the Ukrainians, whether they lived in Galicia, in Bukovina or in
Carpatho-Ukraine. The language question was still being bitterly
debated but at this moment there were two leading parties.
The conservatives, and they included a large part of the Uniat clergy
and the richer and more prosperous sections of the laity, held out
strongly for the old Church Slavonic. They still maintained the theory
that there was almost something sacred in the maintenance of the
traditional language and they felt vaguely that there was something
heretical and impious about the attempts to read and write in the
language of the ordinary peasants.
On the other hand the influence of those who desired to approximate the
language to Russian increased. The results of the intervention of the
Russian army in its fight against the Hungarians had had a great effect
upon the population of Carpatho-Ukraine in particular. Some of their
ablest leaders, such as Dobryansky and Dukhnovich, had definitely taken
sides with the invaders and had retired with them to Russia on their
withdrawal. From this time on a large part of the people of this area
remained devoted to the Russian cause and continued to use a jargon
which they confidently believed to be Russian. The same was true to a
lesser extent in Bukovina, and the Moscophile party in Galicia was very
important.
For a while it even seemed that the conservatives would make common
cause with them. They gradually lost hope in Austria. They realized
that the defeats of the Austrian army were jeopardizing the security
of the Empire, and the Austrian recognition of the Polish interests in
Galicia cut them to the quick. Under such circumstances they idealized
the Empire of Nicholas I and paid little attention to the results of
the Crimean War. They saw only that for a moment the Russian army had
offered a brighter prospect to the Ukrainians of Eastern Ukraine.
They also completely ignored the fact that even under the conditions
prevailing in Galicia they were still able to have certain political
rights which were completely denied in Eastern Ukraine.
On the other hand, the younger generation passed under the influence of
Shevchenko. They read the writings of Marko Vovchok and they realized
the weaknesses of Imperial Russia. They had learned something of
western ideals from study in Vienna and elsewhere and they felt more
strongly the advantages of the more democratic tendencies which they
learned from the West and from the modern literature of Eastern Ukraine.
Thus the stage was set for a bitter struggle in Western Ukraine as
a whole and it lasted for a couple of decades before there came the
definite triumph of those forces which sought to develop the national
tradition. Some even went so far as to argue for the creation of a
definite Ruthenia which would include all of the Ukrainians in the
Hapsburg dominions and sought to differentiate themselves both from the
Poles, the Russians and the Eastern Ukrainians. They glorified as well
as they could the government of Austria and promised absolute loyalty
to the Hapsburg rulers.
It soon became evident, however, that in its simplest and baldest form
this position too was impossible. The differences between them and
their neighbors proved to be greater than those between them and the
Eastern Ukraine and it was not long before this idea went the way of so
many other opinions in Ukrainian history.
The entire controversy was based upon a curious misconception. The
Moscophiles knew little more of Russia than that the Russian armies had
successfully invaded Hungary in 1849. They knew very little about the
difficulties of the Ukrainians resident in Russia and they knew little
more about the development of life in Eastern Ukraine. At the very
moment when they were dreaming of how much better off the Ukrainians
were in Russia, the Ukrainians of the east were looking hopefully to
Galicia for a freedom which they did not have at home.
It was at this moment that the first copies of the _Osnova_ began
to arrive in Lviv and the other cities. Then came in quick succession
the news that this journal had ceased to exist and that a ban had been
imposed on all Ukrainian writings in Russia. This startling news was
followed by the appearance in Lviv of Kulish and of other Ukrainian
authors who brought eye-witness accounts of the forcible suppression
of Ukrainian culture in the land where the modern revival had started.
The arrival of these refugees from their envied homeland started to
turn the scale in the larger part of Galicia. It made it clear to the
younger and more alert people that they had been mistaken and that
much of the boasted well-being of the Ukrainians of Russia was only a
mirage. They realized the advantages of their own position and they set
to work to use the native language--sometimes in a Galician dialect
which differed somewhat from that employed by Shevchenko and the
writers from the left bank of the Dnyeper.
For the next decades as we have seen, the bulk of Ukrainian literature
written in Eastern Ukraine was published in Lviv. The young men came to
know the refugees and emigrants and slowly but surely the century-old
barrier between the provinces began to break down. For the first time
in centuries there came a real transfer of ideas between Eastern and
Western Ukraine.
