The Organizational Upsurge
In modern times, the Ukrainians of Galicia earned a well-deserved reputation for their organizational skill and social discipline, especially in comparison with their compatriots in the east.
One reason the Galician Ukrainians developed these traits was that they had the opportunity to practice them. Despite their disadvantages vis-à-vis the Poles, after 1861 the Ukrainians of Austria lived in a constitutional monarchy that allowed much greater freedom of association and expression than was possible in the Russian Empire.A variety of other factors, however, also contributed to the organizational upsurge that occurred in Eastern Galicia in the late 19th and early 20th century. The West Ukrainians were directly exposed to such paragons of social discipline as the Germans and the Czechs. More immediate was the impact of the Poles who had embarked on a policy of “organic work,” which called for the strengthening of their society by mobilizing and developing its economic and cultural resources. If the West Ukrainians wanted to compete with the Poles, it was obvious that they would have to adopt a similar approach. Hence, the slogan of the Populists: “Rely on your own resources.” Finally, a new type of leadership, personified by the community activist, or hromadskyi diiach, arose among the Ukrainians in the 1880s. Consisting mostly of pedagogues and especially lawyers, it was both idealistic, committing itself wholeheartedly to the welfare of the people, and pragmatic, in that it understood the demands of modern society and sought to prepare the Ukrainian peasant to cope with them. Educational and cultural achievements
The harbinger of this new tendency was the Prosvita society, founded by the Populists in 1868. Committed to raising the cultural and educational level of the peasantry and, more specifically, increasing its literacy, the Lviv-based society, aided by village teachers and parish priests, gradually established a network of reading rooms and libraries throughout Eastern Galicia.
In these, peasants were encouraged to read the press – often one literate villager would read to a group of his illiterate neighbors – and discuss political and social issues. The popularity of these reading rooms was enhanced when, in time, choirs, theatrical groups, gymnastics societies, and cooperatives were formed in association with them. In fact, by the turn of the century they came to rival the church and the tavern as the hub of village life. As a result, they contributed greatly to the rise of political and national consciousness among the peasantry.Thanks to the dedicated work of such leaders as Anatol Vakhnianyn and especially Oleksander Ohonovsky, by 1914 the Prosvita society had 77 regional branches, close to 3000 reading rooms and libraries, over 36,000 members in its Lviv branch, and about 200,000 members of the village reading rooms. Efforts were also made to organize the village youth. Using the highly successful Czech organizations as a model, gymnastics and firefighting societies called Sokil and Sich were established in 1894. The Radicals, especially Kyrylo Trylovsky, were especially active in this area.
Besides providing young peasants with an opportunity to take part in parades, these youth groups instilled in them an appreciation for discipline, cooperation, patriotism, and education. By 1914 they numbered 974 local branches with over 33,000 members. Organizational growth such as this demonstrated that the Populists were capable of making the transition from activity in ephemeral journals and the loose student groups of the 1860s to the systematic work and broadly based organizations that characterized the 1890s and the early 1900s. To compete with the Populists, the Russophiles established the Kachkovsky Society in 1874, but its membership was much smaller than that of its rivals.
The Galician leadership realized, somewhat belatedly, that in addition to the cultural needs of the peasantry, it would have to address economic issues as well.
Given its social position and mentality, it showed little interest in the revolutionary approach, widespread in the Russian Empire, for alleviating economic inequalities. Instead it favored self-help, that is, the cooperative method of improving the plight of the peasants. An initial attempt to mobilize large numbers of peasants for their own welfare occurred in the 1870s, when the clergy launched a campaign to reduce drunkenness in the villages. The massive rallies and communal oath takings helped to reduce the consumption of alcohol, and the campaign became one of the church’s most concrete social achievements.It was, however, the secular intelligentsia that spearheaded attempts at economic improvement. At first, the Prosvita society sponsored cooperative stores, warehouses, and credit unions. But it could not provide the experienced help and specialized cooperatives that were needed. This need was addressed by Vasyl Nahirny, the pioneer of the West Ukrainian cooperative movement, who had spent a decade studying the well-organized cooperatives of Switzerland. In 1883 he organized the Narodna Torhivlia, a consumers’ cooperative whose goal was to buy and sell products in large quantities, eliminate the middlemen, and pass on the savings to the villagers. By means of his organization, Nahirny hoped to accustom Ukrainians to commercial activity.
