The Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism: Galicia as Ukraine's Piedmont

Myroslav Shkandrij is head of the Department of German and Slavic
Studies at the University of Manitoba and the editor of The Cultural
Renaissance in Ukraine: Polemical Pamphlets, 1925–1926.

This volume contains 10 articles on Galician Ukrainians and their
history. Eight of these are modifications of articles already published
between 1979 and 1991. The articles are supplemented by two historical
surveys: one on Galicia from prehistoric times until the present, and
one on Ukrainians and the Hapsburgs.

One important article elaborates the framework that Professor Magocsi
has proposed for analyzing the Ukrainian national revival: the tension
between adherence to the hierarchy of multiple loyalties and adherence
to mutually exclusive identities. It is this framework, he argues, that
helps explain the evolution of individuals and ideologies in a part of
the world subject to powerful political and cultural crosscurrents.
Other articles deal with the 19th-century competition between the
ideologies of Old Ruthenianism, Russophilism, and Ukrainophilism in
Galician life and letters; the development of a literary language; the
issues raised by the growth of public education and reading societies;
the creation of a national bibliography; and the present resources
available in Vienna for Ukrainian studies. The volume is elegantly
produced and includes several useful maps, charts, and documents.

For readers who require an authoritative and readable account of
Galicia, particularly in the “Austrian era”—when from 1772 until
1918 it found itself under Hapsburg rule—this book will be invaluable.
It is lucid and informative on a range of puzzling and significant
issues: Why were the Ukrainians so loyal to the Hapsburg emperor (to the
extent that they were known as the “Tyroleans of the east”)? Why did
this particular territory become the “Ukrainian Piedmont”? Why did
three distinct cultural orientations survive among Galician Ukrainians
into the 20th century? The author examines how, under the more favorable
conditions of Hapsburg rule, Ukrainians were recognized as a distinct
nationality by fellow Slavs within and beyond the Austrian Empire in the
first part of the 19th century, and how this early success was gradually
translated into a self-confident national movement in the later 19th
century. The events of the 20th century, and, of course, Ukraine’s
independence in 1991, owe a great deal to this development of a national
identity in Galicia from the early decades of the 19th century.
Historians, students of identity politics, and policymakers will all
find the book useful.