The Intellectual Awakening

The end of the Napoleonic wars initiated a long period of international and internal peace. But during these drowsy Biedermeier years an indige­nous intellectual life began to take shape among Galicia’s Greek Catholic clerical intelligentsia.

The next step, in 1832, was the formation of a patriotic circle among the students of the Greek Catholic theological seminary in Lviv. The leader of the group was Markiian Shashkevych (1811-43), a talented poet and an inspiring personality. His closest associates were Iakiv Holovatsky (1814-88) and Ivan Vahylevych (1811-60). The three young men were nicknamed “The Ruthenian Triad.’’⁹

What differentiated the Triad from their predecessors and older con­temporaries was their determination to lift the vernacular to the level of a literary language. They decided to publish an almanac containing samples of folk poetry and some original works. After many difficulties with censorship, a small volume appeared in 1837: Rusalka Dnistrovaia (The Nymph of the Dniester). It was printed in Buda in Hungary, where censorship was more lenient than in Galicia. ^rDne Rusalka was the begin­ning of modern Ukrainian literature in Galicia, and also a milestone in the formation of national consciousness.

The Rusalka Dnistrovaia may appear today as completely innocuous and devoid of political significance, but contemporaries felt this “linguistic revolution’’ to be radical and dangerous. Shashkevych and his friends had further plans: they started a systematic collection of folk- Ioristic materials and intended to publish educational literature for the peasants.

Shashkevych and his circle were well aware that the Galician “Ruth- enians” and the “Little Russians’’ across the Austrian-Russian boundary were one and the same people. They were stimulated by the young ver­nacular literary movement in eastern Ukraine, and by personal contacts with some scholars of Ukrainian background at Russian universities (Iz­mail Sreznevsky, Mykhailo Maksymovych, Osyp Bodiansky). The latter were by no means Ukrainian nationalists, but they encouraged their Galician friends’ romantic enthusiasm for the popular language and folk- Ioristic studies.

Another inspiration emanated from the Czechs.¹¹ The spectacular achievements of the Czech national movement were an obvious model for Galician “ Awakeners. ” Through the mediation of Karel Vladislav Zap, a Czech man of letters employed in the Galician administration, Holovatsky and Vahylevych established contacts with the leading Czech Slavists, and contributed to Prague periodicals. Both the Czechs and the Galician Ukrainians inclined to an Austro-Slavic political program. In an article published in 1846, the outstanding Czech publicist, Karel Havlfcek, called Ukraine “a lamb between two wolves,” Russia and Poland, and “an apple of discord thrown by fate between these two na­tions.” He advised Austria to support the Ukrainians in Galicia, who then would be in a position to influence their compatriots in the Russian Empire.¹² Iakiv Holovatsky expressed, also in 1846, strikingly similar views in an article published in a German journal.¹³ After describing the social plight and cultural stagnation of his people, oppressed by the Pol­ish aristocracy and neglected by their own reactionary high clergy, Holovatsky explained why, in spite of these unsatisfactory conditions, the Galician Ruthenians felt no attraction toward Russia.

The anti-Russian revolt in Congress Poland (1830—31) caused a bur­geoning of underground activities in Galicia. These culminated, fifteen years later, in the ill-starred revolt of 1846. Polish conspirators, who thought of their country in its pre-Partition frontiers, extended their prop­aganda to the Ukrainian community.¹⁴ The attempts at proselytizing among the peasantry gave birth to a propagandistic literature in the Ukrainian vernacular. But this agitation met no favourable response. Revolutionary propaganda was more successful with educated Ukrain­ians. At least some segments of the Greek Catholic intelligentsia were susceptible to the libertarian appeal of the Polish cause. A conspiratorial group formed, in 1833—4, among the students of the Lviv seminary. But even before its suppression by the authorities, in 1838, it met with oppo­sition from the ranks of the young people themselves. Some Ukrainian members of the underground Association of the Polish People demanded that its name be changed to “of the Polish and Ruthenian People,” but this proposal was rejected with scorn.¹⁵ This rigidity of the Polish revolu­tionaries led to an anti-Polish reaction, and the Ruthenian national cur­rent, headed by the Shashkevych circle, gained the upper hand among the seminarians. The wider question of the Polish impact on the Galician “Awakeners” requires a double-edged answer. European liberal ideas reached Ukrainians of that generation mostly through Polish channels. On the other hand, the assertion of a separate Ukrainian nationality nec­essarily implied a struggle against the traditional Polish hegemony. “The work was accomplished quietly and without much ado. The Poles lost their hold on a nation which only a few years before had been closely as­sociated with and hardly distinguishable from them. There was no need for [the governor of Galicia] Count Stadion to ‘invent’ the Ruthenians in 1848; he already found them there.”¹⁶