A forgotten anniversary

There is nothing that Ukrainians love more than anniversaries. In order to have a rip-roaring time (our people have a weakness for good times, above all our leaders, and especially when the bill is footed by the state or a company), any occasion or pretext is used. Today, no one is surprised to hear about a 7th or 12th anniversary. In addition to the usual festivities, chances are that some people will receive some sort of award or decoration, even if they had nothing to do with the occasion or were against the event in question.

A holiday is always a holiday, a wonderful opportunity to show off and please certain people. But somehow, quietly and shamefully, we missed the 160th anniversary of the abolition of serfdom in Galicia (Halychyna), a glorious and wonderful date of a landmark event in the life of the Ukrainian people, especially its Galician branch.

This event was epochal. One hundred and sixty years ago, on Easter Sunday, April 16, 1848, a million-strong community of “brutes and silent, powerless cattle” was instantaneously proclaimed, starting from May 15, as a full-fledged people by the will of one person, an autocrat and emperor, not a revolutionary or even a democrat. Serfs were becoming people. The first point in the decree issued by Ferdinand I, Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, “On the Abolition of All Corvee and Other Duties of Serfs in Galicia and Lodomeria,” unconditionally abolished all duties called the corvee and provided for compensation at the treasury’s cost. The prolonged process of freeing the Galician peasantry from the humiliating and odious corvee came to an end. As in the case of the abolition of serfdom, the way to abolishing the corvee was difficult but curiously connected not so much with “the revolutionary struggle and the democratic intelligentsia” as with the Habsburg dynasty.

This dynasty was one of the most educated and advanced of Europe’s imperial families. Ukrainian history still contains echoes of the Soviet, “one and only true” assessment of the history of Western Ukraine: the policy of colonization, oppression of the national borderlands, and the Austro-Hungarian conquest of Galicia. In reality, as a result of the partition of rebellious Poland, the Galician lands fell, as if miraculously, into the hands of an empress who ruled over an already large and unmanageable empire. Historians claim that Empress Maria Theresa unwillingly accepted the Galician lands under her protection. This was genuine protection, supervision, and administration, and only the leather-jacketed comrades and their ideological followers perceived colonialism in this attitude.

The condition of the Galician peasantry under Polish rule had been utterly unfavorable. The true masters were landlords, who governed rural areas, owned peasants and lands, meted out justice, ran the administration, and even recruited for the army. They were the self-sufficient representatives and proxies of the Polish state. The condition of the Galician peasants closely approximated the condition of serfdom in the rest of Ukraine. Perhaps the only difference was that all this lawlessness had legal grounds in the form of the so-called natural law (“This is how it was before, is now, and will be in the future”) and statutory acts (decisions of the Diet, dietines, and other nobiliary and peasant assemblies).

The issue was all the more acute because of national oppression and inequality: rich landlords and those of average means, as well free peasants were mostly Polish, whereas the Ruthenian natives were primarily serfs. Just as the Russian language and Russification marched ahead triumphantly not so long ago, in those distant times being a Ruthenian Ukrainian was a great disadvantage and a condition that lacked prestige; the Polish language predominated everywhere.

The Habsburgs, who were genuinely captivated by the ideas of enlightened autocracy and paternalism, took Galicia, an economically backward province, under their rule. No other province in their vast empire experienced the same penury and lawlessness. Therefore, from the very first days of her “colonialism” Maria Theresa resolutely abolished all forms of serfdom, officially granting the same rights to former serfs as were enjoyed by peasants in other provinces of the empire.

Her cause was upheld by her son Josef II. For a long time in Ukraine autocrats were mentioned like “deceased people, but in reverse”: either nothing or only negative things. Meanwhile, what Josef II did is far more important than the good deeds of another emperor, Nicholas II, who was widely known in Ukraine as “bloody Mykolka.” There are a thousand more reasons for turning the Austrian emperor into a saint, even though he was nothing of the sort — just a decent sovereign anointed by God, who was a good shepherd for his people. To the Galicians’ shame, to this day there is no monument to him in Lviv, a city he so dearly loved and cared for.

