In 1772, by the
First Partition of Poland, the
Habsburg Monarchy acquired Galicia, with parts of Lodomeria and Lesser Poland. Until then, those regions were parts of the
Polish Kingdom: the Lesser Poland since the early medieval times, and Galicia-Lodomeria since the
Galicia–Volhynia Wars in the 14th century, when they were annexed, and remained under Polish rule until the First Partition. The first governor, Count
Johann Anton von Pergen, took his post in the autumn of 1772. Lwów (Lemberg in German) served as the capital of Austrian Galicia, which was dominated by the Polish aristocracy, despite the fact that the population of the eastern half of the province was mostly
Ukrainians. In addition, there existed a large Jewish population in Galicia, also more heavily concentrated in the eastern parts of the province. During the first decades of Austrian rule, Galicia was firmly governed from
Vienna, and many significant reforms were carried out by a bureaucracy staffed largely by Germans and Czechs. The aristocracy was guaranteed its rights, but these rights were considerably circumscribed. The former serfs were no longer mere chattels but became subjects of law and were granted certain personal freedoms, such as the right to marry without the lord's permission. Their labour obligations were defined and limited, and they could bypass the lords and appeal to the imperial courts for justice. The eastern-rite Uniate Church, which primarily served the Ruthenians, was renamed the
Greek Catholic Church to bring it on a par with the Roman Catholic Church; it was given seminaries, and eventually, a Metropolitan. Although unpopular with the aristocracy, among the common folk, Polish and Ukrainian/Ruthenian alike, these reforms created a reservoir of good will toward the emperor which lasted almost to the end of Austrian rule. At the same time, however, the Austrian Empire extracted from Galicia considerable wealth and conscripted large numbers of the peasant population into its armed services.
From 1809 to 1860 In 1809, during the
Napoleonic Wars, Austria was forced in the
Treaty of Schönbrunn to cede all of its third partition gains, plus
Zamość and some other areas, to the Napoleonic
Duchy of Warsaw, and some eastern areas around
Ternopol to the
Russian Empire. (For details, see .) In 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars, the
Congress of Vienna returned Ternopil and a few other territories to Austria, but assigned the bulk of the formerly-Austrian territory of the Duchy of Warsaw to
Congress Poland (Kingdom of Poland), which was ruled by the Tsar. The city of
Kraków and the surrounding territory, formerly also part of New or West Galicia, became the semi-autonomous
Free City of Kraków under the supervision of the three powers that ruled Poland (i.e. Austria, Russia, and Prussia). The 1820s and 1830s were periods of bureaucratic rule that was overseen by Vienna. Most administrative positions were filled by German speakers, including German-speaking Czechs. After the failure of the
November insurrection in Russian Poland in 1830–1831, in which a few thousand Galician volunteers participated, many Polish refugees arrived in Galicia. The late 1830s period was rife with Polish conspiratorial organizations whose work culminated in the
unsuccessful Galician insurrection of 1846. This uprising was easily put down by the Austrians with the help of a Galician peasantry that remained loyal to the emperor. The uprising occurred in the Polish-populated part of Galicia. Polish manorial gentry supported or were sympathetic to plans for an uprising to
establish an independent Polish state, but peasants on the manorial estates of western Galicia, reduced to misery by poor harvests, saw little advantage for themselves in a free Poland. Instead, they seized the opportunity to rise against the institution of
serfdom by
killing many of the estate owners. With the collapse of the uprising for a free Poland, the city of Kraków lost its semi-autonomy and was integrated into the Austrian Empire under the title of a Grand Duchy. In practice, it was administered by the Austrian authorities as if it were part of Galicia. In the same period, a sense of national awakening began to develop among the Ruthenians in the eastern part of Galicia. A circle of activists, primarily Greek Catholic seminarians, affected by the
romantic movement in Europe and the example of fellow Slavs elsewhere, especially in eastern Ukraine under the Russians, began to turn their attention to the common folk and their language. In 1837, the so-called
Ruthenian Triad led by
Markiian Shashkevych, published
Rusalka Dnistrovaia (The Nymph of the Dniester), a collection of folksongs and other materials in vernacular Ukrainian (then called
rusynska, Ruthenian). Alarmed by such democratism, the Austrian authorities and the Greek Catholic Metropolitan banned the book. In 1848,
revolutionary actions broke out in Vienna and other parts of the Austrian Empire. In Lwów, a Polish National Council, and then later, a Ukrainian, or
Ruthenian Supreme Council were formed. Even before Vienna had acted, the remnants of serfdom were abolished by the Governor,
Franz Stadion, in an attempt to thwart the revolutionaries. Moreover, Polish demands for Galician autonomy were countered by Ruthenian demands for national equality and for a partition of the province into an Eastern, Ruthenian part, and a Western, Polish part. Eventually, Lwów was bombarded by imperial troops and the revolution was put down completely. A decade of renewed absolutism followed, but to placate the Poles, Count
Agenor Gołuchowski, a conservative representative of the eastern Galician aristocracy, the so-called Podolians, was appointed Viceroy. He began to Polonize the local administration and managed to have Ruthenian ideas of partitioning the province shelved. He was unsuccessful, however, in forcing the Greek Catholic Church to shift to the use of the western or Gregorian calendar, or among Ruthenians generally, to
replace the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin alphabet.
