War Disability and Welfare State in the Eastern Polish Borderlands (1918–1939)

After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Polish and Ukrainian communities claimed the territory of Eastern Galicia, leading to the subsequent Ukrainian-Polish War between the Second Polish Republic and the Western Ukrainian People's Republic. While the defeated Ukrainian state in Galicia vanished, it continued to exist in the collective imagination. The article examines how the contested nature of the eastern borderlands influenced the welfare system and shaped the diverse groups of disabled veterans’ responses to welfare policy in interwar Poland. The conflicting Polish and Ukrainian national projects, divided memory discourses, and Ukrainian resistance kept the phantom borders of the Ukrainian state alive, turning welfare policy into an instrument of both unification and bordering. By shifting focus to the agency of local actors in the periphery, the article challenges the static state-centred vision of the welfare system and the relationship between the government and disabled veterans.