mail: Bill Thayer	Help	Up	Home
previous: Chapter 1 This webpage reproduces a chapter of Twentieth-Century Ukraine by Clarence Manning published by Bookman Associates New York, 1951 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 3

 p21  II

Ukraine and World War I

The murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, gave to the world its first open intimation that the long-expected test of strength in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Balkans was at hand. More specifically, it was a sign that on a world scale, a clash between the Triple Entente, composed of the British Empire, France and the Russian Empire, and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy was to break out momentarily. This would be a struggle of giants.

Each of these great powers looked at the conflict in her own way. To Great Britain, the main enemy was Germany, with her aspirations for maritime supremacy and her efforts to push to the southeast and seize control of the wealth of Asia Minor and perhaps India. France thought in terms of the lost provinces of Alsace-Lorraine. Italy was torn between her desires to profit at the expense of France and her hopes of recovering Trieste and adjacent territory from her rival and ally, Austria-Hungary, and securing the east shore of the Adriatic. Germany concentrated on her rivalry with Great Britain and her long-standing feud with France. Austria-Hungary wished to put a stop to the spreading of Slav nationalism  p22 among the Southern Slavs from independent Serbia and she hoped to get rid of Russian agents working among her Slavic citizens. Russia saw an opportunity to advance toward the Straits and to win new subjects among the Slavs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

With these differences in the political line‑up, it was only natural that the Western democracies thought of the war largely in terms of the Western front. The German invasion of Belgium and the overrunning of northern France seemed to both the British Empire and France the most important events. They knew relatively little of the complicated situation in Eastern Europe and they cared less. At the moment the might of the Russian Empire was to them the great factor in the East and through there might be criticism of Russian methods, there surged up a friendship for Russia and a belief in Russia that made them skeptical of any Eastern movement which was not sponsored by the tsars. This idea was fostered as always even by the Russian revolutionists abroad who were as ardently opposed to minority rights as were the bureaucrats themselves.

When the Western Powers thought at all of the future of Austria-Hungary, they were willing to divide it up. It was relatively easy to convince them of the right of the Czechs to independence, since they were familiar with the medieval kingdom of Bohemia. The problem of the Balkans was also relatively simple: the Balkan Wars of 1912‑13 had publicized the desire of the Serbs to unite with them their long-separated brothers in the Southern Slav provinces of the Dual Monarchy. The case of Poland was more complex, for to the Poles the war was indeed a civil war. Relatives of all social ranks from peasants to aristocrats were called into the services of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia and were compelled to fight against their own cousins and even brothers. Russia promised freedom to the Poles of the Central Powers and demanded the direct annexation of the "Russians" in West  p23 Ukraine. She confidently envisaged the establishment of a series of independent Slav countries and except in the case of the Serbs, who had already a native dynasty, she believed that she would be able to place on the thrones of the new governments Russian princes who would weld their states to the traditional Russian policy.

The Central Powers naturally saw things differently. They regarded the independence movement among the Czechs as the work of Russian propaganda and they aimed to bring all the Southern Slavs into Austria-Hungary. They were willing to liberate Russian Poland and place it under the control of a German or Austrian prince who would co-ordinate it with their own policy and who would perhaps have some influence in Austrian Poland but none in German Poland. This sharply divided the Poles at home and abroad — with a Polish National Committee operating in Paris, London and New York, and a Polish Council of the Regency working in Berlin and Vienna — and it was not until America entered the war and the Central Powers weakened that there was any agreement between the two factions.​1 The feud continued throughout the entire history of independent Poland in the hostility of the friends of Marshal Joseph Pilsudski and Ignace Jan Paderewski. The Central Powers were willing also to give at least idealistic support to all groups in the Russian Empire which might have separatist ambitions.

In all this the Ukrainians were under a special handicap. They had formed one of the latest waves of emigration to the West, and they did so under the varied names of Galicians, Ruthenians, Russians, Little Russians and even Austrians or Hungarians. They had not yet developed a strong leader­ship abroad. They had no representatives with the broad popular appeal of the Czech Thomas G. Masaryk, a distinguished philosopher with an American wife, or of the musical genius Paderewski. The Russian authorities abroad redoubled their efforts to prove that there was no such people as the  p24 Ukrainians and that the entire Ukrainian movement was of German origin. The Poles demanded the inclusion of a great part of Ukraine in a revived Polish state. The Central Powers would not promise to change their system whereby Polish influences were supreme in the Ukrainian parts of the Hapsburg Empire. Thus the Ukrainians could not look forward without misgiving to a victory of the Triple Entente nor could they be sure that a victory of the Central Powers would bring them any relief.

