Galicia Central Europe: Encyclopedia II - Galicia Central Europe - History

Galicia Central Europe - History

Galicia Central Europe - Prior to partitions of Poland

The region of what later became known as Galicia appears to have been incorporated, in large part, into the Empire of Great Moravia. It is first attested in the Primary Chronicle under 981, when Volodymyr the Great of Kievan Rus took over the Red Ruthenian cities in his military campaign on the border with Poland.

In the following century, the area shifted briefly to Poland (1018 to 1031) and then back to Kievan Rus. As one of many successors to Kievan Rus', the Principality of Halych existed from 1087 to 1200, when Roman the Great finally managed to unite it with Volhynia in the state of Halych-Volynia.

Despite anti-Mongol campaigns of Daniel of Halych, who was crowned the first king of Galicia, his state occasionally paid tribute to the Golden Horde. Daniel's son Lev moved his capital from Halych to Lviv. Daniel's dynasty also attempted to gain papal and broader support in Europe for an alliance against the Mongols, but proved unable of competing with the rising powers of centralised Great Duchy of Lithuania and Poland. In the 1340s, the Rurikid dynasty died out, and the area passed to King Casimir III of Poland. But the sister state of Volynia, together with Kiev fell under Lithuanian control.

Thereafter, the region comprised a Polish possession divided into a number of voivodships. This began an era of heavy Polish settlement among the Ruthenian population. Armenian and Jewish emigration to the region also occurred in large numbers. Numerous castles were built during this time and some new cities were founded: Stanisławów (now Ivano-Frankivsk) and Krystynopol (now Chervonohrad).

Galicia Central Europe - From partitions of Poland to the Congress of Vienna

• Kingdom of the first Piasts
  
• Fragmentation
  
• Kingdom of the later Piasts
  
• Kingdom of the Jagiellons
  
• Republic of Both Nations
  
• Partitions
  • Kingdom of Galicia
    
  • Duchy of Warsaw
    
  • Congress Kingdom
    
  • Free City of Kraków
    
  • Grand Duchy of Poznań
    
  • Regency Kingdom
    
• Second Polish Republic
  
• Polish Secret State
  
• People's Republic of Poland
  
• Third Polish Republic

In 1772, Galicia became the largest part of the area annexed by Austria in the First Partition. As such, the Austrian region of Poland and what was later to become Ukraine was known as the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria to underline the Hungarian claims to the country. However, a large portion of ethnically Polish lands to the west was also added to the province, which changed the geographical reference of the term, Galicia. Lviv (Lemberg) served as the capital of Austrian Galicia, which was dominated by the Polish aristocracy, despite the fact that the population of the eastern half of the province was in the majority Ukrainian, or "Ruthenian", as they were known at the time. In addition to the Polish aristocracy and gentry which inhabited almost all parts of Galicia, and the Ruthenians in the east, there existed a large Jewish population also more heavily concentrated in the eastern parts of the province.

During the first decades of Austrian rule, Galicia was firmly governed from Vienna and many significant reforms were carried out by a bureaucracy staffed largely by Germans and Germanized Czechs. The aristocracy was guaranteed its rights, but these rights were considerably circumscribed. The former serfs were no longer simple chattels, but became subjects of law and granted certain personal freedoms, such as the right to marry without the lord's permission. Their labour obligations were defined and limited, and they could bypass the lords and appeal to the imperial courts for justice. The Eastern Rite "Uniate" Church, which primarily served the Ruthenians, was renamed the Greek Catholic Church (See Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church) to bring it onto a par with the Roman Catholic Church; it was given seminaries, and eventually, a Metropolitan. Although unpopular with the aristocracy, among the common folk, Polish and Ukrainian/Ruthenian alike, these reforms created a reservoir of good-will towards the emperor which lasted almost to the end of Austrian rule. At the same time, however, Austria extracted from Galicia considerable wealth and conscripted large numbers of the peasant population into its armed services.

Galicia Central Europe - From 1815 to 1860

In 1815, as a result of decisions of the Congress of Vienna, the Lublin area and surrounding regions were ceded by Austria to the Congress Kingdom of Poland which was ruled by the Tsar, and the Ternopil Region, including the historical region of Southern Podolia, was returned to Austria from Russia which had held it since 1809.

The 1820s and 1830s were a period of absolutist rule from Vienna, the local Galician bureaucracy still being filled by Germans and Germanized Czechs, although some of their children were already becoming Polonized. After the failure of the November insurrection in Russian Poland in 1830-31, in which a few thousand Galician volunteers participated, many Polish refugees arrived in Galicia. The latter 1830s were rife with Polish conspiratorial organizations whose work culminated in the unsuccessful Galician insurrection of 1846, easily put down by the Austrians with the help of the Galician peasantry which remained loyal to the emperor. This insurrection only occurred in the western, Polish-populated, part of Galicia, and the conflict was between patriotic, noble, rebels, and unsympathetic Polish peasants. In 1846, as one of the results of this unsuccessful revolt, the former Polish capital city of Cracow, which had been a Free City, and a republic, became a part of Galicia, administered from Lemberg.

In the 1830s, in the eastern part of Galicia, the beginnings of a national awakening occurred among the Ruthenians. A circle of activists, primarily Greek Catholic seminarians, affected by the romantic movement in Europe and the example of fellow Slavs elsewhere, especially in eastern Ukraine under the Russians, began to turn their attention to the common folk and their language. In 1837, the so-called Ruthenian Triad led by Markiian Shashkevych, published The Nymph of the Dniester, a collection of folksongs and other materials in the common Ruthenian tongue. Alarmed by such democratism, the Austrian authorities and the Greek Catholic Metropolitan banned the book.

In 1848, revolutions occurred in Vienna and other parts of the Austrian Empire. In Lemberg, a Polish National Council, and then later, a Ukrainian, or Ruthenian Supreme Council were formed. Even before Vienna had acted, the remnants of serfdom were abolished by the Governor, Franz Stadion, in an attempt to thwart the revolutionaries. Moreover, Polish demands for Galician automomy were countered by Ruthenian demands for national equality and for a partition of the province into an Eastern, Ruthenian part, and a Western, Polish part. Eventually, Lemberg was bombarded by imperial troops and the revolution put down completely.

A decade of renewed absolutism followed, but to placate the Poles, Count Agenor Goluchowski, a conservative representative of the eastern Galician aristocracy, the so-called Podolians, was appointed Viceroy. He began to Polonize the local administration and managed to have Ruthenian ideas of partitioning the province shelved. He was unsuccessful, however, in forcing the Greek Catholic Church to shift to the use of the western or Gregorian calendar, or among Ruthenians generally, to replace the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin alphabet.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki