The Emergence of the Radicals

As more and more former Old Ruthenians passed over to the populists, the latter assumed a more conservative and clerical colouring. It was a deliberate policy of the Barvinsky brothers to make the Ukrainian national idea palatable to the Greek Catholic clergy, still the leading element in Galician Ukrainian society.

In this they succeeded, but, as a result, the Ukrainian national movement sloughed off much of its original democratism and non-conformism. Such a tame, “respectable” version of populism could no longer satisfy the bolder minds of the young generation. Repeating the pattern of the 1860s, a new youth movement emerged among the students in the second half of the 1870s. The outstanding members of the group were Ivan Franko, Mykhailo Pavlyk (1853-1915), and Ostap Terletsky (1850-1902). The Weltanschauung of the “Radicals,” as they called themselves, was one of positivism and non-Marxian socialism. Their informal circle was construed by the authorities as a revolutionary conspiracy. The trial of Franko and his friends, in 1878, was the first anti-socialist trial in Galicia. The Radicals had to suffer not only persecution by the Austro-Polish administration, but also the ostracism of their own compatriots, who were particularly shocked by the militant agnosticism of the youthful rebels. In spite of many hardships and setbacks, the Radical trend maintained itself through the 1880s, producing pamphlets and Short-Iivedjournals.⁵⁶

Growing contacts with Russia and east-central Ukraine were instrumental in overcoming Russophile myths. Typical in this respect were the experiences of Kornylo Ustiianovych, the painter and poet, as related with many colourful details in his reminiscences. As a student he had belonged to the Raevsky circle in Vienna, and was an ardent “PanRussian.” He visited the country of his dreams, in 1867 and 1872, to find out that the Galician Ruthenians, despite all their handicaps, enjoyed constitutional liberties far beyond the reach of Russian subjects.

He saw that tsarism, admired by the St. George Circle from afar, was scorned by the best elements of Russian society. And he convinced himself that, all official denials to the contrary, the Russians and Ukrainians were essentially different, and that the latter suffered national oppression. Ustiianovych returned from Russia a determined Ukrainian nationalist.⁵⁷ This was by no means an isolated case. The eminent eastern Ukrainian scholar and civic leader Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841-95), professor at the Kiev University, and after 1876 an exile in Switzerland, tells in his “Autobiography”: “I conceived [c. 1872] the plan of spreading the Ukrainian trend in Galicia with the aid of modern Russian literature, which by its secularist and democratic character would undermine Galician clericalism and bureaucratic spirit. This would make young intellectuals turn to the demos, which is Ukrainian there, and Ukrainian national consciousness would follow by itself.... I dare to say that no Slavophile from Moscow had distributed as many Russian books in Austria as did I, a Ukrainian ‘separatist’.”⁵⁸ The plan succeeded brilliantly when in 1876, under Drahomanov’s influence, the Russophile student organization of Lviv adopted a Ukrainian platform. Through his writings and an extensive correspondence, Drahomanov acted as a mentor of Franko and other progressive Galician intellectuals. He may be regarded as the spiritual father of the Radical movement there; he not only formulated its program, but also advised its leaders on current questions of policy. Drahomanov himself said retrospectively, in 1894: “Of all parts of our country, Rus’—Ukraine, Galicia has become to me equally as dear as my own region of Poltava; it has become my spiritual homeland.”⁵⁹

Relations between “Dnieper” (east-central) Ukraine and Galicia, whose educated classes were bred in different intellectual traditions, were fraught with psychological difficulties. In spite of this, collaboration was a vital necessity for both regions of Ukraine.

For Galicia, it was necessary because the Habsburgs’ Ukrainians derived formative ideas from Dnieper Ukraine; for the Dnieper Ukrainians, because Galicia was a sanctuary from tsarist persecution. After the Ukase of Ems (1876), which prohibited Ukrainian cultural activity in the Russian Empire, Galicia became, for thirty years, the place of publication of works of eastern Ukrainian writers. Journals such as Pravda (The Truth, 1867—96, with interruptions) and Zoria (The Star, 1880-97), which appeared in Lviv, united local and Dnieper Ukrainian contributors. Funds collected by eastern Ukrainian donors were used for the foundation of the Shevchenko Society of Lviv (1873), which later evolved into a representative, allUkrainian scholarly institution. Modern Ukrainian nationalism owes much of its character to the interaction of Dnieper Ukraine and Galicia. An example of this was the elaboration of a standard literary language based on the Poltava dialect, but incorporating significant Galician elements, particularly in scientific, political, and business vocabulary.⁶⁰ In the 1890s Galician Ruthenians embraced the terms “Ukraine,” “Ukrainian,” as their national name. Such a change in nomenclature had obvious inconveniences, but it was dictated by the desire to stress moral unity with Dnieper Ukraine, and also by the determination to prevent any further confusion of “Rus’ ” with “Russia.”

An eastern Ukrainian leader, speaking in his memoirs of his first trip to Galicia in 1903, observed: “At that time, Galicia was for us a model in the struggle for our nation’s rebirth; it strengthened our faith and hope for a better future. Galicia was a true ‘Piedmont’ of Ukraine, for prior to 1906 a Ukrainian press, scholarship, and national life could develop only there.”⁶¹ The “Piedmont complex”—the conviction that their small homeland was called to take the forefront of the whole nation’s struggle for liberation—occupied a large place in the thinking of the Galician Ukrainians on the eve of the Great War.

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Source: Rudnytsky I.. Essays in modern Ukrainian history. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies University of Alberta,1987. — 500 p.. 1987

The Emergence of the Radicals

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