When I was a child, I would ask my grandmother to tell me stories about the “old days.” A village widow weary of life, she would invariably call Josef II “the August Emperor of most blessed memory.” And when I, with my Young Pioneer’s mind already infected by the red bacilli, tried to contradict her, she would fold her arms and offer a quiet prayer to God, saying: “O Lord, remember our emperor of most blessed memory, who delivered our people from bondage.” Grandmother Hania told me: “Child, you don’t even know how much our emperor taught us, and sometimes forced us, for our own good. He was a wise and good ruler.”

Josef II did not limit himself to reforms: he soon declared official serfdom unlawful and abolished slavery by introducing a ban on selling or giving serfs as presents or moving them to another village without their consent. Village children obtained the right to education, which later became mandatory. The humiliating practice of having to obtain the landlord’s permission to get married was also abolished. Even the cautious “radicals” said: maybe it’s too early and the people have not matured yet. The freedom that had been granted by one individual turned out to be a problem for many others. The empire was agitated and all of Europe was unsettled.

However, the Habsburgs’ political pragmatism and foresight, which were manifested in the liberation of the Galician people, were soon confirmed. When the well-organized and united Polish rebels were stirring people to rise up in arms against empires, the Galician peasants did not adopt their customary posture of neutrality but rose up in opposition. The ultimate, and unpleasant, manifestation of love for the emperor and his court was the infamous 1846 Massacre of Tarnow, where the downtrodden mazury - the poorest peasants in the land, who lived in the mixed Ruthenian-Polish area-killed nearly all the rebels without the government troops becoming involved. Later, this devotion to the crown gave the Galician land the edge again, when Prince von Metternich, one of the oldest and most authoritative ministers of the emperor, declared: further changes should begin in Galicia.

Despite the protests of hereditary nobles, local officials, and even most of the intelligentsia, Josef II continued his reforms. He is an example of a single individual who changes the course of history. (I wish we had reformers like him today.) In 1789 he carried out an unprecedented tax reform obliging all landlords and land users to pay equal taxes on land. That same year, when the emperor was at the peak of his activity and close to the end of his rule, he issued a decree abolishing the corvee in 1790 and introducing monetary quitrent, a type of compensation for landlords.

However, the emperor did not live to see his decree enacted. He died a few months before it came into force. Clearly, in contradiction to the popular saying, kings cannot do everything. Ivan Franko put it succinctly: “The corvee remained for another 59 years.” Through his indifference Leopold II, Josef’s successor to the throne, put a virtual stop to the reforms that had been initiated by his predecessors. But this was just an illusion. The year of 1848 had to arrive, and it did. Serfdom was finally abolished on Easter Sunday in April 1848.

The year 1848 began normally and Metternich was optimistic: “There has never been a year that started so quietly and peacefully. Social order has never been so strong and firm as it is now.” He was so mistaken in his views that to this day a phrase is used as a warning to all politicians-do not delude yourselves! The revolution in Vienna, the heart of the empire, struck like a bolt from the blue. The provinces did not stand by and watch idly: this was the beginning of the so-called “spring of nations.” Even though many of the elements of our liberation struggle and the Polish-Ukrainian conflict originated in these stormy events, it is not my intention to analyze them here. Emperor Ferdinand I used troops to quell the riots, but he also adroitly adopted well-planned policies. For this reason he issued a decree to abolish serfdom.

In subsequent years there was turbulence and political instability in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Much of this instability was the result of the seeds that had been sown by the Habsburgs: democracy, recognition of national rights, and the establishment of a rule-of-law state. Fascinating and dangerous winds of liberalism were blowing in from France, and absolutism was changing. Later, Marxist historians would not miss an opportunity to indulge in such explanations as “objective and subjective factors,” “the emergence or exacerbation of class relations,” “national contradictions,” etc.

However, the situation looked different to our 19th-century contemporaries. People wanted a change; they began to feel like individuals and a part of a nation, and they saw changes coming. The most acute and shocking of these changes occurred in the lives of the Galician serfs. The powerless serf became his own master and the “brutes” turned into Ruthenian Ukrainians. Their church became a full-fledged institution, and an absolutely new world opened up before them: a world of travel and hired labor, choices and political rivalry, national revival and literacy, protection of rights and even cooperation. Children in rural areas rushed to attend schools, a phenomenon that Franko vividly depicted on the basis of his own experience. All these things happened quickly, perhaps faster than the slow-acting and conservative peasant was able to absorb.