This movement was greatly assisted by the work of Mykhaylo Drahomaniv,
one of the most brilliant of the publicists, who had profited by the
relaxation of censorship in Russia during the early seventies. As
a professor of the University of Kiev, he came in contact with the
various socialist parties of Russia and then in 1876, after the renewed
ban on Ukrainian work, he emigrated to Switzerland where he could work
more freely. Later he became a professor at the University of Sofia in
Bulgaria, where he died in 1895. Drahomaniv continued the ideas of the
Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius in his belief that there should
be developed a federal union of all the Slavs, but he differed from the
earlier group in emphasizing the necessity of adapting Slavonic life
to the progressive European thought of the seventies and eighties and
in emphasizing freedom of the individual, socialism, and rationalism.
He realized also that in such a case it would be necessary to bring
together all the natives of Ukraine and his active work was devoted
to bringing this about. Thus he corresponded freely with friends in
Galicia as well as in Eastern Ukraine. He collected money to aid in
the publication of journals at Lviv which would be favorable to his
ideas and at the same time he worked to establish contacts between
the thought of Ukraine and that of the western world. His influence,
exerted upon both Moscophiles and nationalists, did much to weaken the
former, for he was able to show that they knew little and cared less
about the accomplishments of Russian literature and that it was idle
for them to think of inclusion in a Great Russia on the basis of their
chimerical dreams.
His ideas were naturally opposed by the more conservative classes, who
were still trying to support the artificial Church Slavonic language,
and they repelled many because of their social hypotheses. Even the
young Franko was arrested because it was supposed that he was in
contact with Drahomaniv. Nevertheless, his position won adherents
constantly and proved a strong ferment in the hitherto sterile
controversies that had been going on.
Drahomaniv laid great stress upon the Ukrainian development in Galicia,
for he realized that there was here the only possibility of obtaining
some experience in political organization. Bad as the government of
Austria-Hungary was, there were possibilities for the Ukrainians
to make their influence felt along political lines. There was no
possibility of this in Russia, where party activity was still entirely
forbidden.
Under the various compromises that had been made in Austria-Hungary
after the establishment of the Dual Monarchy, Galicia had passed
entirely into the hands of the Poles, who furnished a large part of the
higher officials of the province under Austrian rule. However, their
power was not absolute, for it was the consistent policy of Vienna not
to solve any of the main questions that confronted the Empire but to
endeavor to maintain a balance between the various peoples in a given
province, playing off one against another and thus preventing any
definite lineup against the central authority.
This had been the method adopted in 1848, when it looked at one time as
if Austria would concede many rights to the Ukrainians in the province
and even allow the establishment of a Ukrainian university at Lviv. It
was never done, for the swing of reaction had blocked all moves in this
direction. Nevertheless, much could be accomplished, if the Ukrainian
population were really awakened to demand their rights and throughout
the eighties a larger and larger number of persons appeared qualified
to take the post of leadership in the undertaking.
In many ways Ivan Franko played the leading role in this. As a
journalist, novelist and poet, he worked steadily and effectively to
arouse the people. He pointed out the economic needs of the province,
he pictured the social defects of society, he translated into Ukrainian
many of the masterpieces of European literature, and he worked
energetically on all the progressive papers of the area.
As early as 1868 there had been established in Lviv a cultural
society, the Prosvita, and a little later in 1873 there was set up
the Shevchenko Society, with the idea of publishing serious books in
Ukrainian. Progress was very slow and it was more than ten years before
enough funds were available to undertake any important work. Then it
commenced to prosper. It was renamed the Scientific Society in 1892,
and in 1898 it was again reorganized as the Shevchenko Scientific
Society. It attracted the attention of scholars everywhere for the
excellence of its publications. This and many other activities made
Galicia the real centre for Ukrainian work and it gave a vitality
to the Ukrainian cause which was impossible in Russia, where the
censorship tried to block everything that was done.
Early in the nineties there was made an attempt to unite the Poles
and Ukrainians for political purposes but it came to nothing. By the
beginning of the twentieth century, there had come a definite split
between the two nationalities, and Polish and Ukrainian parties were
set up.
In one sense this separation had a tendency to hold back the securing
of high posts by the Ukrainians, for the Poles, with Viennese backing,
still retained their control of the province. On the other hand it
trained the Ukrainians to act together and to take a more active
interest in politics. It forced them to engage in many educational
activities and, as they had done so often in Austria, to lay the
foundation for their own school system, to be supported by their own
funds. It encouraged them to engage in various financial enterprises
on their own behalf, and although their economic situation remained
unfavorable, demands were made for the establishment of a Ukrainian
University in Lviv. Even more ambitious plans were seriously presented
to the Viennese government of definitely separating Western Galicia,
where the Poles were in a majority, from Eastern Galicia, where the
Ukrainians were the dominant population. Such an act might have been
of great importance for the future of Austria-Hungary, had the Emperor
ever been willing to attempt a definite settlement of any of the
problems before him.
