify that their existence was determined by the presence of two significant factors: political leadership and capable armed forces. Naturally, the army has always occupied high levels among public institutions. At the same time, history eloquently testifies that no army, however well-armed, can defeat without professional commanders. The generality and the officer corps determine the army - the army's backbone, which concentrates and embodies the historical military experience, national military traditions, preserves the continuity of generations. The names of the active contributors to the development of the Armed Forces during the first quarter of the 20th century, including nearly five hundred generals and at least three thousand colonels, remain white patches of national historiography.

This article is not about a purely military elite, but about the military as the offspring of the nobility - people who were formed in the aura of education, culture, traditionalism, and social constructivism. In numerous examples, the descendants of the Ukrainian nobility were the very resource of the nation- and state-building that survived in times of statelessness and denationalization.
Keywords
Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, publishing, book, periodical.