Page - 151 - 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 determinationratherthanannexation.“Aswecansee,”writesAlexeiMiller,“the conceptsofself-determinationanddemocracyreplacedthoseofreligiousunity and loyalty to the tsars…”.33 Ukrainian political organisations welcomed the February Revolution and pledgedallegiancetothenewProvisionalGovernment,emphasisingtheneedto organise interethnic relations in the new Russian Republic on a new, equal footing.Inatelegramfrom3/16March,theUnionofUkrainianOrganisationsin Kiev declared itself “convinced that the just requirements of the Ukrainian peopleanditsdemocratic intelligentsiawillbefulfilledintheirentirety”.Onthe same day, the Ukrainians of Katerinodar/Ekaterinodar in the Kuban tele- grammedPetrograd theywere “confident that theUkrainiannation, liberated fromtheoppression(hnitu)oftheoldregimealongwiththeothers,hasearneda new right to a new free, autonomous existence alongside the other nations of Russia”.34Evenastheyreaffirmedtheirsupportfor thenewdemocraticorderin Russia,UkrainiansconsolidatedtheirpoliticalmaturationbycreatingaCentral Rada(council) intendedtoserveasa localgoverningbodyon5/18March1917. Over the next fewmonths, theRada grew increasingly independent of central control, proclaiming autonomy in the First Universal on 10 June, and estab- lishing an autonomous Ukrainian People’s Republic within a hypothetical RussianFederativeRepublic in theThirdUniversalon20November. TheAustro-HungarianForeignOfficefollowedcloselytheunfoldingofevents east of the Zbruch River. Reports from the summer of 1917 highlighted the emergenceofa still somewhat looselydefinedUkrainiannational spacewithin the formerRussianEmpire, dominated by ethno-national developments often tiedtotheagrarianquestion.35Duringthisperiod,Habsburgauthoritiesbecame increasingly reluctant toplay thenationalist card, fearing that ethnic tensions mightspill over fromRussiaand imperil thedelicatebalanceofnationalities in theDualMonarchy.Tomakemattersworse, therewasgrowingevidencethatthe nationalist agitation in Dnieper Ukraine and the Habsburg mobilisation of ethnicity hadwhetted the appetite ofAustria’sUkrainians, whonowbegan to clamourforgreaterautonomywithintheDualMonarchy.On22December1917, 33 Miller,TheRomanovEmpireandNationalism(seenote21),p. 194. 34 Vital’ni telehrami ta listi ukrains’kikhorganizatsii Timchasovomuuriaduz vislovlenniam spodivan’ spravedlivoho vyrshennia ukrain’skoho pytannia, no.2 and 3, 05.03.1917, in: Vladyslav FedorovycˇVerstiuk (ed.),Ukrains’kyi natsional’no-vizvol’nyi rukh: Berezen’-li- stopad1918.Dokumenty imaterialy,Kiev2003,p. 37. 35 Sz8ch8nyi anCzernin,ÜbersendungeinesBerichtesüberdieMachtbefugnissederukrain. ZentralradaundüberdieAgrarfrage, 21.08.1917, in:Hornykiewicz (ed.), Ereignisse inder Ukraine (seenote 5), vol. 1, p. 262–265, herep.264–265.Thepeasant communewasnot a prominent featureofUkrainianagriculture,unlike inEuropeanRussia.Ontheotherhand, most landlords in theareawereeitherPolishorRussian,whichreinforced theoverlapping ethnicandclass cleavages. TheHabsburgMobilisationofEthnicity 151