150 YEARS AGO: The Ukrainian National Awakening in Halychyna (11/08/98)

150 YEARS AGO: The Ukrainian National Awakening in Halychyna

by Dr. T. Mackiw

Early history

The name Halychyna, Latinized as Galicia, was derived from the region's capital of Halych, built by Prince Volodymyrko in 1140. When Galicia and Volhynia merged at the beginning of the 13th century, it was called the principality of Galicia and Lodomeria. In 1214 the Polish and Hungarian kings met in the city of Spish and agreed that Koloman, the 5-year-old son of the Hungarian King Andrew, should take the throne of Galicia and marry the 3-year-old daughter of the Polish King Leszek. The "young couple" married in 1215 and was crowned by the pope. More than 100 years later, in 1349, Poland's king, Casimir the Great, with help from Hungary's King Ludwig, occupied and annexed Galicia to Poland.

Taking advantage of the first partition of Poland in 1772, the Austrian empress, who was also queen of Hungary, claimed Galicia on the basis of the vindication of the rights of the Hungarian kings, who retained the title of "rex Galiciae et Lodomeriae." In addition to Galicia, populated by Ukrainians, Austria also annexed the principality of Krakow, populated predominantly by Poles, and created an administrative unit called the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria with the Great Principality of Krakow, an area of 1,500 square miles that contained a mixed Polish-Ukrainian population of approximately 3 million. Five years later, in 1777, Bukovina, a Ukrainian-populated land was added to Galicia.

After Austrian troops occupied Galicia, the officials, most of Czech origin, reported to Vienna that only a small minority of the nobility was Polish and that most of the people were Ukrainians, or, as they were then called, "Rusyny" or "Ruthenians," according to the name officially used by the Vatican to denote the inhabitants of Galicia.

400 years of oppression

At the time of the Austrian annexation in 1772, Galicia was in a precarious social and economic state. Prolonged and oppressive Polish domination for more than 400 years had left deep scars. The Ukrainians had become a backward ethnic group, unconscious of their national identity. The Ukrainians survived as a people only because they possessed and transmitted a rich cultural heritage: unwritten literature in the forms of tales, poetry and songs; distinct customs; and especially the Greek-Catholic Church - all of which set them apart from the Poles.

The Greek-Catholic, or Uniate, Church played a very important role in the history of Galician Ukrainians in the 19th century. The Austrian government granted to the Greek-Catholic Church and clergy status equal with its Roman Catholic counterparts. In 1774 Empress Maria Theresa founded the Barbareum, a Greek-Catholic seminary in Vienna that provided Galician students with systematic theological training and an invigorating exposure to Western culture. In 1783 a larger seminary and in 1787 a university, were founded in Lviv.

The beneficial reforms sponsored by the Austrian government raised the educational and civic standards of the Greek-Catholic clergy. Beginning with 1848 Greek-Catholic clergy provided political leadership to the Ukrainians in Galicia. Later, the leadership gradually passed into hands of the lay intelligentsia, many of whom however, were children of clerical families.

In the first half of the 19th century, a patriotic circle known as "Ruska Triitsia" - the Ruthenian Triad was formed in the Greek Catholic theological seminary in Lviv by Markian Shashkevych, Iakiv Holovatskyi and Ivan Vahylevych. These three young, idealistic seminarians, captivated by German writer Johann Herder's ideas in support of vernacular speech, decided to publish an almanac, titled "Rusalka Dnistrovaia" (The Nymph of the Dnister), which was to contain folk songs, poems and historical articles written in the vernacular Ukrainian. After some difficulties with censorship, a small volume appeared in Budapest in 1837. The Rusalka was the beginning of modern Ukrainian literature in Galicia and a milestone in the formation of national consciousness.

Events of 1848 spark awareness

The chain of revolutionary events of 1848 throughout Europe, especially in Vienna on March 13, 1848, awakened the Ukrainians in Galicia to also formulate their national rights. When news of the riots in Vienna, and of the resignation of the hated Prince Metternich reached Lviv on March 19, 1848, Polish leaders immediately sprang into action. They sent off a petition to the Austrian emperor calling for greater political rights for Poles in Galicia. However, they totally ignored any mention of the Ukrainian presence in Galicia, which they treated as a purely Polish province. To support the Poles' demands, a Polish National Council (Polska Rada Narodowa) was organized in Lviv on April 13, 1848. Soon afterwards, a network of local councils, the formation of a Polish National Guard, and a newspaper Dziennik Narodowy (National Daily) were founded.

The Ukrainians, whom the Poles did not consider to be a separate nation, rejected Polish invitations to join in these efforts. Instead, at the suggestion of the Austrian governor of Galicia, Count Franz Stadion, on April 19, 1848, a group of Greek-Catholic clergymen led by the bishop-coadjutor of Lviv, Hryhorii Iakhymovych, addressed a separate petition to the emperor.

Unlike the Polish petition, it was a timid, loyalist document. The Ukrainian petitions' introduction consisted of a historical survey that stressed the national distinctness of the Ukrainians of eastern Galicia, the past glories of the medieval principality of Halych, and its subsequent subjugation and exploitation by the Poles. The petition itself requested the introduction of the Ukrainian language into the schools and administration, access for Ukrainian government positions in Galicia, and genuine equalization of the Greek and Roman Catholic clergy.

