Battle of Lemberg (1918)

Battle of Lemberg (Lviv, Lwów)
Part of Polish-Ukrainian War
Fights for the Lychakiv Cemetery on a painting by Wojciech Kossak
Date November 1, 1918 - May 22, 1919 Location Lemberg (Lviv, Lwów) Result Polish victory
Belligerents
West Ukrainian People's Republic	Poland
Commanders and leaders
Dmytro Vitovsky, Hnat Stefaniv	Czesław Mączyński

Battle of Lemberg (Lviv, Lwów) (in Polish historiography called Defense of Lwów) begun on 1 November 1918 and lasted till May 1919 and was a six months long conflict between the attacking forces of the West Ukrainian People's Republic and local Polish civilian population assisted later by regular Polish Army forces for the control over the city of Lviv (Lwów, Lemberg), in what was then eastern part of Galicia and now is western part of Ukraine. The battle sparked the Polish-Ukrainian War, ultimately won by Poland.

The nowadays city of Lviv was called Lviv by the Ukrainians, Lwów by the Poles, and Lemberg by the Austrians and is the largest city in the historical region of eastern Galicia. According to the Austrian census of 1910, which listed religion and language, 51% of the city's population were Roman Catholics, 28% Jews, and 19% belonged to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Linguistically, 86% of the city's population used the Polish language and 11% preferred the Ukrainian language. However, of the 44 administrative divisions of the eastern half of the Austrian province Galicia, Lviv was the only one in which Poles made up a majority of the population. In eastern Galicia, Ukrainians made up approximately 65% of the population, while Poles made up 22% of the population and were numerically superior in the cities. As a part of Austrian partition of Poland, Lemberg became center of Polish culture and scholarship, as well as of Polish and Ukrainian political activity.

Due to the intervention of Archduke Wilhelm of Austria, a Habsburg who adopted a Ukrainian identity and who considered himself a Ukrainian patriot, in October 1918 two regiments consisting of mostly Ukrainian troops were brought into the city, so that most of the Austrian troops stationed in Lviv were ethnic Ukrainians. At the same time, most of Polish units in Austro-Hungarian service were sent to other fronts in order to avoid conflict between the two groups. In addition, the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen were stationed in Bukovina and were supposed to join the Ukrainian troops in the city. The Ukrainian National Rada (a council consisting of all Ukrainian representatives from both houses of the Austrian parliament and from the provincial diets in Galicia and Bukovina) had planned to declare the West Ukrainian People's Republic on November 3, 1918 but moved the date forward to November 1 due to reports that the Polish liquidation committee was to transfer from Kraków to Lviv.

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Wikipedia