Today, most Russians associate political sentiments in Western Ukraine with outrageous Russophobia. Indeed, in many ways it is. A significant part of the "zapadentsev", as the Galicians are called in common parlance - the inhabitants of Galicia, really treats Russia, Russian culture and the Russian people quite negatively, and even with open hatred. These sentiments are supported and cultivated by nationalist Ukrainian politicians who view Western Ukraine as their main electoral base. It was immigrants from the regions of Western Ukraine, primarily from Lvov, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk, who made up the bulk of the active protesters at Euromaidan, and then - the backbone of the paramilitary formations of the Right Sector and the National Guard.
Russian society has become so accustomed to the widespread occurrence of Russophobic sentiments in Western Ukraine that it is hardly ready to believe in the possibility of sympathy for Russia and the Russian world in general among the Galician population. Meanwhile, the Russophobia of the Galicians, which led them to cooperate with the German Nazis during the Great Patriotic War, to the decade of Bandera banditry, to Euromaidan and armed aggression against Donbass, was by no means inherent in them from the very beginning. Anti-Russian sentiments in Galicia were the result of a long and painstaking work of interested political actors, primarily Austria-Hungary and Germany, to construct Ukrainian national identity as an opposition to Russian identity, that is, Russian.
Galicia-Volyn lands were once part of the Russian world and, accordingly, there could be no talk of any Russophobia in this region. The foundations of the modern rejection of Russian statehood by the mass of Galicians were laid during the period when the lands of Galicia fell under the rule of the Commonwealth, and then - Austria-Hungary. Centuries of existence in isolation from the Russian world in themselves did not yet mean the rooting of Russophobia in the mentality of the inhabitants of Western Ukraine. A much larger role in the spread of anti-Russian sentiments was played by the purposeful policy of the Austro-Hungarian authorities, who began to artificially construct "Ukrainians" as an instrument for splitting the Russian world and countering Russian influence in the Carpathian region.
As you know, the territory of the Carpathians, Carpathians and Transcarpathians is inhabited by several ethnic groups of the Eastern Slavs. Conditionally they can be summarized under the names Galicians and Rusyns. The Galicians are the very "Westerners" who inhabit Eastern Galicia. These are the descendants of the population of the Galicia-Volyn principality, whose lands were later divided between Poland, Hungary and Lithuania, then were part of the Commonwealth and, finally, until 1918, belonged to Austria-Hungary under the name "Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria".
Territorial changes of the kingdom in 1772-1918
Until the twentieth century, the entire East Slavic population of the region was called Rusyns, but today this name is understood, first of all, the inhabitants of the Carpathian Mountains and Transcarpathia. Also, there are ethnocultural groups of Boyks, Lemko, Hutsuls, Dolinyans, Verkhovyns, etc., living both in Western Ukraine and in Romania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia. Boyks inhabit the mountainous regions of Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, their number in the 1930s reached at least one hundred thousand people, however, as a result of the process of Ukrainization of Rusyns in Soviet times, today only 131 residents of post-Soviet Ukraine consider themselves to be Boiks.
The Hutsuls, in particular, who traditionally were engaged in pasture cattle breeding, are most interested in preserving archaic folk traditions that give an idea of the life of the Slavic tribes of the Carpathian Mountains during the millennia ago. They inhabit the territory of Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi and Transcarpathian regions. The total number of people who identify themselves as Hutsuls in Ukraine is 21, 4 thousand people. Hutsuls also live on the territory of Romania, where they number 3,890 people. In fact, most of the Hutsuls were Ukrainized during the years of Soviet rule and now identify themselves with Ukrainians.
The Lemkos who inhabit the junction of the borders of Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine, to a greater extent, retain their Rusyn identity, preferring to single out themselves as a separate ethnic group. Their number ranges from 5-6 thousand people. The Polish Lemkos prefer to define themselves as a separate people, while the Lemkos of Ukraine, living in the Lviv region, became Ukrainized during the Soviet era and now call themselves Ukrainians.
Despite numerous political upheavals, as a result of which the Carpathian lands passed from one owner to another, from Hungary to Poland, from Poland to Austria-Hungary, their population retained Russian identity for centuries. The inhabitants of the Carpathians and the Carpathian region considered themselves as an integral part of the Russian world, as evidenced by their self-names - "Ruska", "Rus", "Rusyns", "Chervonorossy". The word "Ukrainians" was absent in the lexicon of the population of Galicia and Transcarpathia until the end of the 19th century.
