Ukrainian Russophiles - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The focus of this article is part of a general political movement in Western Ukraine of the nineteenth and early 20th century. The movement contained several competing branches: Moscowphiles, Ukrainophiles

Ukrainophilia

Ukrainophilia is the love of and/or identification with Ukraine and Ukrainians; its opposite is Ukrainophobia. The term is used primarily in a political and cultural context. "Ukrainophilia" and "Ukrainophile" are the terms used to denote pro-Ukrainian sentiments, usually in politics and...

, Rusynphiles, and others.

Russophiles (Ukrainian: Pусофіли, Rusofily) were participants in a cultural and political movement largely in the Western Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

. This ideology proposed that the people of Galicia (Halychyna) were an ethnic branch of people Kievan Rus'

Kievan Rus'

Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....

(Ruthenians

Ruthenians

The name Ruthenian |Rus']]) is a culturally loaded term and has different meanings according to the context in which it is used. Initially, it was the ethnonym used for the East Slavic peoples who lived in Rus'. Later it was used predominantly for Ukrainians...

) and followers of the Eastern Christianity

Eastern Christianity

Eastern Christianity comprises the Christian traditions and churches that developed in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East, Northeastern Africa, India and parts of the Far East over several centuries of religious antiquity. The term is generally used in Western Christianity to...

. The movement was part of the whole Pan-Slavism

Pan-Slavism

Pan-Slavism was a movement in the mid-19th century aimed at unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires, Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice...

that was developing in the late 19th century. Russophilia was largely a reaction against Polish (in Galicia) and Hungarian (in Transcarpathia

Carpathian Ruthenia

Carpathian Ruthenia is a region in Eastern Europe, mostly located in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast , with smaller parts in easternmost Slovakia , Poland's Lemkovyna and Romanian Maramureş.It is...

) cultural suppression that was largely associated with Catholicism.

Russophilia has survived longer among the Transcarpathian Rusyns and among the Lemkos

Lemkos

Lemkos , one of several quantitatively and territorially small ethnic groups who also call themselves Rusyns , are one of the ethnic groups inhabiting the Carpathian Mountains...

in modern Poland, as well as in other Western Ukrainian regions such as parts of Bukovina

Bukovina

Bukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...

Terminology

The "Russophiles" did not apply the term to themselves, and called themselves Rus[s]ians or Ruthenians (Rusyny). Some Russophiles coined such terms as Obshche-rossy (Common Russians) or Starorusyny (Old Ruthenians) to stress either the differences within their faction, referring to commonness with all Russias, or their unique stand within the whole of the Russian nation.

The ethnonym Ruthenians for Ukrainian people had been accepted by both the Russophiles and the Moscowphiles for quite a long period of time. The new name Ukrainians began to be accepted by the Ruthenian Galicians (as oppose to Polonian Galicians) around the 1890s, under the influence of Mykola Kostomarov and the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius

Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius

The Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius was a short-lived secret political society that existed in Kiev, Ukraine, at the time a part of the Russian Empire...

in central Ukraine.

Background

After the fall of the westernmost East Slavic

Ruthenians

state

Halych-Volhynia

The Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia or Kingdom of Rus or Galicia–Vladimir was a Ruthenian state in the regions of Galicia and Volhynia during 1199–1349. Along with Novgorod and Vladimir-Suzdal, it was one of the three most important powers to emerge from the collapse of Kievan Rus'...

in 1349, most of the area of what is now Western Ukraine came under the control of Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

and Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

, with Poland ruling Galicia and Hungary controlling Transcarpathia

Carpathian Ruthenia

. The loss of independence began a period of gradual, centuries-long assimilation of much of the native elite into Polish and Hungarian culture. These elite adopted a national orientation in which they saw the native Rus population of Galicia as a branch of the Polish

Poland

nation who happened to be of the Eastern Christian faith. They believed that the native language was merely a dialect of Polish, comparable to Mazovian

Masurian language

Masurian was a dialect group of the Polish language, spoken by Masurians in a part of East Prussia that belongs to today's Poland. Masurians are regarded as being descendants of Masovians....

, and that assimilation would be inevitable.

