Page - 147 - 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 Mobilisation throughReligionandtheRussianOccupationofGalicia Occupationplayedakeyroleinthemaking,unmaking,andremakingofnational identities along the Eastern Front during theGreatWar and its immediate af- termath. This included the northern section,where theGermanOberOst ad- ministrationprohibited the public use of Russianwhile promoting the devel- opmentofadistinctBelarusiannationality and theuseof theBelarusian,Lith- uanian,andLatvianlanguages.23Furthersouth, thesubsequentAustro-German occupationofpartsofDnieperUkrainemadesimilararrangements,somuchso thatAlexeiMillerhasrecentlysuggestedthatwehavetoaskourselveswhetherwe can “claim that theUkrainian andBelarusiannations are to a large extent the product of imperial competition during the GreatWar”.24The Russian occu- pationofEastGaliciabetweenSeptember1914andMay1915wasanattemptto nipthisdangerousdevelopmentinthebudbyrootingoutUkrainiannationalist activityintheregionincreasinglyseenasUkraine’sPiedmontandincorporating it intotheRussianEmpire.RussianoccupationauthoritiesinGalicia“supported the unconditional Russification of the region’sUkrainian population,” argues oneRussianspecialistonthesubject.25Accordingly,aftersomeinitialhesitation, the administration under Count Georgii Bobrinskii introduced the use of the Russian language in courts and in all levels of education, a measure which receivedthewidesupportof localRussophilecircles.CountBobrinskii allowed thepublicationofnewspapers in four local dialects in addition toRussianand Polish but categorically forbade the use ofUkrainian, denouncing it as a lan- guagethatwas“bureaucratic,Austrian,andaninventionoftheMazepists”(that is to sayUkrainiannationalist activists).26 Another important policyof the occupation authoritieswas the active sup- pression of the dominantGreekCatholic orUniate Church inGalicia and the forcedconversiontoOrthodoxyofmanyof its followers.Thechurchwasat the heartof theGalicianPiedmontproject andan important regionalplayer in the Habsburgmobilisationof ethnicity at theoutbreakof thewar,highlighting the role of provincial elites. Metropolitan Andriy Sheptyts’kyi, its long-serving leaderbetween1901and1944,composedadetailedmemorandumtotheAustro- 23 VejasG.Liulevicius,WarLandontheEasternFront.Culture,National IdentityandGerman OccupationinWorldWarI(StudiesintheSocialandCulturalHistoryofModernWarfare,9), Cambridge2000. 24 Alexei I.Miller,TheRoleof theFirstWorldWar intheCompetitionbetweenUkrainianand All-Russian Nationalism, in: Lohr/Tolz/Semyonov/vonHagen (ed.), The Empire andNa- tionalismatWar(seenote3),p. 73–89,herep. 89. 25 Bakhturina,OkrainyRossiiskoi imperii (seenote1),p. 129. 26 Aleksandra Iur’evna Bakhturina, Politika Rossiiskoi imperii v Vostochnoi Galitsii v gody Pervoimirovoivoiny(SerijaPervajamonografija),Moscow2000,p. 95. TheHabsburgMobilisationofEthnicity 147