Ukraina – kraj w Europie Środkowej

Abstract

On 1 July 2022, Professor Alois Woldan of the University of Vienna deliver­ed a lecture as part of the “Lectures by Masters” series at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Białystok. Professor Woldan is an eminent specialist in Polish, Ukrainian and Russian literature, known for his research on the myth of Galicia and Austria in Polish literature. He has also translated works of Polish and Ukrainian literature into German. The lecture entitled Ukraine – a Central European country was delivered online in Polish. This volume published, as part of the series “Lectures by Masters”, presents a record of this lecture, the main theses of which can be summarised as follows: The concept of Central Europe was formed in the 1970s, based on the idea that Europe is not only divided into a Western capitalist and an Eastern communist part, but that – between those two blocs – there a number of countries which disappeared as a result of Yalta arrangements after the Second World War. Among these is Ukraine, which emerged as an independent state only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. A number of phenomena and processes in Ukrainian history determine the country’s Central European nature, as well as its affinity to Western Europe. As early as the late Middle Ages, the Principality of Halych, which outlived Kievan Rus by a hundred years or so, had a very specific nature due to its intensive contacts with the Kingdoms of Poland and Hungary, as is evident from the Austrian chapters of the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle of the late 13th century. Sometime later, from the 15th century onwards, the cultural circle of latinitas (Latinness) in Ukrainian culture is another evidence of its participation in the pan-European humanist and renaissance movements. Many lecturers or graduates of the Kraków Academy used the title “Ruthenus” or “Roxolanus” with their names, which pointed to the identity of those scholars and authors who wrote either only in Latin or in Polish. The very concept of “Renaissance” with regard to Ukrainian culture on the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in urban centres located on the Polish-Ukrainian borderland, such as Ostrih, Lviv and later Kyiv, defines a process typical of the development of culture in Western and Central Europe. Ukrainian culture, despite the fact that it could not develop in its own state, participated in this process. The development of literature in the national language, as well as the establishment of universities and printing houses in those centres is a chara­cteristic feature of this movement. The literary genres practised by the professors and students of those institutions, including lamentations or heraldic poems, are typical expressions of European cultural formation. The figure of Ivan Mazepa, born at the end of the 17th century, is an example of a conscious pro-European policy. An alliance with a modern and powerful state, such as Sweden under King Charles XII, was thought to guarantee Ukraine’s liberation from Muscovite rule. Mazepa saw his role as a defender of Christianity against the hostile forces of the South and East. Mazepa’s somewhat belated career in literature and art of the 19th-century Europe is evidence of the interest in the figure of this probably best-known Ukrainian. From the end of the 18th century, Austrian Galicia, formed as a result of the First Partition of Poland, united two rather heterogeneous territories, Lesser Poland and Red Ruthenia, into a single administrative unit. The Austrian government deliberately supported the Ruthenians (as the Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia were called) first as a separate religious group (Greek Catholics as opposed to Roman Catholic Poles) and then as an ethnic group. The literary life of the Galician Ruthenians was modelled on Central European patterns, as Ukrainian young people studied mainly at the University of Vienna. During the constitutional period of the Habsburg monarchy, the Sejm in Lviv and, even more so, the Council of State in Vienna, were paragons of modern parliamentary system for Ruthenians. During the First World War, only Poles and Austrian Ukrainians had the right to organise their own armed forces, the Polish Legions and the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, which helped to form the future independent state after the end of the war. The Habsburg Archduke Wilhelm, Vasyl Vyshyvanyi, as Ukrainians called him, was to become the leader of the newly formed Ukrainian state. While the refugee camps for combatants and prisoners of war in the Austrian towns of Gmünd, Freistadt and Thalerhof during the First World War were more a form of forced integration of Ukrainians into the Austrian state, Ukrainian emigration to Vienna after the war was the result of people’s conscious decision to live in a Western European country. The active involvement of the diaspora in the politics, literature and art was reflected in the large number of newspapers, magazines and books printed in Vienna after 1919, until the majority of emigrants migrated to Prague. A similar situation occurred after the Second World War, except that the destination for migrants was not Vienna, but Salzburg and the Tyrol, which were under American and British occupation. There were several thousand Ukrainians living in displaced persons camps, where they pursued diverse cultural activities. Schools and Orthodox churches were set up in those camps, as well as publishing houses, theatre and music groups. The two cultures, Ukrainian and Austrian, were experiencing a rapprochement. Similar circumstances arose in 2022, when several thousand Ukrainian refugees again found a new home in Austria. It is yet to be seen what impact this third wave of Ukrainian emigration may have on Ukraine’s integration with Europe.