Together, but Almost Separate

Ivan Monolatii (2010), Together, but Almost Separate. The Interaction of Ethno-Political Actors in the Western Ukrainian Lands in 1867–1914. Ivano-Frankivsk, Lileia-NV, 763 p.

The review was prepared by political scientist, cultural scholar, and lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the European Humanities University (Vilnius, Republic of Lithuania) Uladzislau Ivanou.

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“This empire must perish. (…) All the peoples will create their nasty little states, and even the Jews will proclaim their king in Palestine. (…) The present age longs only to create independent nation-states! No one believes in God anymore. People no longer go to churches. They go to national communities.”

J. Roth, The Radetzky March.

It is interesting that the first impressions and associations after becoming acquainted with the monograph are almost in no way connected with the book’s main subject. As a researcher, I was interested not so much in the detailed analysis of relations between the ethnic communities of Western Ukraine as in the clear parallel with a region strongly linked to the history of Belarusians — the Vilnius region. It is precisely this aspect that may attract the Belarusian reader; the parallels emerge inexorably.

It is clear that a similar study has long been awaited by the Vilnius region, with its interesting and difficult relations among Belarusians, Poles, Lithuanians, Jews, Russians, and others. Like Western Ukraine, the Vilnius region is a complex crossroads of cultural and religious routes, another European zone of encounter and mutual penetration among ethnic and confessional communities. There are not so many such zones on the eastern fault line of Europe. The Ukrainian study is extremely sober, and there is no doubt that the future author of an ethno-political study of the Vilnius region should take it into account.

But let us return to the book itself. A relatively young Ukrainian researcher, Doctor of Philosophy and Political Science Ivan Monolatii embodies a new generation of Ukrainian scholars who are not satisfied with a narrow view of the problem. This tendency is understandable: their predecessors accumulated a sufficient amount of various kinds of material, and therefore the time has come for a critical review and theoretical generalization of the achievements of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

With noticeable thoroughness, Monolatii approaches a delicate topic and rather confidently goes through the nodal problems that connected Ukrainians with Poles, Germans, Jews, and other communities of the Danubian Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of the strengths of the work is that the researcher places not Ukrainians at the center of attention, but the region in all its diversity. At the same time, the author tries to combine different disciplines: political science, sociology, and history.

Why 1867–1914? The author begins the study in 1867, when the principles of the Austrian constitutional monarchy proclaimed in 1848 acquired real force. It was in 1867, as a result of the so-called Austro-Hungarian agreement or compromise, that the Danubian monarchy became dualistic — Austro-Hungarian — and abandoned the practice of centralized absolutism. Galicia and Bukovina were transformed into autonomous units. The peoples of the Danubian Empire experienced a unique political experience: parliamentary monarchy, “great emancipation,” democratic freedoms, the right to develop their languages and educational systems, and to create parties and movements.

After 1867, Vienna did not impose an authoritarian ideology on its heterogeneous regions, but offered them a peculiar alternative, called in Monolatii’s work Austro-loyalism or Austro-loyalty. The approach was based on loyalty and devotion to the House of Habsburg, in return for which the monarchy provided a certain autonomy to all groups present on the political stage. There was a “treaty,” a “contract” between Vienna and the provinces, between the Habsburgs and all significant ethnic and national communities of the empire.

It should be emphasized that not only Christians enjoyed rights, but also Jews and Karaites. Nothing similar to the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire existed in Austria-Hungary. The national and political development of Ukrainians who lived under the Habsburgs was relatively free and did not encounter obstacles in matters of recognition of language status or the legal activity of movements and parties. Even under conditions of confrontation between Ukrainians and Poles — the main conflict node of the region in this period — western Ukrainians existed within the context of European rules and procedures.

With the outbreak of the First World War, which brought an end to the dualistic monarchy, the experiment of constitutional monarchy also ended. Yet the author demonstrates that this interesting and useful experience of western Ukrainians proved extremely fruitful for the further development of Ukrainian statehood.

Interest in national relations in the western Ukrainian region is conditioned by the continuous actualization of the ethnic theme. Even cosmopolitan tendencies within the EU remain barely visible against the background of a policy of cultural differentiation and the preservation of cultural and ethnic diversity. To a certain degree, the ethnic picture of that time can also be transposed onto contemporary Ukrainian society; at least the author attempts to make such historical comparisons, casting aside the burden of the region’s multi-layered colonialism — Austrian, Polish, Soviet…

“Together, but almost separate” is, in the author’s view, a formula that, although borrowed from American legal practice, nevertheless perfectly emphasizes the ethno-political specificity of Vienna’s national policy. All ethno-nations of the western Ukrainian region of the Empire existed and interacted while fundamentally preserving their own identity. At the same time, ethno-national communities preserved their boundaries, which were determined by their structure and interests.

Among other things, the author interestingly illustrates the transition from religious to ethnic (national) identification through the example of contemporary fiction (Austrian, Polish, and Ukrainian). The author’s turn to literary studies in examining the ethno-political situation of Western Ukraine, and more broadly of the entire Danubian Empire, seems a truly significant contribution to the subject. Many elusive nuances in the relations of Ukrainians with Jews, Poles, and Austro-Germans become clearly visible not through political or historical analysis, but precisely through the study of works by I. Franko, V. Kobylianska, V. Stefanyk, J. Roth, and others.

The researcher examines the ethno-political development of the Danubian Empire mainly through the prism of interactionism. The drawback of this approach is its concentration on the micro-level. Therefore, interactionism in Ivan Monolatii’s version looks rather conservative, rigid, and at times artificial as a construct. One may also take a critical view of the mathematical analysis of ethnic groups. This concerns the use of somewhat dubious parameters such as “ethnic energy,” “originality,” and the like.

Still, it is worth dwelling on the main results of the study. Vienna’s rather liberal and open policy toward the empire’s various national groups contributed to relatively moderate relations. As a result, all communities of the region avoided social and cultural isolation. Despite their basic difference from the Christian population, neither the Jewish nor the Karaite population was excluded from public life, remaining “other insiders.”

At the same time, the boundary between nations and groups was preserved, as the author proves, above all thanks to the religious factor. The economic situation also made its contribution. While Ukrainians were deprived of land and access to the market, Poles had more opportunities to use the land fund, and Jews had the possibility to develop trade. Thus, competition or the struggle for resources led to the radicalization of Ukrainians and Poles and to the discrediting of common life under Vienna’s protection.

“Together, but Almost Separate” is a monograph that, although devoted to Western Ukraine, is in fact of interest to a wide range of readers, since it presents an analysis and explanations of the failure of peaceful ethnic and cultural relations in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This work is not only of historical interest, but may also be valuable for researchers of contemporary ethnic and political processes. The author directs attention to the mistakes of federalism in the past and reflects on possible models of Europe’s development in the twenty-first century. Strange as it may seem, European integration sometimes gives the formula “together, but almost separate” contemporary political and cultural content.