The Revolution of 1848

The year 1848 has become enshrined as a landmark in modern European history. The reason is that simultaneously throughout much of the Continent revolutions broke out which were to have a profound effect on the future of the societies involved in the events.

The causes of the 1848 revolutions - whether political, socioeconomic, or national - varied from place to place. In some places, like the Austrian Empire, all three kinds of cause were present, although the national question was to give rise to the greatest number of immediate and subsequent changes. For this reason, the 1848 revolution has come to be known, at least in east-central Europe, as the ‘Springtime of Nations.’

1848 as the Springtime of Nations has become a cliche, but cliches sometimes reflect truths, and in the case of Ukrainians in the Austrian Empire the cliche could not be truer. The year indeed witnessed the rebirth of all aspects of Ukrain­ian life in lands under the Habsburg sceptre. In that year alone, Ukrainians estab­lished their first political organization, their first newspaper, their first cultural organization, and their first military units in modern times. They also took part in their first elections. This is to say nothing of the fact that the vast majority of the group - over 95 percent of whom were peasants - were liberated from serfdom. In a sense, a social stratum which virtually coincided with the nationality as a whole was reborn. For the first time since the introduction of serfdom centuries before, peasants were treated as human beings. As such, they now had to be reckoned with in political, cultural, social, and economic life. Given all these factors, 1848 was indeed a springtime for Austria’s Ukrainians.

The revolution in Austria

What had happened in the Austrian Empire to make it ripe for revolutionary activity? After 1815, Austria became a virtual police state concerned with maintain­ing the status quo both within its own borders and within Europe as a whole. The leading proponent of these objectives, Prince Metternich, had a powerful influ­ence over Emperor Franz I (reigned 1792-1835) and, especially, his successor, the inept Emperor Ferdinand (reigned 1835-1848).

Ironically, Galicia proved a major trouble spot for the Austrian Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century. The western, Polish-inhabited regions, espe­cially the autonomous republic of Cracow, continued to be a seedbed for Polish revolutionary activity aimed at reconstituting Polish statehood. In fact, the Cracow republic was seen by Polish patriots as a kind of Piedmont, that is, the territorial basis from which a restored independent Poland would eventually develop. Cracow, therefore, remained a center of revolutionary agitation even after the abortive 1830-1831 revolt against Russia.

By the 1830s, however, certain Polish leaders in Galicia as well as in the Right Bank and other Russian-controlled areas felt that any future success on behalf of a restored Poland must depend upon the support of the peasantry. For its part, the Polish peasantry continued to view the Polish nobility with suspicion and was not about to join in revolution those whom they considered their exploiters. In fact, when several Polish gentry activists in Galicia proclaimed a national and social revolution in 1846, the Polish peasantry, not without the acquiescence of the Austrian government, turned on the gentry estate owners and massacred them. Austrian garrisons eventually put down the uprising, but not before the peasants had done the government’s work and effectively eliminated this latest attempt at Polish revolution. In retaliation, Vienna rescinded the autonomous status of Cra­cow, which henceforth became an integral part of the rest of Galicia.

Two years later, in 1848, the disturbances proved too widespread for the Aus­trian government to control. The causes of the 1848 revolution, which began in Vienna in March, were many. They included news of the February revolution in Paris, which galvanized public opinion in Vienna; unrest in Austria’s northern Italian provinces of Lombardy and Venetia; radical agitation in the Hungarian diet; preparations for elections to an all-German National Assembly in Frankfurt; and a prolonged economic crisis in Austria’s cities. All these factors provided the background for the events leading to the week of 6 to 12 March, when in Vienna several members of the urban educated professional classes (lawyers, doctors, pro­fessors) and students began circulating petitions calling for the immediate intro­duction of civil liberties (freedom of the press, trial by jury, civil rights, academic freedom), emancipation of the peasants, and a constitutional representative gov­ernment. The climax came on 13 March, when students and the liberal urban elite clashed with troops in front of the building of the diet of Lower Austria. Afraid of widespread urban revolution, the imperial government forced the resig­nation of Metternich, who had become the symbol of the bureaucratic police state. That same day, the government announced the end to press censorship and allowed for the formation of a national guard. Then, in April, it permitted the convocation of a constitutional assembly {Reichstag), although it limited the vote to property owners and thereby eliminated participation of the urban working class. Finally, in May the government announced the abolition of serfdom. Thus, within less than two months from 13 March, the Austrian imperial government initiated a series of reforms from above in the hope of counteracting revolution from below. The Habsburgs, however, did too little too late.

