HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

REGIONALISM AND POLITICAL THOUGHT 171emerged not in the Kingdom but in the Grand Duchy. The divergentsocial structures of the two polities, above all the concentration ofpower in Lithuania in the hands of a few magnates, further alienatedthe two realms. In times of stress, such as the 1650s and the early1700s, separatist sentiments emerged among the nobility of the GrandDuchy.Regionalism among the nobles of the Ukrainian lands has receivedconsiderably less attention. In contrast to the nobles of the GrandDuchy of Lithuania, the nobles of the Ukrainian lands had not broughta sovereign polity into the Commonwealth. The western Ukrainianterritories and their elite had been integrated into the Kingdom ofPoland in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and their nobility hadbeen formed in concert with that of the Kingdom. The eastern Ukrainianterritories had been absorbed piecemeal into the Grand Duchy ofLithuania, and their elite orders had been integrated into those of theGrand Duchy. Prior to 1569, the institutional and historical bases forUkrainian regionalism were weak and in neither state were theUkrainian lands a united entity with a "political nation" of nobles.The Union of Lublin provided the institutional framework for a risein regionalist sentiment among the nobles of the lands detached fromthe Grand Duchy of Lithuania and annexed to the Kingdom of Poland(the palatinates of Volhynia, Kiev, and Bratslav). After having beenintegrated into the political and social order of the Grand Duchy ofLithuania, the inhabitants of the Ukrainian territories experienced theintroduction of Polish administrative and social models in the sixteenthcentury. When, at the Union of Lublin, the program for a unitary stateadvanced by Polish noble political theorists met with the opposition ofmagnates from the Grand Duchy, including some from the Ukrainianterritories, many middle nobles and some princes in the Volhynianland and the Kiev palatinate acceded to Polish assertions that theirlands properly belonged to the Polish Crown. The successful incorporationof the Ukrainian lands frightened the Lithuanian oppositioninto agreeing to closer ties with Poland and created an entirely newpolitical and cultural situation in the Ukraine. For while the nobles ofthese lands had only minimal regionalist demands, they did receiveguarantees of religious rights for the Orthodox church, retention ofRuthenian as the language of administration, affirmation of the Lithuanianstatute as their law code, and, later, the right to trial before aseparate tribunal. While the nobles achieved de jure equality with the