Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Century Digitized by the Internet Archive
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
GALICIAN VILLAGERS AND THE UKRAINIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY JOHN-PAUL HIMKA This first case-study of how the East European peasantry was drawn into national politics focuses on the Ukrainians of Galicia, 1772-1914. From first-hand testimony by peasants and rural notables, it demonstrates that the peasants’ political consciousness was forged by serfdom, and reforms initiated by the state and the penetration of a money economy. The book breaks new ground on related issues, including the connection between class and national consciousness, the reasons for a sharp exacerbation of the peasantry’s antagonism towards Jews, the new role of generational differences in the village and the place of rural women in the national movement. For a note on the author, please see the back flap Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Century Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from University of Alberta Libraries https://archive.org/details/galicianvillager00himk_0 Vq-Y' <*/l *JA JUv-t . % CJ 5 if" l^'i Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Century by John-Paul Himka Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies University of Alberta Edmonton 1988 Published in association with Macmillan Press, London Copyright © 1988 Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Himka, John-Paul, 1949- Galician villagers and the Ukrainian national movement in the nineteenth century Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-920862-54-3 1. Ukraine—History—Autonomy and independence movements. 2. Nationalism—Galicia, Eastern (Ukraine)—History. I. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. II. Title. DK511.G185H54 1988 947'. 7108 C87-091223-2 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the copying owner. Distributed in Canada by University of Toronto Press 5201 Dufferin St. Downsview, Ontario Canada M3H 5T8 fljTH MHXaHJTHKa i Ebohkh. mo6 Bh 3HajiH Hhh npaB^a, hhb KpHB^a, I HHI MH fliTH. Contents List of Illustrations ix List of Maps xi List of Tables xiii Preface xv Acknowledgments xvii Introduction xxi Statement of the Problem xxi The Geographical and Chronological Setting xxii The Methodology xxv Some Technical Matters xxvii Abbreviations xxxv 1 . Serfdom and Servitudes 1 The Nature of Serfdom 1 The Enforcement of Serfdom 10 The Resistance to Serfdom 16 The Revolution of 1848-9 26 Servitudes 36 A Case in Point: The Events in Dobrotvir 40 The Servitudes Struggle and Its Lessons 48 The Memory of Serfdom in the Late Nineteenth Century 56 2. The Cultural Revolution in the Village: Schools, Newspapers and Reading Clubs 59 Education and the School System 59 The Newspaper Batkivshchyna 66 The Correspondence in Batkivshchyna 80 Reading Clubs 86 Opposition to the Reading Clubs 92 Generations and Gender in the Reading Clubs 97 3. Village Notables as Bearers of the National Idea: Priests, Teachers, Cantors 105 What Was Notable about the Notables? 106 Notables before the National Movement 117 In the National Movement 123 Tensions between Priest and Peasant 133 4. The Awakening Peasantry 143 Who Were the Peasant-Activists? 143 Commune and Manor 145 The Money Economy and Its Representatives 158 The Challenge to Traditional Authority in the Commune 175 The Transformation of Peasant Culture 189 Class and Nation 204 Conclusions 217 Appendices 223 I. Archival Sources 225 II. Corpus of Correspondence 239 III. Correspondence by Occupation of Authors 251 IV. List of Activists 255 V. Activists by Occupation 319 Bibliography 329 Index 345 List of Illustrations Vasyl Nahirny 77 Mykhailo Pavlyk Iuliian Romanchuk Sylvester L. Drymalyk 256 Kyrylo Genyk Amvrosii de Krushelnytsky Antin Rybachek Danylo Taniachkevych (younger) List of Maps The Crownlands of Austria-Hungary, 1914 xxxi The Circles of Eastern Galicia, 1867 xxxii The Districts of Eastern Galicia, 1868 xxxii The Districts of Eastern Galicia, 1910 xxxiv The Oblasts and Raions of Former Eastern Galicia in the Ukrainian SSR, 1972 xxxv List of Tables 1 Illegal Servitude Actions in Eastern Galicia and Northern Bukovyna, 1850-1900 50 2 Number of Inhabitants per School in Galicia, 1830-1900 61 3 Public Elementary Schools in Galicia: Total, With Ukrainian Language of Instruction, and Bilingual (Ukrainian-Polish), 1869-1900 62 4 Percentage of School-Age Galician Children Actually Attending School, 1830-1900 64 5 Growth of Ukrainian Periodical Press in Galicia, 1850-1910 67 6 Press Run and Frequency of Ukrainian Political Periodicals in Galicia, 1880 and 1885 68 7 Press Run of Batkivshchyna, 1879-85 70 1879-96 8 Confiscations of Batkivshchyna , 71 9 Reasons Given for Confiscation of Batkivshchyna , 1879-81 72 10 Editors of Batkivshchyna , 1879-96 76 1 1 Correspondence to Batkivshchyna and Occupation, Summary 85 12 Literacy and Illiteracy in Reading Club Memberships, 1897-1910 88 13 Reading Club Officers, 1884-5, by Occupation 89 14 Growth of Prosvita