Abstract
<jats:p>The First World War of 1914-1918 remains a landmark event in world history, leading to global geopolitical changes in the 20th century. It was a natural consequence of the intensification of contradictions between European states, but at the same time it became a manifestation of interethnic, social and other internal problems in European society, as well as a spiritual and moral crisis of world civilisation. Ukrainian lands found themselves at the centre of this European civilisational crisis, which marked the beginning of modern human history. The particular tragedy of this large-scale armed conflict for Ukraine lay in the fact that Ukrainians were forced to participate in it on the side of each of the opposing blocs of states – the Quadruple Alliance and the Entente. At the same time, despite all its tragic consequences for humanity, the Great War opened up opportunities for the implementation of Ukrainian statehood projects, but there was no place for a sovereign Ukraine in the plans of the victorious powers. As a result of the so-called ‘resolution’ of the Ukrainian question by the Paris ‘peacemakers,’ the Ukrainian people found themselves part of several states created by war, revolutions, and the will of the world leaders of the time — Soviet Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. The situation of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia and Volhynia as part of the reborn Poland, Northern Bukovina as part of the Kingdom of Romania, and Transcarpathia within the newly formed Czechoslovak Republic, the policies of the governments of these countries regarding the Ukrainian question, the problems of socio-economic, national-cultural development and public-political life of Ukrainians, and the ambiguous civilisational consequences of their stay within neighbouring states in the interwar years, i.e. the little-studied and least known to the Ukrainian public issues of modern national history, are the main idea and subject of our lecture.</jats:p>