Bukovyna and Transcarpathia

While 80% of West Ukrainians lived in Galicia, the remaining 20% inhabited the two small regions of Bukovyna and Transcarpathia. In certain respects, the life of Ukrainians in these two regions was similar to that of their compatriots in Galicia.

The Ukrainians of Bukovyna and Transcarpathia were overwhelmingly peasants; the landowning elites consisted of non-Ukrainians – Romanians in Bukovyna and Hungarians in Transcarpathia. Very few Ukrainians lived in the sleepy towns, which were largely the domain of Germans and Jews; and industry was practically nonexistent. Like Galicia, both Bukovyna and Transcarpathia were internal colonies of the Austrian heartland. Yet in other ways the situation differed notably from the one that prevailed in Galicia.

In Bukovyna, which in 1861 had been separated from Galicia and formed into a separate province, the approximately 300,000 Ukrainians – about 40% of the total population – lived in the hilly northern areas. The remainder of the population consisted of Romanians (34%), Jews (13%), Germans (8%), and other minorities. Of all the West Ukrainians, the Bukovynian peasants were the best off in terms of landholdings, mainly because the large Romanian landholders did not have the vast influence in Vienna that Poles or Hungarians had. Since it was the policy of Vienna to use the Ukrainians as a counterbalance to the Romanians, the former did have some political leverage. By the late 19th century, this influence resulted in a well-organized Ukrainian school system, access to the university at Chernivtsi, and relatively favorable political opportunities. But there was also a barrier to national and political development. The Bukovynians, like the Romanians, were Orthodox and the hierarchy of the church was largely in Romanian hands. Therefore, unlike in Galicia, the church could not and did not play a major role in the development of Ukrainian national identity in Bukovyna, and the process of nationbuilding was quite belated in that region.

When that process actually began in the 1870s and 1880s, it was greatly influenced by the proximity of Galicia and the influx of Galician intelligentsia. In 1869 the Ruthenian Society was established in Chernivtsi to promote native culture. One year later, the Ruthenian Council, a political group, was founded to represent the Ukrainians in elections. Originally Russophiles dominated these groups but they were never very strong in Bukovyna. By the 1880s, Ukrainophiles, such as the Galician Stepan Smal-Stotsky (professor of Ukrainian language and literature at Chernivtsi University) and Baron Mykola Vasylko (a wealthy local landowner), took over the leadership of the Bukovynian Ukrainians. Local branches of the Galician National Democrats, Radicals, and Social Democrats soon appeared in the region. The Ruthenian Society, functioning in a manner similar to Prosvita, attracted about 13,000 members by 1914. Meanwhile, a compromise was reached in 1911 with the other nationalities, whereby the Ukrainians were guaranteed seventeen of the sixty-three seats in the provincial diet. In the Vienna parliament, the Bukovynian Ukrainians usually had a respectable five seats. Thus, because of Vienna’s more balanced policies in Bukovyna, political compromise was more feasible and national tensions more muted than in Galicia.

In Transcarpathia, in contrast to Bukovyna, there could be no talk of compromise. The Hungarians totally controlled the region, especially after 1867, and Hungarian aristocrats exploited the peasantry at will, while Hungarian nationalists stifled local patriotism in any manner they saw fit. Thus, in almost every respect, the approximately 400,000 Transcarpathians who constituted about 70% of the total population of the region were the most disadvantaged of all West Ukrainians.

The national development of the Transcarpathians also suffered serious setbacks. Immediately after 1848, under the leadership of Adolf Dobriansky and Aleksander Dukhnovych, they gained some influential administrative positions and schools in their native language. But the rise of Russophilism, engendered by the arrival of Russian armies in Hungary in 1848 to put down the oppressive Hungarians, enveloped the small intelligentsia and the Greek Catholic clergy and created a cultural gap between them and the peasantry.

After 1867, when the pressure of Magyarization became intense, much of the educated class – lacking a popular base – quickly gave in and became Hungarians or “magyarones” as they were called. The Greek Catholic church, based in the bishoprics of Presov and Mukachiv, not only failed to halt this process but encouraged it. And because Transcarpathia was isolated from Galicia by the tightly controlled Hungarian/Austrian boundary as well as by traditionally weak contacts, Ukrainophile tendencies could not evolve as they did in Bukovyna. Thus, in the final decades of the 19th century, one Slavic periodical after another disappeared in the region, the number of schools teaching in the vernacular declined from 479 in 1874 to none in 1907, and the Society of St Basil (devoted to fostering cultural growth) barely survived. Only a handful of young populists, such as Iurii Zhatkovych and Avhustyn Voloshyn, attempted to resist the trend toward Magyarization.

When Ukrainians from the Russian Empire visited Galicia in the early years of the 20th century, they were invariably struck by the progress their western compatriots had made. In Kiev it was still forbidden to publish a book in Ukrainian, but in Lviv one found Ukrainian learned societies, schools, headquarters of mass organizations and cooperatives, newspapers, political parties, and parliamentary representatives. In Russian-ruled Ukraine, the Ukrainian intelligentsia still gathered in small, urban-based hromady to pursue scholarly, esoteric projects, but the Ukrainian intelligentsia in Galicia and Bukovyna (most of which had emerged only recently from the village) worked closely with the peasantry in Prosvitas, cooperatives, and political parties. Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the the West Ukrainian experience was that it showed that aspirations and hopes for Ukrainian national development were not simply pipe dreams of idealistic intellectuals but something which could be transformed into reality.

Impressive though it was, the progress of the Ukrainians in Galicia and Bukovyna should not be exaggerated.

Despite their efforts, West Ukrainians as a whole were still mired in poverty; illiteracy was widespread; and the national consciousness of many peasants was practically nil. Moreover, within the tiny, educated elite there were sharp differences between Ukrainophiles and Russophiles – and also among liberals, conservatives, and radicals – about which direction their society should take. Nonetheless, on the eve of the First World War, a sense of optimism was palpable among the West Ukrainians.