God’s Playground. A History of Poland, Vol. 2. 1795 to the Present

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classics of French literature, in more than one hundred volumes.^10 Another was
Professor Karol Estreicher (182.7—1908), the Jagiellonian Librarian, who divided
his time between dramatic criticism and the preparation of his epoch-making
Bibliografia Polska (Polish Bibliography) in 22 volumes. A third was Wilhelm
Feldman (1868-1919), who busied himself in political life as a socialist, a Jewish
assimilationist, and in the World War as the envoy in Berlin of Pilsudski's
Legions. His popular survey, Wspoiczesna literatura polska (Contemporary
Polish Literature, 1902), and his scholarly Dzieje polskiej mysli polity'cznej
(History of Polish Political Thought, 1914-20) quickly established themselves as
standard works. He also found time for political propaganda, for writing nov-
els, and for literary criticism, in which he led the opposition against the 'Young
Poland' movement. Last but not least was the figure of Michal Bobrzyriski, his-
torian, educationalist, and Viceroy.
In many ways, the Ukrainian national movement was more advanced in
Galicia than across the frontier in Russia, though for long it declined to accept
the 'Ukrainian' label. The earlier emancipation of the peasantry, and the com-
placent attitude of the Austrian authorities, permitted the steady growth of
nationalist activities throughout the second half of the century. The Uniate
Church was free from the persecution which it had to endure in Russia, and was
able to organize elementary education in the Ruthenian language. Ruthenian lit-
erature had its own Triad' of romantic writers, who published their first collec-
tion of folk verse in 1837. In Lemberg, a Ruthenian National House operated
from 1848; a Ruthenian theatre from 1864; and the first Ruthenian high school
from 1874. In organizational matters, the initiative lay for a time with the Old
Ruthenians—a group which had a special interest in religious reforms, reviving
among other things the study of Old Church Slavonic. After 1882, when an
Austrian treason trial revealed that the Old Ruthenians had been receiving a
secret subsidy from the Tsarist ambassador, the limelight passed to the younger
group of Narodovtsy or 'Populists'. Henceforth, political activities intensified.
Demands were made for social reform, for universal suffrage, for state-sup-
ported Ruthenian education, for closer contacts with the Ukrainians in Russia,
and eventually for the creation of a 'Greater Ukraine from the San to the Don'.
The Populists were the first group in Galicia to call themselves Ukrainians; but
soon the name was to be applied to all sorts of groups and communities, from
the intellectual activists in the towns to the peasant Hutsuls and Lemkos of the
Carpathians, who had little prior sense of their common identity.
At the turn of the century a full range of Ukrainian political parties made their
appearance in Galicia. Among many distinguished names, those of Ivan Franko
(1856-1916), socialist and novelist, Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866-1934),
Professor of History at Lemberg; and Archbishop Sheptytsky, enjoyed special
prestige. Yet tensions between the Ukrainians and the Poles were unavoidable.
The situation before the First World War, when Ukrainians were calling for the
incorporation of Galicia into their projected national state as the 'Western
Ukraine', whilst the Poles called for its incorporation into an independent

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