Galicia during the First World War
When the land of the “Muscophiles” became the territory of anti-Russian nationalists
By the beginning of the 20th century, Galicia, the territory of modern Western Ukraine, remained the only part of Ancient Russia that was not united under the scepter of the Russian tsar. Nowadays, the lands of Galicia are considered a priori a breeding ground for “Ukrainian nationalism” in its most pro-Western, anti-Russian side. But a century ago, the predominant political movement among the local population were those who were called "Moscviles" - staunch supporters of the "united Russian people from the Carpathians to Kamchatka." And only the tragic events of the First World War changed the political face of this region.
"United Russian people from the Carpathians to Kamchatka"
On the eve of the First World War, Galicia was considered the "crown land" of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty. Officially, this territory, inherited by the emperors of Vienna after the division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th century, was considered to be the feud of the Austrian monarchs, having no autonomous government or a titular nation.
Still for the role historical the owners of these lands were claimed by two nations at once - the Poles and the people who a century ago called themselves "Ruska" or "Ruska" (just like that, with one "s"). Now this people is officially called "Ukrainian", sometimes - "Western Ukrainian". For the era of the First World War, apparently, it would be most correct to name the indigenous population of Galicia by the name of the region - Galicians.
The descendants of the primordial population of the most western lands of Kievan Rus became Galicians. A century after the Mongol invasion, the local nobility came under Polish influence and for several centuries was completely "poured" with the adoption of Catholicism. The connection with Orthodoxy during the Polish rule formally lost the peasant population of Galicia. Having accepted the "union" or "Greek Catholicism", the local church, retaining the Byzantine rite and the Slavic language in worship, recognized the spiritual primacy of the Catholic Roman popes.
Unia became an instrument of Catholicism for spreading its influence on the Orthodox lands of former Kievan Rus. But in the territories closer to the Dnieper, during the anti-Polish uprisings of the seventeenth century, the Orthodox had rid themselves of Uniate and Catholic influence. A little later, at the beginning of the 19th century, in the western Russian lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, all Uniates were officially reunited with the Orthodox Church.
The “Greek Catholic Union” was preserved only in Galicia, which was ceded under the rule of Austria. Here "Uniatism" for several centuries has become a traditional religion of the local peasantry. Those who converted to Catholicism, for the same time, completely dissolved in the Polish nation.
From the end of the 18th century, it was precisely among the Uniate clergy and the local intelligentsia of Galicia that a new trend arose, which later became known as “Muscophiles”. Separating themselves from distant Austrian masters and from close but hostile Poles, they turned to the East, to the people of the vast Russian Empire, identifying themselves as the westernmost part of a huge Russian family. It was the local nobleman, nobleman Denis Ivanovich Zubritsky, the author of the multi-volume history of Galician Rus, at the very beginning of the 19th century formulated the idea of a single Russian people "from the Carpathians to Kamchatka." Not surprisingly, in the historiography of the current anti-Russian “Ukrainian nationalists,” Zubritsky is considered a reactionary and negative character.
It is significant that the Austrian authorities, at the end of the Napoleonic wars, finally having received Galicia in their possession, almost immediately felt the danger of the language and cultural affinity of the Galicians to Russia. Already in 1822, the Austrian Empire officially banned the import of Russian books into its territory, “so as not to arouse any extra pro-Russian sympathies”.
Written by Denis Zubritsky, the first “History of Galician Russia” was withdrawn by the Austrian authorities. Moreover, the imperial officials of Vienna during the XIX century several times at the legislative level officially banned the "use of Moscow words." That is, they prescribed a special state for censors to carefully monitor that the newspapers and books published in Galicia in Cyrillic did not use terms and borrowings from the literary language of Russia — Polonism and Latinism were forcibly implanted in their place. It was not possible to suppress the interest of the Galician intelligentsia in Russian culture, but over a century the local “Russian” language in terminology became noticeably different from the literary Russian in the works of the Viennese censors.
