Page - 204 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

204 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 the Ruthenian professors fiercely rejected such proposals.132 The final terna included the famous Kiev historian Volodymyr Antonovyč (Володимир Антонович, also Włodzimierz Antonowicz), his twenty-seven-year-old student Mychajlo Hruševs’kyj (who had yet to graduate), and Volodymyr Myl’kovyč from the Institute of Austrian Historical Research (a Privatdozent in Chernivtsi). That Antonovyč would get the first place in the terna was in no doubt. More important was the question of whom to grant the sec- ond place, as it was clear that the ministry would hardly be able to reach an agreement with the nearly sixty-year-old Antonovyč. He was politically acceptable but would be expensive. Thus, the professorship would go to the second-place scholar. While the majority, along with Šaranevyč, pleaded for Myl’kovyč (Šaranevyč’s son-in-law), Ohonovs’kyj and the minority granted Hruševs’kyj the second place. Conflicts also arose because Hruševs’kyj was not a Greek Catholic, as most Ruthenians in Galicia were, but Orthodox.133 While Antonovyč rejected the call based on his advanced age, he fiercely supported Hruševs’kyj, in his eyes the most skilled of all young Ukrainian historians. This proposition was also approved by the provincial government, which stressed that the young scholar “[belongs] to [the] young-Ruthenian, i.e., Ukrainian party and is an adherent neither of pan-Slavic tendencies nor of an unjustified national chauvinism.”134 Hruševs’kyj, or Gruszewski, as he was called in the official docu- ments of the university, proved a great deal of trouble for the university, consistently refusing to use Polish and becoming a leader of the Ruthenian nationalists in L’viv. By 1896 Gruszewski had asked to change his name to Hruszewski as this was, in his eyes, the official transliteration of his surname from Cyrillic; the provincial government granted this only after serious deliberations and expert consultations.135 His conflicts in the faculty were legendary, as he constantly refused to speak Polish. The Polish professors at first asked other professors to translate, but eventually Hruševs’kyj was disciplined.136 Finally, the dean, Kazimierz Twardowski, refused to acknowl- edge any statements Hruševs’kyj made in Ruthenian.137 With these conflicts and his involvement in the Ševčenko Scientific Society, Hruševs’kyj be- came a spokesperson for Ruthenian demands at the university, which added considerably to his conflicts with the faculty. These demands were pub- licly discussed by Ruthenian students and were perceived as evidence of Polish oppression, increasing the polarization between the national groups in Galicia. Hruševs’kyj enjoyed immense popularity among Ruthenian cul- tural and political elites (see figure 6), which finally led him to be chosen as