Page - 327 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Of Heroes and Cowards 327 took place of enlistment and the assignment to the replacement troop bodies. Since those who were returning home usually spoke very good English, while their com- manders spoke little Ruthenian, this led to the curious circumstance that some soldiers found it easier to communicate in English than in another language.763 Carl Bardolff wrote in his memoirs that in Galicia, the oaths were taken in five languages.764 The troops were then sent straight to the front. When it came to ‘ranking’ reliability, the soldiers in the East Galician regiments came out badly. On 7 December 1914, Major General Peter Hofmann reported that the cases of Ruthenians in his area of command surrendering without being injured were increasing. They were clearly not only tired of the war, but had also succumbed to Russian propaganda, which promised that they would immediately be released to the areas occupied by the Russians if they surrendered voluntarily.765 On 24 March 1915, the commander of the XVII Corps, General of Infantry Křitek, reported that evidently larger portions of the 11th Infantry Division, which was formed mainly from East Galician regiments, had given themselves up to the Russians without resistance. Křitek wanted to withdraw the division, but the army commander, General Boroević, imme- diately rejected the proposal and replied in the almost stereotypical manner : the insub- ordinate elements were to be proceeded against ‘with the harshest measures’. What this was designed to achieve for the deserters was unclear. Among the Imperial and Royal Uhlan Regiment No. 4, Russophile propaganda was disseminated. In this case, the of- ficers who had failed to put a stop to it were identified as being responsible. Aside from this, ‘unreliable people’ were also to be sent ‘to the front at all costs’, in order not to be ‘rewarded for high treason’. In the case of the Ruthenians, the behaviour adopted towards the enemy did not come about by accident. The Ruthenians living to the east of the San River and in northern Bukovina regarded themselves as pawns of the major powers. Their Russo- phile tendency, which had already become stronger in the years prior to the war, was however brought about at least in equal measure by Russia and the Poles in Galicia. It was not only the case that the Ruthenians felt disadvantaged in comparison with the Poles, but were in fact so in reality. The Compromise Agreement, which was modelled on the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, and which they had almost had in their grasp just before the start of the war, was no longer realised. Separating factors were language, religion and economic development, in which the Ruthenians were also disadvantaged. This provided fertile ground for exerting influence. Right at the start of the war, at the request of Tsar Nicholas II, Vitaliy, the archi- mandrite of the monastery of Novy Pochayiv in Volhynia, called on the members of the Orthodox Church in Galicia and Bukovina to defect. The archimandrite, who had been making efforts for years to encourage Greek-Orthodox worshippers to convert to Russian Orthodoxy, produced an exhortation, which was couched in religious terms.