"... and the principality of Auschwitz"
By 1914, the territory that is now referred to as Western Ukraine was officially called Königreich Galizien und Lodomerien mit dem Großherzogtum Krakau und den Herzogtümern Auschwitz und Zator, translated from German, the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomerie with the Grand Duchy of Krakow and Awkward, with the Grand Duchy of Krakow and Rudomies, and with the numbers in a short line and for the day of the day event and for a short number of events and events will be applied for a small number of objects that will be applied for a short time and will be applied to the numbers for the first time by the Krakow and Rashots with the Grand Duchy of Krakow and Rithome and Religions with the Grand Prix of Krakow and Rudomies and Riddles and Riddles and Lodomery with the Grand Duchy of Krakow and Awchartnostiusnn Zator. Auschwitz is now associated with the worst Nazi concentration camps of the Second World War era, but Galicia had to know the horror of the German concentration camps long before Hitler, even during the First World War ...
At the beginning of the 20th century, Galicia was the poorest part of Austria-Hungary, in terms of per capita income, two times lower than the western provinces of the empire. According to statistics, 30% of the population of this subordinate Vienna “kingdom” spoke Polish, almost 10% spoke Yiddish, and only 40% spoke the local “Ruthenian” dialect.
Two thirds of the cities were Poles and Jews, most of the landowners and landowners were Poles, and the top bureaucracy consisted of about half of the Poles and Austrian Germans (of whom only 0,3% of the population of the “kingdom of Galicia” were counted). Only in Lviv there were about 12 thousands of families of Austrian officials. A century ago, this city was officially called Lemberg, inhabited by Poles, Jews and German officials, it was ethnically alien and even hostile to the surrounding rural population.
Galician peasants professing "Uniatism" did not yet call themselves "Ukrainians", the most common self-name was "Ruska". The local peasantry experienced the social and national oppression of the Polish landowners. The Viennese emperors - "Caesars" - played on the contradictions of the subordinate tribes, fearing the Polish national movement, consciously used to strengthen their power the contradictions between the Galicians and the Poles. Among the Galicians, the Austrians supported the social movement that considered itself a people, separate not only from the Poles, but also from the Russians. By the beginning of the 20th century, the followers of this trend began to call themselves “Ukrainians”.
The Austrian authorities encouraged the activities of Galician politicians of the “Ukrainian” sense, welcoming in the territory of Galicia and “Mazepians” who had moved here from the territory of the Russian Empire. So, in the 1894 year, the professor’s chair at Lviv University was occupied by the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalists who emigrated from Russia, Mikhail Hrushevsky.
Mikhail Hrushevsky. Photo: ukrmap.su
However, a century ago, other forces still dominated the public life of the Galicians. The most influential was the “Russian People’s Party”, an association of Galician intellectuals who openly preached the ideas of the unity of the entire Russian people “from the Carpathians to Kamchatka”. Despite the pressure of the Austrian authorities, at the beginning of the 20th century, this movement successfully competed with the “Ukrainophile” organizations for the sympathy of the local population of Galicia. Almost half of the deputies of the Galicians in the Austrian parliament were supporters of the "Russian People's Party."
The program documents of this party declared: “The Russian People’s Party in Galicia confesses, based on science, real life and deep conviction, the national and cultural unity of the entire Russian people and therefore recognizes the fruits of the thousand-year national and cultural labor of the entire Russian people.” Supporters of the “Russian party” in Galicia could openly speak only about the cultural and civilizational unity of the people of Galicia with Russia, but the Austrian authorities not without reason suspected them of political sympathies for the Russian state.
Thus, in 1913, the brothers Aleksei and Georgy Gerovsky, publishers of the “Moscow Philosophy” newspaper Russkaya Pravda, were arrested on charges of an anti-state conspiracy in Chernivtsi. It is indicative that the visits of the brothers to the territory of the Russian Empire to the Pochaev Lavra, the center of Orthodoxy closest to Galicia, were considered evidence of anti-Austrian activity.
In accordance with the charges, the brothers were threatened with an estimated penalty, but they managed to escape from prison and escape in Russia. In response, the Austrian authorities arrested the closest relatives of the Gerovsky brothers — their mother, sister Xenia, and the wife of Alexei Gerovsky with a two-year-old child. The mother of the Moscofil brothers soon died in a prison in Vienna.
"The secret war between the Eastern and Western rites ..."
On the eve of the First World War, two thirds of the rural population of Galicia were Uniates. But at that time, among the “Greek Catholic” priests, there was an influential movement to return to the bosom of the Orthodox Church.