This process of Polonization

Polonization

Polonization was the acquisition or imposition of elements of Polish culture, in particular, Polish language, as experienced in some historic periods by non-Polish populations of territories controlled or substantially influenced by Poland...

was, however, resented by the peasants, the clergy, and small minority of nobles who retained their East Slavic

East Slavs

The East Slavs are Slavic peoples speaking East Slavic languages. Formerly the main population of the medieval state of Kievan Rus, by the seventeenth century they evolved into the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian peoples.-Sources:...

culture, religion or both. The latter two groups would form the nucleus of native national movements that would emerge with the loosening of Polish and Hungarian control in western Ukraine, which occurred when the entire region came under the control of the Austrian Habsburgs

Habsburg Monarchy

The Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...

in the course of the Partitions of Poland

Partitions of Poland

The Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland for 123 years...

. The Austrian Emperor

Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

Joseph II was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I...

emancipated the serf

SERF

A spin exchange relaxation-free magnetometer is a type of magnetometer developed at Princeton University in the early 2000s. SERF magnetometers measure magnetic fields by using lasers to detect the interaction between alkali metal atoms in a vapor and the magnetic field.The name for the technique...

s, introduced compulsory education, and raised the status of the Ruthenian priests to that of their Polish and Hungarian counterparts. Furthermore, they mandated that Ukrainian Catholic seminarians receive a formal higher education (previously, priests had been educated informally by their fathers), and organized institutions in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

and Lviv

Lviv

Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...

that would serve this function. This led to the appearance, for the first time, of a large educated social class within the Ukrainian population in Galicia. Austrian reforms led to a gradual social mobilization

Mass mobilization

Mass mobilization refers to mobilization of civilian population as part of contentious politics. Mass mobilization is often used by grassroots-based social movements, including revolutionary movements, but can also become a tool of elites and the state itself...

of the native inhabitants of Western Ukraine and the emergence of several national ideologies that reflected the natives' East Slavic culture and were opposed to that of Roman Catholic Poland and Hungary. This development was encouraged by the Austrian authorities because it served to undermine Polish or Hungarian control of the area. The cultural movements included: Russophilia

Russophilia

Russophilia is the love of Russia and/or Russians. The term is used in two basic contexts: in international politics and in cultural context. "Russophilia" and "Russophilic" are the terms used to denote pro-Russian sentiments, usually in politics and literature...

, the idea that Galicia was the westernmost part of Russia and that the natives of Western Ukraine were, like all of the Russian Empire's East Slavic inhabitants, members of one Russian nation; Ruthenianism, the idea that the people of Western Ukraine were a unique East Slavic nation; and Ukrainophilia

Ukrainophilia

, the idea that the people of western Ukraine were the same as those of neighboring lands in the Russian Empire but that both were a people different from Russians — Ukrainians

Ukrainians

Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...

.

Initially there existed a fluidity between all three national orientations, with people changing their allegiance throughout their lives, and until approximately the turn of the 20th century members of all three groups frequently identified themselves by the ethnonym Ruthenians

Ruthenians

(Rusyny). Initially the most prominent ideology was Ruthenianism, or Rutenstvo. Its proponents, referred to as "Old Ruthenians", were mainly wealthier or more influential priests and the remnants of the nobility who had not been Polonized, and were quite loyal to the Habsburgs to whom they owed their higher social standing. While emphasizing their separateness from the Poles in terms of religion and background, these people nevertheless maintained an elitist attitude towards the peasantry. They frequently spoke the Polish language among themselves, and tried to promote a version of Church Slavonic with elements of the local Ukrainian vernacular

Vernacular

A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...

as well as the Russian language

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

as a literary language for western Ukraine This language was never standardized, however. The language actually spoken by the common people was viewed with contempt. Old Ruthenians rejected both Ukrainophilism

Ukrainophilia

and Russophilism. The Ukrainian thinker Mykhailo Drahomanov

Mykhailo Drahomanov

Mykhailo Petrovych Drahomanov was a Ukrainian political theorist, economist, historian, philosopher, ethnographer and public figure in Kiev. Born to a noble family of Petro Yakymovych Drahomanov who was of a Cossack descent. Mykhailo Drahomanov started his education at home, then studied at the...

wrote ironically of them, that "you Galician intellectuals really do think of creating some kind of Uniate Paraguay, with some kind of hierarchical bureaucratic aristocracy, just like you have created an Austro-Ruthenian literary language!" Old Ruthenianism dominated Galicia's cultural scene until the mid-19th century, when it was supplanted by Russophilia (many of the proponents of old Ruthenianism eventually became Russophiles).

