Within the Habsburg Empire

The Austrian Empire, especially the Austro-Hungarian Empire after 1867, differed radically from the Russian and German empires. Although it had accumulated diverse territories over the centuries, it had never formed a strong centralized government or a nationalizing state in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In official documents and censuses, the Austrian government classified these Ukrainian speakers as “Ruthenen” (Ruthenians), which came from the term Rusyn, which many members of the local population called them­selves. By categorizing themselves as Rusyny they identified themselves with the Kiev Rus state. Although these peasants understood that their eth­nic and religious backgrounds separated them from their Polish neigh­bours, their distinctiveness did not constitute a clear national consciousness.⁷³ Only at the end of the nineteenth century, as the Ukrainian national move­ment expanded its influence, did they begin to adopt the modern term “Ukrainian” to better describe themselves and to separate themselves from their non-Ukrainian neighbours.⁷⁴

By the end of the eighteenth century, the Austrian Empire controlled three Ukrainian- speaking territories: Transcarpathia, Galicia, and Bukovina. Despite the preponderance of Ruthenians in these provinces, all three pos­sessed ethnically mixed populations and non-indigenous noble elites. With the incorporation of these territories into the empire, the Austrian authori­ties retained the Polish nobility (szlachta) in Galicia, the Romanian boyars in Bukovina, and the Hungarian nobles in Transcarpathia to rule over the peasants.

Although the Ukrainian speakers constituted the majority of the popu­lation in Eastern Galicia (62 per cent of the population in 1910), they did not possess political control of this region. Social divisions reflected na­tional divisions: Poles formed the majority of the great landowning class, and of the 1,500 great landowners who owned 40 per cent of the land in Eastern Galicia, only 47 identified themselves as Ruthenians. Over 90 per cent of the Ruthenians worked as peasants; few - if any - belonged to the middle class.⁷⁵ Most of those who lived in the Galician towns and cities classified themselves as Poles or Jews.⁷⁶

Unlike their compatriots in Eastern Galicia, the Ruthenians in Bukovina composed a plurality of the population (38.4 per cent of the province, ac­cording to the Austrian census of 1910). This province was a distinct ad­ministrative entity from 1775 to 1786, when the authorities united it with Galicia. After 1849 it formed a separate political unit. A Ukrainian-oriented intelligentsia emerged in this predominantly Orthodox crownland only at the end of the nineteenth century, after the expansion of its elementary school system and after the establishment of the University of Chernowitz in 1875. This Ukrainian Orthodox intelligentsia worked very closely with its Galician Greek-Catholic counterpart, its role model, in developing the Ukrainian identity in this region.

As the largest Slavic group in Bukovina, the Ruthenians competed with the Romanians (who represented 34 per cent of the province), who also sought to gain control of it.⁷⁷ Ruthenian efforts to divide Bukovina into a northern part (which contained the Ukrainian-speaking majority) from the southern part (which contained the Romanian-speaking majority) failed prior to the outbreak of the First World War.⁷⁸

Transcarpathia constituted the most illiterate, the most impoverished, and the most isolated area within the entire empire.

This official Magyarization limited the size and the impact of local Ukrainian intelligentsia, thwarting its efforts to mobilize the Ukrainian­speaking masses. By 1910, fewer than 1 per cent of the teachers, notaries, lawyers, priests, or journalists identified themselves as Ukrainian speak­ers.⁷⁹ In this region, the Hungarian, Russian, and local Rusyn identities competed with the Ukrainian identity and attracted many (if not the ma­jority) of the small educated population.

Although the Rusyns in Hungarian-controlled Transcarpathia did not enjoy the same official support as did their compatriots in Austrian- controlled Galicia and Bukovina, all of the empire’s Ukrainian speakers lived in a state that tolerated the slow emergence of a civil society, however weak its implementation on both sides of the realm.⁸⁰ Not only did the Habsburgs allow religious and cultural diversity, they also permitted broad civic and economic initiatives on the part of their subjects.

By allowing the peasants legal remedies in their struggles against their landlords, even granting them the right to sue the nobles in court, Maria Theresa and Joseph II (ruled: 1780-90) hoped to strengthen the peasants as a social class, not to set them against their lords. Although the peasants did not always win their lawsuits, this initiative transformed the Ruthenian masses in Galicia into loyal supporters of the Habsburg dynasty until the end of the monarchy in 1918. Austria, for the most part, operated as a Rechstaat, a state based on laws, however imperfectly implemented.

In addition to protecting peasants within the institution of serfdom, Austrian policies also helped create the Ukrainian intelligentsia, which emerged from within the ranks of the Greek Catholic Church. Like other European monarchs, Maria Theresa and Joseph II sought to subordinate the church hierarchy to Austria and to transform clergymen into state of­ficials who would represent the secular authority of the state. By introduc­ing policies that promoted equal rights for all Christian faiths within their kingdom, they strengthened the Ruthenian clergy, who had lived in pov­erty and ignorance. Maria Theresa, moreover, decreed that Austrian au­thorities employ the term “Greek Catholic” (instead of “Uniate”) in order to promote the equality between the Greek and Roman rites.⁸¹

In order to transform these clergymen and clergywomen into efficient emissaries of the state, the Austrian authorities created a number of insti­tutions to educate them properly. Maria Theresa and Joseph II established Greek Catholic theological seminaries in Vienna, Lemberg, Ungvar, and Czernowitz in the 1770s and 1780s. In 1784 the Austrian government founded the University of Lemberg and allowed members of the theologi­cal faculty to give lectures in Old Church Slavonic, the Ruthenian church language. In 1808 the authorities elevated the Greek Catholic Lemberg bishopric to the rank of Metropolitan See of Galicia.⁸²

But even with the Austrian control of Galicia, the Ruthenian clergy and hierarchy continued to adopt Polish as their working language. Church leaders believed that the vernacular represented a vulgar, common lan­guage and prohibited their clergy from employing their native language in official correspondence. They found only Polish and Old Church Slavonic acceptable languages.