After the Uniates in the former territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which ceded to Russia, almost completely converted to Orthodoxy at the beginning of the 19th century, the Catholic Church began to flirt with “uniatism” to prevent its merging with Orthodoxy. For example, in the middle of the 19th century, the Pope granted the cardinal title to the Uniate Metropolitan of Galicia and forbade the Catholic prelates with administrative decisions to rewrite the Uniates into Catholics.
The end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries was a time of struggle within the Galician church, when the question of whether this confession would be closer to Orthodoxy or, conversely, to Catholicism, was decided.
Writer Mikhail Prishvin, who visited Lviv in the winter at the very beginning of 1915, wrote that in Galicia there is an old “secret war” between the eastern and western rites. The writer gave a figurative description of the hidden struggle of religious orientations: “And in the churches I visited, I everywhere met echoes of this war: here various forms of bows, rings, chants, flowers on candles were fighting among themselves. Looking at the one who was the patron of the church, she had the appearance of either Catholic, or Eastern; the benches for the seat, then very large, filled the whole space for the worshipers, as if in churches, then were reduced to half, then completely disappeared, and only the small, imperceptible were molded against the very walls. The iconostases then closed the altar to the top, now the openwork and narrow ones made the entire service visible, like those of the Catholics ... Titsian's sweetie, plump faces struggled with the Greek faces, choral singing with organ sounds ... "
It must be admitted that at the beginning of the 20th century, the Catholic forces took serious organizational and political steps to suppress the sympathy towards Russia and the craving for Orthodoxy among the Galician “Uniates”. Back in 1900, the Pope appointed the Polish earl Andrew Sheptitsky, who had learned at a Jesuit seminary, as the Metropolitan of the Uniate Church in Galicia.
A convinced enemy of Russia and Orthodoxy, Sheptytsky in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was not only a religious, but also a political authority - as the head of the Lviv Metropolis, he automatically entered the Austrian parliament and the Diet of Galicia. At the beginning of the 20th century, they issued numerous messages to the Uniate parish clergy, which required local pastors to “unswervingly and systematically clarify to the people the malignantness of the Orthodox Church” and discourage parishioners from the “destructive” pilgrimage to the Pochaev and Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.
Together with the Austrian administration, in the first 13 years of the 20th century, Sheptytsky was able to reduce by three times the number of Galician peasants who annually went on pilgrimage to Orthodox laurels in the territory of the Russian Empire. Austrian authorities and Sheptytsky's priests forced pilgrims traveling to Russia to give a public oath that they would not pass from Uniatism to Orthodoxy.
By the beginning of the 20th century, freedom of religion was formally declared on the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Indeed, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Uniates got along quite well here. Only Orthodoxy was suspicious for Vienna. By oppressive measures, the Austrian authorities prevented the return of the Uniates to Orthodoxy, rightly fearing that the Orthodox would be spiritually and politically oriented towards Russia.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Transcarpathia (which formally was not part of the “Kingdom of Galicia”, but of the “Hungarian Kingdom” of the Austrian Empire) underwent a series of major trials against peasants and local Uniate priests, who sought to convert to Orthodoxy. So, in December 1913, 188 peasant-Rusyns, who secretly gathered in the forests for Orthodox prayers, were brought to court - they were accused by the Austrian authorities of treason in favor of the Russian Empire. According to the results of the scandalous process (the falsity and absurdity of accusations of working for Russian intelligence was too clear even to ill-wishers of Orthodoxy) two Uniate priests and three dozen peasants were sentenced to prison terms.
In 1912 – 1914 in Lviv prison, a group of activists of the “Moscow Philosophy” movement in Galicia, including two priests who converted from Uniatism to Orthodoxy - Ignatius Hudyma and Maxim Sandovich, was tried and investigated in Lviv prison. For propaganda of ideas about the unity of the Russian people, the Austrian authorities have traditionally accused them of espionage. It is significant that the arrested priests, then widely known in Galicia for their sermons, the authorities promised release in exchange for renouncing Orthodoxy and returning to Uniate Church - according to the plans of the Austrians, this should have reassured local peasants and made them look not at Moscow, but at Vein.
Priest Ignatius Hudyma. Image: cyberleninka.ru
Naturally, no evidence of espionage was found by Orthodox priests. After two years of imprisonment, they were released in June 1914. However, a month and a half later, immediately after the start of World War I, the Austrian authorities again arrested Ignatius Hudima and Maxim Sandovich, along with hundreds of other social activists of Galicia suspected of sympathizing with Russia.
