The recognition of Eastern Galicia as part of Poland in 1923 presented the Western Ukrainians with a new situation. They had henceforth to decide whether to accept their position as a definite part of Poland or to continue to struggle for independence. The latter position was taken by the Ukrainian Military Organization, headed by Col. Evhen Konovalets, a former regimental commander. This body carried out various acts of terrorism against individual members of the Polish government who were prominent in the suppression of Ukrainian activities. Another group, composed largely of intellectuals, like Professor Hrushevsky, accepted the invitation of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic to transfer the centre of their activities to Kiev. Professor Hrushevsky left Vienna, where much of the Ukrainian organized activity had been concentrated. The vast majority, however, began to tend toward such activity in the Polish state as they were permitted, without for a moment giving up the right of Ukraine to its independence in the future. Thus in 1923 the Ukrainians took part in the Polish elections and a considerable number took their seats in the Diet, while their leader, Dmytro Levitsky, declared publicly that they had not renounced their ideals of independence and that they considered all treaties denying the rights of the Ukrainian people to national independence to be without any legal basis. From year to year the struggle changed its form as various measures were put into effect by the Polish government to break down the solid block of Ukrainians living in Eastern Galicia and to introduce Poles into the area. Thus the Poles in their laws for breaking up large estates settled on these estates groups of Polish veterans in the hope that they might destroy the Ukrainian voting majority. They banned the use of Ukrainian in other than the three provinces in which the Ukrainians were a majority. They refused any steps toward the organization of a Ukrainian university and they did their best to limit the number of schools in which Ukrainian was used as the language of instruction. Again and again they initiated movements to close Ukrainian cultural, economic and even athletic organizations by arguing that they were merely being used for subversive activities. During the early years after the War, the relations between Czechoslovakia and Poland were badly strained. The Czechs accused the Poles of inciting the Slovaks and in return they opened their own institutions to offer refuge to the Ukrainians from Eastern Galicia. There was established at Prague a Ukrainian Free University, a Ukrainian Historical and Philological Society, a Union of Ukrainian Physicians of Czechoslovakia, a Museum of Ukraine’s Struggle for Liberation, and a Ukrainian Agricultural School at Podebrady. While these were ostensibly open to Ukrainians of all regions, they were for all intents and purposes largely catering to people from Eastern Galicia who had fled from Polish rule.