Not surprisingly, their greatest problem was with Hungary. The Hungarians had been whipped into a patriotic and anti-Austrian frenzy during the 1840s by their diet’s fiery orator, Lajos Kossuth. Within three days after the 13 March events in Vienna, the Hungarians demanded the creation of a national diet to govern their kingdom’s own affairs as well as a national army (honveds) to provide its own defense. When Vienna refused to allow a separate army, the newly elected Hungarian diet formed one anyway, as well as a separate budget and currency. In response, Vienna dispatched a military force into Hungary, whose newly created national army, now under the leadership of Kossuth, authorized that the imperial ‘invaders’ be resisted with force.

In October, with civil war in Hungary imminent, workers and troops in Vienna rebelled. Emperor Ferdinand had fled from the capital in May, and although the city was finally restored to order after the October rebellion, the weak Habs­burg sovereign was convinced by his closest advisers to abdicate in favor of his eighteen-year-old nephew, Archduke Franz. The transfer of power took place on 2 December 1848. In deference to the liberal spirit of the times, the new sovereign added the name Joseph as a symbolic gesture to the enlightened liberalism of his eighteenth-century predecessor. It was as Franz Joseph that the young emperor was to rule Austria for the next sixty-eight years, until 1916, just two years before the complete demise of the Habsburg Empire.

The accession of a new monarch gave the Hungarians under Kossuth a legal excuse to continue on their independentist political course. Since he was not crowned according to tradition in Hungary - the coronation traditionally held there was not possible in the prevailing revolutionary circumstances — the Hun­garians refused to recognize Franz Joseph as their sovereign. In the face of renewed Austrian military attacks, Kossuth retreated to the eastern city of Debre­cen, where in April 1849 he declared Hungary an independent republic.

The revolution in Galicia and the Ukrainians

The revolution of 1848 had a lasting impact on the political, socioeconomic, and, especially, cultural life of Ukrainians in the Austrian Empire. The achievements by Ukrainians in these three areas were played out not only in Galicia, but in the imperial capital, Vienna, and in Prague as well. Throughout 1848, the Austrian government gave its support to the Ukrainians, both to their efforts to obtain rec­ognition as a nationality and to their attempts to achieve political and cultural rights. In return, the Ukrainian leadership turned a blind eye to the political reac­tion and repressive measures that at the same time were being carried out by Habsburg authorities against certain other peoples in the empire. The inclination of the Austrian government to support Ukrainian demands was actually a heritage from 1846, when, following the abortive Polish revolution in Galicia, Vienna appointed the energetic and innovative Count Franz Stadion as governor of the province. In Vienna’s view, the Polish gentry and intelligentsia were untrustwor­thy. Consequently, Governor Stadion was prepared and expected to use any ele­ment, whether the Polish peasants or the Ukrainian peasants - or, as will become evident, the Ukrainian intelligentsia - to counteract the Polish gentry. Some com­mentators consider this an application of the classic policy of divide and rule (divide et impera), a view which incorrectly presumes that the Polish gentry was united with the Polish or Ukrainian peasantry or with the Ukrainian intelligentsia.

