Ukrainian peasants and landowners: social and interethnic conflict on the Right-Bank Ukraine through the prism of publications of the «Dziennik Kijowski»

Abstract

The aim of the article is to clarify the preconditions and essence of the peasant–landowner confrontation in
Right-Bank Ukraine at the beginning of the twentieth century and to examine its nature and dynamics as reflected in the pages of the newspaper «Dziennik Kijowski».
Scientific novelty lies in the analysis of materials from the Polish periodical «Dziennik Kijowski» as an important source
for the study of social and interethnic conflicts in Right-Bank Ukraine, which makes it possible to reveal the specifics of the perception of the peasant movement of the early twentieth century through the lens of the Polish press in the region.
Conclusions. The article demonstrates that the materials of the newspaper «Dziennik Kijowski» represent peasant–landowner conflicts mainly as fragmented and episodic manifestations of social tension during the active phase of the Peasant Revolution (1906–1907) and the Stolypin agrarian reform (1906–1911). At the same time, these publications lack interpretation of these phenomena in terms of a peasant revolution as well as a coherent analysis of their socio-economic causes. This, in our view, indicates a descriptive rather than analytical character of the presented material. The reported events are mostly described as isolated incidents without a systematic explanation of their causes, scale, and broader social context. This suggests that the editorial policy of the newspaper approached agrarian conflict cautiously, which is also reflected in the nature of the publications, most of which consist of reprints from other sources or anonymous correspondences.