Page - 140 - in Österreich-Ungarns imperiale Herausforderungen - Nationalismen und Rivalitäten im Habsburgerreich um 1900

© 2020, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847110606 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737010603 as well as escalating levels of violence towhat had previously been primarily peaceful culturalactivitiesonbothsidesof theZbruchRiver,whilechallenging theterritorialintegrityofAustria-HungaryandRussia.Ultimately,itfacilitateda process of accelerated nation- and state-building which culminated in the emergenceof two independentUkrainianstatesby January1919. This essay aims to examine this process by applying the concept ofmobi- lisation of ethnicity, first developed byMark von Hagen in a path-breaking article, toAustria-Hungary’sUkrainianpolicyduring theGreatWar.2Thisview shiftsthemainfocusawayfromtheactionsof8migr8nationalist leaderstostate and Imperialpolicies, suggesting that Imperial establishmentsbecameactively involved in nationalising processes which contributed, inadvertently, to their owndemise. Suchanapproachmayseemcounterintuitive to the studyofAus- tria-Hungary’s involvement in theGreatWar, given theHabsburg aversion to nationalist politics and distrust of nationalism in general. However, theGreat War witnessed a radical rethinking of nationality policy in all four dynastic empires along the entangled Eastern Front, and Austria-Hungary was no ex- ception.BylookingathowtheHabsburgmobilisationofethnicity impactedthe nationalityquestioninthemulti-ethnic,multi-confessionalborderlandsofEast- CentralEurope in relationto similarpolicies enactedby theHohenzollernand RomanovEmpires,wecanimproveourunderstandingnotjustofthecreationof nation-statesbut also, asvonHagenpointsout, of the reasonsbehind thepro- liferationof interethnicconflict andviolenceduring thesecondhalf thedecade longEast-CentralEuropeancontinuumofviolencebetween1914and1923. Inapplyingtheconceptofmobilisationofethnicity totheHabsburgEmpire, it is important totakeintoaccountthemoredecentralisedstructureof theDual Monarchy in comparisonwith the Russian and, to a somewhat lesser extent, GermanEmpire.Thisessaywill focusonpolicies initiatedoractivelysupported by the jointAustro-HungarianForeignOffice and theAustrianGovernment in Viennaaswell as regional elites and individual actors.TheUkrainianpolicyof theHungarianGovernment inBudapestwasdistinctive anddoesnot fit easily withinthis framework,which iswhy itdeserves separate treatment. TheHabsburgmobilisationofethnicitywasa two-stageprocess.During the first phase, betweenAugust 1914 and the February 1917 revolution inRussia, Austria-Hungary supported actively, if somewhat ambiguously, bothdomestic and 8migr8-Ukrainian organisations committed to the revolutionising of DnieperUkraine and its eventual separation from theRomanovEmpire. Even thoughGermanyquicklybecame the championof thispolicy,Habsburg expe- 2 MarkvonHagen,TheGreatWarandtheMobilizationofEthnicity intheRussianEmpire, in: BarnettR.Rubin/JackSnyder (ed.), Post-SovietPoliticalOrder:Conflict andStateBuilding, London1998,p. 34–57. BorislavChernev140