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Galicia is a historical region currently split between Poland and Ukraine. The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, or simply Galicia, was the largest, most populous, and northernmost province of Austria from 1772 until 1918, with Lemberg (Lwów, L'viv) as its capital city. It was created from the territories taken from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the partitions of Poland and lasted until the dissolution of Austria-Hungary at the end of the First World War.

Origin and variations of the name

The name Galicia et Lodomeria was first used in the 13th century by King Andrew II of Hungary. It was a Latinized version of the Slavic names Halych and Volodymyr, the major cities of the Ukrainian or Ruthenian principality of Halych-Volhynia, which was under Hungarian rule at the time.

The origin of the Ukrainian name Halych (Halicz in Polish, Galich in Russian, Galic in Latin) is uncertain. Some historians believe it has to do with people of Celtic origin settled nearby, and is related to many similar place names found across Europe, such as Galaţi in Romania, Gaul (France), and Galicia in Spain. Others claim that the name is of Slavic origin – from halytsa/galitsa meaning "a naked (unwooded) hill", or from halka/galka which means "a jackdaw". The jackdaw was used as a charge in the city's coat-of-arms and later also in the coat-of-arms of Galicia. The name, however, predates the coat-of-arms which may represent folk etymology.

Although Hungarians were driven out from Halych-Volhynia by 1221, Hungarian kings continued to add Galicia et Lodomeria to their official titles. In the 16th century, those titles were inherited, together with the Hungarian crown, by the Habsburgs in 1527. In 1772, Empress Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary, decided to use those historical claims to justify her participation in the first partition of Poland. In fact, the territories acquired by Austria did not correspond exactly to those of former Halych-Volhynia. Volhynia, including the city of Włodzimierz Wołyński (Volodymyr Volyns'kyi)—after which Lodomeria was named—was taken by Russia, not Austria. On the other hand, much of Lesser Poland—which was historically and ethnically Polish, not Ruthenian—did become part of Galicia. Moreover, despite the fact that the claim derived from the historical Hungarian crown, Galicia and Lodomeria was not officially assigned to Hungary, and after the Ausgleich of 1867, it found itself in Cisleithania, or the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary.

The full official name of the new Austrian province was:

Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria with the Duchies of Auschwitz and Zator.
After the incorporation of the Free City of Kraków in 1846, it was extended to:
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, and the Grand Duchy of Krakau with the Duchies of Auschwitz and Zator. Each of those entities was formally separate; they were listed as such in the Austrian emperor's titles, each had its distinct coat-of-arms and flag. For administrative purposes, however, they formed a single province. The duchies of Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Zator were small historical principalities west of Kraków, on the border with Prussian Silesia. Lodomeria existed only on paper; it had no territory and could not be found on any map.

Galicia and Lodomeria in different languages

  • Latin: Galicia et Lodomeria
  • German: Galizien und Lodomerien
  • Hungarian: Gácsország (or Halics) és Lodoméria
  • Polish: Galicja i Lodomeria
  • Slovak: Halič a Vladimírsko or Galícia a Lodoméria
  • Ukrainian: Halychyna i Volodymyria (Галичина і Володимирія)
  • Romanian: Galiţia şi Lodomeria

History

Prior to partitions of Poland

Main articles: Red Ruthenia and Halych-Volhynia

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 was twice occupied by the Ottoman Turks in the 1490s and 1520s, ravaged by Ukrainian Cossack pogroms and Russian and Swedish invasions during The Deluge, and the Swedes returned during the Great Northern War of the early 18th century.

From partitions of Poland to the Congress of Vienna

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. Ugartsthal* 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.

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.

Constitutional experiments

In 1859, following Austrian military defeat in Italy, the Empire entered a period of constitutional experiments. In 1860, the Vienna Government, influenced by Agenor Goluchowski, issued its October Diploma, which envisioned a conservative federalization of the empire, but a negative reaction in the German-speaking lands led to changes in government and the issuing of the February Patent which watered down this de-centralization. Nevertheless, by 1861, Galicia was granted a Legislative Assembly or Sejm. Although at first pro-Habsburg Ruthenian and Polish peasant representation was considerable in this body (about half the assembly), and the pressing social and Ruthenian questions were discussed, administrative pressures limited the effectiveness of both peasant and Ruthenian representatives and the Sejm became dominated by the Polish aristocracy and gentry, who favoured further autonomy. This same year, disturbances broke out in Russian Poland and to some extent spilled over into Galicia. The Sejm ceased to sit.

