When both the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires collapsed, unexpectedly, in 1917 and 1918 respectively, many Ukrainians thought they would finally be able to establish a state. That hope was quickly extinguished in the territory that had been ruled by the Habsburgs. After a brief but bloody Polish-Ukrainian military conflict that cost 15,000 Ukrainian and 10,000 Polish lives, the multi-ethnic territory of western Ukraine, including Galicia as well as Lviv, its most important city, was integrated into modern Poland. There it remained from 1919 to 1939.
