Conclusion

The Great War’s carnage on the eastern front shattered the Austro- Hungarian, German, Russian, and Ottoman Turkish empires.⁶⁷ The long and brutal conflict unleashed a political and social tsunami, which under­mined these dynastic, multinational empires, ignited revolutions and cre­ated new states, and set the stage for an even more devastating war.

The war internationalized, militarized, and radicalized “national ques­tions” within the empires of East Central Europe, transforming ethnic com­munities into national communities. Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire sought to intertwine their highly diverse components around a single unifying identity within their own realms. As the war continued, seemingly without end, its belligerents created categories, dividing the world into loyal allies and diabolic foes, seeking out subversive “enemy aliens” in their midst.⁶⁸ Entire communities now bore collective responsi­bility for the actions of a few of their compatriots. In an environment of mass violence, shifting boundaries, and decaying authority, Austria- Hungary and the Russian Empire applied these categories to their own loyal subjects, needlessly undermining their own imperial unity.

In the case of Austria-Hungary, the military command had created regi­ments of Serb, Czech, Romanian, and Ruthenian soldiers mixed with “reliable” German and Magyar troops as “an extra check upon suspect nationalities.”⁶⁹ Although these suspicions surfaced long before Franz Joseph’s death in November 1916, most rank-and-file soldiers from these problematic nationalities placed the blame on Karl I. Governmental suspi­cions became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many of the non-German and non-Hungarian soldiers suspected of disloyalty resented this intense scru­tiny and “began to question their role, the purpose of the war, and looked forward to a speedy peace.”⁷⁰

The resentments and frustrations of the Ruthenians in the Habsburg armies and the Little Russians in the tsarist armies prompted many to think of themselves as Ukrainians and to question their loyalty to their respective imperial structures. In an age of popular sovereignty and na­tional self-determination, why not demand home rule or autonomy, even independence for the downtrodden Ukrainian masses? In these uncertain times, why not learn from and reproduce the Irish and Polish models of the struggle for national independence?