By 1863, open revolt broke out in Russian Poland and from 1864 to 1865 the Austrian government declared a State of Siege in Galicia, temporarily suspending civil liberties.

1865 brought a return to federal ideas along the lines suggested by Agenor Goluchowski and negotiations on autonomy between the Polish aristocracy and Vienna began once again.

Meanwhile, the Ruthenians felt more and more abandoned by Vienna and among the "Old Ruthenians" grouped around the Greek Catholic Cathedral of Saint George, there occurred a turn towards Russia. The more extreme supporters of this orientation came to be known as "Russophiles". At the same time, influenced by the Ukrainian language poetry of the eastern Ukrainian writer, Taras Shevchenko, a Ukrainophile movement arose which published literature in the Ukrainian/Ruthenian vernacular and eventually established a network of reading halls. Supporters of this orientation came to be known as "Populists", and later, simply as "Ukrainians". Almost all Ruthenians, however, still hoped for national equality and for an administrative division of Galicia along ethnic lines.

Galician autonomy

In 1866, following the Battle of Sadova and the Austrian defeat in the Austro-Prussian War, the Austrian empire began to experience increased internal problems. In an effort to shore up support for the monarchy, Emperor Franz Joseph began negotiations for a compromise with the Magyar nobility to ensure their support. Some members of the government, such as Austrian prime minister Count Belcredi, advised the Emperor to make a more comprehensive constitutional deal with all of the nationalities that would have created a federal structure. Belcredi worried that an accommodation with the Magyar interests would alienate the other nationalities. However, Franz Joseph was unable to ignore the power of the Magyar nobility, and they would not accept anything less than dualism between themselves and the traditional Austrian élites.

Finally, after the so-called Ausgleich of February of 1867, the Austrian Empire was reformed into a dualist Austria-Hungary. Although the Polish and Czech plans for their parts of the monarchy to be included in the federal structure failed, a slow yet steady process of liberalisation of Austrian rule in Galicia started. Representatives of the Polish aristocracy and intelligentsia addressed the Emperor asking for greater autonomy for Galicia. Their demands were not accepted outright, but over the course of the next several years a number of significant concessions were made toward the establishment of Galician autonomy.

From 1873, Galicia was de facto an autonomous province of Austria-Hungary with Polish and, to a much lesser degree, Ukrainian or Ruthenian, as official languages. The Germanisation had been halted and the censorship lifted as well. Galicia was subject to the Austrian part of the Dual Monarchy, but the Galician Sejm and provincial administration had extensive privileges and prerogatives, especially in education, culture, and local affairs.

These changes were supported by many Polish intellectuals. In 1869 a group of young conservative publicists in Cracow, including Józef Szujski, Stanisław Tarnowski, Stanisław Koźmian and Ludwik Wodzicki, published a series of satirical pamphlets entitled Teka Stańczyka (Stańczyk's Portfolio). Only five years after the tragic end of the January Uprising, the pamphlets ridiculed the idea of armed national uprisings and suggested compromise with Poland's enemies, especially the Austrian Empire, concentration on economic growth, and acceptance of the political concessions offered by Vienna. This political grouping came to be known as the Stanczyks or Cracow Conservatives. Together with the eastern Galician conservative Polish landowners and aristocracy called the "Podolians", they gained a political ascendency in Galicia which lasted to 1914.

This shift in power from Vienna to the Polish landowning class was not welcomed by the Ruthenians, who became more sharply divided into Russophiles, who looked to Russia for salvation, and Ukrainians who stressed their connections to the common people.