Ideology

The early Galician Russophile Nikolay Kmicykevich wrote an article in 1834 stating that the Russians were the same people from Western Ukraine to Kamchatka, from the White Sea to the Black Sea, and the language they spoke was the same Russian language. He wrote that the standard Russian language was more acceptable for modern writing and that the popular dialects in Ukraine were corrupted by Polish influence. These ideas were stimulated by the Russian pan-Slavist

Pan-Slavism

Mikhail Pogodin

Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin was a Russian historian and journalist who, jointly with Nikolay Ustryalov, dominated the national historiography between the death of Nikolay Karamzin in 1826 and the rise of Sergey Solovyov in the 1850s. He is best remembered as a staunch proponent of the Normanist...

, who stayed in Lviv

Lviv

(Lemberg) in 1835 and 1839–1840 and who during this time influenced the local Ruthenian intelligentsia. No longer seeing themselves as representatives of a small Ruthenian nation of under three million people, weak in comparison to its neighbors, the Russophiles now saw themselves as the westernmost branch of the Great Russia

Great Russia

Great Russia is an obsolete name formerly applied to the territories of "Russia proper", the land that formed the core of Muscovy and, later, Russia...

n people. A Russian orientation also played into the Russophile's elitist tendencies, because the Russian literary language which they tried to adopt (many continued to use the Polish language in their daily lives) set the Russophile priests and nobles apart from the Ukrainian-speaking peasants. Politically, the Russophiles came to advocate the idea of a union between a Galician Ruthenia and Russia.

One of the most active of the Galician Russophiles was the prominent historian, nobleman Denis Zubrytsky

Denis Zubrytsky

Denis Zubrytsky – January 16, 1862), was the first Ukrainian historian in Galicia and a major early figure in the Galician Russophile movement.-Life:...

, who helped convert many of the Galician elite to his cause. He was also the first to begin writing in standard Russian: as early as 1849 he started his main work, The History of the Ancient Galician-Russian Principality. In a letter to his friend Mikhail Pogodin

Mikhail Pogodin

, Zubrytsky claimed that his stated purpose was to acquaint his Galician people with Russian history and the Russian language. Indeed, the historiography of the medieval Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia was largely begun by Galician Russophiles and served as the basis for their nation-building project (in contrast, the Ukrainophiles at that time focused on the history of the Cossacks). In terms of literature and culture, the Russophiles promoted Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...

and Ivan Naumovich

Ivan Naumovich

Ivan Naumovich , was a priest, member of parliament, writer, and major figure in the Russophile movement in western Ukraine. His article Glimpse into the future was considered the most important manifesto of Galician Russophilism -Background:...

in contrast to Ukrainophile emphasis on Taras Shevchenko

Taras Shevchenko

Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko -Life:Born into a serf family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven...

.

Despite some democratic elements (such as promoting literacy among peasants) Galician Russophilia tended to be antidemocratic and reactionary, placing it at odds with the democratic trends in 19th century society. For example, the Russophile leader Dennis Zubrytsky defended serfdom both before and after the emancipation of Austrian Galician serfs in 1848. There were also some antisemitic strains in Russophilism. From the 1860s to the 1880s some peasants hoped that the Tsar would come to Galicia and slaughter the Poles and the Jews.

Western Ukrainian Russophiles felt that the people of Ukraine played a special role within the larger Russian nation. The priest Ivan Naumovich

Ivan Naumovich

declared that the Russian language was derived from "Little Russia

Little Russia

Little Russia , sometimes Little or Lesser Rus’ , is a historical political and geographical term in the Russian language referring to most of the territory of modern-day Ukraine before the 20th century. It is similar to the Polish term Małopolska of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth...

n" and was only being readopted in Galicia. Indeed, Galician Russophiles wrote that one of the reasons for all East Slavs to adopt the Russian language was that the modern Russian language had been created in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by scholars from Ukraine.

Rise and development

Western Ukrainian Russophilia appeared in Carpathian Ruthenia

Carpathian Ruthenia

at the end of the 18th century. At this time, several people from the region settled in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and obtained high academic positions. The best known of these was Vasilly Kukolnik (father of Russian playwright Nestor Kukolnik

Nestor Kukolnik

Nestor Vasilievich Kukolnik was a Russian playwright and prose writer of Carpatho-Rusyn origin. Immensely popular during the early part of his career, his works were subsequently dismissed as sententious and sentimental. Today, he is best remembered for having contributed to the libretto of the...