Constitutional experiments (
Polish "Rzeź galicyjska") by
Jan Lewicki (1795–1871) In 1859, following the Austro-Hungarian military defeat in Italy, the Empire entered a period of constitutional experiments. In 1860, the
Vienna Government, influenced by
Agenor Gołuchowski, issued its October Diploma, which envisioned a conservative federalization of the empire, but a negative reaction in the German-speaking lands led to changes in government and the issuing of the February Patent, which watered down this decentralization. Nevertheless, by 1861, Galicia was granted a legislative assembly, the
Diet of Galicia and Lodomeria ( in Polish). Although at first pro-Habsburg Ukrainian and Polish peasant representation was considerable in this body (about half the assembly), and the pressing social and Ukrainian questions were discussed, administrative pressures limited the effectiveness of both peasant and Ukrainian representatives and the diet became dominated by the Polish aristocracy and gentry, who favoured further
autonomy. This same year, disturbances broke out in Russian Poland and, to some extent, spilled over into Galicia. The diet ceased to sit. By 1863, an open revolt broke out in Russian Poland and from 1864 to 1865, the Austro-Hungarian government declared a state of siege in Galicia, temporarily suspending civil liberties. The year 1865 brought a return to federal ideas along the lines suggested by Gołuchowski and negotiations on autonomy between the Polish aristocracy and Vienna began once again. Meanwhile, the
Ruthenians felt more and more abandoned by Vienna and among the Old Ruthenians grouped around the Greek Catholic Cathedral of Saint George, there occurred a turn towards Russia. The more extreme supporters of this orientation came to be known as
Russophiles. At the same time, influenced by the
Ukrainian language poetry of the central Ukrainian writer,
Taras Shevchenko, an opposing Ukrainophile movement arose which published literature in the Ukrainian/Ruthenian language and eventually established a network of reading halls. Supporters of this orientation came to be known as Populists , and later, as Ukrainians. Almost all
Ruthenians, however, still hoped for national equality and for an administrative division of Galicia along ethnic lines.
