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Polish Lords and Ukrainian Peasants: Conflict, Deference, and Accommodation in Eastern Galicia in the Late Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Stella Hryniuk
Stella Hryniuk
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History at The University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, R3T 2N2. This is a revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, December 1990.
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Extract

Some aspects of the relationship between the Polish aristocracy and the Ukrainian peasantry in Eastern Galicia in the last quarter of the nineteenth century have been treated by many scholars over the years. This relationship has been seen primarily as one of class and then national conflict, played out in the economic and political spheres of Galician life. The traditional picture has been one of discrimination against and exploitation of the peasants by the numerically small class of Polish magnates and gentry. The emphasis has been on forced peasant labor, on inequities in the size of landholdings, on the brutality of the landlords and oppression by their stewards, on beatings, on the illegal annexation of peasant lands, and on the expected and automatic obedience and subservience of the peasant to the manorial lord. All of these elements were certainly part of the relationship in pre-1848 Galicia, though even in this respect one may ask questions about the growing number of Ukrainian village schools, and so on.

Type
Articles
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 24 , January 1993 , pp. 119 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1993

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References

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2 See in particular Himka, Galician Villagers, 36–56, and Kravets, Selianstvom 96–97 and 159–61.

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11 Tittel, Schematismus und Statistik, 217.

12 Details may be found in ibid., and in Pilat, T., Skorowidz dóbr tabularnych w Galicyi z wielkiemks. krakowskiem (Inventory of tabular landholdings in Galicia and the Grand Duchy of Cracow) (L'viv, 1890)Google Scholar. In total, 39.38 percent of the Galician land area belonged to “tabular” owners; this was a lesser percentage than in other parts of prepartition Poland. The percentage of tabular land was somewhat higher in Eastern than in Western Galicia (Pilat, “Der landtäflicher Grundbesitz,” 291–94 and 297).

13 T. Pilat, “Die Auswanderung aus den podolischen Bezirken nach Russland,” Statistische Monatschrift, vol. 19, 71.

14 Strakosch-Grassmann, G., Geschichte des österrekhischen Unterrichtswesens (Vienna, 1905), 271–72Google Scholar; Dulczewski, Z., Walka o szkole na wsi Galicyjskiej (The struggle for the school in the Galician village) (Warsaw, 1953), 64Google Scholar.

15 Hryniuk, Peasants with Promise, 45–46.

16 See note 2 above.

17 Budzynovsky, V., “Ahrarni vidnosyny Halychyny” (Agrarian conditions in Galicia), Zapysky naukovoho tovarystva imeny Shevchenka (Records of the Shevchenko Scientific Society), vol. 4 (1894), 37–38Google Scholar.

18 Wages paid to estate servants on annual contracts were low to very low, even when remuneration in kind is taken into account. Hromads'kyi holos (People's voice), 1 October 1898, reported on an article by Prince O. Puzyna published in the St. Petersburg newspaper Kraj (The country) that highlighted the “pitiful” wages and deplorable living conditions of estate servants. See also Pilat, “Die Auswanderung.” Yet conditions for labor on the large estates were better than on large peasant holdings; see Biegeleisen, L. W., Rozwój gospodarczy nowoczesnej wsi Polskiej (The economic development of the modern Polish village) (Cracow, 1916), vol. 1, 462, n. 34Google Scholar.

19 Pruski, W., Hodowla zwiezat gospodarskich w Galicji w latach 1772–1918 (Domestic animal husbandry in Galicia, 1772–1918) (Wrocław, 1975), vol. 1, 289Google Scholar.

20 Inglot, S. et al. , Historia chłopów Polskich (History of the Polish peasantry), vol. 2, Okres zaborow (The partition period) (Warsaw, 1972), 251Google Scholar.

21 Hryniuk, S., “The Peasant and Alcohol in Eastern Galicia in the Late Nineteenth Century: A Note,” Journal of Ukrainian Studies 20 (1986): 75–85Google Scholar; also Cybulski, N., Próba badan nad zywieniem się ludu wiejskiego w Galicyi (An attempt to study the nutrition of village people in Galicia) (Cracow, 1894)Google Scholar, passim.

22 See, for example, Batkivshchyna (Fatherland), 15 February 1889.

23 Hryniuk, S. M., “Peasant Agriculture in East Galicia in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Slavonic and East European Review 63 (1985): 228–43Google Scholar; Hryniuk, Peasants with Promise, 115–70; Bujak, Galicya, vol. 1, 240–43, 285ff., 313. On animal husbandry see especially W. Pruski's most valuable two-volume work cited in note 19.

24 Pruski, Hodowla zwienat gospodarskich, vol. 1, 40–41, 79, 103, 107, and 143; von Wiedersperg, G. R., “Die Entwicklung des Veterinárswesen in Österreich,” Geschichte der Österreichischen Land- und Forstwirtschaft und ihrer lndustrien 1848–1898 (Vienna, 1899), vol. 1, 790Google Scholar.

25 Österreichische Statistik, vol. 60, no. 3, pt. 2.

