Postwar “Normalization”: The Reintegration of Disabled Veterans to Civilian Life in Interwar Lviv

• Author / Creator

  Vynnyk, Oksana

• This dissertation analyzes how various groups of disabled soldiers, the government, and society in interwar Poland dealt with the traumatic experiences and consequences of the Great War. Treating “disability” as a socially constructed notion, it explores the political, medical, and architectural discourses and how they defined this concept in the Second Polish Republic (1918-1939). It examines the relationship between disabled veterans and the state, focusing particularly on the First World War imperial legacies of disabled veterans, and the ways in which their ethnicity influenced their post-war political and social lives. Poland’s imperial past and the series of borderland conflicts after the Great War, as well as the Soviet-Polish War of 1919-21, resulted in the co-existence in postwar independent Poland of different groups of veterans that had belonged to numerous, sometimes conflicting, armies. The presence of large Jewish, German and Ukrainian minority communities became the most serious challenge for the Polish government and discussions about their place in the national body strongly affected the political climate in interwar Poland. Both ethnicity and army affiliation became important components of disabled veterans’ identities and affected their relationship with the state and society at large. My dissertation argues that the process of defining war disability took place alongside the process of nation-building. The process of defining the category of “Polish war invalid” determined who was a part of the national body. This study uses Lviv as a case study to examine the adaptation of disabled veterans to civilian life. Characterized by its heterogeneous population, this city serves as an ideal site for the study of interethnic relations in the Second Polish Republic. The focus on Lviv not only reveals how disabled veterans re-adapted to “normal” life in a time of severe national and social conflict, but also brings the numerous “disability” discourses created by the emerging welfare state, society, and disabled veterans into high relief. The dissertation argues that the interconnections between legislative norms, bureaucratic policies, and informal practices were key in shaping the experience of war disability in interwar Lviv. The interplay between various levels of government and various veterans’ organizations highlights the complex relationship between bureaucracy and the public sphere in interwar Poland. This research provides a more nuanced picture of state-building processes and contributes to broader discussions on the construction of new national states, the welfare state, and civil society in East-Central Europe.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • welfare state
  • national minorities
  • war disability
  • interwar Poland
  • disabled veterans
  • Lviv

• Graduation date

  Fall 2018

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3J09WM02

• License

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