If we draw parallels between the abolition of 19th-century serfdom and the serfdom of the 20th century, which was the collective and Soviet farm system, we can reach some interesting conclusions. The first one concerns the role of the individual in history. In the words of Vladimir Vysotsky, “truly ungovernable people are in the minority, so there are no leaders.” We had an opportunity to verify the truthfulness of this statement, even though the people who are afraid to admit their “authorship” of the agrarian reform have been lining up to receive distinctions and awards.

The second conclusion is the clear lack of correspondence between the expected and real outcomes. For many of the “new masters,” both in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the modern period, freedom granted people the right to hang out in taverns and ruin through lives through drinking, rather than the right to work. An abyss of human mentality, shortcomings, and temptations lies between economic freedom on the one hand and successful management, or even free economic choice, on the other. Both in those days and today some bright minds began to wonder: can freedom and liberty be the cause of poverty and misery? Among the 19th-century intelligentsia were self-styled prophets, who began to reason with the newly freed peasants with the words: “Freedom is our enemy!” Strange people, you will say. Yet, today’s nostalgic lamenters for the collective and Soviet farms are echoing almost the same thing, but much more subtly: “The reforms are the cause of your misfortune!”

Both the agrarian reform of today and the peasants’ liberation from serfdom in the 19th century led to many economic and legal problems. The main issues of those distant times, which later adversely affected peasant incomes and public property, were connected with the redemption of property and compensations for landlords; the so-called easement forests and land; and the problem created by the landlords’ exclusive right to produce and sell vodka, mead, and beer. During the corvee peasants were literally forced to buy vodka, horivka in their dialect, from their landlords. The abolition of serfdom did not put an end to this custom. Stripped of their possessions, some landlords suddenly realized that in the new circumstances it was much more profitable for them to accustom people to hard drinking rather than agricultural work.

The authorities used various methods to solve these problems: compromises, administrative pressure, or lawsuits involving entire communities and landlords. This was the beginning of economic activity that was firmly based on legal regulations and financial and economic relations. Circumstances made it necessary for the peasants to learn about auctions, mortgages, shares, bills, and liabilities. This was the beginning of public storehouses (shpikhlery), credit unions, and the cooperative movement. Freedom is freedom.

Today, exactly 160 years after serfdom was abolished in Galicia, we do not hear of state and local organizing committees organizing anything, holding scholarly conferences, or announcing celebration programs. Yet we have much to celebrate.

National memory is an interesting thing. In 1996-97 a group of my colleagues and I were working on the research project “Economic Reform through the Eyes of the Village.” We were in the village of Kryve, Lviv oblast, where the peasants held a religious procession in May. They were carrying banners and singing, evidently heading for some place outside the village. “What’s the procession about?” we asked. The proud answer was: outside the village there is a memorial cross in honor of the abolition of serfdom. We celebrate and thank God and the Emperor every year for our freedom.

We have a lot to be grateful for. So will we be able to give thanks? Will we have enough wisdom and memory? This year’s anniversary is a wonderful opportunity to erect some monuments. One of them could be dedicated to Emperor Josef II, his mother Maria Theresa, and his brother Ferdinand I and placed in Lviv, the main city of Galicia. We probably won’t do this by the end of the anniversary year, but that’s not a problem — these distinguished people have already been waiting a long time.

The second one, a monument to the laboring peasant, would be appropriate in Lviv or some other large Galician cities. Peasants were called “peasant feeders” by Josef II and virtually all other rulers, with the exception of the one who believed that they were “the enemies of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” We have monuments to all kinds of people and things. Even plumbers, cats, and the comical Panikovsky (a character in Ilf and Petrov’s famous novel The Golden Calf - Ed.) have been immortalized in bronze. Will we not find the metal to erect one to the peasant behind the plow? I once mentioned this idea to a top official, a holder of an assortment of orders and medals, but he only raised his eyebrows in surprise and said nothing.

You may remember that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union issued slogans on the occasion of holidays and anniversaries. Times have changed and I am not a committee, but here’s a slogan for you: “People of Ukraine! Mark and celebrate the 160th anniversary of the abolition of serfdom in Galicia in a dignified way!”