Instead of that, the movement only sharpened the antagonism between
the two groups, for it was becoming evident that the Poles were
losing their absolute control of the province. In each election to
the Galician Diet the Ukrainians won for themselves a larger number
of seats and their leaders were slowly becoming trained in the
intricacies of Austrian politics. They were gradually shaking off
their old hesitation and their own acquiescence in the superiority of
Polish ability and Polish culture. The results were often increased
disturbances and led even to the assassination of the Polish governor
of the province, Count Andrew Potocki, in 1902. Every step of progress
was bitterly contested by the Poles, who persisted in their traditional
policy and could not understand why any concessions should be made to
those whom they regarded as their natural inferiors.
In this progress the Uniat Church played a great part. The technical
head of the Church, Archbishop Count Andrey Sheptitsky, a member of a
noble family which had furnished several archbishops to the Uniats, put
himself at the head of all the various charitable and social movements.
A distinguished figure and a devout and able leader, he was able to
accomplish much for his people. He reorganized the spiritual life of
the Church so as to bring it nearer to modern conditions and there was
hardly a single feature of life in Galicia which promised well for the
people in which he did not take a personal interest.
Thus by the early years of the twentieth century and the approach
of the First World War, conditions in Galicia had been vitally
changed. The Ukrainian masses were no longer satisfied with the mere
appellation of Ruthenian. The province which had been the most lost
to the Ukrainian cause had been made the most advanced and the most
conscious of its inheritance. The forces that had been striving for the
adaptation of Ukrainian culture and language to that of Russia had been
definitely checked and the influence that was radiating from Lviv was
in its turn impinging upon Kiev and the Ukraine that was still under
Russia. At the same time, conditions were still such that the fight
in the province between the Ukrainian and Polish populations remained
undecided, but a few more years of peace would undoubtedly strengthen
the Ukrainian position still further.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
_BETWEEN REVOLUTION AND WAR_
The revolution of 1905 made many changes in the life of Russia and
these affected very materially the situation in Ukraine. For the period
of a few weeks it appeared as if the entire country were reverting
to a state of chaos. There seemed little positive agreement upon any
definite course of action. Change was in the air. Each nationality in
the Russian Empire, each social class propounded its own program and
there was no central authority to decide between them. The Imperial
power seemed weakened after the disastrous Russo-Japanese War but the
various malcontents were not prepared to harmonize their differences
into a working whole. As a result the forces of the central government
were ultimately able to resume control and gradually annul many of
the promises that they had been forced to make at the height of the
movement.
The agrarian disturbances in Eastern Ukraine were among the most bitter
in the entire Empire but it was relatively easy to consider these as
more agrarian than national, the more so as up to this time Russian
authorities had refused to consider Ukraine as a separate entity within
the Empire. That had been destroyed by Catherine and even though the
conditions of landholding were far more favorable to the individual
than elsewhere in Russia, it would have been exceedingly tactless
for the autocracy and the liberals alike to stress any symptoms of
dissatisfaction that came from a separatist source. For good or ill
it was necessary for Russia, the Russia of the right or the left, to
maintain the theory that Ukraine and Russia were one and inseparable
or a fire would be kindled that would be difficult to extinguish.
The prohibition of the publication of books in the Ukrainian language
for forty years now bore very definite fruits. The Ukrainian leaders
were not in a position to distribute revolutionary material in their
native language as well as were the Poles, the Baltic peoples and the
groups of the Caucasus. The peasants (and they were the chief force in
the disturbances in the country) were concerned about the land question
and undoubtedly paid more attention to the economic situation than the
national and cultural problems.
On the other hand, in the various cities of Ukraine where there had
been an influx of Great Russians, largely workmen, the appeals of the
radical parties that also denied the existence of Ukraine, led the
strikers in the various factories to emphasize the demands that they
made on the owners and on the government. Here again it was highly
expedient to play down the feelings of any self-conscious Ukrainian
groups and to label them as dreamers and as fantastic individuals who
were romantically trying to recall a long vanished past.
It is significant in view of the frequent statements that only a
handful of scholars and literary men were in favor of Ukrainian
separate development that the new laws introduced by the government
repealed all the prohibitions that had been made in 1863 and 1876.
The censorship was lifted and without delay there began a flood of
Ukrainian newspapers and journals in all the cities of Ukraine. Several
were started in Kiev, in Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Poltava. In places
where for over a century there had not been a word of Ukrainian spoken
(according to the information of the government), now newspapers sprang
up almost like magic to supply a need that was solemnly declared to be
non-existent.