Both Vienna and the Poles saw treason among the Russophiles and a series of political trials eventually discredited them. Meanwhile, by 1890, an agreement was worked out between the Poles and the "Populist" Ruthenians or Ukrainians which saw the partial Ukrainianization of the school system in eastern Galicia and other concessions to Ukrainian culture. Thereafter, the Ukrainian national movement spread rapidly among the Ruthenian peasantry and, despite repeated setbacks, by the early years of the twentieth century this movement had almost completely replaced other Ruthenian groups as the main rival for power with the Poles. Throughout this period, the Ukrainians never gave up the traditional Ruthenian demands for national equality and for partition of the province into a western, Polish half, and an eastern, Ukrainian half.

The Great Economic Emigration

Beginning in the 1880s, a mass emigration of the Galician peasantry occurred. The emigration started as a seasonal one to Germany (newly unified and economically dynamic) and then later became a Trans-Atlantic one with large-scale emigration to The United States, Brazil, and Canada.

Caused by the backward economic condition of Galicia where rural poverty was widespread (See "Economy" below), the emigration began in the western, Polish populated part of Galicia and quickly shifted east to the Ukrainian inhabited parts. Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, and Germans all participated in this mass movement of countryfolk and villagers. Poles migrated principally to New England and the midwestern states of the United States, but also to Brazil and elsewhere; Ukrainians migrated to Brazil, Canada, and the United States, with a very intense emigration from Southern Podolia to Western Canada; and Jews emigrated both directly to the New World and also indirectly via other parts of Austria-Hungary.

A total of several hundred thousand people were involved in this Great Economic Emigration which grew steadily more intense until the outbreak of the World War in 1914. The war put a temporary halt to the emigration which never again reached the same proportions.

The Great Economic Emigration, especially the emigration to Brazil, the "Brazilian Fever" as it was called at the time, was described in contemporary literary works by the Polish poetess, Maria Konopnicka, the Ukrainian writer, Ivan Franko, and many others.

First World War and Polish-Ukrainian conflict

During the First World War Galicia saw heavy fighting between the forces of Russia and the Central Powers. The Russian forces overran most of the region in 1914 after defeating the Austro-Hungarian army in a chaotic frontier battle in the opening months of the war. They were in turn pushed out in the spring and summer of 1915 by a combined German and Austro-Hungarian offensive.

In 1918, Western Galicia became a part of the restored Republic of Poland, while the local Ukrainian population briefly declared the independence of Eastern Galicia as the "Western Ukrainian Republic". During the Polish-Soviet War a short-lived Galician SSR in East Galicia existed. Eventually, the whole of the province was recaptured by Poles. Poland's annexation of Eastern Galicia, never accepted as legitimate by the conquered Ukrainians, was internationally recognized in 1923.

The Ukrainians of the former eastern Galicia and the neighbouring province of Volhynia, made up about 15% of the Second Polish Republic population, and were its largest minority. As Polish government policies were unfriendly towards minorities, tensions between the Polish government and the Ukrainian population grew, eventually giving the rise to the militant underground Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

Second World War and Distrikt Galizien

In the prelude to the Second World War, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact divided Poland roughly along the Curzon line, thus all territory east of the San, Bug and Neman rivers were annexed into the USSR, this included the majority of Galicia. The territory was divided into four administrative districts (oblasts). Lvov, Stanislav, Drogobych and Tarnopol (the latter including parts of Volhynia) of the Soviet Republic of Ukraine. The period 1939 to 1941 is as controversial as the basis of USSR's legitimacy for its annexation. Whilst most of Ukrainians did rejoice, at least initially, that they were part of a nation that at least respected their national identity, Soviet repression made the (majority Polish) intelligentsia feel otherwise. The period of Sovietisation was put to an end when Germany's Operation Barbarossa occupied it in 1941 and incorporated it into the General Government as Distrikt Galizien. As Germany viewed Galicia as already aryanized and civilised, the Galicians escaped the true nature of German intentions that most other Ukrainians had to put up with. Conflicts between Poles and Ukrainians also intensified during that time, with conflicts between the Polish Home Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and Soviet partisans, and the massacres of Poles in Volhynia, and, to a lesser extent, in Galicia, and revenge attacks on Ukrainians.

