HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

ESSAYS IN MODERN UKRAINIAN HISTORY 525basis of this strength is shown insufficiently. "St. George's Cathedral" was aboveall anti-Latin, and had been so for centuries. It is for this reason that it clung to theViennese court from the time of the partitions of the Commonwealth, and this is themain reason why it took an anti-Polish attitude in 1848. It started to lean towardsOrthodoxy after 1866, when the Polish nobility reached an agreement with Vienna.But even then it proceeded cautiously. The "St. George's Circle" should not beidentified with Muscophiles (p. 329); only some Uniate canons definitely enteredRussian service. It was they, among others, who had their hand in the abolition ofthe Union in the Xolm region (Rudnytsky does not mention this incident). The Uniatechurch became a politically independent factor thanks to Andrej Septyc'kyj. Inthe enthusiastic characterization of his person (p. 339), Rudnytsky has neglected toadd a few sentences of explanation for his meteoric church career. After all, hebecame metropolitan at the recommendation of the conservative Polish establishment,which supported his candidacy in Vienna and in Rome (documentation on thissubject is preserved). Septyc'kyj did not live up to the hopes of Polish conservatives,as is known, although he remained faithful to Rome and loyal to Vienna.Is it true, as the author maintains, that the "Old Ruthenian" camp "had all butdisappeared" before 1914 (p. 343)? This dangerous trend was still seriouslyreckoned with in Vienna and in Lviv. The Old Ruthenians reemerged in the firstmonths of the war, when Lviv was occupied by Russians; then, even Petljura, onelearns (pp. 392-93), sided with Russia. In December 1914 he said privately that theexpected annexation of Galicia and Bukovina by Russia might turn out to beprofitable for the Ukrainian cause.Consecutive stages in the struggle of Galician Ukrainians with Poles for equalrights are lucidly and by and large objectively presented. Among important concessionsthat the former obtained in the so-called "New Era" after 1890,1 would rankfirst the "Ukrainianization" of school textbooks. The fierce and prolonged hagglingfor a Ukrainian university in Lviv was probably most accurately presented byBobrzyriski in his memoirs. I am inclined to agree with Bobrzyriski that neither Polishnor Ukrainian nationalists wanted a compromise at the time. On the matter ofDiet election law, a compromise was achieved early in 1914, but since it was neverput into effect, it is difficult to assess how it would have functioned in practice.On page 413, the author severely condemns Austrian duplicity in connectionwith the rescript of 4 November 1916, which promised the Poles a "separation" ofGalicia. But he notes with satisfaction (p. 415) the next rescript, of 9 February1918, promising the Ukrainians a partition of the same Galicia into two provinces.Vienna also reneged on that promise, under the pressure of the Polish Caucus, onlyto facilitate the taking of Lviv by Ukrainian military formations in extremis inNovember 1918. The tussles of a falling monarchy do not merit such attention. On1 November 1918, says the author, "the Poles rose in arms against the Ukrainianstate" (p. 65). This is how it looks today in Ukrainian historical tradition. The