Naturally, the Russian self-awareness of the indigenous population of the region never aroused much enthusiasm among the Polish and Hungarian kings and Austro-Hungarian emperors who owned the Carpathian lands. The preservation of Russian identity among the East Slavic population of the Carpathians and the Carpathian region meant a constant risk of strengthening Russia's positions in the region, right up to the full return of these territories to the orbit of Russian statehood. For obvious reasons, neither Austria-Hungary, nor Prussia, nor other European powers were satisfied with such a development of events and they were ready to make any efforts just to weaken the political and cultural influence of the Russian Empire in Eastern Europe.
The stronger the Russian state became, the more actively it showed concern for the brothers - the Slavs, whether they were Bulgarians or Serbs who resisted the yoke of the Ottoman Empire, Czechs and Slovaks who lived under the heel of Austria-Hungary, or the same inhabitants of the Carpathians. Moreover, the latter did not separate themselves from other Russians at all, using the same ethnonym as a self-name.
The rise of national consciousness in the countries of Eastern Europe took place in the middle of the 19th century. Revolution of 1848-1849 led to the emergence of powerful national liberation movements in the Austro-Hungarian Empire - Italian, Hungarian, Czechoslovak. The territory of modern Western Ukraine was no exception. Russophile sentiments were widespread here, which were expressed in the formation of the political Russian movement in Galicia. Public figures of Galicia, who managed to visit the Russian Empire, were delighted with the similarity of the Russian language with the dialects of the Carpathian Rusyns and Galicians, which at that time were united under the name of “Ruska”. At the end of the 19th century, the literary Russian language became widespread in the Galician lands. There was even a whole Russian-speaking generation of writers from Galicia and Transcarpathia, whose traditions are partly preserved to this day, despite a whole century of Ukrainization.
The growing political power of the Russian Empire also did not go unnoticed by the Galician public, which saw in it a long-awaited liberator from the dictatorship of the linguistically and ethnoculturally alien Austro-Hungarians. Note that it was in the 19th century that the Russian Empire finally turned into a world-class power, whose sphere of natural interests includes, first of all, lands inhabited by Slavic-speaking inhabitants, as well as territories adjacent to the borders of the Russian state.
The further strengthening of pro-Russian sentiments in the Carpathian region was facilitated by the intensification of the Russian military-political presence in Eastern Europe. The inhabitants of the Carpathians saw that Russia was providing assistance to the Bulgarians, Serbs, and other Slavic peoples who resisted the Ottoman Empire. Accordingly, there was hope for the participation of the Russian Empire in the fate of the Slavic population of Austria-Hungary. By the 1850-1860s. the appearance of several pro-Russian print media in Galicia belongs.
Bogdan Andreevich Deditsky is considered the founder of journalism in the Galician lands. At the age of twenty-two, he met a priest of the Russian army passing through the territory of Galicia to Austria-Hungary. This meeting had a key impact on the entire future life of Deditsky. He turned into an ardent supporter of the integration of Galician Rus with the Russian Empire, emphasized the need to spread the Great Russian language in the Carpathian lands. Deditsky was sharply criticized by the idea of the Austro-Hungarian government to introduce Latin script for the Galician-Russian language. The latter measure was seen by the Austro-Hungarian leadership as an instrument of alienating Galicia from the Russian world in a cultural sense, which Deditsky, who remained a staunch supporter of the use of the Cyrillic alphabet, perfectly understood.
In Transcarpathia, the pro-Russian social movement was headed by Adolf Ivanovich Dobriansky. This native of an ancient gentry family was educated in philosophy, and then in law faculties. During his studies, he became acquainted with the world of Great Russian culture. Rusin Dobriansky was a Uniate by religion, but he had great sympathy for Orthodoxy and was convinced of the need for a gradual transition of the Uniates back to the Orthodox faith. This was also facilitated by his close contacts with the Serb community.
