“The Ukrainian Conquest”62
“As nothing gives more pleasure to a doctor than to observe the gradual recovery of a patient... similarly the greatest pleasure of a historian is to watch the rebirth of a nation which from a morally and politically degraded state advances toward a normal life.”63 These words of Franko, a distinguished contemporary witness, may be supplemented by the statement of a historian writing in the inter-war period: “In a short stretch of twenty years preceding the Great War, a tremendous change has taken place in eastern Galicia: in the place of a depressed peasant mass arose a politically conscious peasant nation.” The same historian, in comparing the balance of strength of Galicia’s two nationalities, concluded that “although the Polish upper class considerably surpassed the Ukrainian leading circles in culture and material power, the Ukrainian peasantry, on the other side, were superior to the Polish peasantry [of western Galicia] in national consciousness, civic spirit, discipline, and even in culture and morality.”64
Toward the end of the century Galicia went through a grave economic crisis.
“A dozen and more years after the administration of the province had passed completely into Polish hands, it was still one of the poorest crownlands of the monarchy.... There is no doubt that during the first twenty-five years of Polish rule little was done to raise the country from poverty, and that Galicia’s [Polish] great landowners and bourgeoisie showed insufficient economic and social initiative.”65 Some 40 per cent of Galicia’s territory belonged to the Iatifundia. The yield of agriculture was the lowest of all Austrian provinces. The peasants used primitive, almost medieval, implements and methods of production. The countryside was entangled in a tragic net of illiteracy, usury, and alcoholism. The progress of urbanization and industrialization was slow; at the turn of the century the number of industrial workers had not yet reached 100,000. Mounting population pressure caused endemic famine; approximately 50,000 people died every year of malnutrition. The Vienna government showed little interest in the development of a distant and strategically exposed province. The provincial Diet and administration combined incompetence with callousness.66The new militancy of the Ukrainian masses was dramatically expressed in the agrarian strikes which, in 1902, encompassed over 400 village communities in twenty districts of eastern Galicia. The peasants refused their labour to the manorial estates, trying to obtain improved wages and more humane treatment. The strike movement had started spontaneously, but organization and guidance was soon given to it by the Ukrainian political parties.67
Other forms of economic self-help were less spectacular, but perhaps more effective in the long run. Population pressure was eased by emigration overseas, mostly to the United States, in part also to Canada and Brazil. It is calculated that from 1890 to 1913 approximately 700,000 to 800,000 Austro-Hungarian Ukrainians (from Galicia and Transcarpathia) left the country; this amounted to between a third and a half of the total population increase for the period.68 Of importance also was the movement of seasonal workers to various European countries, mostly Germany. About 75,000 migrants went there on the average every year from 1907 to 1912.69 Ukrainian organizations made agreements with German authorities concerning the recruitment and working conditions of the migrants, which the Polish press interpreted as evidence of a Prussian- Ukrainian, anti-Polish “intrigue.” Both American immigrants and European seasonal workers were able to save money, a large proportion of which was sent back home. Cash appeared for the first time in the hands of the eastern Galician peasants. This was used for purchase of land. The large estates were frequently badly managed and deeply in the red.
The process of breaking up the Iatifundia among small-holders was known as “parcelling” (German ParzellierungY This involved complicated legal and credit operations. Moreover, it also had political overtones: Polish leaders used “parcelling” to bring to eastern Galicia settlers from the western part of the province. The Ukrainians formed a special Land Bank in 1908. The percentage of eastern Galician land in great estates decreased from 40.3 per cent in 1889 to 37.8 per cent in 1912.70 Simultaneously, the Ukrainian co-operative movement made spectacular advances.71 Its modest beginnings lay back in the 1880s, and it gained momentum in the 1890s. By 1914 the whole country was covered with a tight network of credit unions, co-operative stores, associations for the purchase of agricultural products, co-operative dairies, and so forth. The association Silskyi Hospodar (The Farmer) spread agricultural instruction. A Polish observer noted: “Militant ‘ Ukrainianism ’ has secured in them [the co-operatives] a number of entrenched strongholds and many outposts, and their work has contributed greatly to the rise of a nationalist spirit among the masses. Practical peasant minds can be most easily attracted to a movement when they see that it coincides with their vital, everyday interests.”72 Similar conclusions were reached by a Russian student of the nationality problems of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: “The lot of the Galician peasant is a hard one, and... he needs aid from the educated class. Neither the Polish gentry nor the ‘Muscophiles,’ who expected salvation from a mythical Russian intervention, gave this needed aid. There is no question that the ‘Ukrainians’ have done a praiseworthy job.”73The veteran Prosvita association continued to expand. In 1914 it counted 77 branches and nearly 3,000 local reading halls. Private Ukrainian schools supplemented the deficiencies of the public educational system, especially in the field of secondary and trade schools.