Legacy

The border was later recognized by the Allies since 1944-1947, and the region was ethnically cleansed by Soviets and a communist Polish government (Wisla Action). The old province, as modified by Austria around 1800, remains divided today, with the western part Polish, and the original eastern part, Ukrainian.

Economy

Despite being one of the most populous regions in Europe, Galicia was also one of the least developed economically. The first detailed description of the economic situation of the region was prepared by Stanislaw Szczepanowski (1846–1900), a Polish lawyer, economist and chemist who in 1873 published the first version of his report titled Nędza galicyjska w cyfrach (The Galician Poverty in Numbers). Based on his own experience as a worker in the India Office, as well as his work on development of the oil industry in the region of Borysław and the official census data published by the Austro-Hungarian government, he described Galicia as one of the poorest regions in Europe.

In 1888 Galicia had 785,500 km² of area and was populated by ca. 6.4 million people, including 4.8 million peasants (75% of the whole population). The population density was 81 people per square kilometre and was higher than in France (71 inhabitants/km²) or Germany.

The average life expectancy was 27 years for men and 28.5 years for women, as compared to 33 and 37 in Bohemia, 39 and 41 in France and 40 and 42 in England. Also the quality of life was much lower. The yearly consumption of meat did not exceed 10 kilograms per capita, as compared to 24 kg in Hungary and 33 in Germany. This was mostly due to much lower average income.

The average income per capita did not exceed 53 Rhine guilders (RG), as compared to 91 RG in the Kingdom of Poland, 100 in Hungary and more than 450 RG in England at that time. Also the taxes were relatively high and equalled to 9 Rhine guilders a year (ca. 17% of yearly income), as compared to 5% in Prussia and 10% in England. Also the percentage of people with higher income was much lower than in other parts of the Monarchy and Europe: the luxury tax, paid by people whose yearly income exceeded 600 RG, was paid by 8 people in every 1000 inhabitants, as compared to 28 in Bohemia and 99 in Lower Austria. Despite high taxation, the national debt of the Galician government exceeded 300 million RG at all times, that is approximately 60 RG per capita.

All in all, the region was used by the Austro-Hungarian government mostly as a reservoir of cheap workforce and recruits for the army, as well as a buffer zone against Russia. It was not until early in the 20th century that heavy industry started to be developed, and even then it was mostly connected to war production. The biggest state investments in the region were the railways and the fortresses in Przemyśl, Kraków and other cities. Industrial development was mostly connected to the private oil industry started by Ignacy Łukasiewicz and to the Wieliczka salt mines, operational since at least the Middle Ages.

Major cities and towns

See also

References

  • Paul Robert Magocsi, Galicia: A Historical Survey and Bibliographic Guide (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983). Concentrates on the historical, or Eastern Galicia.
  • Andrei S. Markovits and Frank E. Sysyn, eds., Nationbuilding and the Politics of Nationalism: Essays on Austrian Galicia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982). Contains an important article by Piotr Wandycz on the Poles, and an equally important article by Ivan L. Rudnytsky on the Ukrainians.
  • Christopher Hann and Paul Robert Magocsi, eds., Galicia: A Multicultured Land (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). A collection of articles by John Paul Himka, Yaroslav Hrytsak, Stanislaw Stepien, and others.
  • Taylor, A.J.P., The Habsburg Monarchy 1809–1918, 1941, discusses Habsburg policy toward ethnic minorities.
  • Grzegorz Hryciuk, Liczba i skład etniczny ludności tzw. Galicji Wschodniej w latach 1931-1959, Lublin 1996

Personalities from Galicia

External links

Galicia (Central Europe) | Polish historical regions | Ukrainian historical regions

Галиция | Galítsia | Halič | Galizien | Galiitsia | Galicia (Europa Central) | Galicio | Galicie | Galitzia | Galicija, Ukrajina | גליציה | Galicija | Galícia | Galicië (Oost-Europa) | ガリツィア | Galicia og Lodomeria | Galicja | Galícia (Europa Central) | Galiţia | Галиция | Halič (región) | Galizien | Галичина | 加利西亚 (中欧)

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Galicia (Central Europe)".

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