Despite the cheerless outlook, the Ukrainian leaders in Austria-Hungary established as early as August 5, 1914, a Holovna Ukrainska Rada to mobilize all Western Ukrainian forces against the Russian Empire. The next day a Ukrainian Military Organization was started to create a volunteer force of Sichovi Striltsi (Riflemen of the Sich).​2 This paralleled the Polish Legions of Pilsudski but it was distrusted by the authorities. The number of the Striltsi was severely limited and they were poorly supplied at the beginning. In 1918, a fully equipped regiment of them marched to the defence of Lviv.

The Ukrainians who had left Russia organized in Vienna a Society for the Liberation of Ukraine. This broadcast appeals for assistance to all enemies of Russia and hoped to find some sympathy among the Western democratic powers. At the moment it met with slight success.​3

The wave of patriotic enthusiasm which swept over Russia demanded the suppression of all Ukrainian organizations as agents of the Central Powers.​4 Ukrainian newspapers in Kiev and elsewhere which had survived the censor­ship of the last years were now suppressed. New regulations were added so that authors who desired to print books of any kind in Ukrainian were compelled to file three copies of the manuscript with the censor and then the government found excuses to hold up decisions and avoid publication. Prominent Ukrainians were moved into the interior of Russia. Separate Ukrainian relief organizations were forbidden as unnecessary on the familiar  p25 pretext that the Ukrainians were not a separate people. Yet with open work barred, the Ukrainians were able to form unofficial groups within the Russian organizations and thus give some aid and encouragement to, and receive information from, the Western Ukrainians who were taken prisoners. Vainly the Eastern Ukrainians, especially those of socialist tendencies, argued that they were loyal and wished to see all Ukraine united within the Russian Empire. They were not believed and the government made it clear to them that the time had come to liquidate the Ukrainian problem for good and all.

In Western Ukraine the Hapsburg government arrested the Muscophile leaders as Russian agents. It was none too soon, for three days after the declaration of war between Russia and Austria-Hungary, the Russian Army crossed the boundaries of Eastern Galicia and on September 3, 1914, entered Lviv, the capital of the province. Then it pushed on and finally it reached the summit of the Carpathian Mountains in the district of Carpatho-Ukraine, following much the same route as the Russians had taken in 1849, when they entered to aid the Hapsburgs against the Hungarians.

The Russians lost no time in putting into power the Muscophiles among the Western Ukrainians. They proceeded on the usual assumption that there was no such people as the Ukrainians; they appointed a Russian governor general of the "liberated" province and they deported prominent nationalist leaders to the interior. Thus they arrested Professor Hrushevsky at his summer home in the Carpathians and sent him to Nizhni Novgorod; but thanks to the intercession of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he was allowed to go to Moscow and work in the libraries there. Archbishop Count Andrew Sheptitsky, metropolitan of Lviv and head of the Catholics of the Eastern rite, was taken into Russia and kept there during the entire period of the war.​5

The lesser clergy of the Uniat church who fell into Russian hands were either deported or compelled to join the Orthodox  p26 church, on the adroit theory that the Uniat church had been forced upon the Russian Orthodox people in the sixteenth century by the papacy and the Poles​6 and that the Russian armies had therefore liberated the people from a foreign yoke and brought them back to their original faith. Again it made no difference if the people preferred their own usages and customs. They were Russians and were to make the best of it. In the words of Shevchenko, be silent and happy.

All Ukrainian cultural and economic institutions were abolished. Reading rooms were closed down, co‑operative societies were shut down, and the printing of Ukrainian was subjected to the same rules as in Russia itself. Everything possible was done to give an air of permanence to the new regime.

In the spring of 1915 Tsar Nicholas II visited Lviv, where he congratulated the "Russian" population on their return to the homeland and assured them that the province would never again return to alien rule. All of the imperial and other official utterances stressed the fact that special rights would be given to the Poles but that the Russians of the province would receive the same treatment as did Russians everywhere.

This was a convenient principle for the Russians. In a region already devastated by war, it gave them the right to treat all conscious Ukrainians as traitors to the cause of Russia, their native land, to confiscate their property, and deport them to regions in the Russian Empire where they would be no longer subject to German influences — and this at a time when the activities of the Baltic Germans who held high rank at the Russian court, were beginning to awake suspicion of treason within the empire.

Naturally, this principle, when applied by renegade Ukrainians who had fled into Russia before the war and by certain favored Poles who were hostile to the growth of Ukrainian influence in Eastern Galicia, could excuse the most arbitrary actions. There resulted a reign of terror and destruction which did as much harm to the population as the actual fighting  p27 around the various cities, even including the fortress of Peremyshl, which held out against the invaders for several months.

At the end of April, 1915, the tide turned again. General von Mackensen smashed the Russian lines along the Dunajec River in the western part of the province and the Russians were compelled to retreat. Since "Russian" patriots must, of course, be kept from falling under German control, the army command disordered them to be evacuated. The Russians hoped to be able to move out of Western Ukraine all "Russian-speaking" persons, i.e., Ukrainians. Of course they did not succeed, yet they did gather up thousands of men, women and children who were compelled to retire eastward with the army and were then deposited as refugees throughout the eastern and northern provinces of European Russia and Siberia. The forced evacuation of the Ukrainian population was attended with severe hardships, especially since the military could ill spare any food, clothing or other supplies for the "liberated" and "rescued" civilians.