Accordingly, when news of the revolutionary events in Vienna reached Galicia in March 1848, and when in response the Poles immediately established the Polish National Council demanding extensive autonomy for what they considered a purely Polish land, Stadion urged Ukrainian leaders to formulate their own demands. The result was a Ukrainian petition addressed to the Austrian emperor dated 19 April, calling for recognition of their nationality and for the division of Galicia into Polish and Ukrainian parts, a proposal that had actually been put forward by Governor Stadion as early as 1847. Then, on 2 May 1848, under the leadership of L'viv’s Greek Catholic auxiliary bishop, Hryhorii lakhymovych (reigned 1841-1863), the first Ukrainian political organization was established, the Supreme Ruthenian Council (Holovna Rus'ka Rada). One week later, on 10 May, the Supreme Ruthenian Council issued a manifesto declaring that Ukrainians were a people distinct from both Poles and Russians, and that they were ‘part of a great Ruthenian people that speaks the same language and num­bers 15 million, of whom 2.5 million live in Galicia.’¹ The Supreme Council soon had thirty-four branches throughout eastern Galicia, and on 15 May it began pub­lishing (with financial help from Governor Stadion) the first Ukrainian news­paper to appear anywhere, Zoria halytska (L'viv, 1848-57).

Polish leaders in Galicia were displeased with these developments, and almost immediately several polemical pamphlets appeared which argued (1) that the Ruthenians of Galicia were only Greek Catholic Poles, and (2) that Ukrainian was no more than a dialect of Polish. Also, to counteract the Supreme Ruthenian Council, another body known as the Ruthenian Council (Rus'kii Sobor) was set up on 23 May by polonized nobles of Ukrainian origin, who argued that they were the true representatives of Galicia’s Ukrainian population. The Ruthenian Coun­cil issued its own newspaper, Dnewnyk rus'kij (L'viv, 1848), written in Ukrainian (with issues in both a Cyrillic and a Polish-based Latin alphabet) and edited by Ivan Vahylevych, formerly one of the Ruthenian Triad, who by 1848 had become a

The Supreme Ruthenian Council

The first Ukrainian political organization, the Supreme Ruthenian Council (Holovna Rus'ka Rada), issued in L'viv on io May 1848 a manifesto addressed to the Ruthenian people (rusyny) that outlined its ideological beliefs and polit­ical goals.

Brothers!

You know that our Most Illustrious Austrian Emperor and King issued to all the peoples of his realm, including us Ruthenians in Galicia, a decree dated 25 March 1848 that contained a constitution. This means a fundamental legal statute that allows all of our people, through their duly elected representatives, to participate in the law-making process and thereby ensure guarantees for our freedom and well-being.

Among the freedoms given to us is the right of assembly in order to discuss the common social good and to inform our Most Illustrious Ruler of the needs of the people and our province....

We Galician Ruthenians are part of a great Ruthenian people [narod] that speaks the same language and numbers 15 million, of whom 2.5 million live in Galicia. At one time our people were independent and the equal of the most powerful peoples in Europe; we had our own literary language, our own laws, and our own rulers.... As a result of an unfortunate turn of fate and various political misfortunes, our great people gradually declined, lost its independence, its rulers, and fell under foreign rule.

As a result of these misfortunes, many of our leading figures gradually gave up the Ruthenian rite of their fathers, and at the same time lost their Ruthenian lan­guage and left their people, even though the change of rite could not transform their nationality, since Ruthenian blood still flowed in their veins....

But since everything in life changes, and as spring replaces harsh winter, so too, brothers, has our unfortunate status been transformed because of the constitu­tion....

Our first task will be to preserve our faith and to put our rite and the status of our church and priests on the same level as that of other rites.

[We must also] develop and enhance all aspects of our nationality by perfecting our language and introducing it into lower- and secondary-level schools; by pub­lishing a periodical press; by maintaining contacts with our own writers and those of other Slavic peoples; by distributing good-quality and practical books in Ruthe­nian; and by introducing through whatever means our language as an equal medium alongside others in public and governmental affairs.

We will protect our constitutional rights, determine the needs of our people, seek to improve our people’s welfare through constitutional means, and continu­ally defend our rights against any attacks or defamation....