One of the priority tasks, according to Dobriansky, was the unification of Ugric Rus, which was part of the Hungarian Kingdom, with Galicia, which formed the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. This step, according to the public figure, would contribute to the unification of all Rusyns of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in a single territorial entity. Naturally, the Austro-Hungarian authorities rejected such proposals, because they understood perfectly well that the disunity of the Rusyn lands was an excellent ground for maintaining their domination over the Carpathian territories, and the unification of Galician and Ugrian Rus would entail an intensification of separatist sentiments, beneficial to the Russian state.
Dobriansky's political positions aroused hatred among the Magyar nationalists, who saw in his programs for the development of Ugric Rus and its reunification with Galician Rus a direct threat to Hungarian interests in the region. The natural result of Dobriansky's pro-Russian activities was an attempt on his life. In 1871, in the center of Uzhgorod, where Dobriansky and his family lived at that time, his crew was attacked by Magyar nationalists. The son of Adolf Dobriansky, Miroslav, was seriously wounded. Nevertheless, the brave patriot of Carpathian Rus did not stop his social activities. He published the Political Program for Austrian Rus, which was based on a deep conviction in the unity of the East Slavic peoples - Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians.
According to Dobriansky, the Carpathian and Galician Rusyns are as much a part of the single Russian people as the Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians. Accordingly, Russian culture in Galicia and Ugrian Rus needs comprehensive encouragement and dissemination. Dobriansky saw the interests of the German world in the formation of a separate Little Russian (Ukrainian) language and its intensified propaganda by supporters of "Ukrainism", which sought to prevent the strengthening of Russia's positions in the Carpathian region and to split Little Russia away from it. As it turned out later, these thoughts of the Rusyn public figure were prophetic.
Another prominent figure in the Russian movement of Galician Rus was the priest Ivan G. Naumovich. A modest rural priest, Ivan Naumovich belonged to the Uniate church, but was an ardent supporter of the rapprochement of the Uniates with the Orthodox Church, with the prospect of a gradual reunification with Orthodoxy. Naumovich's political activity consisted of active participation in the affairs of the Russian movement in Galicia. This amazing person was also a poet, writer and fabulist, one of the founders of Galician-Russian literature.
Ivan Naumovich advocated the unity of all East Slavic peoples, which he regarded as one Russian people. According to Naumovich, “Rus Galitskaya, Ugorskaya, Kievskaya, Moscowskaya, Tobolskaya, etc. from the ethnographic, historical, linguistic, literary, ritual point of view is one and the same Rus … linguistic, literary and folk ties with the entire Russian world. For active pro-Russian activities, Ivan Naumovich was excommunicated by the Pope from the church and in 1885, at the age of sixty, converted to Orthodoxy. After moving to the Russian Empire, he continued serving as a rural priest in the Kiev province, where he was buried in 1891.
The spread of pro-Russian sentiments in Galicia and Transcarpathia caused an extremely negative reaction from the Austro-Hungarian authorities, which turned to direct repressions against representatives of the Russian movement. In 1882, Dobriansky himself, his daughter Olga Grabar and several like-minded people became victims of the Austro-Hungarian repressions against the Russian movement. The reason for the initiation of the case was the story of the transition to Orthodoxy of the peasants of the Galician village of Gnilichki. Before the inhabitants of the village belonged to the Greek Catholic Church. Wishing to create their own separate parish in the village, they turned to the landowner Count Jerome Della Scala.
The landowner, a Romanian by nationality, professed Orthodoxy and advised the peasants to also accept the Orthodox faith. The peasants turned for advice to the famous Uniate priest Ivan Naumovich, who sympathized with the Russian movement and, naturally, assured the peasants that Orthodoxy was the original faith of the Rusyns, therefore, the transition to Orthodoxy is a return to the origins and even desirable. This incident aroused serious suspicion of the Austro-Hungarian authorities, who saw the massive conversion of peasants to Orthodoxy as a result of the subversive activities of pro-Russian organizations.