), a member of an old noble family who had studied in Vienna before coming to Russia. Vasilly's pupils included Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich of Russia

Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich of Russia

Constantine Pavlovich was a grand duke of Russia and the second son of Emperor Paul I. He was the Tsesarevich of Russia throughout the reign of his elder brother Alexander I, but had secretly renounced his claim to the throne in 1823...

and Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich of Russia

Nicholas I of Russia

Nicholas I , was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers...

, the future emperor Nicholas I of Russia. These émigrés, while adopting a sense of Russian patriotism, also maintained their ties to their homeland and tried to use their wealth to introduce Russian literature and culture to their region. When the Hungarians revolted

Hungarian Revolution of 1848

The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was one of many of the European Revolutions of 1848 and closely linked to other revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas...

against the Austrians in 1848, the local East Slavs

East Slavs

, antagonistic toward the Hungarians who had dominated them, were deeply moved by the presence of the seemingly invincible Russian troops sent by Nicholas to help crush the rebellion. At this time, Austria supported the Russophile movement as a counterbalance to Polish and Hungarian interests, and under the leadership of the Russophile nobleman Adolf Dobriansky, the people of Transcarpathia were granted limited autonomy, although the region reverted to Hungarian control after a few years.

In Galicia, Russophilia emerged as early as the 1830s, when "Society of scholars" was organized in Peremyshl

Przemysl

Przemyśl is a city in south-eastern Poland with 66,756 inhabitants, as of June 2009. In 1999, it became part of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship; it was previously the capital of Przemyśl Voivodeship....

and was stimulated in part by the presence in Lviv

Lviv

(Lemberg) in 1835 and from 1839–1840 of Russian pan-Slavist

Pan-Slavism

Mikhail Pogodin

who became acquainted with the local Ruthenian intelligentsia and became an influence on them. However, the movement did not come to dominate western Ukrainian society until the 1850s–60s. After the reforms of 1868, despite western Ukrainian loyalty to the Habsburgs the Austrian authorities made political concessions to the Polish aristocrats, who proceeded to roll back some of the earlier Austrian reforms. Many proponents of Ruthenianism became disenchanted with Austria and linked themselves with the giant and powerful Russian state

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

. The relative rise of Russia's power in comparison to that of Austria during the 19th century also played a role in such feelings.

During this time, the poet and scholar Yakiv Holovatsky

Yakiv Holovatsky

Yakiv Holovatsky was born October 17, 1814 in Chepeli, Zloczow powiat, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria - died on May 13, 1888 in Vilno, Russian Empire...

, a member of "The Ruthenian Trinity", joined the Russophile movement. Soon thereafter, the Russophile priests of the St George Cathedral Circle came to dominate the local hierarchy of the Greek Catholic Church, thereby transforming that Church into an instrument of their cause. Russophiles took over Ruthenian academic institutions (such as the Stauropegion Institute

Stauropegion Institute

The Stauropegion Institute was one of the most important cultural and educational institutions in western Ukraine from the end of the 18th century until World War II...

, with its printing press and large collection of archives) and the venerable Ruthenian newspaper Slovo (‘The Word’), and under their leadership it became the most widely circulated newspaper among Western Ukrainians. In 1870, the Russophiles formed a political organization, the Ruthenian Council (Ruska Rada) which represented the population of Western Ukraine. From the 1860s until the 1880s Western Ukrainian political, religious, and cultural life came to be dominated by the Russophiles.

Pre-war decline and fall

Within a generation of achieving dominance of Western Ukrainian life, however, the Russophiles were eclipsed by the Ukrainophiles, or so-called Populists (Narodovtsi). Originally coming from the same social stratum as the Russophiles (priests and nobles), but joined by the emerging secular intelligentsia, the Ukrainophiles were from a younger generation who unlike their fathers found ethusiasm for Taras Shevchenko

Taras Shevchenko

rather than the Tsars, and embraced the peasantry rather than rejecting it. This dedication to the people (the "bottom-up" approach) would prove successful against the Russophiles' elitist "top-down" orientation.