And so, brothers, believe in us Ruthenians and know that only through such

[constitutional] means can we become what we should become - an honorable, enlightened, and free people!!!

source: Zoria hafyska, 15 May 1848, cited in Kost' Levyts’kyi, Istonia pohtychnoidumky kahtstyih uirai'ntstv, 1848-1914, Vol. I (L’viv 1926), pp. 21-24.

firm believer in the need for Polish-Ukrainian cooperation. Galicia’s Governor Stadion was particularly disliked by Polish spokespersons, who argued that there would have been no problems if Stadion had not ‘invented the Ruthenians.’

In the end, such Polish protestation was in vain. Because of the rapidly chang­ing situation, Ukrainian leaders, albeit mostly clergy, were coopted into the political process. Moreover, the new circumstances forced them to justify their existence as a group somehow distinct from the previously dominant one - the Poles. In this way, the 1848 Springtime of Nations brought Ukrainians firmly into the political and national arena of Galicia and, as we shall see, into the Habsburg Empire as a whole.

Governor Stadion was also instrumental in arranging for an early announce­ment in Galicia of the imperial decision to end all labor obligations connected with serfdom. Although the imperial decree was not issued throughout the empire until 15 May, in an effort to undermine those Poles who hoped to make the abolition of serfdom their own political issue, Stadion announced the provi­sions of emancipation in Galicia on 22 April. All serf duties were abrogated, but the peasants were still expected to pay an indemnity to their landlords. Not sur­prisingly, this requirement was to provoke bitter resentment on their part. None­theless, by far the largest stratum of the Ukrainian population, the peasantry, had suddenly as a result of emancipation become a factor to be considered in political life. Indeed, the recently liberated Ukrainian peasants began to exercise their new role as early as June 1848, during elections to the first Austrian parliament.

The preliminary constitution decreed by the emperor on 25 April provided for a bicameral parliament (Reichstag) composed of a House of Lords appointed by the emperor and a House of Deputies elected by property owners. The Austrian parliament was to share legislative powers with the emperor and prepare a proposal for a new constitution. The elected chamber had 383 deputies, and although urban workers had been excluded from the vote, the peasants, as land­holders, were not. In fact, more than one-quarter of all deputies were peasants. Galicia (excluding Bukovina) was allotted 100 deputies, 25 of whom were Ukraini­ans, and of these, 15 were peasants, 8 were Greek Catholic clergy, and 2 were members of the so-called secular intelligentsia (including Governor Stadion). The Ukrainian parliamentary delegation from Galicia was therefore more or less representative of the actual social structure in the eastern half of the province. Despite their limited or non-existent knowledge of German, the Ukrainian peas­ants participated in the debates. Not surprisingly, their primary concern was the question of indemnification for lands acquired as a result of the emancipation from serf duties. One of the most memorable of all speeches in Austria’s first par­liament was delivered by the Galician-Ukrainian peasant deputy Ivan Kapushchak on this topic. In passionate if broken German, Kapushchak drew a clear distinc­tion between the ‘good emperor’ who had brought about the emancipation and the wicked designs of the policy makers surrounding him, who had willfully dis­torted his good intentions. After outlining how the peasants literally had been paying dues for the previous several centuries, Kapushchak argued that if anybody owed anything, it was the lords, who owed indemnity to the peasants.

The other important issue before parliament was the question of a constitu­tional and administrative framework for Austria. Some of the leading intellectuals of the time took an active part in drawing up the final proposal, including the Czechs Frantisek Palacky and Frantisek Rieger, the Pole Franciszek Smolka, and the Austro-Germans Franz Schuselka and Kajetan Mayer. Eventually, a compro­mise was reached between those who favored centralism (mostly Germans) and those who favored federalism (mostly Slavs).