Since it was during this period that Adolf Dobriansky was in Lviv with his daughter Olga Grabar, the first suspicion fell on them. Not only Adolf Dobriansky and Ivan Naumovich were arrested, but also Olga Grabar, as well as eight other prominent figures of the Russian movement - Oleksa Zalutsky, Osip Markov, Vladimir Naumovich, Apollon Nichai, Nikolai Ogonovsky, Venedikt Plochansky, Isidor Trembitsky and Ivan Shpunder. The main point of the accusation was that the defendants asserted the unity of the Rusyns and the Russian people. The jurors were specially selected from among the Poles and Jews, since the Rusyns could make a decision guided by national solidarity. However, the charges of high treason were challenged by talented lawyers who defended the defendants. As a result, some of the activists were released, Ivan Naumovich, Venedikt Ploshchansky, Oleksa Zaluski and Ivan Shpunder were convicted of violation of public order and received insignificant sentences of 8, 5, 3 and 3 months in prison, respectively.
Olga Grabar's trial was far from the only example of attempts by the Austro-Hungarian leadership to destroy the pro-Russian movement in the Galician and Transcarpathian lands. From time to time, activists of Russian organizations were persecuted, searches took place in their apartments, and printed publications aimed at promoting Russian unity were closed. An important role in opposing the Russian movement was played by the Catholic clergy, who strove by any means to prevent the spread of Orthodoxy in the Carpathian lands and the conversion of the Uniate flock to the Orthodox faith. On the other hand, in opposing the Russian movement, the Austro-Hungarian authorities used the potential of the Poles, who constituted the majority of the population of Western Galicia and had a negative attitude towards the Galicians.
Much more serious repressions against the Russian movement in Galicia and Ugric Russia followed after the outbreak of the First World War, in which Austria-Hungary opposed the Russian Empire. During the war years, pro-Russian activists no longer got off with such liberal sentences as at the trial of Olga Grabar. The exact number of Rusyns who were executed by the decision of the Austro-Hungarian military tribunals or who died in concentration camps is still unknown. The bodies of 1,767 people killed by the Austro-Hungarians were recovered from the unnamed cemetery in Talerhof alone. Thus, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in an attempt to eradicate Russian influence in Galicia and Transcarpathia, moved to open massacres, the victims of which were not only political activists, but also any suspected Rusyns and Galicians, primarily Orthodox believers.
In parallel with the repressions against the Russian movement, Austria-Hungary artificially cultivated the concept of "Ukrainianness" in Galicia and Transcarpathia. An important role in the formation of the concept of “Ukrainianness” was played by the Greek Catholic Church, which feared the strengthening of the position of Orthodoxy due to the self-identification of the Rusyns with the Russian people. At least in 1890, the deputies of the Galician Diet, Yulian Romanchuk and Anatoly Vakhnyanin, declared that the inhabitants of Galician Rus had nothing to do with the Russian people, but were a special Ukrainian nation. This statement was accepted "with a bang" by the Austro-Hungarian authorities. Since then, the concept of "Ukrainians" has become the main argument of Austria-Hungary, Germany, and in the modern world - the United States and its satellites, used in the interests of destroying the Russian world.
The First World War dealt a severe blow to the positions of the Russian movement in Austria-Hungary. As a result of the repressive policy of the Austro-Hungarian authorities, the movement fell into a state of deep crisis. Print media were closed, most of the activists were killed or imprisoned. The Civil War in Russia also contributed to the weakening of the positions of the Russian movement in Galicia and Transcarpathia. Like Russian society, Galicians and Carpathian Rusyns split into supporters of the "white" movement and the pro-communist part. The latter tended to cooperate with the Communist Party of Western Ukraine. Nevertheless, in Poland and Czechoslovakia, which, after the collapse of Austria-Hungary, included, respectively, the lands of Galicia and Ugric Rus, Russophile political organizations operated. Polish Russophiles even put forward the idea of creating a Russian federal republic on the lands of Galicia.
The next blow, from which the Russian movement in Galicia and Transcarpathia practically did not recover, was dealt by the Second World War. Hitler's occupation authorities, as well as Hitler's Hungarian and Romanian allies, also carried out brutal repression against any activists suspected of pro-Soviet sympathies. Nevertheless, unlike the Galicians, who for the most part supported the armed resistance of Ukrainian nationalists from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the Rusyns of Transcarpathia initially took the side of the Soviet Union and fought against Nazi Germany and its allies as part of the First Czechoslovak Army Corps. The Rusyns made a significant contribution, thousands of whom took part in the Great Patriotic War on the side of the Soviet Union, in the victory over Nazi Germany.
