HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

498 MARTHA BOHACHEVSKY-CHOMIAKfounding by the Austrian emperor Joseph II in 1784, twenty-one yearsafter the Jesuit institution had been disbanded and at a time whenPoland was no longer an independent state. 1Joseph II had established the university in Lviv to serve the needs ofthe population and the government. German and Latin were theprimary languages of instruction, but a large portion of the firststudents were Ukrainian priests, whom Joseph II wanted to make"bureaucrats, teachers, land tillers, and even doctors in the village." 2Ukrainian was their language of instruction in pastoral theology andother subjects. From 1787 to 1809, a Ruthenian institute also existed atthe university. 3Both the institute and the university were abolishedduring the reactionary period following Joseph's death. The universitywas reestablished in 1817 as the Francis I University, and it functionedunder that name until 1918. During that time Ukrainians made someadditional gains — in 1848 a chair in Ruthenian (Ukrainian) languageand literature and in 1862 two chairs in law with Ukrainian as thelanguage of instruction were established.The reorganization of the monarchy in the 1860s benefitted thePoles, and by the 1870s the administration of the province of Galiciawas in Polish hands. A law passed in 1871 provided for the use of thelocal language in education and administration, but it was oftenignored or abused. Galician Ukrainians always proclaimed their legalright to use their own language. 4 Nonetheless, in 1879, Polish replacedGerman as the official language of the university in Lviv, with Ukrainianpermissible in certain instances or with certain subjects.1In some studies, the date of the founding of the university is given as 1661;see, for instance, Evhen K. Lazarenko, 300 rokiv L'vivs'koho universytetu (Lviv,1961) and L'vivs'kyi Ordena Lenina derzhavnyi universytet im. I. Franka, abrochure published in 1967. Lazarenko accused the Poles of founding the universityfor colonizing purposes. See also Bohdan Barvins'kyi, "Predtecha universytetuim. Frantsa I u 'L'vovi," Zapysky Naukovoho tovarystva im. Shevchenka(Lviv), 125 (1918): 1-41.2Ludwik Finkel and Stanisław Starzyński, Historia Uniwersytetu Lwowskiego,2 pts. (Lviv, 1894), 1: 78 (Actually, Finkel wrote part 1, covering the years up to1869, and Starzyński wrote part 2, covering 1869 to 1894.)3To Ukrainians it was significant that there had been a Ukrainian institute atthe university, but not a Polish one. The Ukrainian side is given by Vasyl Mudryi,an active participant, in Ukrains'kyi universytet и L'vovi u rr. 1921-1925 (Nuremberg,1948), and Borot'ba za ohnyshche ukrains'koi kul'tury ν zakhidnykh zemliakhUkrainy (Lviv, 1923). He also edited L'viv: A Symposium on its 700 anniversary(New York, 1962), which contains some material on the university issue.4See Finkel and Starzyński, Historia, 2: 3, and Kost' Levyts'kyi, Pro pravarus'koi movy (Lviv, 1896). The law referred to is the rescript of the Ministry ofReligions and Public Education of 11 July 1871.