In a sense, however, all the work of the parliament was in vain. After the urban uprising in October 1848, the legislative body moved from Vienna to the small Moravian town of Kromefiz. Because the German name of the town was Kremsier, the body is known in Austrian history as the Kremsier parliament. Regardless of its name, its fate was sealed following the reestablishment of imperial authority, at least outside Hungary, in early 1849. On 7 March, the Kremsier parliament was dissolved, its constitutional proposal scrapped, and in its stead a new constitution (written by Galicia’s Governor Stadion) decreed from above by the imperial gov­ernment - the so-called octroy constitution of 4 March 1849. As for the problem of peasant indemnification to their landlords, some compensation could be expected, but the actual amount and terms would have to await the passage of future laws. In any case, the peasant delegates seemed satisfied that they had received their land and freedom from duties to their former landlords as a result of the emperor’s declaration of 15 May 1848.

While it is true that the constitutional proposals of Austria’s first elected body were never adopted and that the question of indemnification was left in abeyance, the significance of the Kremsier parliament should not be underestimated. Dur­ing its few months of existence, Ukrainians from Galicia (including peasants who less than half a year before had been serfs) participated for the first time in a modern political process. The lessons they learned were important and would not be forgotten.

As well as in the parliamentary deliberations at Vienna and Kremsier, Galician Ukrainians participated in the Slav Congress in Prague. This congress came about as a reaction to the all-German National Assembly convened in Frankfurt in May 1848 to discuss the problem of the German lands. When the Czech leaders Palacky and Rieger were invited to Frankfurt (since from the German point of view Bohemia and Moravia, their homeland, constituted German territory), the Czechs adamantly refused the invitation. Instead, they invited Slavic leaders from within and beyond Austria to meet in June 1848 at their own congress in Prague. The goal of what came to be known as the Slav Congress was to discuss ways to restructure the Austrian Empire so that it would reflect the Slavic majority living there. The Slav Congress was by no means radical in orientation. On the contrary, while it may have reflected a sense of Pan-Slavic unity, it also was undeniably loyal to the Habsburg Empire. A reflection of the latter sentiment was the now-famous letter of rejection sent by Palacky to the meeting of Germans in Frankfurt: ‘Truly,’ wrote the Slav leader, ‘if it were not that Austria had long existed, it would be nec­essary, in the interest of Europe, in the interest of humanity itself, to create her.’²

Galician Ukrainians also came to Prague. Actually, both the Supreme Ruthe- nian Council and the pro-Polish Ruthenian Council sent delegates, three and five in number respectively. In this first public manifestation of Slavic solidarity, the presence of the Ukrainians confirmed that they were a nationality in their own right. In fact, one of the three sections of the congress was devoted specifically to Polish-Ukrainian relations, in particular to the problem of Galicia. Initially, the Polish delegates wanted all of Galicia to become an integral part of a restored Poland, while the Ukrainians wanted to be recognized as a distinct nationality and to have Galicia remain in Austria, although administratively divided into Polish and Ukrainian provinces. The resulting compromise (7 June) called for the use of Polish in schools where Poles predominated and Ukrainian where Ukrainians predominated. While the Ukrainians may not have obtained the division of Gali­cia, they did gain recognition as a distinct nationality in the eyes of their fellow Slavs. This achievement had important psychological as well as political conse­quences, felt beyond the confines of the congress itself. The Slav Congress was dis­solved on 12 June, less than two weeks after it was convened following the imperial army’s bombardment and capture of Prague.

