HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

THE UKRAINIAN UNIVERSITY IN GALICIA 505a Ukrainian student rally was banned by the Polish city administrationof Lviv. In July 1912 the Ukrainian parliamentary group resumed itsfillibuster in Vienna, this time insisting on a documented pledge. Animperial transcript was issued in December of that year, promising thatthe university would be established by 1916. The Poles could notcontest the decree, but the issue remained a heated one. In 1913Ukrainian students organized another mass rally to keep the issue inthe public eye. 19The outbreak of the First World War did not extinguish the Ukrainians'commitment to the university. After the invading Russian imperialarmy left Lviv in February 1916, the Shevchenko ScientificSociety bombarded beleaguered Vienna with memoranda remindingthe imperial government of the promise it had made in 1912.When the armistice was signed in the West on 11 November 1918,the war was still going on in Galicia. On 1 November 1918, theUkrainians proclaimed in Lviv the establishment of a national Ukrainianstate on the territories of Eastern Galicia (i.e., the historicalterritories of the Halych principality). From that day until 14 March1923, when the Allies mandated Galicia to Poland, Galician Ukrainiansregarded Polish claims to Galicia as illegal and imperialist.During the next four years the situation in Galicia became entwinedwith the Ukrainian national movement, the Ukrainian socialist andcommunist movements, Soviet Russian territorial ambitions, the aspirationsof conservative Russians, Polish attempts to reestablish Polandto pre-partition boundaries, and great power considerations. Butmobilizations and demobilizations, famine, pestilence, and economicand political crises did not diminish the issue of the university for theUkrainians in Galicia.In 1919 the Poles succeeded where the Ukrainians had failed. Theyestablished an independent state, beset as it was by internal dissension,political unrest, and terrorism. Immediately the university at Lviv wastotally Polonized. A regulation of 14 August 1919, formalized by thegovernment on September 22, allowed only loyal Polish citizens or19Istorychni postati Halychyny XIX-XX st., pt. 2: Budivnychi novitnoi ukrains'koiderzhavnosty ν Halychyni, by Isydor Sokhots'kyi (Philadelphia, 1961),p. 141; see also Mudryi, Ukrains'kyi universytet, p. 13. The national issue continuedto permeate deliberations of the Galician provincial school board. Forinstance in March 1914, the school board, trying to forestall demonstrations,permitted commemoration of the death of Taras Shevchenko. Immediately Polesdemanded similar official celebrations of the anniversaries of the Polish writersand poets P. Skarga, J. I. Kraszewski, Z. Krasiński and Juliusz Słowacki.