SOCIAL ECONOMIC CHANGES IN THE

REGION

By Elmir Badalov

REVOLUTIONARY ERA

First 1848-1859 marked a neo-absolutist

phase,with government exclusively under the

control of Vienna

Second 1860 to 1866 was a time of

constitutional experiment

Third 1867 to 1868 witnessed the creation of the

Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy,the structure

which prevailed until the very demise of

Habsburg Empire in 1918

ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURE

Vienna rulled the empire directly from the imperial court

and,in some areas,including Galicia and Hungary,through

martial lawadministered by the imperial army

Martial law in Galicia lasted until 1854,after which an

imperial civil administration was set up,headed by a

viceroy.In 1867 the nineteen regions were replaced by

seventy-four and,later,eighty-three districts,each with its

own sheriff in the charge of the district administration

Besides,the districts there were also two self-governing

cities L’viv and Cracow

The status of Bukovina remained uncertain.

Transcarpathia was under martial law

VICEROY IN GALICIA

The first viceroy to function under the centralized

system of Austrian rule was the polish count Agenor

Goluchowski.

Goluchowski was convinced that Austria offered the

best political future for Poles.

Goluchowski served as Galician viceroy three times

between 1849 and 1875

Goluchowski successfully foiled Vienna’s inclination to

divide Galicia into two provinces a division which would

effectively have meant a Polish and Ukranian province.

He even tried to introduce the Latin alphabet for

Ukranian publications in 1859

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS AND AUSTRIA’S

INTERNAL POLITICS

1859 was a crucial turning point for Austria,since it lost a

war with France and the growing Italian nation-state of

Sardinia-Piedmont.it was evident that centralized from

Vienna had failed.

Count Goluchowski propesed a new solution,this marked

the dawn of the era of constitutionalism and

representative government in Austrian history.

In 1866 Prussia leadership of Chancellor Otto Bismarch

defeated Austria in a war.

The result was a compromise reached with the

Hungarians in may 1867 and known as Ausgleich.it

inevitably prompted demands from other natinalities.

The Poles put forth their program in the so-called Galician

Resolution of 1868(political autonomy for the

province,local diet,a separate supreme court,and

responsibility on the part of the viceroy to the diet.

Polish became the language of internal administration

secondary school s and Lviv University

In 1871 the Ministry of Galician Affairs was created

Ukranians participated in the political system and

guarenteed certain legal rights

The dominant position of the Poles was bolstered by the

social privileges of the landed nobility and the upper

middle class

For the Ukranians the struggle for national and social

emancipation was one and the same.

AUSTRIAN PARLIAMENTARY STRUCTURE

When galicia’s diet was established in 1861 it had 150

seats.1901 161,1911 228.1861(44 by great

landowners,3 by chambers of commerce,23 by cities,80

by small towns and rural communes.

Bukovinian diet 31 until 1911,thereafter it had 63

Austrian parliament came into being 1861 consisted of 2

houses.Houses of Lords(members appointed by

emperor.House of Deputies(until 1907 by curia

system,then by universal male suffrage).

Number of deputies 203(1861) increased 516 (1907)

66 of 228(1914) 49 of 150(1861) deputies were

ukranians

All subsequent Galician viceroys were Poles

SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND ECONOMIC

DEVOLOPMENTS In the first half of the XIX century Galicia was an

underdeveloped agrarian region whose raw materials

were exploited by the more industrialized provinces in the

western part of the Habsburg Empire.

Galicia’s population increased from 4.9 million(1849) to

7.9 million(1910).

1849 and 1910 Poles percent in Galicia remained same

but Ukranians declined from 47 % to 43%.

The Reasons for this proportional change were:

1.an increase in Polish colonization from western to

eastern Galicia.

2.the large-scale emigration of Ukranians abroad

beginning in the 1880s.

NATIONALITY COMPOSITION OF GALICIA 1910

NUMBER PERCENTAGE

POLES 3.627.000 45.4

UKRANIANS 3.422.000 42.9

JEWS 872.000 10.9

GERMANS 65.000 0.8

OTHERS

TOTAL

10.000

7.996.000

0.0

100.0

The provincial capital L’viv,in 1910 it was a still relatively

small city of only 207.000 inhabitants,over 80 % of whom

were Poles or Jews.Prezmysl and Kolomyia with fewer

than 40.000 inhabitants each.Ternopil and Stanyslaviv

fewer than 30.000.

Three-fifths of the province ‘s inhabitants were engaged in

agricultural pursuits.

The difficult economic situation gave rise to frequent

peasent strikes at the beginning of XX century.Many

peasents also sought relief by emigrating abroad.

Between 1881 and 1912 estimated 430.000 ukranians left

galicia and bukovina and another 170.000 left

Transcarpathia.

The only real way to stop the emigration was to improve

the Galician economy.

In the 1880s in particular industrial development was

encouraged by the dynamic marshall of the Galician diet

Mikolay Zyblikiewicz.

Railroad construction had already begun in the 1860s and

by 1914 Galicia together with Bulkovina and

Transcarpathia had a rather well developed network

totaling 2.294 miles(3.700 kilometers).

By 1900,foreign investments in Galicia amounted to 1.3

billion crowns,at a time when the province’s entire budget

was only 20.5 million crowns.

A modest industrial growth took place in Galicia.

By 1902 there were 335 plants,employing 26. 000

workers,1910 these figures had increased to 448 plants

with 36.000 workers.

Oil disvored in 1870 in eastern Galicia.

