Background

The year 1848 witnessed the outbreak of revolutionary activity throughout large parts of the European continent. Galicia was to remain under Austrian rule, but during the next six decades the Ukrainian population underwent a profound social, political, and cultural transformation.

The revolutionary activity that began in March 1848 and threatened to over­throw Habsburg rule spread quickly to eastern Galicia. One month later, an imperial decree repealed serfdom. As a result of this act, a whole class of people (comprising more than ninety percent of the Ukrainian populace) had in effect come into being and had for the first time to be reckoned with as a factor in organized political and cultural life. In May, the freed serfs participated in elections to Austria’s first Parliament (the Reichstag). At the same time a small group of Ukrainian leaders, mostly Greek Catholic clergy, set up political and cultural organizations. Although Habsburg authority was reinstated throughout the empire by 1850 and a period of neoabsolutism began, this did not erase the fact that Ukrainians had come into existence as a group; from now on their political and cultural needs had to be and were taken into account by the imperial govern­ment in Vienna as well as by the provincial administration in Galicia.

The abolition of serfdom, an increase in the number of Ukrainian elementary and secondary schools, and the resultant advances in literacy contributed, after the 1870s, to the growth of civic consciousness and organizational strength of the peasant masses as well as the evolution of a new, more secular-oriented Ukrainian intelligentsia. This resulted in the establishment of numerous Ukrainian newspa­pers and journals, publishing houses, cultural societies, theaters, credit associ­ations, economic cooperatives-and in the 1890s, political parties. Thus by the end of the century, Ukrainians in Galicia had created a comprehensive infrastruc­ture for national life that in turn prompted demands for more and more political autonomy.

During this rapid advancement of Galician-Ukrainian society, it is not surpris­ing that the group’s political and cultural leaders often suffered from the inability of society to fulfill their ever-rising expectations. Whereas the imperial govern­ment permitted and even at times promoted Ukrainian national life, political realities dictated that Vienna reach an accommodation with the most powerful force in Galicia-the Poles. The failure of Austria’s neoabsolutist approach to internal administration and its military defeats at the hands of France and Sardinia (1859) and Prussia (1866) forced Vienna to embark on a period of experiment in reorganizing the empire. The result was the establishment of a new parliament (1861), ushering in Austria’s constitutional period, and the creation of the Dual Monarchy (1867), permitting self-rule for Hungary. The Galician Poles, who had just witnessed the failure of another Polish revolt (1863) against Russia, were ready to cast their lot fully with the Habsburgs, although they wanted autonomy like the Hungarians had received. Vienna was not prepared to go so far, although in return for their support of the Habsburg monarchy, the Poles were allowed to control the internal affairs of Galicia as they saw fit. As a result, the provincial administration remained basically in Polish hands until the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918.

The Ukrainians were left to struggle as best they could to obtain a greater control over the life of the province. It was an uphill battle, fought primarily for more schools, more seats in the Austrian Parliament (Vienna) and Galician Diet (L’viv), and more provincial funds for cultural and economic activity. Like all national groups living within a multinational state and struggling for political autonomy and even independence, the Ukrainians in Austrian Galicia were never satisfied that they had gained enough concessions. Nevertheless, despite contin­ued Polish dominance in the affairs of the province and the generally underdevel­oped agrarian-based economy that left the region one of the poorest in the whole Habsburg Empire, the Ukrainians of Galicia made remarkable progress in the political and especially cultural spheres.

Such relatively favorable conditions were dependent, however, on the exis­tence ofthe Austro-Hungarian Empire, which, in 1914, entered a military conflict that four years later was to result in its demise. From the outset of the world conflict, eastern Galicia had become a war zone and it was occupied by tsarist Russia during the winter of 1914 and 1915. Although Ukrainian political leaders and the vast majority of the population remained to the end loyal to the Habsburgs (who fondly referred to them as the Tyrolians of the east), the passing of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in late October 1918 put an end to the Austrian period in Galician history and opened up a new era in the national life of Galician Ukrainians.