The Growth of National Consciousness in Western Ukraine

Ukrainian cultural activity was distributed very unevenly. For the most part, it was concentrated on the Left Bank, the territory of the former Hetmanate, and in Sloboda Ukraine.

In Western, or Austrian, Ukraine, evidence of Ukrainian cultural activity in the early 19th century was also very spotty. In such isolated, backward regions as Romanian-dominated Bukovyna and Hungarian-dominated Transcarpathia, it was almost nonexistent. Only in Eastern Galicia did Ukrainophilism, even more tentative and narrowly based than on the Left Bank, succeed in establishing a foothold. The West Ukrainian intelligentsia

To speak of the West Ukrainian intelligentsia in the early 19th century is to speak of the clergy. Indeed, because the clergy was the only social group that could avail itself of the opportunities for higher learning provided by the Austrian Empire, higher education in Western Ukraine became practically synonymous with the study of theology. Thus, in the early 1840s, of the approximately 400 Ukrainian students at Lviv University and other institutions, 295 studied theology while almost all the rest were enrolled in philosophy courses, which were a prerequisite for theology.

Only in the latter part of the 19th century would a secular intelligentsia, composed of teachers, lawyers, scholars, writers, and bureaucrats, become a significant factor in Western Ukraine. Conversely, one should not assume that every priest was an intellectual. The vast majority of the clergy were poor and isolated village priests, whose education and intellectual horizons were only marginally broader than those of the peasants to whom they ministered. It was only a small minority based in cities such as Lviv and Peremyshl (which were centers of ecclesiastical administration and had institutions of higher learning, libraries, and printing presses) that had an opportunity to engage in cultural activities.

Even where such opportunities existed, the inbred conservatism of the clergy and its slavish loyalty to the Habsburgs discouraged intellectual growth. Provincial and conservative, the thin, educated stratum of Western Ukraine looked with extreme suspicion on new ideas and preferred to expend its limited intellectual resources on secondary (but furiously debated) issues such as those dealing with alphabets, calendars, and church procedures. For the few who sought to explore more radical Western ideas or to become involved in revolutionary activity, the only avenue open was in the Polish context. As a result, in the 1830s, a small number of young Ukrainian seminarians joined Polish revolutionary groups that were striving to rebuild the Polish Commonwealth and who viewed Ukrainians as nothing more than a confused and backward branch of the Polish nation.

The attractions of the prestigious Polish culture, even to the most traditionalist members of the clergy-intelligentsia, were so great that – as the legal, educational, and material standing of the West Ukrainian elite improved – they began to emulate Polish ways.

As a result, the use of Polish gradually became more widespread among the clergy and intelligentsia, and Ukrainian was confined more and more to communication with the peasants. A telling example of the decline in the use of Ukrainian (that is, of the artificial and unwieldy mixture of the vernacular, Church Slavonic, and Latin, Polish, and German words that passed for literary Ukrainian at this time) by the educated, was the dismantling of the Ukrainian-language Studium Ruthenum at Lviv University in 1809. Paradoxically, it was brought about not by the Poles or Austrians, but by Ukrainians themselves. Because all other courses at the university were taught in German, the Ukrainian students at the Studium Ruthenum considered it discriminatory that they too were not taught in that language and they readily agreed to have it replace Ukrainian.

But if higher education highlighted the inadequacies of the Ukrainian language, it also produced its defenders. While pursuing their studies in Lviv or Vienna, some Ukrainians could not help but hear about the ideas of Herder concerning the importance of one’s native language. Often they came into contact with Polish or especially Czech intellectuals who were far ahead of other Slavs in the Habsburg empire in terms of national consciousness and cultural development. Inspired by the successes of their neighbors, a small but growing number of West Ukrainian members of the intelligentsia, despite the discouraging milieu in which they lived, began to develop an appreciation of the new idea of Ukrainian nationhood. The “national awakeners” in Western Ukraine

The first signs of growing interest in the cultural aspects of nationhood appeared in the early 19th century in the ancient city of Peremyshl, the seat of a Greek Catholic eparchy, site of a lyceum and rich libraries, and the home of some of the most sophisticated members of the Ukrainian clergy.

Among the members of the Peremyshl circle, Ivan Mohylnytsky, a highly placed churchman and superintendent of primary education in the eparchy, was the most prominent. In 1816, with the support of his superior, Bishop Mykhailo Levytsky, Mohylnytsky organized a group of clergymen into a Clerical Society, the purpose of which was to prepare and distribute simple religious texts, written in Ukrainian, to the peasantry. Considering the Polonophile attitudes that were predominant at the time, this act was viewed as an unorthodox undertaking. Mohylnytsky and his colleagues were apparently not motivated solely by Herder’s ideas or East Ukrainian examples; an important realization was that if Polish-language materials alone became available to the peasants, they might turn to Roman Catholicism.

Although the results of the society’s efforts, which consisted of the publication of several prayer books and primers, were modest and the group soon disbanded, its appearance was noteworthy: it was the first attempt of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, both in the west and in the east, to organize itself; and more important, it focused attention on the language issue that would remain for decades a key concern of the West Ukrainian intelligentsia. However, in his attempts to “improve” the vernacular, Mohylnytsky insisted on using it with many Church Slavonic admixtures. The resulting artificial linguistic hybrid did little to dispel questions about the appropriateness of Ukrainian for literary use.