“Long live Holy Orthodoxy! May Holy Russia live! ”
The Austrian Empire could not withstand a direct military clash with Russia. In two months, in August and September 1914, the advancing Russian armies defeated the forces of the Vienna monarchy, captured almost 100 thousands of Austrian soldiers and advanced 200 versts deep into Galicia to the slopes of the Carpathians. 3 September (new style) 1914, the Russian troops entered Lviv, the next day - in Galich, the ancient capital of the Galician-Volyn principality.
But the triumph of Russian weapons became the beginning of the terrible tragedy of the Galician "Muscophiles". In the panic of defeat and retreat, the Austrian authorities began to massively arrest and then openly kill all those suspected of obvious or imaginary sympathies for Russia. The tragic fates of two Orthodox priests, Ignatius Hudyma and Maxim Sandovich, are indicative here, only six weeks before the start of the First World War, released from a prison in Lviv after two years of imprisonment.
Maxim Sandovich in August 1914 was arrested along with his whole family - a pregnant wife and father. A few weeks later, on the eve of their hasty escape from the advancing Russian troops, on September 6, Austrian soldiers without trial had shot a priest in the courtyard of Gorlitsa prison in front of his pregnant wife, father and fellow villagers. Standing in front of the firing squad, Sandovich shouted: “Long live Holy Orthodoxy! May Holy Russia live! ”
After his arrest, the priest Ignatius Hudyma ended up in the notorious concentration camp Talerhof (in Austrian Styria), where he bravely led Orthodox services for prisoners. In the camp, he was repeatedly subjected to torture for stating the question of nationality to the question of nationality in the roll call of the prisoners - “Russian”. This was a challenge to the Austrian administration, which did not recognize the presence of such a nationality in Galicia, demanding to be called ruthenen ...
The killings and executions during the retreat of the Austrians in the autumn of 1914 were not solitary - this was the first mass extermination of Galicia’s Moscophiles. So, 15 of September 1914 of the year on the street of Przemysl were stabbed with 40 bayonets a man of local intellectuals and peasants, just in case arrested by the authorities on suspicion of “Moscow Philosophy” in the first days of the war. On September 30 in the Transcarpathian Mukachevo, a priest, a clerk and a peasant suspected of sympathizing with Russia were hanged. In the village of Skomorokhi, near Sokal, during the retreat of the Austrians, 25 Moskvofil were hanged up and hung. The story of the execution for refusing to fight on the Russian front in the autumn of 1914 of the year of a soldier of the 80 Austrian infantry regiment recruited from the peasants of Brodsky, Kamenetsky and Zolochiv counties of Galicia is well known.
These are just a few examples of mass anti-Russian terror by the Austrian authorities in Galicia this autumn. In addition to murders and hangings, many thousands were thrown into prisons and sent to concentration camps deep into Austria. By the time of the arrival of Russian troops, only in the prisons of Lvov there were imprisoned around 2 thousands of Galician “Moscophiles” - the figure of political prisoners is very large by the standards of the First World War.
In fact, August and the beginning of the autumn of 1914 were the first stage of open terror against the pro-Russian forces of Galicia. At the same time, at the very beginning of the war, the head of the Uniate Church, Cardinal Sheptytsky 8 August 1914, issued a special propaganda message to his flock: “There is a war between our Emperor and the Tsar of Moscow. War is being waged for us, for the Moscow Tsar could not tolerate the fact that in the Austrian state we have freedom of faith and nationality ... ”
It is significant that, immediately after the Russian army occupied Galicia, the Russian Empire did not take any repressive measures against Sheptytsky and his supporters. They limited themselves only to the fact that the Uniate Cardinal gave "honest word" to General Brusilov, that he would no longer take any actions hostile to Russia.