Once the refugees had reached their new homes, they were naturally forbidden to form any special Ukrainian associations. What was the use of a war of liberation if any evidence could be shown that the form of liberation was not too palatable to those liberated? The various other national groups that had been removed from the Western borders of Russia were allowed to form their own relief organizations, but the Ukrainians, since they were in theory Russian, were not given this privilege. Thus they were caught again on the two horns of the Russian dilemma. Their very existence was denied and they were refused the aid which they could expect as Russians while at the same time they were treated as an alien body which could expect no sympathy or support from the Russian population. Imperial fiat even tried to prevent help from the "non-existent" Ukrainians of the empire.

With the Russian retreat from Galicia, the Austrian authorities returned and they allowed Ukrainian life to resume in the  p28 evacuated areas. Once more the old institutions, now devastated, were reopened. As the German armies advanced eastward and northward, Kholm, Pidlyashshya, Volyn and Podolia each became in turn the scene of the same kind of military activities, with the Russians evacuating Ukrainian inhabitants and forgetting about them afterwards. Later a Russian offensive under General Brusilov succeeded in penetrating Galicia again in the southwest and again the process was repeated.

The inability of the Ukrainians to win any active support abroad reacted against them. The activities of the Poles in all of the capitals of both groups of powers and in the United States made it advisable for the Austro-Hungarian government to proceed with caution and try to satisfy their demands. Both the Central Powers and the Triple Entente promised the Poles an independent state of some kind, the Germans and Austrians generously offering to include in their projected territory the land of the Western Ukrainians.

As a result of Polish influence, the Austrian government now became deaf when the Society for the Liberation of Ukraine pleaded for the establishment of an independent state in the Ukrainian territory taken by the Germans from Russia. The General Ukrainian Rada established in Vienna in 1915 had urged that the Ukrainian districts of Galicia and Bukovina should be included in this state. At this moment, with the Russian armies in retreat, the attitude of the Ukrainians was similar to that of the Austrian Poles: all groups within the Hapsburg lands were agreed that a reorganization of the government was necessary to satisfy the legitimate demands of the citizens and provide a proper and efficient setup. But the rigid ideas of the old Emperor Francis Joseph I prevented any action and the vigorous foreign propaganda of the Poles won them favored treatment. Undoubtedly Vienna hoped that the refusal of the Ukrainian request would leave the people a dissatisfied core in the Polish state projected by the Central Powers and so nullify its activity. The Ukrainians  p29  became convinced that they could not look for justice to Vienna and they joined the nations ardently desiring the disintegration of the entire Hapsburg structure.

Meanwhile conditions in Russia for Ukrainians of even the noninvaded areas were going from bad to worse. The few Ukrainians in the Russian Duma again asked permission to use their own language in the schools and to implement the provisions of the Constitution of 1905 and the decrees of the Academy of Sciences. A new system of educational reforms was projected by the minister of education, Count Paul Ignatyev, but even this still preserved the old idea that Ukrainians were Russians and did not give them any of the relief granted to other nationalities in the empire. A few of the Russian Progressives utilized the scandal of the occupation in Galicia to make some interpellations but these were easily set aside by the ending of the session. The Russian liberals, as hostile as the government to the Ukrainian cause, refused to see anything extraordinary in the situation in the Ukrainian areas and the authorities continued to take every measure to suppress the Ukrainian movement and smear it both at home and abroad.

Thus the year 1916 passed. On both sides of the border there was a growing realization that the days of both Austria-Hungary and Russia were running out. No one could foresee what was going to happen but there was a growing war weariness and a sullen willingness to dream of what might happen that boded ill for the two regimes. Even the death of Francis Joseph and the accession of Charles could change nothing.

---

The Author's Notes:

1 R. L. Buell, Poland, Key to Europe (New York, 1939), pp65 ff.

2 Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, ed. Ivan Tyktor (Lviv, Winnipeg, 1948), pp748 ff.

3 Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, pp756 ff.

4 Hrushevsky, op. cit., pp518 ff.

5 Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, pp758 ff.

6 For earlier cases, see A. H. Hore, Student's History of the Greek Church (London, 1902), pp447 ff. Cf. Hrushevsky, op. cit., pp516 ff.

◂ previous						next ▸
Images with borders lead to more information. The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)
UP TO:		Twentieth-Century Ukraine	History of Ukraine	European History	Home
A page or image on this site is in the public domain ONLY if its URL has a total of one *asterisk. If the URL has two *asterisks, the item is copyright someone else, and used by permission or fair use. If the URL has none the item is © Bill Thayer. See my copyright page for details and contact information.

Accessibility