Lemkos living in Poland also made a great contribution to the victory over Nazi Germany, deploying a powerful partisan movement back in 1939, after the Nazi attack on Poland. It was the representatives of the Russian trend in the Rusyn movement who put up heroic resistance to the Nazis, while the supporters of the concept of “Ukrainism”, having received the support of the German authorities, acted as collaborationists.
After 1945, the territories of Galicia and Ugric Rus became part of the Soviet Union and were annexed to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. However, the long-awaited annexation to the USSR did not become a joy for the Russian movement in Galicia and Transcarpathia. The fact is that the national policy of the Soviet state, in many ways running counter to the true interests of the Russian world, provided for the formation of unified Soviet nations. At the same time, ethnic groups that were “unlucky” to be among the privileged could have only one fate - to be assigned to any major “nation”. Thus, Talysh and Kurds in Transcaucasia were recorded as Azerbaijanis, Tajiks in Uzbekistan as Uzbeks, Assyrians and Yezidis as Armenians.
The Ukrainian SSR was no exception. It was the Soviet government that played an almost greater role in the “Ukrainization” of Little Russia than the Austro-Hungarian special services or the Petliura and Bandera nationalists. In Galicia and Transcarpathia, the very fact of the existence of Rusyns was ignored in every possible way. Without exception, all Rusyns were recorded in their passports as Ukrainians, and an intensified campaign began to eradicate the remnants of Russian self-awareness and inculcate “Ukrainians”, ie. Ukrainian national identity.
Naturally, the practical implementation of the political and cultural concept of “Ukrainianship” required the breaking of all reminders of ties with the Russian world. Not only the Russian movement itself, but also any memory of the activities of the pro-Russian social movements in Galician and Ugric Rus' fell under a strict ban. The names "Galician Rus" and "Ugorskaya Rus" themselves were not used in official literature, which also tried in every possible way to silence the fact of the existence of a whole cultural Russian tradition in the Galician and Transcarpathian lands.
The consequence of the policy of "Ukrainianization", which reached its apogee just in the period of Soviet history, was the destruction of the unity of the Carpathossians, or Rusyns. Thus, the ethnic groups of Boyks and Hutsuls currently identify themselves as Ukrainians, while a part of the Dolinyans living in the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine continues to call themselves Rusyns.
Only with the collapse of the Soviet Union did the Ruthenian population again have the opportunity to gradually restore their Russian identity. Galicia, where the processes of Ukrainization, which began during the years of Austro-Hungarian rule, went too far, actually turned out to be lost to the Russian world. Today it is a citadel of Ukrainians and Ukrainian nationalism, and rare supporters of unity with Russia run the risk of repeating the fate of their ideological predecessors, who became victims of the Austro-Hungarian and Hitlerite repressions. Moreover, at the present time it is difficult to speak about the existence of legal mechanisms in Ukraine that would make it possible to resist illegal actions against dissidents, primarily from among the pro-Russian activists.
At the same time, in the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine, there is hope for the growth of Russian self-awareness. The Rusyns of Transcarpathia, which developed as part of Ugrian Rus, retained their name, and even now a significant part of the Rusyns continues to sympathize with Russia. Thus, the leader of the Rusyn movement, Peter Getsko, expressed solidarity with the people of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, also proclaiming the creation of the Republic of Subcarpathian Rus. Nevertheless, the development of events according to the Donetsk-Luhansk scenario in the Transcarpathian region did not follow, which indicates the contradictory moods of the region's population.
Thus, we see that the current political situation in Western Ukraine is largely a consequence of the artificial planting in the Galician and Transcarpathian lands of the construct “Ukrainians”, developed in Austria-Hungary with the aim of destroying the Russian world and weakening Russian influence in Eastern Europe. If the lands of Galicia had developed as part of the Russian state from the very beginning and had not been torn off from the main core of the Russian world for centuries, the appearance of the very phenomenon of Ukrainian nationalism would hardly have become possible.
The playoff of the Slavs, which began in the Middle Ages, continues to this day, only Austria-Hungary was replaced by the United States, which was also interested in the destruction of Russian unity. The people of Galicia and Transcarpathia, once united with Russia, have become a victim of manipulation of consciousness and are currently being used by external forces to implement an anti-Russian policy, which will inevitably hit a boomerang in the life of Western Ukraine itself.