However, Sheptytsky in his sermons, avoiding direct calls for war with Russia, immediately began to pursue the idea of the hostility of "official Orthodoxy." 6 September 1914, he said so in a sermon in the oldest Assumption Church in Lviv: “You call yourself“ Orthodox ”, and we also have Orthodox faith. However, our Orthodoxy is ecclesiastical, and yours is state and, so to speak, “official”. This means that you make the support of your Orthodoxy the state power. We, on the contrary, draw spiritual strength from our unity with the Holy Catholic Church, through which God's grace proceeds and in which the true source of salvation lies ... "
It should be noted that if Russian Orthodoxy was “official”, then Sheptitsky himself in his Uniate activity constantly relied on the Austrian state apparatus. And if the Russian authorities initially did not seek any pressure on the Uniate church, forgiving even overt anti-Russian appeals, the Austrian authorities, on the contrary, immediately after the start of the war immediately and severely punished the priests for any sympathy for Russia and Orthodoxy.
While many Moskofil priests were shot by Austrians or found themselves in concentration camps, Cardinal Sheptytsky after openly anti-Russian sermons was only taken to comfortable exile in Kiev, and then in Kursk. At the same time, Russian intelligence in the basement of the Lviv Sheptytsky residence found immured safes with correspondence and other documentation that clearly indicated the close ties between the head of the Uniates and the Austrian special services - for example, plans to organize the management of the provinces of Little Russia in the event of their capture by Austro-Hungarian troops.
"... will complete the gathering of the fates of Russia"
However, contrary to the dreams and plans of Cardinal Sheptytsky, for the time being, military success was accompanied by the East, not the West. From September 1914, Galicia for nine months was under the authority of the Russian tsar.
The occupation of the ancient principality of Galicia was perceived in Russia as the completion of the centuries-old gathering of the lands of Russia. In an appeal signed by the Supreme Commander Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich with pathos said: “Let there be no more subjugal Russia. The property of St. Vladimir, the land of Yaroslav Osmomysl, the Princes Daniil and Roman, throwing off the yoke, let it set up a united, great, indivisible Russia. ”
Galicia, along with the Black Sea Straits and East Prussia, was considered as one of the main goals of the Russian Empire in the unfolding great war. Russia's firm intention to annex the Slavic lands near the Carpathians was almost immediately announced to the allies in the Entente. In November 1914, Nicholas II, during an audience with the French ambassador Paleologue, specifically explained that Galicia and the northern part of Bukovina would allow the Russian Empire to reach its “natural limits”.
In the autumn of 1914, the unfolding world war by all its participants was still viewed as fleeting, which did not last longer than next year. Therefore, the royal authorities immediately rushed to begin the integration of Galicia into Russia. On the former territory of Königreich Galizien und Lodomerien, already in the fall of the first year of the war, four Russian provinces were organized - Lviv, Tarnopol, Chernivtsi and Peremyshl. These territorial units were united in the Galician Governor-General, the head of which in August 1914 was appointed Count George Bobrinsky. This general (descended from a noble family of Bobrinsky, who led from the son of Empress Catherine II and Grigory Orlov) was engaged in the army’s rear administration during the Russian-Japanese war.
In August 1914, on behalf of the new governors, it was announced that in the province "Russian civilian administration is being introduced to restore order and calm." However, this decision turned out to be hasty - the bureaucratic apparatus of the Russian Empire had no such experience and was not ready to organize the administration of a territory with a population of several million people right away in the chaos of war. It would probably be more effective to confine ourselves to military control during the war. But the royal authorities, in the euphoria of the first victories, hastened to declare the integration of Galicia into Russia.
The bulk of the officials in the new land was seconded from the provincial territory of the Kiev, Podolsk and Volyn provinces. These were mainly police officers from middle-level positions and, what is indicative, there was not one with higher education among them.
At the beginning of the war, an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vasily Olferyev, was assigned as a consultant and analyst to the command of the Russian South-Western Front, which occupied Galicia. In the autumn of 1914, he carefully studied the situation on these lands: “Since the declaration of war, no measures were taken to set up advance personnel sufficiently prepared for the upcoming activities to immediately replace the departed or unreliable Austrian authorities ... ... Russia is represented in the conquered territory by only a few dozen mediocre police officials seconded here from various provincial corners. These officials are far from the best quality ... "
In his analysis, Olfer'ev indicated that the new heads of counties, who arrived from the territory of the Russian Empire, "do not know the region, its life and customs, often without understanding even the local language, and even more adverbs." In addition, not enough funds have been allocated so that the new Russian county-level official could "attract himself to help supernumerary employees from local residents."