Under these circumstances, many Greek Catholic priests did not know how to read or write Ruthenian, the language of their parishioners. Many candidates for the priesthood, moreover, did not even know their prayers in that language.

As Austria emerged as a liberal autocracy, the Habsburg Monarchy be­came a haven for Poles, Ruthenians, and other non-German groups. After the great Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Austria’s new constitu­tion proclaimed that “all nationalities in the state enjoy equal rights, and each one has an inalienable right to the preservation and cultivation of its nation­ality and language” not only in private life, but also in schools, the civil ser­vice, and public life.⁸³ The leaders of these emergent non-German national movements then employed their limited constitutional freedoms and sought not only to enhance the quality of life of their national groups within the empire, but also to connect their movements with those of their compatriots within Romania, Serbia, and the German, Ottoman, and Russian empires.

Austria, although a liberal monarchy, did not constitute a democratic society. Elected deputies held the right to initiate legislation, supervise the activities of the government, and impeach its ministers, but the emperor, not the majority party or coalition of parties in the house of deputies, chose the Austrian government’s ministers.

Despite these limitations, the Austrian political system after 1848 evolved in a semi-democratic direction. It allowed elected representatives; held free, generally fair and frequent elections; tolerated freedom of ex­pression and voluntary associations; established an independent judiciary and an impartial and reasonably neutral civil service. This political envi­ronment differed radically from that prevailing in Russia, which never ap­proximated the civil society Austria had created.⁸⁴

Living under a system of constitutional law, the Ukrainian movement in Austria-Hungary became a mass movement by the eve of the First World War.⁸⁵ Concentrated in Eastern Galicia, with its capital of Lemberg (Lwow/ Lviv), it inspired the creation of thousands of Ruthenian civic organiza­tions - clubs, banks, schools, bookstores, credit unions, and cooperatives that promoted the Ukrainian idea in the region.

Most importantly, by the mid-nineteenth century the leadership of the Ukrainian movement in Galicia considered itself an integral part of the Ukrainian homeland controlled by St Petersburg. During the revolutions of 1848, Austria’s Supreme Ruthenian Council (Holovna Rus’ka Rada) de­clared that Ruthenians did not constitute a part of the Polish or Russian nations nor did they reside solely in the Austrian Empire. It asserted that Austria’s Ruthenians constituted a part of a larger nation numbering fif­teen million.⁸⁸ By identifying the Greek-Catholic Ukrainians in Austria with their Orthodox compatriots in Russia, this organization started the process of empowering the Ruthenians in Austria both psychologically and politically.

By establishing various civic, educational, and economic associations (not possible in the Russian Empire), the Galician Ukrainian populists penetrated the countryside. By the end of the nineteenth century they cre­ated three political parties, the Radical Party (est. 1891), the moderate National Democratic Party (est. 1899), and the Marxist Social Democratic Party (est. 1900). Each competed for votes among Ukrainians but cooper­ated with each other after the elections.⁸⁹

The Austro-Hungarian government introduced another major electoral breakthrough at the imperial level in 1907.⁹⁰ It abolished the curial system of elections and instituted the general, equal, direct, and secret ballot, but only for men. This measure gave Ukrainian men their first opportunity to exert influence throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire by parliamenta­ry means, even though they received only half of the mandates due them based on proportional representation. Each Ukrainian deputy generally represented 102,000 Ukrainians, whereas one Pole legislated on behalf of 52,000.⁹¹ Despite extensive gerrymandering and election fraud, the Ukrainians in Galicia elected twenty-seven deputies (seventeen National Democrats, three Radicals, two Social Democrats, and five Russophiles) in 1907. Together with the five Ukrainian deputies from Bukovina, they formed a small group in the 516-member Reichsrat, Austria’s parliament, but not enough “to overcome the Polish dominance of Galician politics.”⁹²

In the 1890s the Ukrainian national movement in Galicia shifted from the cultural stage to the political stage. Nationally conscious Ukrainians in the Habsburg Monarchy started to abandon calling themselves “Ruthenians” (their traditional name) and assumed the name “Ukrainians,” a national designation that the Ukrainian intelligentsia within the Russian Empire ad­opted by the early twentieth century.⁹³ In 1895 the Radical Party’s Julian Bachynsky published Ukraina irredenta, which espoused the political inde­pendence of Ukraine five years before the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party in Kharkov adopted a similar slogan. Bachynsky defined Ukraine as the contiguous territory from the Sian River in the Habsburg Monarchy to the Caucasus, including the nine Ukrainian-speaking tsarist provinces.⁹⁴ Soon all three Ukrainian parties in Galicia accepted the idea of Ukrainian inde­pendence as their ultimate goal.