26 Quoted in Murdzek, B. P., Emigration in Polish Social-Political Thought (New York, 1977), 84Google Scholar.

27 Batkivshchyna, 13 February 1896.

28 Biegeleisen, Rozwój gospodarczy, vol. 1, 295; Hryniuk, Peasants with Promise, 26–27.

29 Z., Daszyńska-Golińska, “Neuere Literatur über galizisches Agrarwesen,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 20 (1904): 729Google Scholar.

30 Hryniuk, Peasants with Promise, 127–28; Biegeleisen, Rozwój gospodarczy, vol. 1, 290ff.

31 The crops obtained through intercropping, however, were sometimes regarded as part of a laborer's remuneration. See Pilat, “Die Auswanderung,” 80; Bujak, Galicya, vol. 1, 286.

32 V., Stefanyk, The Stone Cross, trans. Wiznuk, J. (Toronto, 1971), 71Google Scholar.

33 Hryniuk, Peasants with Promise, 95, 127–29, 152–53, 154, and 156; see also A., Gurnicz, Kólka rolnicze w Galicji (Agricultural Circles in Galicia) (Warsaw, 1967)Google Scholar.

34 Sirka, A., The Nationality Question in Austrian Education: The Case of the Ukrainians in Galicia, 1867–1914 (Frankfurt, 1980), especially 79–80Google Scholar; Dulczewski, Walka o szkole, 65–86; Bartel, W., “Zur Geschichte des Galizischen Landesschulrates, 1867–1918,” Anzeiger der phil.-hist. Klasse der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 114 (Vienna, 1977)Google Scholar; Hryniuk, Peasants with Promise, 65–66 and 76–78.

35 Sirka, The Nationality Question, 77, (see also 55–58 and 179). See also Hryniuk, Peasants with Promise, 74–76, and, for the discrimination in the funding provided for schools in Ukrainian districts, Hromads'kyi holos, 1 July 1899.

36 For the names of teachers in Galician elementary schools in 1890, from which legitimate inferences may be made about their nationality, see Statistische Central-Commission, Schematismus der allgemeinen Volksschulen und Bürgerschulen in den im Reichsrathe vertretenen Königreichen und Ländern (Vienna, 1891)Google Scholar.

37 Hempel, “Ekonomiczne stosunki Galicyi,” 183 and 187.

38 Hryniuk, Peasants with Promise, 18–20.

39 lstorychno-memuamyi zbirnyk Chortkivs'koi okruhy, 497.

40 Himka, Galician Villagers, 151–53; Hryniuk, Peasantswith Promise, 20, 197–98.

41 Bilous, M., Russkoe vesilie pislia zvychaiv i obychaiv narodnykh nad Prutom i na Podoliu (Ruthenian weddings according to the folk customs and traditions along the Pruth and in Podolia) (Kolomyia, 1909), 14 and 19Google Scholar.

42 Istorychno-memuamyi zbirnyk Chortkivs'koi okruhy, 351 and 419.

43 Ibid., 579, 606, 609, and 719; also Prolom (Breakthrough), 11 December 1881, and Batkivshchyna, 8 October 1888.

44 Istorychno-memuarnyi zbimyk Chortkivs'koi okruhy, 614 and 617; Batkivshchyna, 15 August 1881.

45 See, for example, Istorychno-memuarnyi zbirnyk Chortkivs'koi okruhy, 621, and also the novel by Makovei, O., Zalisia (1897)Google Scholar. The local landlord as patron of a parish church could be levied a portion of the cost of the repair of the church. In the village of Butsniv in 1901 the landlord provided one-sixth of the cost of repairing the local church (Naukova Biblioteka Akademii nauk URSR im. V. Stefanyka u L'vovi, Hlynsky collection, file 585, box 40, item 543/1, 301).

46 See, for example, Batkivshchyna, 15 August 1884; and Narod (The people), 1 June 1890 and 1 July 1890; and Himka, Galician Villagers, 149.

47 Batkivshchyna, 28 September 1888.

48 Vynnytsky, I., ed., Terebovels'ka zemlia: Istorychno-memuarnyi zbirnyk (Terebovlia Territory: A historical and memoir collection) (New York, 1968), 295Google Scholar.

49 For a matter-of-fact family account of a rape-seduction, probably in the late 1860s, and the fate of resultant children see Picknicki, J., Generations, A Family History (Winnipeg, 1990), 149–50Google Scholar.

50 See, for instance, Himka, Galician Villagers, 148.

51 For an account of beatings on the estate of Anton Teodorowicz in Zhukiv, Horodenka county, see Hromads'kyi holos, 15 July 1898. For intimidation during elections see Hryniuk, Peasants with Promise, 197–98. By the 1890s Ukrainian villagers were beginning to fight back, and were being exonerated by the law courts for doing so [Svoboda (Freedom), 14 October 1897].

52 Svoboda, 22 July 1897.

53 Hryniuk, Peasants with Promise, 97–101.

54 Svoboda, 18 and 25 November 1897, 2 and 3 December 1897, and 13 January 1898.

55 Ibid., 14 October 1897.

56 See, for example, the memoirs of the expatriate American Princess Virgilia Sapieha, Polish Profile (New York, 1940), 209–10 and 264–66Google Scholar.