Olferiev specifically noted that the retreating Austrians arrested and took with them more than 10 thousands of Moscophiles, that is, activists of pro-Russian social movements, of which more than 800 sympathize with Orthodoxy of Uniate priests. That is, having lost the military battle for Galicia, the authorities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire still managed to deprive Russia of those people whom it could successfully rely on in the conquered land.
"The people will be in a huge mass with the Orthodox"
The Russian Empire was officially an Orthodox state. Therefore, the religious issue in Galicia was considered especially closely. Catholics and Jews, naturally, were considered strangers. But the Galician Uniates were considered in St. Petersburg as Orthodox without five minutes. However, in this area, the Russian authorities did not have time to develop a common policy.
13 September 1914, the command of the Russian army, fearing potential discontent in the rear of the attacking troops, issued a special order, "so that our spiritual power does not repress any oppression of the Uniates and the Uniate clergy. Political unreliability should not be identified with religious disunity ... ”
At the same time, the Most Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church sent to Galicia to manage the religious sphere of Volyn Archbishop Evlogy. Unlike the head of the Uniates of Count Sheptytsky, Eulogius was the son of a simple village priest. From the end of the 19th century, he served in the western provinces of the Russian Empire and therefore was well acquainted with the confessional situation in Galicia.
Archbishop Eulogius believed that in Galicia "the Orthodox self-consciousness rests mainly in the village" and the peasant "people in the vast majority will be with the Orthodox." Indeed, in the fall of 1914, in the eastern parts of Galicia, a massive transition of local Uniate parishes to Orthodoxy began - previously only the power of the Austrian administration kept them from doing so. In the first two months of the Russian government, about 30 thousand people returned from union to Orthodoxy.
6 December 1914, Archbishop Eulogius arrived in Lviv and the next day in the largest Uniate church in the city read a sermon, which delighted all the local Muscovites. On the same day, the newspaper "Prikarpatska Rus", which was previously closed by the Austrian authorities, published the pastoral message of Archbishop Eulogius "To the Galician-Russian people and their clergy." The message said: “Good shepherds of Galician Russia! .. You were brought up in the traditions of the Latin Union, but she could not drown the Russian spirit in you ... In the life of the people entrusted to you, a great revolution takes place, it flows into the all-Russian channel ... him along the path of this organic merger with great Russia, and especially restore and consolidate its most ancient historical union with the Orthodox Russian Church. ”
However, attempts to create Orthodox parishes in the Lviv region caused resistance and discontent among numerous Polish Catholics who were afraid of losing their influence in the region. The Russian military authorities, seeking to preserve the loyalty of the Poles, who at that time occupied key positions in the economic life of Galicia, even opposed the arrival of Archbishop Eulogius to Lviv, as Governor-General Bobrinsky wrote, “finding this trip premature.”
An active opponent of any measures to eliminate the union was the uncle of the Russian tsar, commander-in-chief of the army, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich - he feared that at the height of the fighting at the front in the Carpathians this could cause unnecessary unrest in Galicia, which became the near rear of the fighting army.
As a result, the practical activity of Archbishop Eulogius on the conversion of Uniates to Orthodoxy was blocked. Nevertheless, in the territory of Galicia until the spring of 1915, about a hundred Orthodox parishes were established.
However, the bulk of the Uniate priests of Galicia abstained from returning to Orthodoxy. First, they were oppressed by the elite of the Uniate Church, linked with Cardinal Sheptytsky, who was afraid to lose her power and influence. Secondly, many of the most authoritative and active supporters of returning to Orthodoxy from among the Uniate priests were arrested by the Austrian authorities in August-September 1914, killed or taken away to concentration camps and prisons west. Thirdly, unlike the Austrian authorities, the Russian state authorities, in fact, refused to actively intervene in the religious life - retaining the Uniate confession no obstacles, and especially no reprisals from the Russian authorities.
"The idea of cultural and national unity of Russian tribes"
Despite all the difficulties of integrating the region into Russia, there is no doubt that over time this process would become irreversible. Moreover, the Russian authorities have planned in the coming 5 years to create in Galicia 9 thousands of new Russian schools, 50 gymnasiums and 12 teachers' seminaries and institutes. The return from union to orthodoxy and the creation of a system of Russian education, which began in the fall of 1914, would inevitably bring these lands to Russia, not only formally, but in essence. However, this took time, at least a few years. But the fate of Russian Galicia was decided by force of arms in the spring of 1915.
