The New Political Order

After they quelled the uprisings of 1848, the emboldened Habsburgs attempted to undo the revolutionary reforms and to restore the emperor to absolute power. They disbanded parliament, cancelled the constitution, and ushered in a decade of stifling neoabsolutist rule.

But important changes already were afoot, even if they were not yet readily perceptible. In 1849, Count Agenor Goluchowski, a wealthy Polish landowner and confidant of Emperor Franz Joseph, was appointed viceroy of Galicia. There were two important aspects to this appointment: first, in line with Vienna’s autocratic policy, the new viceroy was given broad powers which included supervision of law enforcement, the economy, education, and religion in the province; second, Goluchowski was a new type of Pole who believed that concentration on small but concrete gains would improve the Polish position more than heroic but failed revolts. For the next twenty-five years, Goluchowski, who served thrice as viceroy of Galicia and twice as minister in Vienna, would play a decisive role in fashioning the new political order that would emerge in the province. The growth of Polish influence

While the new viceroy demonstratively emphasized his loyalty to the Habsburgs and his intention of dealing fairly with the Ukrainians, behind the scenes, he quietly and systematically expanded Polish influence in the government of the province.

In 1859, the Habsburg empire came to another decisive turning point when it suffered a severe defeat against the French and Sardinians in Italy. Weakened externally, the Habsburgs were forced to make concessions internally. As a result, the neoabsolutist regime was dismantled and constitutional, parliamentary government was restored – this time permanently. A central parliament was created in Vienna and each province received its own diet. Up to 1873, delegates to the former were selected from among the members of the latter.

To win the support of the upper classes, Vienna created an electoral system that would greatly favor them. Members of provincial diets were elected by four categories or curia of voters: the great landlords, chambers of commerce, townsmen, and rural communes, each of which was represented by a specific number of delegates. In Galicia’s 150-member diet, the great landlords had 44 delegates, the chambers of commerce had 3, the townsmen had 28, and the rural communes (in which landlords could also be elected) had 74.

But the Poles were about to gain even more. In 1867 a familiar pattern was repeated. Defeated in a war with Prussia, the Habsburgs were forced to make far-ranging concessions to the Hungarians, the strongest nationality in the empire. The result was the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which placed about half of the empire, including Transcarpathia, under direct Hungarian rule. The Habsburg empire now became the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hungarian success encouraged the Poles to demand complete control of Galicia. While Vienna refused to acquiesce formally, it did agree to an informal political compromise: in return for Polish support the Habsburgs promised not to interfere in the Polish conduct of Galicia’s affairs. In effect, Galicia was to become a Polish “state within a state.”

The sudden surge in Polish influence in Galician affairs went far beyond their guaranteed majority in the diet. Until 1916 only Poles could occupy the office of viceroy. When, in 1871, a minister for Galicia was appointed in the central government, he, too, was always Polish. The bureaucracy was purged of Germans and quickly Polonized. The school commission was almost competely in Polish hands, and, in 1869, Polish became the official language of education and administration in the province. On the socioeconomic and cultural level, the Poles were incomparably stronger than the Ukrainians.

Having attained power, what did the Poles intend to do with it? To comprehend Polish policies in the 1868–1914 period one must consider the Polish perspective on events, as well as their hopes and goals. The Poles, that is to say, their nobility and intelligentsia – for the Polish peasantry was almost as politically naive as the Ukrainians – were a frustrated people. In the late 18th century, they had been robbed of their statehood and when they rose up to regain it in 1830 and in 1863, their revolts failed dismally. To Ukrainians they may have appeared as arrogant, overpowering opponents, but many Poles were obssessed with their own weakness vis-à-vis the Germans and Russians. After the disaster of 1863, a major shift occurred in Polish thinking, and Goluchowski was a major proponent of it. Rejecting revolutionary activity as counterproductive, Polish leaders propagated a policy of “organic work”: concrete (if mundane) activity that would strengthen Polish society by modernizing it. The conditions were exceedingly favorable for implementing such an approach in Galicia, which therefore, came to be viewed as a Piedmont or base from which the regeneration of the Polish nation would begin.

And what of the Ukrainians, the Habsburgs’ loyal “Tyrolians of the East”? Vienna’s attitude on this issue was reflected in the cynical words of an Austrian statesman: “Whether and to what extent the Ruthenians may exist is left to the discretion of the Galician diet.”⁸ In other words, the Ukrainians were placed at the mercy of the Poles. Given the plans that Polish patriots (many of whom were quite democratic) had for Galicia, their attitude toward Ukrainian national aspirations was naturally negative.

Initially, the Polish approach toward the Ukrainians (especially evident among the conservative “Podolians”) was to negate the existence of Ukrainians as a separate nation and to argue that they were merely a Polish subgroup. Hence, the statement of a Polish leader: “There are no Ruthenians; there is only Poland and Muscovy.”⁹ When the upsurge of Ukrainian activity in 1848 made it difficult to maintain this position, a new line, formulated by Goluchowski, was implemented. It called for discrediting the Ukrainians in Vienna, obstructing their national and social development by all means and at every level, and enforcing their Polonization.

The area in which these policies were pursued with special determination was education. After 1867, Polish replaced German as the language of instruction at Lviv University and in all the technical and vocational institutions. The secondary schools, or gymnazia, were also thoroughly Polonized; by 1914 there were ninety-six Polish and only six Ukrainian gymnazia in the province, that is, one for every 42,000 Poles and every 520,000 Ukrainians. In elementary schools there were three times as many classes available to Poles as to Ukrainians.

Discrimination against Ukrainians existed at every level. For example, in 1907 Polish cultural institutions received ten times as much financial support as did Ukrainian ones. When investments were made, they were usually funneled into the western, Polish part, of the province. At every turn, Ukrainians met not only disinterest but active opposition from the provincial government. They were forced to carry on a bitter, stubborn struggle for each institution, each position, each office, indeed, for each word of Ukrainian.

The all-pervasive, often petty, nature of this confrontation was exacerbated by the deep differences in mentality between Polish and Ukrainian leaders. While the outlook of the Polish intelligentsia bore the imprint of the gentry worldview, that of the Ukrainian intelligentsia was clearly plebian. As Ivan Lysiak Rudnytsky put it: “Every educated Ukrainian was only one or two generations removed from either a parsonage or a peasant hut.” The one common trait in the worldviews of educated Poles and Ukrainians was, to quote Rudnytsky again, that “both communities viewed their conflict as if it were similar to the great 17th century wars between the Polish aristocracy and the Ukrainian Cossacks.”¹⁰