The Polish/Ukrainian Confrontation
As the political and national development of both Ukrainians and Poles quickened, relations between the two peoples went from bad to worse. On almost every major issue the interests of the two nationalities, at least as interpreted by their leaders, clashed: while the Poles were adamant about preserving the unity of Galicia so that it could serve as the basis of their future state, the Ukrainians demanded its division so that they could create their own base in the eastern part of the province; while in Eastern Galicia the Poles constituted the upper classes, the Ukrainians were identified with the lower.
The Ukrainians demanded changes and reforms, while most of the Polish leadership defended the status quo. In short, the Poles were the “haves,” the Ukrainians were the “have-nots” who were unwilling to accept their status any longer.Because of organizational growth within both nations, greater numbers of people were drawn into political activities and conflicts. No longer could the Poles be identified with a coterie of nobles or the Ukrainians with a handful of clerics and intelligentsia, in contrast to circumstances in 1848. By the early 20th century, as both sides mobilized their societies, the Polish/Ukrainian conflict grew from a struggle between two national elites into an increasingly menacing confrontation between two national communities.
There were, to be sure, attempts at compromise. Ukrainian and Polish socialists, such as Ivan Franko and Feliks Daszyński, castigated chauvinism on both sides and urged workers and peasants of all nationalities to cooperate for the sake of their mutual interests. East Ukrainians, like Antonovych and Kulish, fearful that the conflict might jeopardize their haven in Galicia, tried to mediate between the antagonists. At times, Vienna attempted to arrange a settlement, hoping to cool tensions on its sensitive eastern borderland.
Of the several attempts to reach a compromise, the most publicized was the so-called new era of political peace that was to begin in 1890. As a result of an agreement arranged between the Populists, led by Iuliian Romanchuk and Oleksander Barvinsky, on the one hand, and the Galician government represented by the governor-general, Casimir Badeni, on the other, the Ukrainians were to receive concessions (primarily in the cultural and educational fields) in return for their recognition of the political status quo. However, when these concessions were limited to a few new gymnazia, and the provincial government continued to manipulate the elections, the agreement broke down and both sides returned to political warfare. Later efforts to reach an understanding, such as the one in 1908, ended similarly.In the decades preceding the First World War, the Polish/Ukrainian confrontation focused on three main issues: the peasant question, the university controversy, and the demands for electoral reforms. Highlighted by the extraordinarily low wages agrarian workers received on large estates, the peasant question was a perennial problem. By 1900, many peasants were no longer willing to consider emigration as the sole solution to their difficulties. In 1902, in the midst of the harvest season, the peasants (urged on by the Radicals and, somewhat belatedly, by the National Democrats – but criticized by the Russophiles), launched a massive boycott involving over 100,000 agricultural workers of the large estates in Eastern Galicia. Numerous local committees helped to coordinate the strike and to maintain discipline and calm among the participants.
Shocked by this unexpectedly effective demonstration of peasant solidarity, landlords called on the government to “restore order.” Despite the arrest of hundreds, the strikers persevered. The landlords then turned to Polish public opinion with the argument that the strike was actually a Ukrainian attempt to push Poles from their hereditary lands.
Thus, an issue that might have united Ukrainian peasants with similarly exploited Polish ones was used with notable success to heighten the national animosities between them. Eventually, the strike ended with a victory for the peasants. The landlords were forced to raise wages and make other concessions. Its broader significance, however, was that it activated many peasants and drew them into the political struggle.Even more intense, if less widespread, was the conflict at Lviv University. After 1848, Vienna had planned to make the university bilingual – but when the Poles gained control they quickly moved to Polonize the institution. Gradually, the use of Ukrainian, even by professors, was limited and the “Polishness” of the university repeatedly emphasized. Infuriated, Ukrainian students throughout the 1890s mounted a series of protests aimed at reversing this trend. When their protests were ignored, the students raised the demand for the creation of a separate Ukrainian university. The idea caught the imagination of Ukrainian society, including peasants, and large public gatherings were called to support the student demands. Meanwhile, in the Galician diet and the Viennese parliament, Ukrainian delegates repeatedly and vehemently demanded government action on the issue.
