Page - 205 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 5 ♦  205 the first head of the Central Council (Tsentralna Rada, Центральна Рада), the parliament of the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic (Украінська Народня Республіка) in 1918. The second chair whose filling was influenced by the New Era pol- icies was that for Ruthenian language and literature; it was occupied by Ohonovs’kyj after Holovac’kyj was dismissed for his alleged Russophilism (see above).138 After Ohonovs’kyj’s death in 1894, the question of his suc- cessor was raised, but only after Polish-Ruthenian problems had brought an end to the New Era in the autumn of 1894. As the chair was vital for the propagation of the Ruthenian language, conceptions of which differed across political groups, it was also right in the middle of the conflict over the cul- tural orientation of Ruthenians, massively influenced by New Era policies. In the early 1890s, the provincial government had decided to introduce a phonetic orthography for Ruthenian schools, legally clarifying an issue that had been discussed throughout the nineteenth century, that of an alphabet for written Ruthenian.139 The introduction of a phonetic alphabet was a step figure 6 From the moment of his arrival in L’viv, Mychajlo Hruševs’kyj not only grew to become the political leader of the Ruthenian-Ukrainian movement but also was instrumental in creating and stabilizing its ideological basis. Here he is among participants of the Meeting of Ukrainian Writers (Z'їзд українських письменників) for the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Eneïda by Ivan Kotljarevs’kij. Hruševs’kyj is fourth from the left in the middle row; to his left sits Ivan Franko. (Photographer unknown.)