PERIODIZATION OF UKRAINIAN-POLISH RELATIONS IN GALICIA UNDER AUSTRIA: NATIONAL STRUGGLE, COOPERATION AND THE SEARCH FOR AGREEMENT
Authors:   Ivan Franko Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Lviv, Ukraine, Nakhlik Yevhen 
Published: February 2024

The author distinguishes five historical stages in the development of Ukrainian-Polish socio-political, cultural, educational, and literary relations in sub-Austrian Galicia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first stage is from the beginning of the Austrian annexation of Galicia (1772) to the eve of the revolution (February 1848). For the Galician-Ruthenian leadership, it was a stage of national and cultural revival that lasted from the beginning of the nineteenth century. For the Polish leadership, it was a political and conspiratorial stage of the national liberation struggle to restore the recently lost statehood. The second stage is from the revolutionary Spring of Nations (March 1848-1849) to the end of the reactionary era (1850-1859). In 1848-1849, Polish revolutionary writers published numerous propaganda works in Ukrainian (political poems, messages, fables, poems, short stories, letters, appeals, and articles) in brochures or in periodicals of the time, calling on Galician “Ruthenians” to support the Polish struggle against the Austrian enslavers. However, the church and cultural and educational leadership of the “Ruthenians” acted as a self-sufficient and independent political force, part of the entire Ukrainian people, loyal to the Habsburg monarchy. Later (1894), V. Budzynovskyi and M. Pavlyk condemned the Austrophilic loyalty of the “Rusyns” of that time, while Ivan Franko justified it. Signed at the Slavic Congress in Prague on June 7, 1848, the agreement between Galician Ukrainians and Poles (the first under Austrian rule) on an autonomous Ukrainian-Polish federation in Galicia (within the Austrian Empire) theoretically laid down the most optimal and promising foundations for Ukrainian-Polish understanding, cooperation, and equal coexistence in the region, but was not implemented. The third stage covers the era of reforms: from the beginning of constitutional experiments in the Austrian Empire to the transformation of Galicia into a disproportionate Polish-Ukrainian autonomy (1859-1873). Attempts at Ukrainian-Polish rapprochement were renewed: the governor of Galicia, A. Goluchowski tried unsuccessfully to legalize the conversion of Ukrainian spelling from Cyrillic to Latin (1859-1861), financed the newspaper “Rus” (1867), and the vice-marshal of the Galician Provincial Sejm, Yu. Lavrovskyi, and other Galician-Ruthenian ambassadors initiated the Polish-Ukrainian agreement of 1869-1871 based on a program of 32 articles, which, however, was not adopted in the Sejm. The situation in Austrian-Polish-Ukrainian relations in Galicia changed to the opposite: in 1848-1849, the Austrian authorities fought the Polish nobleman’s revolutionary movement, gaining the loyalty of most Galician Ukrainians, and in 1867-1873, on the contrary, the conservative Polish nobility reached an agreement with the Austrian authorities and achieved national and territorial autonomy for Galicia under Polish domination. Under these conditions, the fourth stage (1890-1897) continued. From the late 1870s to the mid-1890s, a new phenomenon was the attempts at cooperation and interaction between Ukrainian (I. Franko, M. Pavlyk, and others) and Polish socialists in Galicia. The most successful attempts at Ukrainian-Polish political agreement and cultural and educational cooperation in Galicia end this stage with the “New Era” of national democrats O. Barvinskyi and Y. Romanchuk and the stadtholder of Galicia K. Badeni (1890-1894), as well as the “New Course” of O. Barvinskyi (1895-1897). The fifth stage lasted from the aggravation of the Ukrainian-Polish confrontation as a result of the bloody parliamentary elections in March 1897 to the beginning of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (October 1918). Under the threat of Ukrainian-Austrian understanding due to the government’s support for Ukrainians, the stadtholder of Galicia A. Potocki negotiated with Ukrainian national democrats (primarily the head of the Ukrainian club in the Galician Sejm, E. Olesnytskyi) in 1907-1908, but their agreements were nullified by a terrorist attack by a student of the University of Vienna, a social democrat, M. Sichynskyi. Under the leadership of the new stadtholder of Galicia, M. Bobrzynski, a Polish-Ukrainian compromise draft of the reform of elections to the Galician Sejm (1913) was developed, but due to the protests of the Polish opposition minority and Muscophiles, Bobrzynski resigned. Under the new stadtholder of Galicia, V. Korytowski, and the decisive role of Greek Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyi, the Galician Sejm in 1914 adopted a reform of the provincial statute and the introduction of a new electoral order to the Sejm. This law (the so-called Galician Equalization) opened up historical opportunities for Ukrainian-Polish dialogue and reconciliation that were unimaginable until then, but were not realized due to the outbreak of World War I.