106 GALICIA
After 1867, when for reasons of purely Viennese politics they were joined to the
Magyars of Hungary and the Germans of Austria as one of the Dual
Monarchy's three 'Master Races', they increasingly attracted the envy of the
other minorities.
Cultural cohesion was wellnigh impossible. Under Maria Theresa, the official
language of the Kingdom had been Latin. Under Joseph II, it became German.
In 1867-69, Polish was put on an equal footing with German and then replaced
it. Yet the Ruthenians continued to speak ruski; the Jews spoke Yiddish; and
both of them demanded the right to education in their own language. Access to
the world of high culture was denied to all except the Polish literati, and to the
numerous intellectual emigres who left for Vienna, Prague, or for Germany.
For most of the time, modern democracy was out of the question. For the first
ninety-five years, Galicia was administered as an integral province of a central-
ized Empire. The aristocratic, provincial Landesrat (Diet) possessed an advisory
role only, and failed to assemble for decades at a stretch. The autonomous gov-
ernment (which answered to Vienna) introduced in 1867 earned a reputation for
gerrymandering and corruption. The era of modern party politics enjoyed only
seven years of troubled existence before the onset of World War.
Economic, social, national, cultural, and political factors combined to aggra-
vate the poverty in which most -of the people lived. The nedza galicyjska or
'Galician misery' was proverbial. A well-informed analyst, writing in 1887, con-
trived to demonstrate that rural overpopulation in Galicia had outstripped that
in all other parts of Europe, and was approaching levels prevalent in China and
India. According to his study, the cumulative effects of inefficient agricultural
techniques were compounded by rigid, conservative attitudes, by crippling tax-
ation, and by the inordinate number of unproductive, petty officials; some
50,000 people were dying each year as a result of near-starvation conditions; and
one-quarter of the total inhabitants could safely emigrate before any improve-
ment might be expected. Of all the three Partitions, Galicia had the highest
birth-rate and the highest death-rate, together with the lowest rate of demo-
graphic growth and the lowest level of life-expectancy. Galicia was in a worse
predicament than Ireland at the start of the potato famine. As compared with
the standard of living in England at that time, the average Galician produced
only one-quarter of the quantity of basic foodstuffs, ate less than one-half of the
standard English diet, possessed only one-ninth of the Englishman's propertied
wealth, and received barely one-eleventh of the English farmer's return on his
land; yet he paid twice as high a proportion of his income in taxes. One need not
necessarily take Szczepanski's figures as gospel to accept the obvious conclu-
sions. All available statistics point in the same direction. Galicia could fairly
claim to be the poorest province of Europe.2 (See Table overleaf.)
Galicia's budget was not designed in Galicia's interest. The round figures for
1887 show a revenue from state and local taxes of 60 million zioties. From this,
34 millions had to be spent on the salaries of state employees; 10 millions went
on defence; and no less than 12 millions were sent in cash to the imperial