Page - 203 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 5 ♦  203 procedures for the chair of universal history, deciding to award Finkel an associate professorship in Austrian history.126 Most conflicts, however, re- lated to the habilitations of Ruthenian scholars. For example, the geographer Anatol’ Vachnjanyn and the historian Volodymyr Myl’kovyč enjoyed the support of Ruthenian professors, but their habilitations were turned down by the Polish majority.127 Such cases should not, however, give the impression of persistent and ag- gressive Polish-Ruthenian conflict at the faculty. At least until the 1890s, that was not the case. In fact, the faculty made most decisions via consensus.128 To an extent, this resulted from a careful choice of nonnationalist Ruthenian scholars; however, the general prevalence of nonconfrontational conserva- tive cultural Greek Catholic nationalism in Galicia at the time should also be taken into consideration. In fact, older Ruthenian professors did not accept the Ukrainian nationalist ideology of the younger generation of Ruthenian scholars, uniting with the Polish faculty members on this matter. The most important changes in the cultural division of the L’viv faculty, apart from the language change in the 1870s, took place between 1890 and 1899, a time that also turned Galicia into a powder keg. During the political rapprochement of the 1890s, the so-called New Era (Nowa Era, or Нова ера), the Polish-dominated provincial government allowed several concessions for Ruthenians. The most important were the use of Ruthenian as an adminis- trative language, the phonological codification of the language in place of an etymological one, support for Ruthenian educational and cultural organiza- tions, and the strengthening of the Ruthenian presence at the university.129 These acts seriously strengthened the narodovtsi (pro-Ukrainian national populists) against the conservatives and Russophiles, especially in the urban L’viv sphere and among the educated classes. Through a brief glance at this period, I demonstrate the mechanisms of political divisions in L’viv, both those between Poles and Ruthenians and those within Ruthenian culture.130 Among the concessions of the New Era, the creation of a chair for Ruthenian history was seen as the most vital. In its designation, the pro- vincial government mentioned not only the scholarly qualifications of the new historian but also the chair’s function as a broker between western and eastern cultures: “The professor of the newly created chair should make the university youth acquainted with the historic-literary production of the East, but on the other hand process and use those in the spirit of the West.”131 As a teacher and educator, the new professor had a pronounced political function. Although the faculty also considered Polish scholars for the post,