Many factors accounted for the collapse of the Russophile movement. The principal one was likely the Ukrainophiles' incredible capacity for organization. The Populists fanned out throughout the countryside in order to mobilize the masses to their cause. In 1868, the Lviv student Anatole Vakhnianyn

Anatole Vakhnianyn

Anatole Vakhnianyn , was a Ukrainian political and cultural figure, composer, teacher and journalist.-Biography:Vakhnianyn was born in Sieniawa, Przeworsk County, today a part of Poland but at that time a part of the Austrian Empire. He came from a clerical family; his father, Klym Vakhnianyn, and...

organized and became the first head of the Prosvita

Prosvita

Prosvita is a society created in the nineteenth century in Ukrainian Galicia for preserving and developing Ukrainian culture and education among population....

organization, whose goal was to organize reading rooms and community theaters which became extremely popular among the peasants. In order to help the impoverished peasants, Ukrainophile activists set up co-operatives that would buy supplies in large quantities, eliminate middlemen, and pass the savings onto the villagers. Credit union

Credit union

A credit union is a cooperative financial institution that is owned and controlled by its members and operated for the purpose of promoting thrift, providing credit at competitive rates, and providing other financial services to its members...

s were created, providing inexpensive loans to farmers and eliminating the reliance on non-Ukrainian moneylenders. Russophiles belatedly tried to imitate such strategies but could not catch up. By 1914, Prosvita had 3,000 reading rooms while the Russophile version, the Kachkovsky Society (founded in 1874), had only 300. The Ukrainian co-operative union had 900 members, while the rival Russophile one had only 106. Prevented from publishing in the mainstream western Ukrainian newspapers by the Russophiles who controlled them, the Populists created their own. In 1880, Dilo (‘Deed’) was founded as a rival to the Russophile Slovo, and due to the rising literacy of the Ukrainian population its circulation surpassed that of its older rival.

A second important factor for the success of the Ukrainophiles

Ukrainophilia

was the exile from Dnieper Ukraine

Dnieper Ukraine

Dnieper Ukraine , was the territory of Ukraine in the Russian Empire , roughly corresponding to the current territory of Ukraine, with the exceptions of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and Galicia in the west, which was a province of the Austrian Empire. Galicians sometimes call it Great Ukraine...

of a large number of well-educated and talented eastern Ukrainian writers and scholars, such as the writer Panteleimon Kulish, the former professor of Kiev's University of St. Vladimir

Kiev University

Taras Shevchenko University or officially the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv , colloquially known in Ukrainian as KNU is located in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. It is the third oldest university in Ukraine after the University of Lviv and Kharkiv University. Currently, its structure...

, economist and philosopher Mykhailo Drahomanov

Mykhailo Drahomanov

, and especially the historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky

Mykhailo Hrushevsky

Mykhailo Serhiyovych Hrushevsky was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian, and statesman, one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century...

, who headed a newly-established department at the University of Lviv

Lviv University

The Lviv University or officially the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv is the oldest continuously operating university in Ukraine...

. Many of these figures settled or lived for a time in Lviv. In contrast, no prominent Russian intellectuals came to Galicia in order to help the local Russophile cause. This phenomenon led to the ironic observation of Drahomanov that the Ukrainianophiles were actually more in touch with contemporary Russian cultural and intellectual trends than were the Russophiles despite the latter group's love for Russia. From among the local intelligentsia, Ivan Franko

Ivan Franko

Ivan Yakovych Franko was a Ukrainian poet, writer, social and literary critic, journalist, interpreter, economist, political activist, doctor of philosophy, the author of the first detective novels and modern poetry in the Ukrainian language....

showed the literary potential of the vernacular Ukrainian language. The local Russophiles could not compete with the talent of these Ukrainophile cultural figures and scholars.

Help for the Ukrainophile cause

Ukrainophilia

from eastern Ukraine also took the form of generous financial assistance from wealthy Ukrainian landowners. Due to restrictions against Ukrainian printing and the Ukrainian language imposed by the tsarist government in eastern Ukraine, eastern Ukrainian noble or Cossacks officer families who had not became Russified sent money to Galicia in order to sponsor Ukrainophile cultural activities there. These people, enjoying gentry status, were generally much wealthier than the priests and priests' sons who dominated the local Galician movements. The amount sent by these private individuals from Russian-ruled Ukraine to Ukrainophile causes likely equalled the subsidies sent by the Russian government to Galician Russophiles. For example, Yelyzaveta Myloradovich, a noblewoman from Poltava, donated 20,000 Austrian crowns to the Shevchenko Scientific Society

Shevchenko Scientific Society

The Shevchenko Scientific Society is a Ukrainian scientific society devoted to the promotion of scholarly research and publication. Unlike the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine the society is a public organization that was reestablished in Ukraine in 1989 after almost 50 years of exile...