The Galician-Ukrainian national movement: the organizational stage

Ukrainian achievements in the cultural realm proved to be more enduring than was Ukrainian political activity. The first Ukrainian newspaper, Zona halytska, which began to appear in May 1848, continued to be published until 1857. Other journals also began publication in L'viv in 1849 (Halycho-ruskii vistnyk, Novyny, Pchola) and in Vienna in 1850 [Vistnyk dlia Rusynov avsthiskoi derzhavy). The gen­eral growth in Ukrainian publication was remarkable. In 1848 alone, 156 titles appeared, almost five times as many as the largest number to appear in any previ­ous year in Galicia (32 in 1847) - not to mention Dnieper Ukraine in the Russian Empire, where in that same year a total of only one book and a few pages in two other books appeared in Ukrainian. The 1848 figure takes on even greater signifi­cance when it is understood that not until 1879 did more publications in Ukrain­ian appear in any one year. Moreover, most of the serial publications and many of the books and pamphlets appeared in the Galician-Ukrainian vernacular, not in the Slaveno-Rusyn book language. The Church Slavonic alphabet (kyrylytsia) was still used, however.

The year 1848 also witnessed the convocation of the first Galician-Ukrainian cultural society, the Congress of Ruthenian Scholars (Sobor Uchenykh Rus'kykh), which met in L'viv in October. Its ninety-nine participants discussed problems of education, scholarship, and linguistic usage, although nothing significant resulted. More lasting was the Galician-Rus' Matytsia (Halyts'ko-Rus'ka Matytsia), a society established in L'viv to promote education and popular culture. In the 1860s, the Matytsia began to publish an important scholarly and literary journal. Aside from engaging in political activity, the Supreme Ruthenian Council founded a cultural organization, the so-called National Home (Narodnyi Dom). The organization was first housed, in 1849, in a building donated by the Austrian government, but between 1851 and 1864 a fund drive was undertaken which resulted in the construction of a new center that included a museum, a printing shop, and a library. Besides having symbolic and practical value as a venue for Ukrainian cultural events in L'viv, the National Home published books and pro­vided student scholarships.

Another important cultural achievement came as a result of the imperial gov­ernment’s decision in December 1848 to establish the Department (katedra) of Ruthenian Language and Literature in the faculty of philosophy of L'viv Univer­sity. This department became not only the oldest but also the most enduring of all university departments in Ukrainian subjects, existing until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. The first head of the department was a former member of the Ruthenian Triad, lakiv Holovats'kyi. He immediately proceeded to demonstrate in his lectures (some of which were published) that Ruthenian, or Ukrainian, was a distinct Slavic language with a long literary history.

Finally, the Galician Ukrainians had their own military units. Responding to the emperor’s call for the creation of provincial national guards (a call first made in March and then repeated in the fall of 1848), the Ukrainians formed two units: a peasant frontier defense (November 1848) and the Ruthenian Sharpshooters {Ruthenische Bergschutzen, January 1849). Both units were voluntarily constituted as an indication of loyalty to the Habsburg emperor. The more important of the two, the Ruthenian Sharpshooters, had as its specially stated goal the defeat of the ‘conceited’ and ‘arrogant’ revolutionary Magyars. The Sharpshooters accompa­nied Austrian regular army units into Hungary to defend the fatherland, but they arrived after August 1849 and thus too late to shed their blood for the emperor.

The revolution of 1848 in Bukovina and Transcarpathia

As Bukovina was territorially part of Galicia, the Bukovinians participated in the June 1848 elections to the first Austrian parliament. Of the eight deputies from the region, five were Ukrainians, including the peasant leader Lukiian Kobylytsia, only recently released from prison. Kobylytsia soon became dissatisfied with the proceedings in Vienna, returned home, and organized two peasant meetings in late 1848. He was arrested, however, for revolutionary agitation among the peasantry.

The discontent of Kobylytsia and his Ukrainian followers was owing to the unresolved problem of peasant indemnification for their recently acquired land (Bukovina’s peasants were officially emancipated in August 1848, four months after those in other parts of Galicia), and to their opposition to the attempt by local Romanian leaders to separate Bukovina from Galicia. By the imperial consti­tution decreed on 4 March 1849, Bukovina was made into a separate crownland province of Austria. This development had no effect on the national movement, however, and with the exception of a handful of publications, no Ukrainian cul­tural advances were made in Bukovina as a result of the upheavals of 1848.

