Political Struggles, 1900-1914
From the turn of the century until the eve of the Great War, a great political battle was fought unremittingly in Galicia. It is impossible, in the framework of this paper, to discuss the episodes of the struggle.
This was a time when elections, either to the Reichsrat or to the Diet, were taking place at frequent intervals. Each election was accompanied by a wave of mass rallies, demonstrations, and clashes with the police, which in turn led to arrests and trials. Parliamentary oratorical duels were accompanied by complicated behind-the-scenes negotiations on the provincial level and in Vienna. Political struggle overlapped with social strife, such as the agrarian strikes. Simultaneously, the Ukrainian community was engaged in building its cultural and economic institutions. One has to turn to contemporary fiction to get the feeling of the deep groundswell which was running through the Ukrainian people.84 A symptom of this excitement was the assassination of the viceroy of Galicia, Count Andrzej Potocki, by a Ukrainian student, Myroslav Sichynsky (1887— 1980) in 1908. This was, however, an individual act, not the outcome of a plot. The Ukrainian movement, despite its increased militancy, continued to adhere to legal and evolutionary methods.Beginning with a series of mass rallies in 1900, Ukrainian agitation concentrated on the issue of electoral reform: the abolition of the curiae, and introduction of the universal, secret, and direct ballot. Many other groups in Austria desired a democratization of the franchise, and, under the impact of the 1905 Russian Revolution and in connection with difficulties with Hungary, this cause was espoused by the imperial government. The reform became law in January 1907. “One Slav national group, the Ruthenians, was the chief winner in the franchise reform, by more than trebling its previous parliamentary representation at the expense of the Poles.
Still, the new Ruthenian quota remained less than half the representation due them on the basis of the proportional system.”85 Through a gerrymandering of electoral districts, one Reichsrat seat was granted to the Poles in proportion to 52,000, and to the Ukrainians to 102,000 inhabitants. In the parliamentary elections of 1907 the Ukrainians gained twenty-seven seats in Galicia (seventeen National Democrats, three Radicals, two Social Democrats, and five Russophiles), and five seats in Bukovyna. In the cities, there was an electoral alliance between the Ukrainians and the Zionists; with the support of Ukrainian votes, two nationalist Jewish deputies appeared for the first time in the Vienna parliament.The problem which dominated the Galician political scene for the next six years, 1907—13, was reform of the provincial statute, especially of the Diet’s franchise.86 Three parties were involved: the Ukrainians, the Poles, and Vienna. The central government regarded a Polish-Ukrainian compromise as highly desirable because of the threat of war with Russia. Moreover, since 1907 the Ukrainians had become a powerful factor in the Reichsrat. While suggesting to the Poles a conciliatory policy, and offering its good offices as a mediator, the central government did not intend to impose a new provincial statute from above. The reform was to come as the result of an agreement between Galicia’s two nationalities. A “compromise” meant, however, under the given conditions, the Poles’ abdication of their monopoly of power in Galicia. As a Polish publicist acutely observed, the chief difficulty consisted in the lack of a basis for a quid pro quo.87 Whatever the Poles as a nationality could desire in Austria was already their own. Polish public opinion violently resisted the idea of making unilateral sacrifices without receiving compensation. Also, the dynamic nature of the Ukrainian movement made it evident that concessions which the Poles might consider acceptable if they were to be final would rather turn out to be a down payment, and that the Ukrainians would soon come up with further demands.
A deadlock ensued on the question of the provincial statute’s reform. To force the hand of the Polish majority of the Diet, the Ukrainian members repeatedly had recourse to “musical obstruction’’ (1910-12): armed with whistles, trumpets, and drums, they raised an uproar which completely disrupted the Diet’s work. The provincial legislative machinery had come to a virtual standstill.The other major issue, besides franchise reform, was the question of the founding of a Ukrainian university.88 At Lviv University there existed, in 1914, ten Ukrainian-Ianguage chairs. The original Ukrainian plan had been gradually to increase the number of these chairs, and thus to prepare the future division of the school into two independent institutions, a Polish and a Ukrainian one, as Prague University had been divided into a Czech and German school. This, however, was prevented by the refusal of the university administration to create additional Ukrainian chairs and to admit the “habilitation” of Ukrainian scholars. From 1901 the Ukrainians concentrated their efforts on the foundation of a new, separate university. Lviv University became the scene of clashes between the school administration and Ukrainian students and of brawls between Polish and Ukrainian students. In 1912 the Austrian government promised to create a Ukrainian university in Galicia by 1916, but Polish objections delayed the implementation of the decision.
During the last pre-war years the Russophile trend entered its final transformation. Its traditionalist, “Old Ruthenian’’ wing had all but disappeared by that time. The remaining hard core, under the leadership of Volodymyr Dudykevych (1861-1922), abandoned the macaronic iazy- chiie and attempted to square theory with practice by introducing literary Russian in its publications, at least in those for the educated class. A lease on life was given to moribund Russophilism by outside aid. The viceroys Leon Pininski (1898-1903) and Andrzej Potocki (1903-8), wishing to divert the rising Ukrainian tide, threw their support to the Russophiles.
