Page - 99 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 3 ♦  99 Ukraine as an autonomous cultural nation both in his historiography and in his popular writings. In his vision of cultural separatism, science/schol- arship/education—наука (nauka)—had the aim of not only demonstrating cultural strength but also increasing the self-awareness of the Ukrainian population in Galicia and Ukraine: to use his own metaphor, it would help in the process of renouncing “the culture of the knife.”38 The triple meaning of наука, encompassing science, scholarship, and education, is clearly evi- dent, but наука here also evokes culture and civilization and is a synonym of progress, both as an aim and as a means: One of the main questions regarding cultural language and the fru- ition of national life is the question of academic education in this language. Until a language finds entrance to higher education in- stitutions, until it is a language of university or other academic lectures, until it is a tool of scientific work in lectures and books, a nation [народність] that speaks this language will feel as if it were a “low-grade,” culturally handicapped nation. It will receive from all a suspicious look, supposing that they consider it neither a cultural nation, nor its language as a cultural language. Academic, university science in one’s [own] language attests culturality; it gives a stamp of cultural entitlement to a given nation, in the eyes of contemporary man. Independent of the size of the nation, or the dimensions of its political, economic, and cultural, practical and intellectual talents, the nation considers itself then a cultural nation, and senses the moral right to request such attention from other [nations]—that she will be respected as a cultural nation, culturally equal with the other nations. Hence, we see that all nations that appeared so far, or are just coming to their national rights or to a reputation as a cultural nation, struggle for an independent academia [вищу школу], with lectures in their language, and when that is not possible, then at least lectures on sev- eral subjects in their language at a university.39 In the conflict over the University of L’viv, two claims turn up repeat- edly. The Polish side claimed that the freedom of learning and the possibility of habilitation had given the Ruthenians concessions that they had not taken advantage of because of a lack of qualified scholars.40 After 1900 this argu- ment, expressed vehemently in the brochures of Dietl and Helcel I discussed above, took a more nationalistic turn, in which Ruthenian development in