In addition to the Peremyshl circle, in the 1820s a few isolated Western Ukrainian scholars appeared who, in the spirit of collectors and antiquarians, gathered materials about the history of Eastern Galicia and its native folklore.

In the 1830s, the center of national consciousness-raising activity shifted to Lviv, where young, idealistic seminarians, captivated by Herder’s ideas, came to the fore. Their leader was Markian Shashkevych, a 21-year-old youth endowed with poetical talent and an inspiring personality. Together with his two close associates, the scholarly Ivan Vahylevych and the energetic Iakiv Holovatsky, they formed what is commonly referred to as the Ruthenian Triad. In 1832, they organized a group of students that set for itself the ambitious goal of raising the Ukrainian vernacular, free of Church Slavonic and other foreign “refinements,” to the level of a literary language. Only this, they believed, would give the peasants access to the knowledge that might improve their lot and allow Ukrainians to express their long-suppressed cultural individuality.

To the Greek Catholic authorities, the idea of writing in the plain, unmodified language of the peasantry in a simplified Cyrillic script seemed outlandish. In no uncertain terms they let Shashkevych and his associates know that they could expect no support from the church for their undertaking. But encouragement did come from Russian-ruled Ukraine, where the Ruthenian Triad established contacts with such Ukrainophiles as Izmail Sreznevsky, Mykhailo Maksymovych, and Osyp Bodiansky. And from the west came the inspiring example of the flourishing Czech national movement. With the help of Karel Zap, a Czech intellectual serving in the administration of Galicia, the threesome, especially Holovatsky, developed a lively correspondence with such experienced “national awakeners” and avid Slavophiles as the Slovaks Jan Kollar and Pavel Šafarik, the Slovene Bartholomeus Kopitar, and the Czech Karel Havliček.

To set their plans in motion, the Ruthenian Triad resolved to publish an almanac, entitled Rusalka Dnistrovaia (“The Nymph of the Dnister”), which would contain folk songs, poems, and historical articles written in the vernacular. When news of the almanac reached the Greek Catholic hierarchy, they condemned it as being “undignified, indecent, and possibly subversive.”²⁰ Meanwhile, the German police chief of Lviv noted: “We already have enough trouble with one nationality [the Poles], and these madmen want to resurrect the dead-and-buried Ruthenian nation.”²¹ The local censor, Venedikt Levytsky, a Greek Catholic clergyman, blocked publication of the almanac in Lviv, so Shashkevych and his colleagues were forced to publish it in far-off Budapest in 1837. Of the 900 copies that were transported to Lviv, almost all were confiscated by the police. Only a handful found their way into the hands of a skeptical public. Disillusioned by this response and hounded by church authorities, Markian Shashkevych died a young man; Vahylevych eventually joined the Polish camp; Holovatsky alone, carefully but stubbornly, continued to work for the attainment of the Ruthenian Triad’s original goals.

Although the publication of the Rusalka Dnistrovaia initially appeared to be a fiasco, it set an important precedent, demonstrating in Western Ukraine that the language of the Ukrainian peasant could in fact be used as a literary language. Moreover, it focused attention on the common people and their “unspoiled” culture. Under the influence of the Rusalka Dnistrovaia, a new generation of Western Ukrainian intelligentsia would begin the slow, yet irreversible, process of shifting its orientation to the Ukrainian masses from among whom it would draw most of its members.

The spread of the idea of nationhood in Ukraine was, as we have seen, a laborious and halting process. At the mid 19th century, it had not progressed far beyond the point of small groups of Ukrainian intelligentsia defining for themselves the essential ingredients of a Ukrainian cultural identity. Hurdles to progress beyond this cultural phase were numerous and daunting. Except for the intelligentsia, there were no social groups in Ukraine – an agrarian, traditionalist, and provincial society – that were receptive to new ideas. Moreover, the view that Ukrainians were a separate nationality and that their language and culture were worth cultivating found numerous skeptics and detractors among Ukrainians themselves. The pull of the prestigious, more highly developed cultures of the Poles and Russians was difficult to withstand. Yet, inspired by Western examples and convinced that they were responding to the needs of the idealized “narod,” the “national awakeners” persevered.

From the outset, there were important differences in the spread of national consciousness in Eastern and Western Ukraine. On the Left Bank, where Cossack traditions and the memory of self-government were still strong and the intelligentsia more numerous and sophisticated, national consciousness-raising activity got off to a promising start. However, the harsh treatment of the Brotherhood of Sts Cyril and Methodius revealed that once the Ukrainian movement in the Russian Empire transcended certain limits, it faced an implacable and overwhelming enemy in the tsarist government. In Eastern Galicia, progress was more modest and much of the resistance was due to the conservatism of the Greek Catholic establishment. Nonetheless, there were no dramatic setbacks there and the growth of national consciousness, although sluggish, was perceptible. Finally, the parallel, if differing, development had another important consequence: after centuries of limited contact, East and West Ukrainians began to evince a growing interest in each other. The process of national integration had begun.