By the first military spring, the Russian empire, not ready for a protracted war, faced a “supply crisis” —the armies at the front were sorely lacking rifles and artillery shells. It was at this time that Germany, desperate to take Paris, transferred the main reserves against Russia. 2 May German and Austrian troops launched a general offensive and broke through the Russian front between the Vistula and the Carpathians.
Soon began the general retreat of the Russian army in Galicia. Along with the troops, fearing Austrian terror from last fall, many local Moscophiles also left for the East. By June 1915, only in Rostov-on-Don, there were already over 6 thousands of Galician refugees, even here they created a new gymnasium for their children. According to minimal data, the number of refugees reached 100 thousands. But there are more significant estimates, which by the summer of 1915, with the retreating Russian army, the region had left at least 300 thousand, that is, almost every tenth “Russian”.
In the whole of Galicia, around 9 political arrests were made during the 1200 months of the Russian government. The return of the Austrian authorities turned into an unprecedented terror. Almost 10% of Uniate priests were repressed for their sympathy for Russia, both real and invented by the Austrian authorities and their accomplices. At the same time, an active role in the repressions was played by the denunciations of the “Ukrainian party”, the local “Mazepians”, who sought to get rid of the “Muscovites” who competed with them for power over the minds and hearts of the peasants of Galicia.
During the First World War, on the orders of the Austro-Hungarian authorities, 72 thousands of Slavs of Galicia, Bukovina and Transcarpathia were executed. For the era of the First World War, this is the most massive terror against civilians.
Back in September, 1914, in the foothills of the Alps, near the town of Talerhof, the Austrian authorities set up a concentration camp for Muscophiles. During World War I, over 20 of thousands of pro-Russian Galicians and Bukovinians passed through imprisonment in this camp. Only in the first half of 1915, almost 4 thousands of Muscovites captured in Galicia after the return of Austrian power were executed here. According to the meticulous Austrian statistics, 7% of the prisoners of this concentration camp were Galician uniat priests suspected of sympathy for Orthodoxy. According to the conditions of detention and the death rate of prisoners, this concentration camp did not differ from the most terrible concentration camps of Hitler that appeared after a quarter of a century.
In addition to Talerhof, the captured “Moskvofili” were massively detained in the Theresienstadt prison camps (on the territory of modern Czech Republic) and Bereze-Kartuz (in the west of modern Belarus), after its capture by German troops in 1915.
In 1915 – 1917 in Vienna two large political processes took place, on which the very idea of the unity of the Russian people and the Russian literary language was blamed. In the dock, among the dozens of those arrested, there were also former deputies of the Austrian parliament from the Galician “moskofilskoy” intelligentsia, thrown into prison during the first days of the war. Most of the defendants were sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. At the same time, the prosecution witnesses, in addition to Austrian officials, were readily supported by anti-Russian “Ukrainian nationalists”.
The main accused in the Vienna political process 1915 of the year was an activist of the “Russian People's Party” of Galicia, the son of a simple Galician peasant Dmitry Andreyevich Markov, a deputy of the Austrian parliament, arrested by the authorities in the first days of the war. In his last word, in the face of a death sentence, he said: “Truth protects me, and the power of truth is irresistible. This truth is my national idea, the idea of the cultural and national unity of the Russian tribes. ”
But, despite the self-sacrifice and courage of the Galician “Muscovite”, the military defeat of the Russian armies in 1915 for a long time buried the idea of “cultural and national unity of the Russian tribes” living “from the Carpathians to Kamchatka”. After all, the national and political sympathies of the peoples are formed by the intelligentsia, and the intelligentsia of the indigenous population of Galicia at the very beginning of the 20th century was extremely small. Two rival political movements - pro-Russian “Moscophiles” and anti-Russian “Ukrainians” - almost broke it in half. The tragic events of the First World War - the outcome of many Muscovites following the retreating Russian army and the targeted mass terror of the Austrian authorities against the Galician supporters of Russia - led to a radical change in the political image of Galicia. From the center of the “Carpathian-Russian Renaissance”, which preached the unity of the great people of Russia “from the Carpathians to Kamchatka”, the territory of present-day Western Ukraine became a hotbed of anti-Russian nationalism.
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