Other cooperatives followed. In 1899 the Silskyi Hospodar, led by Evhen Olesnytsky, was founded to teach peasants modern methods of farming, and by 1913 it had over 32,000 members. Yet the most numerous cooperatives were the credit unions, some of which were organized as early as 1873. However, only in 1894, with the establishment of the Vira union, were they put on a stable and well-regulated footing. Charging about 10% for loans, these unions, which numbered in the hundreds, soon drove most moneylenders out of business. Another important economic institution emerged in 1895, when Dnister, an insurance company, was established in Lviv.
By 1907, it had 213,000 policyholders. The growth of the cooperatives led to the organization, in 1904, of a central association of Ukrainian cooperatives that had about 550 institutional affiliates, mostly credit unions, and 180,000 individual members. On the fortieth anniversary of the founding of Prosvita in 1909, activists of the cooperative movement called a congress attended by 768 delegates – the vast majority of whom were young, secular intelligentsia – to plan for the further development of their nation. Reflecting unaccustomed optimism, many of the delegates voiced the opinion that the Ukrainians were finally gaining control over their own fate.An important aspect of the cooperative movement as well as the work of the Prosvita society was that it encouraged the development of a close, harmonious relationship between the intelligentsia and the peasantry, something that the intelligentsia in Russian-ruled Ukraine had not been able to achieve. The fact that many members of the growing intelligentsia were themselves either directly from the village or a generation removed aided this process considerably. The success of the Populists in mobilizing the masses also meant that their ultimate victory over the Russophiles, whose cooperative membership was only about one-fifth as large as that of the Ukrainophiles, was assured. Finally, the growth of the cooperatives had serious repercussions for the Jewish community: the boycotts of alcohol, the credit unions, and consumer cooperatives badly hurt the Jewish tavern owners, moneylenders and shopkeepers, heightening tensions between Ukrainians and Jews and encouraging many of the latter to emigrate. Growth in the urban environment
Heartened by its organizational achievements among the peasantry, the intelligentsia also strove to strengthen its position in the more sophisticated urban environment. Education, especially on the secondary and university levels, became the focal point of its concern. As might be expected, Ukrainians were badly underrepresented on all educational levels.
In the elementary schools, for example, they had only half as many classrooms and teachers as did the Poles. Disparities were even greater in the city-based gymnazia and university, where Poles did everything in their power to prevent the growth of a Ukrainian educated elite. Thus, in 1897, of the 14,000 secondary-school students in the province, 80% were Poles and only 16% were Ukrainians (in 1854, before the Poles took over control of education, the proportions were roughly equal). While thirty gymnazia were Polish, only two were Ukrainian. At Lviv University, Ukrainians, concentrated mostly in the faculties of theology and law, constituted about 30% of its 1700 students. In 1911 in a faculty of about eighty, there were only eight Ukrainian professors. It was clear, therefore, that if they wished to raise their cultural level, the Ukrainians would have to gain greater access to higher education.Because the establishment of each gymanzium required government approval, Poles and Ukrainians carried on a fierce political struggle over every school. By 1914 the latter managed to squeeze four more state-supported gymnazia from the government. The Poles, meanwhile, obtained several times as many secondary and vocational schools. Realizing that reliance on the government would not satisfy their needs, the Ukrainians turned to their own community and, by means of private contributions, founded eight more gymnazia. To help students, especially those from the village, to study in the expensive urban environment, numerous privately funded dormitories were established near the gymanzia and the university.
At Lviv University, as we shall see, the Poles were even more determined to maintain the “Polishness” of higher education. At times, however, they were forced to make concessions. Thus, in 1894, they grudgingly agreed, under pressure from Vienna, to create one more Ukrainian professorship (in history) at the university. Little did they know that this one appointment would have the impact of many.
Because qualified candidates were lacking in Galicia, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the 28-year-old student of Antonovych in Kiev, was invited to assume the new post. With the arrival in Lviv of Hrushevsky, a new era began in Ukrainian scholarship.This greatest of all Ukrainian historians quickly began the publication of his monumental Istoriia Ukrainy-Rusy (“History of Ukraine-Rus’”) with the express purpose of providing the idea of Ukrainian nationhood with historical legitimacy. Almost single-handedly Hrushevsky reorganized the Shevchenko Society into a de facto academy of sciences. The society soon united almost all the leading East and West Ukrainians and included many famous European scholars in its ranks. By 1913 it published, in addition to numerous other works, 120 volumes of its highly regarded Zapysky. Meanwhile, its excellent library and numerous subsections served as a training ground for a new generation of talented scholars.