In Transcarpathia, however, the situation proved very different. In late March 1848, when news of the revolutionary activity in Budapest reached Transcar­pathia’s cultural and religious center of Uzhhorod, the local Greek Catholic hierarchy gave its blessing to those young seminarians who rushed to join the Hungarian national guard. But a very small group led by the Transcarpathian mining engineer Adol'f Dobrians'kyi had other goals in mind. In January 1849, after Hungary’s struggle against the Habsburgs turned into a serious military con­flict, Dobrians'kyi traveled to Vienna and presented a memorandum to Emperor Franz Joseph calling for unity with Galicia’s Ruthenians. Dobrians'kyi then went on to L'viv, where he was received favorably by the Supreme Ruthenian Council, which consequently added the goal of unity with Transcarpathia to its own plat­form.

In effect, from the very outset the Transcarpathian political and national revival as formulated by Dobrians'kyi was associated with Vienna and therefore directed against Hungary’s revolutionary efforts. The association with Vienna was reinforced when the imperial government appointed Dobrians'kyi as Austrian liaison with the tsarist Russian army that arrived in the summer of 1849 to crush the Hungarians. Thus, the Transcarpathian leader was to play an important role in helping those forces that were to destroy the Hungarian revolution.

Another aspect of Dobrians'kyi as well as of his contemporary, the popular writer Aleksander Dukhnovych, was their russophilism. Following in the tradition of those Transcarpathians who in the earlier part of the century had gone to the Russian Empire, Dobrians'kyi and Dukhnovych came to believe that they and their people were part of the Russian nationality. Certain Transcarpathian leaders were, therefore, profoundly moved by the presence of the tsarist troops as they crossed through the Carpathian Mountains on their way to crush the Hungarian revolutionaries.

Russophilism was at this time acceptable in Austria. Hence, after Habsburg imperial forces defeated the Hungarian revolution and Vienna administratively reorganized Hungary, the northeastern sector of the country, inhabited primarily by Transcarpathian Rusyns/Ukrainians, became the Uzhhorod District, and Dobrians'kyi the deputy head and actual administrator. During its brief existence between November 1849 and March 1850, Dobrians'kyi hoped to transform what he considered a Ruthenian district into a semi-autonomous national unit within the empire.

In the realm of culture, the period between 1847 and 1850 saw the appearance of the first schoolbooks and literary almanacs in the Transcarpathian vernacular as well as the establishment of the first cultural society and the publication of the text that later became the Transcarpathian Rusyn national anthem. All these cul­tural developments were almost exclusively the work of the dynamic Greek Catho­lic priest Aleksander Dukhnovych.

Thus, 1848 marked the real beginnings of a Transcarpathian national renais­sance, with cultural and even some political achievements. The first real contacts with Galicia began, although the Transcarpathian movement had from its outset two special particularities: (1) dependence on Vienna in the face of a hostile Hun­garian environment; and (2) the spread of the idea that the local Slavic ihabitants, who called themselves Rusyns or Rusnaks, formed part of the Russian nationality.

The significance of the revolutionary year 1848 for Ukrainians living within the Austrian Empire cannot be overstated. At a time when in Dnieper Ukraine the first efforts at creating a Ukrainian organization, the Cyril and Methodius Broth­erhood, were being liquidated and the leading members of the Ukrainian intelli­gentsia (Shevchenko, Kostomarov, and Kulish) were being exiled from their homeland, Ukrainians in Austrian Galicia and, to a lesser degree, in Hungarian Transcarpathia were making remarkable advances in their national life. In Gali­cia, Ukrainians had their own political and cultural organizations, their own news­papers and publications, and their own deputies to a national parliament. Their largest social group, the peasantry, was emancipated from serfdom, and its mem­bers began to participate in political life. Ukrainians also interacted with other Slavs in the Austrian Empire, and those in Galicia even had their own military for­mations. Moreover, all these developments took place with the blessing, the encouragement, and at times at the initiative, of the imperial government and its representatives.