Western Ukraine, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had a very different historical experience. Numbering 3.5 million in 1910, Ukrainians in East Galicia (with its centre in Lemberg (L'viv)) suffered from Polish dominion in the crown land of Galicia but benefited from education in their native tongue, freedom of cultural development and - however limited - the experience of political participation. Downsides included the lack of industrial development in the region and Polish and Jewish control of the cities. The national movement began in the mid-nineteenth century and, in time, greatly benefited from Ukrainian identification with the Greek Catholic (Uni- ate) Church that clearly set Ukrainians apart from the Poles. By the turn of the century, a massive network of Ukrainian printed media, co-operatives, reading rooms and cultural societies produced a generation of nationally conscious peasants.11 Intellectuals, meanwhile, finally established that their people were
11 John-Paul Himka, Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Century (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1988).
not just 'Ruthenians', but a part of a larger Ukrainian nation. With political parties legally operating, the moderately nationalistic National Democrats dominated Western Ukrainian politics.
In the province of Bukovina, where the ruling class was Romanian, rather than Polish, and most Ukrainians belonged to the Orthodox Church, the growth of the national movement largely followed the Galician model. This was not the case in Transcarpathia, which belonged to the Hungarian part of the dual monarchy. In Transcarpathia, Hungarian upper classes encouraged assimilation and hindered the spread of the Ukrainian national idea.
The First World War initially had the greatest impact on Western Ukraine. As the Russian army occupied Galicia and Bukovina early during the war, it sought to 'reunite' these lands with Russia. In the spring of 1915, Nicholas II paid a triumphant visit to Lemberg, where his civil administration was actively suppressing organised Ukrainian life. Austria-Hungary, in the meantime, authorised the creation of a Ukrainian legion within its army. When the tsarist regime collapsed, Ukrainian activists in Kiev promptly created the Central Rada (council), which was headed by the respected historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky. In December, the nationalists proved unable to organise effective resistance to the Bolshevik army, which had invaded from Soviet Russia. Just before abandoning Kiev, on 22 January 1918, the Central Rada proclaimed the independent Ukrainian People's Republic. However, soon it was back in the capital on the heels of the German advance. Because the German high command disliked the socialist views of the Rada's leaders, such as Volodymyr Vynnychenko, it installed the conservative General Pavlo Skoropadsky as Ukraine's monarch or hetman (April-December 1918). Following the German withdrawal, the reestablished Ukrainian People's Republic saw its authority collapse in the chaos and violence of the civil war during which the Reds, the Whites, the Ukrainian forces, the anarchists and bands of looters fought each other until, by the end of 1920, the better-organised Reds established their control.
In Western Ukraine, the revolution started later and had a national, rather than social colouring. As the Austro-Hungarian Empire began disintegrating, in November 1918 the Ukrainian activists proclaimed the creation of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic. In January 1919, the republic entered a union with its east Ukrainian counterpart, but the unification was never implemented because Western Ukrainians had to fight their own civil war against the Entente-supported Poles, which they lost in July. Subsequently, the Allies approved Polish control over all Galicia, as well as the inclusion of Bukovina in greater Romania and that of Transcarpathia in the new state of Czechoslovakia.
Bordering Dnieper Ukraine in the south-west was Bessarabia, which we currently know under its historical name of Moldova. (The old Moldavian principality was considerably larger, and the present-day Republic of Moldova is only slightly bigger than Bessarabia proper.) In the early nineteenth century, the tsars wrested this province from the Ottoman Empire, thus depriving Moldavians of a chance to participate in the later unification of Romanian principalities. Although known as Moldavians, the region's population was ethnically Romanian and spoke dialects of the Romanian language. Economically, Bessarabia was the most backward agricultural region on the empire's western fringes, and literacy among ethnic Moldavians stood at a meagre 6 per cent (1897). When the national awakening began after the Revolution of 1905, it manifested itself primarily in the discovery of the common pan-Romanian cultural heritage. Nationalists in Romania proper also sought to establish contacts with Moldavian intellectuals hoping for eventual reunification, but, before the war and revolution, this aim looked more like a pipe dream.
The February Revolution gave Moldavians an unexpected chance to organise. By October i9i7, various civic and military groups managed to convene in Chi§inau a national assembly, which declared Bessarabia autonomous. The elections to a national council, Sfatul Tarii, followed, but before this body could establish its authority, in January 1918 the Romanian army arrived in force - ostensibly by invitation of the Moldavian authorities with the aim of protecting the country from the Bolshevik peril. The Sfatul Tarii proclaimed first the independent Moldavian Democratic Republic of Bessarabia (24 January) and then its union with Romania (27 March).[299] However, the USSR never recognised the Romanian annexation of Bessarabia, and Romanians failed to win a complete international recognition of this act.
One productive way to analyse the revolutionary events in the non-Russian borderlands is to look at the complex interaction of 'class' and 'nation' as two principal identity markers, which competed in contemporary political discourse and influenced the nationalities differently.[300] But given that the western borderlands were positioned strategically between Russia and Western Europe, their internal ideological struggles and nation-building projects were time and again overridden by the intervention of the Great Powers, which reshaped states and nations based on their own global interests.[301]
States and nations in the era of mass politics
Rogers Brubaker has suggested that the new nation-states that after the First World War replaced multinational empires were essentially 'nationalising' states, protecting and promoting the political domination, economic welfare and culture of their 'core' nations.[302] This is, of course, an ideal model, useful in comparative analysis but too generalising to be sustained in most case studies. Nevertheless, the notion of a 'nationalising state' captures a significant feature ofthe post-warperiod, when states, armed with the techniques of mass politics, interfered aggressively in the nation-building processes.
299
Charles King,
301
Geoff Eley 'Remapping the Nation: War, Revolutionary Upheaval, and State Formation in Eastern Europe, 1914-1923', in