But the Poles persisted with their previous policies and, in the initial decade of the 20th century, the situation at Lviv University turned ugly. Gangs of Ukrainian and Polish students, armed with clubs, fought pitched battles in lecture halls; in 1901 Ukrainian students resigned en masse from the university; in 1907 large demonstrations were organized against university authorities; and in 1910, during a fierce melee, a Ukrainian student, Adam Kotsko, was shot and killed. By now Vienna realized that it had to act, and in 1912 it promised that a separate Ukrainian university would be established within five years. The outbreak of war, however, deprived the Ukrainians of this long-sought-after prize.
Yet it was electoral reform that, in the view of the Ukrainian leadership, seemed to be the issue of greatest importance. For if Ukrainians could win fairer representation in the Galician diet and Viennese parliament, they would be in a much better position to improve their lot. The curial system greatly limited the impact of the Ukrainian vote and the Polish-controlled provincial government was notorious for its heavy-handed manipulation of election results. Manipulation occurred in a variety of ways: voter lists were falsified, the time and place of elections were changed only hours before they were to occur, voting boxes were pilfered (an easy matter because Ukrainians did not have vote-counters), and Ukrainian candidates were often jailed on petty charges to prevent them from campaigning. Electoral abuses reached a high point during the “bloody elections” of 1895 and 1897 that took place during the tenure of Badeni, often called “the iron governor.” When Ukrainian peasants protested against the unfair practices, Badeni set the police against them with the tragic result that 10 were bayonetted to death, 30 severely wounded, and over 800 arrested.
But in this area, too, improvements were on the way. At first Vienna and then, in 1907 – after much obstruction and resistance on the part of the Polish leadership – Galicia abolished the curial system and introduced universal suffrage. Although the provincial government still practiced electoral fraud, the number of Ukrainian delegates to both the Viennese parliament and the Galician diet rose steadily thereafter. In 1879 the Ukrainians had three representatives in the former body and after the 1907 election they had twenty-seven; in the Galician diet they had thirteen in 1901 and thirty-two in 1913. Nevertheless, Ukrainians still remained underrepresented, in large part because of the electoral chicaneries of Galician governors.
In protest against these malpractices, Myroslav Sichynsky, a young Ukrainian student, assassinated the governor, Andrzej Potocki, on 12 April 1908.
The incident reflected the dangerous point to which Polish/Ukrainian relations had come. There were, however, more deeply rooted reasons for the rising tensions. Among the Poles, an ultranationalist movement, led by the Polish National Democratic party of Roman Dmowski, was rapidly gaining influence. The Polish National Democrats, like the Ukrainian National Democrats, established a network of organizations among the peasantry and gained great popularity among the urban middle classes, intelligentsia, and students. Their major concern was the growing Ukrainian challenge to Polish control in Eastern Galicia, a foreboding that echoed in the words of the noted Polish social historian Franciszek Bujak: ‘Our outlook in Eastern Galicia is not promising. The fate of the English in Ireland and the Germans in Czech lands … is a bad prognosis for us.”16 Therefore, a primary concern of the Polish nationalists in Galicia was the retention of the Polish “state of possession” in the eastern part of the province. This meant that it was no longer the “Podolians,” a coterie of East Galician nobles, who confronted the Ukrainians but a broadly based Polish movement that stubbornly refused to grant any concessions.Led by their own National Democrats, the Ukrainians responded with equal militancy. They energetically continued their organizational work, confronted the Poles in parliament and the diet on every occasion, and held frequent rallies to demonstrate their growing strength. On 28 June 1914, during a massive rally in Lviv at which thousands of Sich and Sokil members performed drills and gymnastic exercises before a huge and appreciative audience, a messenger rushed up to the podium full of dignitaries with the momentous news that the Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand had been assassinated in Sarajevo. Europe was about to plunge into a horrendous war of conflicting nationalisms.