.

The Austrian government also contributed significantly to the Ukrainophiles' victory. During the latter part of the 19th century, as Austria-Hungary and Russia became rivals, the Austrian authorities became alarmed by the Russophiles' activities. To maintain the loyalty of the Ukrainian population, the Austrian authorities expanded the Ukrainian educational system, and in 1893 made the Ukrainophile version of the vernacular Ukrainian language the language of instruction. Doing so effectively shut the Russophiles out of the educational system. During the 1880s the Austrians put many Russophiles on trial for treason or espionage. These trials were widely publicized, and served to discredit the Russophiles among the Ukrainian people, most of whom continued to be loyal to the Austrian Emperor

Franz Joseph I of Austria

Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I was Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia, King of Croatia, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Galicia and Lodomeria and Grand Duke of Cracow from 1848 until his death in 1916.In the December of 1848, Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria abdicated the throne as part of...

. One of the prosecuter was Kost Levitsky, who later became an important Ukrainian politician. The Austrians also deported an editor of the Russophile newspaper Slovo and deposed the Russophile head of the Greek Catholic Church

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church , Ukrainska Hreko-Katolytska Tserkva), is the largest Eastern Rite Catholic sui juris particular church in full communion with the Holy See, and is directly subject to the Pope...

, Metropolitan Joseph Sembratovych

Joseph Sembratovych

Joseph Sembratovych was the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church from 1870 until his resignation in 1882.-Life:Joseph Sembratovych was born on 8 November 1821, son of a priest of the Archeparchy of Przemyśl. Since 1841 he studied in Wien and at the end of his studies, on...

.

In 1899, Count

Count

A count or countess is an aristocratic nobleman in European countries. The word count came into English from the French comte, itself from Latin comes—in its accusative comitem—meaning "companion", and later "companion of the emperor, delegate of the emperor". The adjective form of the word is...

Andrey Sheptytsky

Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky was the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church from 1901 until his death. During his tenure, he led the Church through two world wars and seven political regimes: Austrian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Soviet, German National Socialist , and...

became new head

Metropolitan bishop

In Christian churches with episcopal polity, the rank of metropolitan bishop, or simply metropolitan, pertains to the diocesan bishop or archbishop of a metropolis; that is, the chief city of a historical Roman province, ecclesiastical province, or regional capital.Before the establishment of...

of the Greek Catholic Church

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

. A Polonized nobleman from an old Ukrainian family, he adopted the Ukrainian language

Ukrainian language

Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....

and a Ukrainophile orientation. Although Sheptytsky did not interfere in priests' personal activities and writings, he slowly purged the Church's hierarchy of Russophiles. Despite drawing some Ukrainophiles' criticism for the slow progression of his changes, under Sheptytsky's leadership the Church gradually ceased being a bastion of Russophilism and instead became a staunchly Ukrainophile one.

Lacking support within their community and from the Austrian government, the remaining Russophiles turned to outsiders for support. They largely depended on financing from the Russian government and Russian private sponsors (the Galician-Russian Benevolent Society was established in Saint Petersburg in 1908) and from ultraconservative Galician Polish aristocrats. The Polish ultraconservatives had become alarmed by the social mobilization of the Ukrainian peasants and sought to use the Russophile movement as a way of dividing the Ukrainian community. They were also united with the Russophiles in opposition to a proposed alliance between Ukrainophiles and politically moderate Poles. Polish support provided the Russophiles with some advantages during elections, some advantages for Russophile priests in obtaining parishes, and tolerance towards Russophile political activities.