Galician autonomy to Galicia in 1880 In 1866, following the
Battle of Sadova and the Austrian defeat in the
Austro-Prussian War, the Austro-Hungarian Empire began to experience increased internal problems. In an effort to shore up support for the monarchy, Emperor
Franz Joseph began negotiations for a compromise with the
Magyar nobility to ensure their support. Some members of the government, such as the Austro-Hungarian prime minister
Count Belcredi, advised the Emperor to make a more comprehensive constitutional deal with all of the nationalities that would have created a federal structure. Belcredi worried that an accommodation with the Magyar interests would alienate the other nationalities. However, Franz Joseph was unable to ignore the power of the Magyar nobility, and they would not accept anything less than dualism between themselves and the traditional Austrian elites. Finally, after the so-called of February 1867, the Austrian Empire was reformed into a dualist
Austria-Hungary. Although the Polish and Czech plans for their parts of the monarchy to be included in the federal structure failed, a slow yet steady process of liberalisation of Austrian rule in Galicia started. Representatives of the Polish aristocracy and
intelligentsia addressed the Emperor asking for greater autonomy for Galicia. Their demands were not accepted outright, but over the course of the next several years, a number of significant concessions were made toward the establishment of Galician autonomy. From 1873, Galicia was
de facto an autonomous province of
Austria-Hungary with
Polish and, to a lesser degree, Ukrainian or
Ruthenian, as official languages. The
Germanisation had been halted and the
censorship lifted as well. Galicia was subject to the
Cisleithanian jurisdiction of the Dual Monarchy, but the
Galician Sejm and provincial administration had extensive privileges and prerogatives, especially in education, culture, and local affairs. These changes were supported by many Polish intellectuals. In 1869, a group of young conservative publicists in Kraków, including
Józef Szujski,
Stanisław Tarnowski,
Stanisław Koźmian and
Ludwik Wodzicki, published a series of satirical pamphlets entitled ''
(Stańczyk's Portfolio''). Only five years after the tragic end of the
January Uprising, the pamphlets ridiculed the idea of armed
national uprisings and suggested compromise with Poland's enemies, especially the
Austrian Empire, concentration on economic growth, and acceptance of the
political concessions offered by Vienna. This political grouping came to be known as the Stanczyks or Kraków Conservatives. Together with the eastern Galician conservative Polish landowners and aristocracy, called the "Podolians", they gained a political ascendancy in Galicia which lasted until 1914. This shift in power from
Vienna to the Polish landowning class was not welcomed by the Ruthenians, who became more sharply divided between
Ukrainophiles, who looked to Kyiv and the common people for historic connection, and Russophiles who stressed their connections to Russia. Both
Vienna and the Poles saw treason among the Russophiles and a series of political trials eventually discredited them. Meanwhile, by 1890, an agreement was worked out between the Poles and the "Populist" Ruthenians or
Ukrainians which saw the partial Ukrainianization of the school system in eastern Galicia and other concessions to Ukrainian culture. Possibly as a result of this agreement, Ukrainian language students rose sharply in number. Thereafter, the Ukrainian national movement spread rapidly among the Ruthenian peasantry and, despite repeated setbacks, by the early years of the twentieth century this movement had almost completely replaced other Ruthenian groups as the main rival for power with the Poles. Throughout this period, the Ukrainians never gave up the traditional Ruthenian demands for national equality and for partition of the province into a western, Polish half and an eastern, Ukrainian half. Starting with the election of September 1895, Galicia became known for its "bloody elections" as the Austrian prime minister Count
Kasimir Felix Badeni proceeded to rig the election results while having policemen beat those voters who were not voting for the government at the poll stations.
First World War and Polish-Ukrainian conflict in 1915 During the
World War I, Galicia saw heavy fighting between the forces of Russia and the
Central Powers. The
Imperial Russian Army overran most of the region in 1914 after defeating the
Austro-Hungarian Army in a chaotic frontier
battle in the opening months of the war. They were, in turn, pushed out in the spring and summer of 1915 by a
combined German and Austro-Hungarian offensive. In late 1918, Eastern Galicia became a part of the restored
Republic of Poland, which absorbed the
Lemko-Rusyn Republic. The local Ukrainian population briefly declared the independence of Eastern Galicia as the
West Ukrainian People's Republic. During the
Polish-Soviet War, the Soviets tried to establish the
puppet-state of the
Galician SSR in East Galicia, the government of which, after a couple of months, was liquidated. The fate of Galicia was settled by the
Peace of Riga on March 18, 1921, giving all of Galicia to the
Second Polish Republic. Although never accepted as legitimate by some Ukrainians, it was internationally recognized with significant French support on 15 May 1923. The French support for Polish rule of ethnically mixed eastern Galicia and its oil resources in the Borysław-Drohobycz basin was rewarded by Warsaw, allowing significant French investment to pour into the Galician oil industry. The Poles had convinced the French that since less than 25% of the ethnic Ukrainians were literate before the Great War, and Ukrainians were novices in governing themselves, only the Poles, not the Ukrainians, would be able to administer eastern Galicia and its precious oil assets. The Ukrainians of the former eastern Galicia and the neighbouring province of
Volhynia made up about 12% of the population of the
Second Polish Republic, and were its largest minority. As Polish government policies were unfriendly towards minorities, tensions between the Polish government and the Ukrainian population grew, eventually giving rise to the militant underground
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. == Administrative divisions ==