More than that, the Imperial Academy of Sciences re-studied the
question of Little Russian and officially decided that Ukrainian formed
an independent East Slavonic language and was not a mere dialect of
Great Russian. This fact alone was a complete reversal of the position
taken for a century by scholars, journalists, radicals and critics. It
justified the position of the Ukrainian national party in Galicia and
it also warmly supported the attitude of the Great Russian scholars
who had so persistently and inconsistently emphasized the differences
between the Muscovites and the people of Kiev in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. It could not of course restore to the Ukrainian
cause those millions of people who during the past centuries had become
Russianized in order to acquire the civilized and highly cultured
society which they had lost hope of finding at home.
Thus, following the Revolution of 1905, Ukrainian was restored, on
paper at least, to its rightful place as a language in the Russian
Empire. Yet for post-revolutionary Russia it was a dangerous thing.
In the era of repression that followed the failure of the Revolution,
attempts were made to censor the publications in Ukrainian more
severely than those of other nationalities. It was also forbidden to
open schools in Ukraine with instruction in Ukrainian. Many devices
were tried to stem the spread of Ukrainian knowledge. Abroad the
Russian government still continued to deny the existence of a separate
Ukrainian people, and here it won its greatest success.
There was a Ukrainian bloc forming in the First Duma which met in 1906
but this was dissolved before it really could get to work. In the later
Dumas the elections were better controlled and the Ukrainians were
compelled to realize that they had a long way to go before they could
secure even equal treatment with the other nationalities in the Russian
Empire. It was too important for Russia at all costs to maintain
the unity with the Ukraine, to control its Black Sea coast and its
rich resources to allow too close examination of the forces that were
spreading in the area.
Yet even those reliefs that were offered to the people showed again
the vitality of the movement. In 1907 there was established at Kiev a
Shevchenko Scientific Society which worked very closely with the older
foundation in Lviv. _The Literary and Scientific Review_, of which
Franko was one of the chief editors and contributors, started a second
edition in Kiev. In every way it was becoming uncomfortably clear to
both Russia and Austria-Hungary that the two Ukraines were coming to
consider themselves one, but separated by a foreign border, exactly as
was the case in Russian and Austrian Poland.
As a symbol of this new unification, Prof. Michael Hrushevsky moved
from Lviv to Kiev. Prof Hrushevsky had made himself the outstanding
authority on Ukrainian history. He was born in Russian Ukraine in 1866
and had been educated in the University of Kiev. Then in 1890, when
there was established at the University of Lviv a chair of Ukrainian
history, he had been offered it and there he remained for nearly twenty
years, producing the early volumes of his massive history of his native
country. He examined the early records and did more than any one
else to disprove the traditional point of view that after the Tatar
invasions Ukraine had become merely an empty land and that the Kozaks
and the later inhabitants were really a group of immigrants from either
Poland or Moscow.
His arrival in Kiev and his active part in the Shevchenko Scientific
Society there was perhaps the outstanding event during this period. It
meant that in Kiev and in Russian Ukraine, where the revival of the
nation had actually started, there would now be established the real
centre of Ukrainian historical scholarship. It meant that the bonds
between Kiev and Lviv would be tightened and that it might not be
impossible for the two sections to work together, in case there should
be a conflagration in Europe which would involve the two Empires.
This could not fail to have an effect upon European politics and
indirectly upon the future fate of the Ukrainians and their position in
world opinion. Russia as the self-appointed protector of all the Slavs
could not fail to look with dissatisfaction at the loss of influence
of her friends in Austria-Hungary. As the self-appointed model of
Orthodoxy, she could not but be displeased at the success of the Uniats
and at their revival in Eastern Galicia. During the years before
1914, she made constant efforts to turn back the Greek Catholics to
Orthodoxy, especially in Carpatho-Ukraine under Hungary. She exploited
in every way possible any unrest or discontent in the mountain valleys
and hoped in the coming struggle to be able to profit by these newfound
friends. At the same time her own position and her own attitude
insisted upon thinking of all Ukrainians as merely a form of Russians
and she could not visualize any policy other than that of complete
Russification.
On the other hand, Austria-Hungary and later Germany could not be blind
to the potentialities of the Ukrainian movement. They had first used
it as a tool against the dangers offered by Polish irredentism. Now as
they saw it growing in Russia, they began to wonder if it might not
be used also as a means of disintegrating that country also. Some of
their leaders began to scheme how this could best be done and they were
willing to make minor concessions in Eastern Galicia which might win
over the loyalty of the Ukrainians and make them more willing to be
loyal to the Dual Monarchy.