Help from Russian and Polish patrons largely failed to prevent the Russophile decline. By the early 20th century, the Russophiles became a minority in Galicia. Within the Church, they were nicknamed "bisons," in scholar Himka's words an "ancient, shaggy species on the verge of extinction." Of nineteen Ukrainian periodicals published in Galicia in 1899, sixteen were Ukrainophile in orientation, only two were Russophile in orientation and one was neutral. In the 1907 elections to the Viennese parliament, the Ukrainophiles won 22 seats while the Russophiles won five. But the Russophiles, due to Polish interference, won elections to the Galician parliament the same year by taking 11 seats, the Ukrainophiles 10. In 1913, 30 Ukrainophile and only 1 Russophile delegate were sent to the Galician Diet. There were certain regional patterns in the support for Russophilism, in that it was most popular in the extreme western parts of eastern Galicia, particularly in the Lemko

Lemkos

Lemkos , one of several quantitatively and territorially small ethnic groups who also call themselves Rusyns , are one of the ethnic groups inhabiting the Carpathian Mountains...

region of centered on the city of Przemysl

Przemysl

. This region, closest to Polish ethniographic territory, may have been most receptive to Russophilia's radical differentiation of Ukrainians/Ruthenians from Poles.

World War I and Afterwards

Immediately before the outbreak of World War I, the Austrian and Hungarian governments held numerous treason trials of those suspected of Russophile subversion. When the Austrians were driven from Galicia in August 1914, they avenged themselves upon suspected Russophiles and their families. Russophiles were punished for allegedly seeking to separate Galicia, Bukovyna and parts of northern Hungary from Austria-Hungary and attaching them to Russia, of seeking volunteers for the Russian army, and of organizing a pro-Russian paramilitary group known as the Russkie Druzhiny – a Russophile counterpart to the Ukrainophile pro-Austrian Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. Hundreds of suspected Russophiles were shot, and thirty thousand were sent to the Talerhof

Talerhof

Talerhof was a concentration camp created by the Austro-Hungarian authorities of Franz Joseph I of Austria in the first days of World War I, in a sandy valley in foothills of the Alps, near Graz, the main city of the province of Styria....

concentration camp, where approximately three thousand died of exposure.

The Russian administration of Galicia lasted from August 1914 until June 1915. Russian Grand Duke Nicholas issued a manifesto proclaiming that the people of Galicia were brothers who had "languished for centuries under a foreign yoke" and urged them to "raise the banner of United Russia." During this time, with the help of local Russophiles, the Russian administration, aware that the Ukrainophiles were loyal to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and that they had organized the Ukrainian legion of the Austro-Hungarian army, engaged in a harsh persecution of the Ukrainophile

Ukrainophilia

leaders and their ideology. Ukrainian schools were forcibly converted to Russian-language instruction, reading rooms, newspapers, co-operatives and credit unions were closed, and hundreds of community leaders were arrested and exiled under suspicion of collaboration. The popular head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

, Metropolitan

Metropolitan bishop

Andrey Sheptytsky

was arrested and exiled to Russia. Although Nicholas II issued a decree forbidding forceful conversion from Uniatism to Orthodoxy, except in cases where 75% of the parishioners approved, the ultimate goal was the liquidation of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. In addition to its head, hundreds of priests were exiled to Russia and replaced by Orthodox priests, who urged the parishioners to convert to Orthodoxy. The behavior of the Russian authorities was so heavy-handed that it was denounced as a "European scandal" in the Russian Duma

Duma

A Duma is any of various representative assemblies in modern Russia and Russian history. The State Duma in the Russian Empire and Russian Federation corresponds to the lower house of the parliament. Simply it is a form of Russian governmental institution, that was formed during the reign of the...

by the Russian statesman Pavel Milyukov

Pavel Milyukov

Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov , a Russian politician, was the founder, leader, and the most prominent member of the Constitutional Democratic party...

. The Russians were aided in their suppression of Ukrainian culture by local Russophiles and by Polish anti-Ukrainian figures such as Lviv professor Stanisław Grabski. Such actions angered most of the local Ukrainian population.

When Austria regained Galicia in June 1915

Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive

The Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive during World War I started as a minor German offensive to relieve Russian pressure on the Austro-Hungarians to their south on the Eastern Front, but resulted in the total collapse of the Russian lines and their retreat far into Russia...

, most of the remaining Russophiles and their families retreated alongside the Russian army in fear of reprisals. Approximately 25,000 of them were resettled near Rostov-on-Don

Rostov-on-Don

-History:The mouth of the Don River has been of great commercial and cultural importance since the ancient times. It was the site of the Greek colony Tanais, of the Genoese fort Tana, and of the Turkish fortress Azak...