There were also impressive achievements in literature, associated, first and foremost, with Ivan Franko, one of Ukraine’s leading writers. Combining an unwincing, almost photographic perception of reality with an idealistic, optimistic belief in man’s better instincts, Franko wrote in an extraordinary variety of genres – novels, narratives, psychological and social sketches, satires, poems – and covered a broad range of subjects. Besides the obligatory tales of peasant misery, in his novels Boa Constrictor and Boryslav Is Laughing, he recreated the brutality in the lives of oil workers. His precisely drawn pictures of prison life appeared alongside psychologically perceptive and warm stories about children. And his deep understanding of sociology came through in sketches of the declining nobility and rising intelligentsia. Franko was also an excellent scholar, a courageous polemicist, and, as we have seen, a prominent political activist who was often misunderstood and mistreated by his own community.
Other West Ukrainian writers of note were Vasyl Stefanyk and Olha Kobylianska. The former was renowned for his short, powerful, and highly concentrated sketches of human tragedy as it occurred in the context of village life, while the works of the latter reflected a “longing for beauty” and an “aristocracy of the spirit.” In the arts, such noted painters as Oleksander Novakivsky and Ivan Trush and their many students received encouragement in their work, and were often sent abroad – thanks to the subsidies provided by the new metropolitan, Andrei Sheptytsky. Meanwhile, the world-famous singer Solomea Krushelnytska thrilled the operatic world with her performances, most notably that of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly whose success she ensured.
Another indication of the cultural and institutional growth of the Galician Ukrainians was a rapidly proliferating press. Under the able editorship of Oleksander Barvinsky, the Populist Dilo, founded in 1880, broke the Russophile dominance of the printed media and became the most influential and widely read Ukrainian newspaper. Not to be outdone, the Radicals and other ideological rivals of the Populists also established their own periodicals as did the various educational societies, professional associations, and religious and youth groups. By 1913 the West Ukrainians boasted eighty periodicals, sixty-six in Galicia and the remainder in Bukovyna and Transcarpathia. Political parties
As ideologies evolved, the organizational infrastructure grew, and the need for coordinated participation in the parliamentary system became more pressing, the stage was set for the rise of political parties that would replace the loose populist and Russophile groupings. Unlike the small, radical, underground parties in Russian-ruled Ukraine, the Galician parties developed openly, legally and – in their attempts to appeal to as many voters as possible – adopted a generally moderate tone. Another difference between East and West Ukrainian political parties hinged on the national issue. While the former agonized over its importance relative to socioeconomic concerns, the latter, even the most socialist among them, clearly stressed their membership in one, large Ukrainian nation, demanded equality with the Poles, and declared that their ultimate goal was independent statehood. The demand for independence was not surprising; other nationalities in the Habsburg empire had long since voiced similar aspirations. With the rising militancy of the West Ukrainians, it was only a matter of time before they would do the same. Thus, in 1896 when the young Radical Iuliian Bachynsky first openly advocated the union of all Ukrainians in an independent state in his book Ukraina Irredenta, his message had an electrifying effect on nationally conscious Ukrainians.
As we have seen earlier, it was the Radicals who, in 1890, formally constituted themselves into a political organization and thereby laid claim to being the first Ukrainian political party. Guided by Drahomanov and led by Franko and Pavlyk, they espoused “scientific socialism,” adopted a critical stance toward the Greek Catholic clergy because of it social conservatism, and advocated cooperation with the Polish workers and peasants. In 1895 they “nationalized” their program by declaring that socialism could be achieved best, in the long run, in an independent Ukrainian state and, in the short run, in a fully autonomous Ukrainian province in the Austrian Empire. However, the enmity of the clergy, which blocked the Radicals from access to the village, the lack of a Ukrainian proletariat, dependence on Polish socialists, and factionalism prevented this dynamic, innovative party from obtaining a broadly based following in Galician society.
In 1899 a regenerated version of the Populists, led by Evhen Levytsky and Volodymyr Okhrymovych (and joined by Hrushevksy and Franko, who had left the quarreling Radicals), formed the National Democratic party. Formulating their program so as to appeal to disgruntled Radicals and disillusioned Russophiles, the National Democrats also made national independence their long-term goal, while autonomy, together with loyalty to the Habsburgs, was their short-range objective. In other respects, the party espoused a typically liberal platform and avoided controversial social issues. Its moderate stance and the backing of such populist organizations as Prosvita soon made the National Democrats the largest Ukrainian party in Galicia.
