The last shot in World War I was fired in the autumn of 1918; in November
of the same year the Central Powers surrendered one after another to the
Entente states. The winners could dictate the peace conditions, set the
course of postwar world development, and prepare for the upcoming Versailles
Peace Conference, which had to consider these urgent questions. It is fitting
to recall this. What was Ukraine's fate during the war? What role did the
great powers assign it in their geopolitical plans?
For the major players - the German Kaiser, Austro-Hungarian Emperor,
and Russian Tsar - the Ukrainian card was extremely valuable. For instance,
Kaiser Wilhelm II, fulfilling the orders of German cities and landowners,
could use it as a source of agricultural products; it could supply raw
materials to industry; it could be a perfect market. Emperor Franz Josef
hoped for the same material benefits. Tsar Nicholas II believed that Galicia,
Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia should belong to his empire.
With the beginning of the war, the belligerent states announced total
mobilization. 3.5 million Ukrainians were forced to put on the gray uniform
of the Russian army; 250,000 Galician Ukrainians had to join the Austro-Hungarian
army. Young men, full of energy and persistence, had to fight on the land
of their forefathers and die for interests not their own.
Representatives of Galician Ukrainians could not avoid supporting Austria-Hungary
against Tsarist Russia. "Only the constitutional order of the Austrian
State" can defend "our national life", the Supreme Ukrainian Council's
Manifesto read. The Council was formed in early August 1914 in Lviv. Over
30,000 people answered its appeal to join the legion of Ukrainian Sich
Sharpshooters (Sichovi Striltsy), but only 2,000 young men were
actually inducted. Obviously, the imperial government was frightened they
might turn their rifles not only at the Russian autocracy.
At that same time members of Ukrainian national liberation movement
from Dnipro Ukraine formed the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine in Lviv.
Its cofounders set for themselves the task of building an independent Ukrainian
democratic monarchy on Russia's territory with help of Austria-Hungary
and Germany. In their turn, Russophiles supporting Russia fled Western
Ukraine and formed in Kyiv "Carpatho-Russian Liberation Committee," which
appealed to Galician Ukrainians to greet Russian troops as liberators.
What were the answers of the both great empires to the patriotic feelings
of Ukrainian community, living in their territories? "Little Russians",
were characterized as "traitors and betrayers," "who only want Russia to
die, so they can build independent Ukraine on its ruins." The newspapers
and journals Rada, Dzvin (Bell), Ukraina (Ukraine), Ridny
krai (Native land), and others, which supposedly propagandized separatism,
were shut down. Tsarist authorities considered Mykhailo Hrushevsky an ideologist
of separatist views, so he was arrested and sent out of Kyiv to Simbirsk,
then to Kazan, and finally to Moscow, where he was given a chance to reconsider
his "erroneous" views and await the autocracy's fall.
From August 1914 to April 1915 Russia established a brutal occupation
regime in the occupied territory of Eastern Galicia. The administration
brought into this "original territory of one and indivisible Russia," began
"to introduce the Russian language, laws, and ways" to turn Galician Ukrainians
into "real Russians" and Uniate Catholics into Russian Orthodox. Metropolitan
Andrei Sheptytsky was exiled from Lviv to a Suzdal monastery. In April
1915, when the Tsar's army began to retreat from Galicia, a massive deportation
of Ukrainians from their land was carried out. The major part of these
Ukrainians died on their way to the Ural Mountains and further East. The
"liberators" returned to Western Ukraine in the summer of 1916, but unlike
the previous period, local people suffered little national or religious
oppression. However, the attitude toward them remained quite suspicious.
It is appropriate mention here that Russian government ventured "to
temper justice with mercy," only after the Russian army had suffered major
defeats.
Austro-Hungarian authorities were just as "generous" toward Galician
Ukrainians. From the first days of war, governmental establishments were
flooded with accusations of their secret sympathy toward Russia, of attempts
to "complete the work of Ivan Kalita," or of betraying the interests of
Habsburg dynasty, which had a negative influence upon the fighting spirit
of the soldiers. Thousands of Galicians, Russophile or not, were put in
concentration camps on the slightest suspicion or after denunciation Austro-Hungarian
soldiers would kill people far removed from politics.
The war deeply affected the situation in both empires. In particular,
Western Ukraine became a huge bridgehead for exhausting and bloody battles
on the Eastern Front. Its economy was totally ruined, and the population
suffered tremendous devastation. Galician Ukrainians experienced the rudeness
of military commanders and civil administration, which took away from people
everything the armies needed.
By late 1916 the Russian economy was on the verge of collapse. Ukraine's
mines had stopped supplying coal and iron ore, its metallurgy quit supplying
metal, and its railroads failed to cope with cargo transportation. Labor
productivity was low, because skilled and experienced workers were replaced
by women, children, and prisoners of war. The cities were struck by hunger,
prices of everyday necessities rose, and there was heavy speculation.
Dissatisfaction with the outdated political and socioeconomic regime
of autocracy grew. Strikes under such slogans as "down with the war" and
"down with the autocracy" grew in number. In the countryside landlords'
property was torched, and some peasant revolts ended in armed conflict
with the military. Antiwar sentiments grew among the soldiers, as a result
of this, some army units refused to go into battle.
Both the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires faced new powerful revolutions,
during which the Ukrainian nation, which suffered so much from World War
I, again proved its historic right to its own state, tasted the bitterness
of defeat, and sacrificed its best sons.