. Among those that did not leave, the Austrians arrested and sentenced to death approximately thirty noted Russophiles, including two members of parliament, Dmytro Markov and Volodymyr Kurylovich (their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment and they were released in 1917)., as well as Metodyj Trochanovskij

Metodyj Trochanovskij

Metodyj Trochanovskij , Lemko activist, was born in Binczarowa, Poland, when it was part of the province of Galicia of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on May 5, 1885. At the onset of World War I, he was accused of treason against Austria-Hungary, arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to death in 1916...

. Kost Levitsky, a prominent Ukrainophile

Ukrainophilia

leader and the future president of the West Ukrainian National Republic

West Ukrainian National Republic

The West Ukrainian People's Republic was a short-lived republic that existed in late 1918 and early 1919 in eastern Galicia, that claimed parts of Bukovina and Carpathian Ruthenia and included the cities of Lviv , Przemyśl , Kolomyia , and Stanislaviv...

, appeared as a prosecutor during the trials against the Russophiles.

When civil war broke out in Russia, some Galician Russophiles then fought in the ranks of the White Army, specifically under Lavr Kornilov

Lavr Kornilov

Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov was a military intelligence officer, explorer, and general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and the ensuing Russian Civil War...

, in the hope that Galicia would become part of a democratic White Russia.

After the collapse of Austria-Hungary the Ukrainians of Galicia proclaimed the West Ukrainian National Republic. Between 70 and 75 thousand men fought in its Ukrainian Galician Army

Ukrainian Galician Army

Ukrainian Galician Army , was the Ukrainian military of the West Ukrainian National Republic during and after the Polish-Ukrainian War. -Military equipment:...

. They lost their war and the territory was annexed by Poland. However, the experience of proclaiming a Ukrainian state and fighting for it significantly intensified and deepened the Ukrainian orientation within Galicia. Since the interwar era, Galicia has been the center of Ukrainian nationalism

Ukrainian nationalism

Ukrainian nationalism refers to the Ukrainian version of nationalism.Although the current Ukrainian state emerged fairly recently, some historians, such as Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, Orest Subtelny and Paul Magosci have cited the medieval state of Kievan Rus' as an early precedents of specifically...

Rusynophilia

The Russophile tradition persisted in the portions of Galicia west of the Dukla Pass

Dukla Pass

The Dukla Pass is a strategically significant mountain pass in the Laborec Highlands of the Outer Eastern Carpathians, on the border between Poland and Slovakia, and close to the western border of Ukraine....

, resulting in the formation of the Lemko-Rusyn Republic

Lemko-Rusyn Republic

The Ruthenian National Republic of the Lemko People , often known as the Lemko Republic or the Lemko-Rusyn Republic, was founded in Florynka on 5 December 1918, in the aftermath of World War I, after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire...

. Metodyj Trochanovskij

Metodyj Trochanovskij

continued to espouse the Rusyn national identity, up to the start of World War II. Karpatska Rus'

Karpatska Rus'

Karpatska Rus is a Rusyn language newspaper published in the United States for the Rusyn-speaking Lemko immigrant community. It is the successor to Lemko, which began publication in 1927....

, a Rusyn language

Rusyn language

Rusyn , also known in English as Ruthenian, is an East Slavic language variety spoken by the Rusyns of Central Europe. Some linguists treat it as a distinct language and it has its own ISO 639-3 code; others treat it as a dialect of Ukrainian...

newspaper published in the United States avoided any suggestion that the Lemkos

Lemkos

Lemkos , one of several quantitatively and territorially small ethnic groups who also call themselves Rusyns , are one of the ethnic groups inhabiting the Carpathian Mountains...

were a branch of the Ukrainian

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

s.

Call for a Lemko

Lemkos

Lemkos , one of several quantitatively and territorially small ethnic groups who also call themselves Rusyns , are one of the ethnic groups inhabiting the Carpathian Mountains...

autonomus region in Poland persisted at least until 1989, with a Rusyn

Rusyns

Carpatho-Rusyns are a primarily diasporic ethnic group who speak an Eastern Slavic language, or Ukrainian dialect, known as Rusyn. Carpatho-Rusyns descend from a minority of Ruthenians who did not adopt the use of the ethnonym "Ukrainian" in the early twentieth century...

than a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n orientation.

Terminology

Background

Ideology

Rise and development

Pre-war decline and fall

World War I and Afterwards

Rusynophilia

See also