Two other parties appeared at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. In 1899, the Marxists Mykola Hankevych and Semen Vityk founded a Social Democratic party to represent the interests of the Ukrainian workers. That same year, some of the clergy formed the Catholic-Ruthenian Alliance. However, both parties had little success because, in the first case, there were too few Ukrainian workers to provide the Marxists with a social base, and, in the second, most of the young Ukrainophile clergy was more attracted by the outspoken nationalism of the National Democrats than by the stodgy conservatism of the clerical party.
In order to attract peasant support, all the parties resorted to the viche, public gatherings called by party activists in the countryside to discuss and debate issues of general concern. Often peasants participated in these gatherings in large numbers. During the election campaign of 1905–06, for example, about 20,000 people came to a National Democratic viche – a telling indication of the growing political awareness spreading among the peasantry.
As the organizational and political strength of the Ukrainophiles grew, that of the Russophiles declined. For the younger generation of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and even for the semieducated peasants, the iazychie language was too artificial, the identification with the Russians too farfetched, the social conservatism of the Russophiles too reactionary, and their dependence on foreign support too demeaning. Russophile attempts to compete with the Ukrainophiles in organizational terms met with little success: in 1914, their Kachkovsky Society had only 300 reading rooms compared to the Prosvita’s nearly 3000; while the Ukrainian cooperative union had over 900 institutional members, the analogous Russophile organization had 106. Matters were no better in politics. In 1913, thirty Ukrainophile delegates were sent to the Galician diet and only one Russophile.
Hoping to stem their decline, in 1900 the younger, more-aggressive generation of the Russophiles adopted a “new course” that called for total identification with Russia. They founded the Russian National party, obtained even greater subsidies from the tsarist government, and agitated for the conversion of Galician Ukrainians to Orthodoxy. In order to sow dissension among the Ukrainians, as well as to encourage conservatism, the Polish aristocrats in Galicia began to back the Russophiles. Consequently, the Russophile camp was preserved from complete disintegration largely because of support from tsarist officials and Polish landowners. Eastern Galicia: a Ukrainian stronghold
In 1907 the noted Polish-Jewish liberal Wilhelm Feldman wrote: “The 20th century has seen many nations rise from the ashes but there are few cases of rebirth so rapid and energetic as that of the Ukrainians of Austria … their unexpected and vigorous growth is mostly the result of self-help and hard-fought gains.”15 While Feldman did not mean to imply that the West Ukrainians had overcome all their troubles – they were still among the empire’s poorest and politically most underrepresented peoples – he did stress that they were gaining momentum and quickly developing into a major force. As their organizations proliferated, the West Ukrainians demonstrated that they were finally taking charge of their own affairs and that their national movement was a broadly based, multifaceted phenomenon. In short, it was clear that if and when an opportunity for independent statehood appeared, the West Ukrainians would be ready to grasp it.
The burgeoning national activity in Galicia also had a major effect on relations between East and West Ukrainians. Actually, it was easterners, such as Antonovych, Konysky, Kulish and later Drahomanov and Hrushevsky, who first realized Galicia’s potential for functioning as a Piedmont or base of national growth. As early as the 1860s they cooperated with Galician periodicals and financially supported West Ukrainian cultural institutions. As these publications and institutions grew, so, too, did the easterners’ participation in them.
By the early 20th century, East Ukrainians were frequent correspondents and subscribers to the Galician press; scholars and literary figures from both regions often worked together in the Shevchenko Society; students from Russian-ruled Ukraine frequently enrolled in Ukrainian summer courses in Galicia; and, especially after 1905, East Ukrainian emigres often found refuge and established their headquarters in Lviv. As it observed Ukrainian life in the West, the repressed Ukrainian intelligentsia of the Russian Empire was greatly encouraged to see that what for itself was still a dream was turning into a reality in Galicia. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians of Galicia also benefited from the influx of first-rate intellectuals and from the inspiring feeling that they were not a small, isolated people of only about 4 million, but members of a large nation of 25 million. Thus – because of the rights guaranteed by the Austrian constitution, the pressure to organize in order to compete with the Poles, and the moral and intellectual support of the East Ukrainians – small, impoverished and backward Galicia emerged as a bastion of the Ukrainian national movement.