Membership, 1868-1908 91 15 TsDIAL, 146/64-64b (Servitudes Commission): Holdings Consulted 227-8 16 TsDIAL, 156/1 (Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office in Lviv, Illegal Servitude Actions): Holdings Consulted 230 17 TsDIAL, 168/1-2 and 488/1 (Indemnization Commission): Holdings Consulted 232-4 18 TsDIAL, 348/1 (Prosvita, Reports from Reading Clubs): Holdings Consulted 236 Preface The conception of this book can be located and dated with precision. It was conceived in the library of the University of Lviv in February 1976. At that time I was researching my doctoral thesis on the socialist movements in Galicia, and needed to consult a newspaper for the Ukrainian peasantry entitled Batkivshchyna. I noticed immediately that there were two types of article appearing in the paper. There were the earnest, lucid, somewhat dull and paternalistic articles contributed by the editor and other highly educated people in the city, explaining the world to the peasants and exhorting them to vote correctly, establish reading clubs and cooperative stores and acquire an education. And then there were the other articles, enlivened by exaggeration, dialect-laden and juicy language and a rustic humour. These talked of a different world, inhabited by hard-pressed church cantors, tyrannical village mayors, good and bad priests, grasping Jewish tavern-keepers, righteous country school teachers and drunk and sober, ignorant and educated, opportunistic and self-sacrificing peasants. The setting and origin of these articles were the Ukrainian villages of Galicia. The authors were in large part peasants, but also village notables ranging from the lowly cantor to the pastor. They wrote about the progress of the national movement and the conflicts it engendered in particular villages. They boasted, lamented, praised, slandered and described. The articles fascinated me. 1 ordered almost all the issues of Batkivshchyna in the university library and scanned the items of correspondence from the countryside. I began to see certain patterns emerging and decided then that I would return to this source in the future to study the grass-roots national movement. The return resulted in the present study. The present study also represents part of a larger project conceived in the course of my doctoral research and may be regarded as another installment in a series of works interpreting the rise of social and national consciousness in Austrian Galicia from the perspective of social history. The earlier installments are the doctoral thesis, and later book, on the Polish and Ukrainian socialist movements, 1860-90, and a series of shorter studies on such topics as the priest-peasant relationship and naive tsarism. In the future XVI Preface I hope to continue work on this broad theme, turning next to an examination of the Greek Catholic church and nation-building. Something remains to be said about the structure of this book. Its methodology demands a focus on details and an investigation of matters and personages that have historical relevance only when understood as a collectivity. This focus on minutiae, which was indispensable to the method of investigation, complicates the presentation. It is difficult not to force the reader to wade through much the same swamp of detail as the investigator had to. I have tried to alleviate this problem by confining the greater part of the details to the appendices, which constitute a lengthy section of the book. But it has been neither possible nor entirely desirable to remove all the minutiae from the text. Acknowledgments Three institutions funded the research for this monograph. The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies awarded me a grant in 1978, which allowed me to employ two research assistants, Yarema Kowalchuk and Nestor Makuch. The Institute, especially its former director. Dr. Manoly R. Lupul, also encouraged this project while I was on staff in 1978-81 and while I was Neporany Postdoctoral Fellow in 1982-4. Dr. Bohdan Krawchenko, the cur- rent director, has been most solicitous in bringing this work into print. The Institute also put at my disposal the skills of Peter Matilainen, who gave technical asssistance with computer wordprocessing, and Lida Somchynsky, who typed part of the manuscript. Myroslav Yurkevich of the Institute read the manuscript and proposed valued improvements. The International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) gave me emergency support in 1982 which allowed me to conduct research in Vienna. In 1983 IREX not only pro- vided me with a generous stipend, but also arranged for my wife and me to spend six months in the Ukrainian SSR. I especially appreciated the conscientiousness and interest in my work displayed by programme officer Oksana Stanko. The Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies awarded me the Neporany Postdoctoral Fellowship, which gave me twelve months to devote to research and writing in Canada, 1982-4. The Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the US, particularly Dr.