In the last pre-war decade there was also an upswing of the gymnastic and sport associations Sokil (Falcon, following the well-known Czech model) and Sich (named after the Cossack stronghold of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries). Assessing the achievements of two decades, Franko in 1907 reached an optimistic conclusion: “Our impoverished people, who for many years were the object of systematic exploitation and stultification, have by their own strength and energy pulled themselves out of this humiliating condition.... They look with cheerful confidence toward a better future.”74Besides the mobilization of the people, the progress of the Ukrainian community involved the development of an intellectual life corresponding to the needs of a diversified, modern society. Two men were leaders in this endeavour, Ivan Franko and Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866—1934).75 Franko was amazingly productive and versatile. He made outstanding contributions as poet, novelist, literary historian and critic, translator, student of folklore, and political publicist. He was also a living model of intellectual integrity and selfless civic service. A university career had been denied him because of his radical views, but he acted as a mentor to the rising generation of writers and intellectuals. Hrushevsky was a native of Dnieper Ukraine. Appointed in 1894 to the newly established Ukrainian-Ianguage chair of East European history at Lviv University, he deployed there an activity which has well been called “gigantic.” His standard History of Ukraine-Rusf reached the eighth volume by 1913. Elected president of the reorganized Shevchenko Scientific Society, he raised it to the level of an unofficial Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. “For sixteen years (1897-1913) Hrushevsky stood at the helm of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, and during that time the society gained wide recognition in the world of scholarship, published hundreds of volumes... built up a large library and a museum, gathered around itself scores of Ukrainian scholars....
While lecturing at Lviv University, Hrushevsky trained several scholars who later made great contributions to Ukrainian historiography.”76 Next to Drahomanov, Hrushevsky was the eastern Ukrainian who made the strongest impact on Galicia. Franko and Hrushevsky collaborated closely in the Shevchenko Society and on the editorial board of the monthly Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk (Literary and Scientific Herald), founded in 1898. This journal united the best literary talent of Russian and Austrian Ukraine, and exercised great influence as an organ of opinion.Relations between the Ukrainian national movement and the Greek Catholic Church had not been happy in the second half of the nineteenth century. Authoritative circles of the clergy favoured the Old Ruthenian trend while, at the same time, Uniate metropolitans and bishops often displayed obsequiousness toward the province’s Austro-Polish administration. Clerical tutelage over the society was resented by the growing lay intelligentsia, and militant anticlericalism was one of the chief driving forces of the Radical movement. A new chapter opened with the elevation of Count Andrei Sheptytsky (1865-1944) to the Metropolitan See of Halych.77 A descendant of a Polonized family which had produced several Uniate bishops, Sheptytsky reverted to the Eastern rite and was made metropolitan when only thirty-five, in 1900. Sheptytsky is universally recognized as one of the outstanding Slavic churchmen of the century. His pastoral labours cannot be discussed here; it suffices to mention his founding of new monastic orders, liturgical reforms, and promotion of theological studies. While keeping aloof from current politics, Shep- tytsky rendered great services to the Ukrainian cause by the tactful use of his connections in Vienna, and also as a generous patron of the arts. In 1910 Sheptytsky delivered a great speech in the Austrian House of Lords in support of the creation of a Ukrainian university in Lviv. Intellectually alert and aware of the needs of the times, he encouraged the clergy’s participation in civic life. The fact that the Greek Catholic Church was now headed by a grand seigneur who was also an impressive, colourful personality gave a new self-assurance to the Ukrainian national movement. Sheptytsky, however, was not a narrow nationalist but a man of supranational vision: the idea to which he had dedicated his life was the reconciliation of Western and Eastern Christianity. This implied a respect for all the traits of the Oriental religious tradition compatible with Catholic dogma. He made several incognito trips to Russia, and kept in touch with Russian groups sympathetic to the idea of union.