Employment of workers (1910)

Machine building and metal

working

10 percent

Food Processing 34 percent

Lumber and Wood

Processing

20 percent

Clothes Manufacturing 16 percent

Mineral-mainly oil-extraction 15 percent

THE PROBLEM OF STATISTICS

During the second half of the nineteenth century,several

European countries began to undertake censuses every

ten years.

For instance,the Austrian statistics on language for Galicia

in 1910 were the following:

Polish 4.672.000 58.5%

Ukranian 3.208.000 40.2%

German 90.000 1.1%

Others 10.000 0.1%

OTHER PEOPLES IN EASTERN GALICIA AND

BUKOVINA

Most of the administrative,commercial and industrial

development in late ninetenth-century Galicia was directed

not by Ukranians but rather by Poles and Jews.

By 1890 one-third of all Poles living in eastern Galicia had

immigrated from the west of the San.

By 1910 there was a total of 890.000 Poles in eastern

Galicia.In terms of socioeconomic composition ,68 percent

were peasents,16 percent were engaged in industry.8.5

percent were engaged in the trade and transport,and 7.5

percent were engaged in administration,the professions

and service jobs.

L’VIV

Among the Polish diaspora from Ukraine was a strong

contingent from the city of L’viv.

After the war they established in London the L’viv Circle

to perpetuate through lectures and publications of the

memory of Polish Lwow.

Numerous books ,pamphlets,reprintings and journals

devoted to Polish western Ukraine have appeared.L’viv,in

particular has been the focus of attention through

publications,media reports,and the activity of over a

dozen Friends of Lwow societies founded throughout

Poland since 1989.

JEWS IN GALICIA

Whereas in 1849 there were 328.000 Jews,by 1910 their

numbers had more than doubled to 872.000 a figure that

represented 11 percent of the total population of the

province.

Three-quarters of Galician’s jews (660.000) lived in the

eastern half of the province in both cities and small towns

(76.2 percent) and the surrounding Ukranian countryside.

The Jews remained an important factor in the Galician

economy.By 1910 77 percent of the group were engaged

in commerce,industry,and small handicrafts.

Despite emigration,Galicia in the second half of the

nineteenth century was the center of a vibrant Jewish

political and cultural life.

THE UKRANIAN DIASPORA

Migration is nothing new to the peoples of Ukraine.In the

XVI century Ukranians discontented with Poland’s

economic and cultural policies emigrated to Muscovy.

In the early XVIII century the first political emigration

associated with the Cossack hetman Pylyp Orlyk,fled

westward from Muscovite rule.

By 1914 600.000 Ukranian left their lands,established

distinct community structures in the USA and then

Canada.

The Ukranian national building process in North America

was initially carried out by secular organizations,the

oldest and still the largest of which is the Ukranian

National Association established in 1894 in Jersey city.

Among the most important Ukranian institutions in North

America were the churches

The churches and their parish priests became as

intrested in preserving thr Ukranian language and

fostering a Ukranian identity as theywere in sustaining

purely religious activity.Ukranian churches were almost all

Greek Catholic.

Quite apart from the Orthadoxy brought by the few

Bukovinian immigrants the 1890s witness2ed the

beginning of an Orthadox movement in the United States.

Ukranian immigrants and their descendants hoped to

influence economic and in particular political

developments in Ukraine.

The diaspora fulfilled its role as preserver of Ukranian

culture and national conscioness through the creation in

Western Europe and North America of several

educational and scholarly institutions such as,

The Ukranian Studies Program at Harvard University,in

Cambridge,Massachusetts

The Shevchenko Scientific Society and Ukranian

Academy of Sciences in New York city.

The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the

University of Alberta in Edmonton,Canada.

In short the Ukrainian diaspora despite numerous internal

conflicts,maintained for posterity all those elements of the

Ukranian cultural patriomony that were being suppressed

in the Ukranian homeland.

The jewish elite was similar to those Ukranians who

accepted the principle of multiple loyalties.For them the

choice was to be a German or a Pole of Jewish religious

background.

Zionists first Galician organization was established in

Przemysl in 1874 looked to only one avenue to jewish

salvation emigration to palestine.

One of the aspects of self-emancipation was a new

attitude toward the indigenous Yiddish culture of jews in

the Austro-Hungarian Empire as well as elsewhere in

Eastern Europe.

Neighboring Bokovina,in particular was the home of the

founder of Yiddish theater,Abraham Godfaden,and the

site of the first world congress of Yiddish language and

culture.

UKRAINE’S OTHER DIASPORAS

Since Ukraine was home to many different peoples,it

generated other Ukranian diasporas or,more

precisely,diasporas from Ukraine.Numerically the most

important was that of the Jews.

In the 1940s there were in the US as many as 31

separate organizations of Jews from the city of Odessa

alone,which were among the nearly 800 groups that

formed an umbrella body known as the National

Conference of Ukranian Jewish Organizations.

Armand Hammer,an american-born,who himself became

a wealthy industrialist and art collector

German language writers Manes Sperber and Paul

Celan.

ROMANIANS

The oldest and most important cultural organization was

the Society for Romanian Literature and Culture in

Bukovina.Over the next half century it published literary

journals.,provided scholarships for Romanian gymnasium

students.

During the last three decades of Habsburg

Rule,Romanian leaders were concerned primarily with two

issues:

The first was the growth of the local Ukranian movement

The other issue was Romanian irredentism from

neighboring Romania