Page - 26 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

26 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 Ruthenian elites around it, including hosting a printing house for Ruthenian literature. The Studium was an autonomous part of the university that of- fered lectures in Church Slavonic.29 The institute, headed by the historian and archivist Denys Zubryc’kyj (Денис Зубрицький), had a high scholarly profile and served as a meeting place for L’viv’s Ruthenian intellectuals. Zubryc’kyj’s works illustrate, however, the political essence of the de- bates about Ruthenian culture. While striving to underscore Ruthenians’ distinctiveness from Poles, Zubryc’kyj saw Ruthenians as a branch of Rus’ culture, united by the use of Church Slavonic. A new generation of Ruthenian nationalists, however, pleaded for cultural development based on the ver- nacular spoken in Galicia.30 However, the church’s influence also hindered such vernacular-language ideologies: Rusalka Dněstrovaja (The nymph of the Dniester), published anonymously in Buda in 1837 by three Studium stu- dents, set the standards for late nineteenth-century vernacular Ruthenian.31 Nevertheless, strong opposition from church authorities prevented it from finding as many supporters as intended. Rusalka Dněstrovaja was published in Buda to escape Galician censorship (it had been rejected by a Galician censor for Ruthenian literature, the professor of moral theology Venedykt Levyc’kyj [Венедикт Левицький]). Yet its circulation was hampered by the L’viv metropolitan Mychajlo Levyc’kyj (Михайло Левицький), who bought almost the entire run of the first edition.32 Moreover, church authori- ties exiled all three authors to small villages as priests, which impeded their future activities. While the language issue for Galician Greek Catholics was not set before 1848, it was clear that the gap between different groups was increasing and was being translated into ethnic terms. Indeed, the idea of introducing a Polish-based alphabet to write Galician Ruthenian attracted only a few—predominantly, but not exclusively, Polish nationalists claiming Ruthenian as a Polish dialect.33 The development of provincial societies concentrating on language and history shaped both the Austrian and Hungarian parts of the monarchy. In the latter, Ferenc Széchényi founded a museum and library as early as 1802 but succeeded in creating the Hungarian Learned Society (Magyar Tudós Társásag) only in 1825. In line with other learned institutions, this society concentrated in its early years on developing a Hungarian scientific language and literature as well as modernizing scholarship in the Hungarian part of the monarchy.34 The society clearly supported the idea of cultural distinc- tiveness for the Hungarian Crown, although this was not its primary aim; this was also not the same as supporting the goal of political autonomy.35