Two weeks later, on May 2, 1848, the Supreme Ruthenian Council (Holovna Ruska Rada), the first modern Ukrainian political organization, was established in Lviv and thereby contradicted the claim of the Polish National Council to speak for Galicia as a whole. The Rada, led by Bishop Iakhymovych, consisted of 66 members, half of them clergy and the other half members of the secular intelligentsia.

In the weeks that followed, 50 local and 13 regional branches of the Ruska Rada were established throughout Galicia by priests. For the first time, the first Ukrainian-language newspaper Zoria Halytska (Galician Star) was published May 15, 1848, not only in Galicia, but in all Ukrainian lands. Meanwhile, contacts with the Ukrainians of Bukovyna and Transcarpathia were established.

The emergence of the Rada was a direct challenge to the Polish claim that Galicia was an organic part of Poland. Polish leaders tried to undermine the Rada's positions by establishing an opposing body that claimed to represent a pro-Polish current among the Ruthenians. Therefore, on May 23, 1848, a handful of Polonized Ruthenian nobles (shliakhta) and intelligentsia ("gente Rutheni, natione Poloni"), met in Lviv to establish the pro-Polish Ruthenian Assembly (Ruskyi Sobor). The Sobor started to publish a newspaper Ruskyi Dnevnyk (Ruthenian Daily) in Ukrainian, but with Polish characters; Ivan Vahylevych, a former member of Ruska Triitsia was engaged as its editor.

The Ukrainians grouped around the Rada and denounced the Sobor as a sham. The Sobor and its newspaper had a brief, ephemeral existence.

The question of national identity was answered by the Rada in the "Ukrainian" sense, that is, in asserting the distinctness of their people not only from Poland, but from Russia as well. The Rada's manifesto of May 10, 1848, stated: "...We Galician Ruthenians (Rusyny halytski) belong to the Great Ruthenian (i.e. Ukrainian) nation who speak one language and count 15 millions of whom 2 1/2 million inhabit the Galician land."

During the Slavic Congress in Prague on June 1-10, 1848, the Ukrainian delegates sent by the Rada demanded that Galicia be divided into separate Polish and Ukrainian provinces - an idea that the Poles adamantly opposed. The Czechs, working behind the scenes, mediated a compromise resolution: the Ukrainians agreed to postpone the issue of Galicia's division, and the Poles conceded on the principle of the equality of the two nations in all administrative and educational matters.

This agreement was never implemented, inasmuch as Austrian troops bombarded Prague, forcing the congress to disband. Nevertheless, the Ukrainians had made their debut on the international political stage.

While the Prague congress was still in session, elections commenced in Galicia to the Reichstag, or lower house of the newly founded imperial Parliament. For the Ukrainians, and peasants in particular, these elections were a new and confusing experience. In contrast, the Poles, who were much more sophisticated politically, succeeded by means of rumors and threats in keeping many Ukrainian peasants away from the polls. The Ukrainians won only 25 of the 100 seats allotted to Galicia.

In the parliamentary debates that took place in the latter part of 1848, first in Vienna and then in Kormeriz, the Ukrainian deputies concentrated on two issues: compensation to landlords for the abolition of the corvee (panschyna) and the administrative division of Galicia into separate Ukrainian and Polish provinces.

Meanwhile, the imperial government was slowly regaining control of the situation. Soon after the new emperor, 18-year-old Franz Joseph, ascended the throne, Parliament was dissolved. After the revolution in Austria was suppressed, the Hapsburg monarchy returned to absolutism.

The transition to the neo-absolutist decade (Bach era, 1849-1859) brought about a decline of overt political activities among all Austrian nationalities. The Rada was dissolved in 1851 and its leaders reverted to predominately ecclesiastical matters.

In 1849 Count Agenor Goluchowski was appointed governor of Galicia. As a high aristocrat, Goluchowski won the full confidence of the emperor. He used his office and the confidence of the emperor to remove all obstacles preventing Polish dominance in Galicia, filling the ranks of the civil service, which had been predominantly German prior to 1848, with Poles. Moreover, he denounced the Ukrainians to Vienna as Russophiles and as a dangerous threat to the security of Austria.

During the revolutionary period of 1848, which lasted 227 days, the greatest achievements were undoubtedly the abolition of the corvee and the introduction of constitutional government.

Considering the total lack of experience on the part of Ukrainians in political affairs, the achievements included:

the formation of the Supreme Ukrainian Council with local branches throughout the country;
establishment of the first Ukrainian newspaper Zoria Halytska;
participation in the Slavic Congress in Prague;
a campaign for election to the first Austrian Reichstag and participation in parliamentary work;
formation of a Ukrainian National Guard and military detachments that took part in the war against insurgent Hungary;
holding of a Conference of Ukrainian Scholars (Sobor Ruskykh Uchenykh), October 19-26, 1848, to determine guidelines for cultural and educational policies; and the holding of public meetings.

Over all, 1848 clearly marked a turning point in the history of Galicia. The age-old inertia, passivity and isolation of Ukrainians was broken, and the Ukrainian nation was launched on the long and hard struggle for national and social emancipation.

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