The latter also received financial and moral aid from Russia. After the failure of its Far Eastern designs (1905), imperial Russia returned to an active policy in the Danubian-Balkan area. The tsarist government was also worried about the impact of Ukrainian nationalism in Galicia on the population of Russia’s south-western provinces. At the 1908 Slavic Congress in Prague, “a Polish-Russian pact was concluded concerning the attitude toward Ukraine.... The gist of the pact was that the national movement of the Ukrainians in Galicia ought to be impeded and combated [by the Poles]. As a counterpart, the Russian government promised in general terms to satisfy Polish national needs [in Congress Poland].”89 With abundant financial means provided by Russia and with the tacit toleration of many Polish officials, the “Galician Russians” conducted a brisk propaganda, out of proportion with their real strength.90 The decline of Russophilism was reflected in their continual loss of votes. In the last elections to the Diet in 1913, only one Russophile deputy was elected, as against thirty-one seats gained by the Ukrainian parties. Yet this did not deter the Russophile leaders. Having lost the competition for the minds of the people, they staked their hopes on the coming Russian invasion. A well-qualified Polish observer stated: “This [Russophile] trend ought to be regarded as an outpost of the Russian government in our land.... A comparison of the Ruthenian national institutions with those of the Muscophiles shows conclusively that the former result from the natural development of a people full of strength and vitality, eager to expand its achievements in breadth and depth; the latter, on the other hand, are an artificial product, planted from outside, without a firm foundation and future.’’91By 1913 a Polish-Ukrainian agreement concerning the provincial statute reform seemed near at hand. The opposing camps had reached the point of exhaustion in their negotiations, and Vienna was prodding for a settlement.92 A last-minute delay occurred when Viceroy Michal Bobrzynski, the architect of the compromise, was forced to resign by an intrigue of the Polish opponents of the reform.
Negotiations, however, went on. A decisive role in the smoothing away of the last difficulties was played by Metropolitan Sheptytsky. The Diet finally passed the reform bill on 14 February 1914. The new provincial statute, which embodied most features of the preceding year’s compromise platform, was a marvel of complexity. It retained the system of representation by curiae, and established within each curia the ratio of Polish and Ukrainian seats.93 The Ukrainians were to receive 62 seats out of 228, or 27 per cent of the membership of the Diet. This was the same ratio as obtained in Galicia’s representation to the Reichsrat, according to the 1906 law. The Ukrainians were also the obtain two places on the eight-person Provincial Board (LandesauschussY and to be represented on the various committees of the Diet. The Polish and Ukrainian members of the Provincial Board and of the committees were to be separately elected by the Diet’s deputies of each nationality.The implications of the reform were greater than its rather modest explicit terms. The provincial statute of 1914 was the first instance of a Polish-Ukrainian compromise; the agreement reached at the 1848 Slavic Congress in Prague had remained on paper, and the 1890 New Era had foundered on a basic reciprocal misunderstanding. The 1914 compromise did not grant the Ukrainians what they felt to be their due, but at least it broke the monopoly of power which the Poles had had in Galicia since 1867. The Ukrainians were now to become partners in the provincial government, from which they had previously been virtually exeluded. Moreover, the Poles would no longer be able to discriminate against the educational and cultural advancement of the Ukrainian community. It had been a consistent policy of the Polish-dominated Diet to restrict the creation of Ukrainian secondary schools.94 Now control over Ukrainian elementary and secondary education was to be taken from Polish hands. As an immediate result of the changed situation, the opening of ten new Ukrainian secondary schools was planned for the fall term of 1914.
As part of the compromise, the Polish side promised to desist from further obstruction against the creation of a Ukrainian university in Lviv.95 There was at that time a universal feeling that the compromise of February 1914 amounted to a turning point in the history of Galicia’s two nationalities.It is possible to extrapolate Galicia’s further development, assuming that the Austrian regime had lasted. It is not likely that the Ukrainians would in the foreseeable future have been able to achieve their major goal—the province’s partition on ethnic lines—because that issue depended on a territorial-administrative reorganization of the whole empire. But the balance of power in the undivided province was bound to shift considerably once the artificial handicaps on the Ukrainians were removed. With the continued economic and educational progress of the masses, and the accelerated formation of a native intelligentsia and middle class, political preponderance in eastern Galicia was likely to pass to the Ukrainians in the course of ten to twenty years. A Polish scholar prognosticated in 1908: “Our prospects in eastern Galicia are unfavourable. The fate of the English nationality in Ireland, of the German in Czech lands, and the probable future fate of the German nationality in Upper Silesia serve us as a bad augury.’’96