We and the empire
I am writing a different foreword than the one I initially planned. I must respond to a diplomatic scandal that broke out in the last days of the “gas war.” When First Deputy Foreign Minister Anton Buteiko was on Channel 5, a viewer called and said, “You have an unfriendly attitude toward Russia because you wrote in a newspaper that it is an empire that will fall apart.” After Buteiko pointed out reasonably that he was not taking his words back, since empires tend to fall apart sooner or later, the Russian foreign ministry reacted instantly. The Ukrainian diplomat was officially accused of an unfriendly attitude to Russia.
Should a person be offended when he is told that sooner or later he will die? Should a government feel offended by a statement that its country will one day exist in a different form? Both questions are identical. I believe that this scholarly problem should not be instantly turned into a political one. The only justification is that everyone in Russia and Ukraine was edgy during the New Year celebrations. Although it was a gas war, it was nevertheless a war.
I will summarize the originally planned introduction, because it is necessary. A team of Ukrainian scholars is working on an eight-volume Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine. It is an analytical publication rather than a reference source, a survey of modern knowledge about Ukraine’s past against the background of world history. After I prepared a series of articles for the third EHU volume, for the entries “imperialism,” “emperor,” [imperator] “imperium,” and “empire,” I decided to rewrite them in newspaper format for The Day. I am convinced that the imperial problem is a topical one.
1. IMPERIUM
Arguments often arise because of vague concepts. We listen to our opponent but do not hear him; we do not pay attention to the precise content of a concept and lose track of the line between the identical roots of terms. When this concerns history, which is not only an academic subject and science but also a significant part of our consciousness, unpleasant consequences may arise. The historical awareness of influential politicians is crammed with myths that prevent them from responding adequately to events. This also applies to the imperial topic in which quite a few myths have accumulated.
We should start with the key concept of empire, or imperium. The existence of this term simultaneously in the Ukrainized and original, i.e., Latin, form indicates that it is seldom used. It is used mostly in its transformed appearance, as a legal term. Imperium is the right of a state to wield exclusive juridical power within the limits of its national territory, including territorial waters and airspace over land. This term is absent in everyday language, although it has a precise meaning: unlimited authority, including the right to dispose of citizens’ lives and property. The point at issue is power, not the individual vested with it. Everyday thinking is concretized, and we are interested not in an abstract property but in the carrier of this unlimited power. That is why the concept of imperium has not become part of our daily vocabulary. Instead, a number of other, nearly synonymous, concepts, have appeared, which indicate the carrier of power: dictator, autocrat, monarch, emperor.
2. EMPEROR
A short and precise definition of the term “emperor” is: one who has an imperium. The first emperors appeared in republican Rome, i.e., they were not monarchs. The Senate of the Roman Republic bestowed this honorary title on military leaders after a great victory. Some military leaders were emperors several times. They had unlimited authority over their armies, not only by virtue of their positions but as a result of their personal authority.
The Roman Republic was becoming an empire while preserving the outward signs of a republic. Octavian turned the military title of emperor into a hereditary one for the head of state, and Vespasian expanded the content with which it was filled (the carrier of unlimited power) to civilians. This meant that the emperor was entitled to dispose of the lives and property of his subjects. The Roman emperors went even further and proclaimed themselves living gods.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, the title of emperor was retained by the head of the Byzantine Empire. In Western Europe, it was reinstated by Pope Leo III who crowned Charlemagne (Charles the Great) emperor in 800. After the fall of Charlemagne’s empire the title was transferred to Germany. Its rulers identified themselves as emperors of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, a state formation that existed only on paper. Starting in the 15th century, this title was held almost continuously by the Austrian Habsburgs.
In the new European history Peter I and Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to become emperors. After signing a victorious peace agreement with Sweden in 1721, the Russian Senate and Synod conferred on Peter I the title of emperor and the appellations “Great” and “Father of His Native Land.” Some countries protested the appearance of another emperor in Europe. The Rzeczpospolita recognized the Russian emperor only in 1764.
Napoleon was crowned emperor of France in 1804. In 1806, when the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation was liquidated, German emperor Franz II became Austrian emperor Franz I.
In 1852, Napoleon’s nephew Napoleon III became emperor of France. He lost power after the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, and France once again became a republic. In contrast, Prussian king Wilhelm I, after defeating France in 1871, united Germany, proclaimed it the Second Reich, and donned the German emperor’s crown. Five years later Queen Victoria of Great Britain became the empress of colonial India; a year later the Turkish sultan proclaimed himself the Ottoman emperor. The monarchs of China, Japan, Siam, Brazil, Mexico, Abyssinia, and several other countries began calling themselves by the European title of emperor. The Japanese empire perished in the fires of WWII, but the emperor’s title is still held by the head of state. No other emperors exist in the 21st century.
3. EMPIRE
Empires are states that have fundamentally increased in size by incorporating originally independent countries and/or stateless territories. It is difficult to grasp the typology of empires because each empire was a closed world with its own forms of life. Perhaps the only common denominator was the presence of an emperor, who wielded supreme power in every region of the motley conglomerate of formerly independent states and stateless territories. However, even here there were exceptions. Russia was an empire long before Peter I was proclaimed emperor. The British Empire had no emperor and the head of state was the king (queen). Japan is not an empire but has an emperor.
There are at least seven systemic signs by which an empire may be distinguished from other types of states.
First, the authority of the emperor, which had a sacred character. State bodies were called upon to implement the sacred will of the head of state, expressed in the form of laws and edicts.
Second, the policy of imperialism, i.e., expansion, whose goal was to add territory. As a rule, this policy was aimed at subjugating countries that were weaker in military, economic, and cultural terms in order to exploit their human and material resources and/or to colonize them by its own population. Expansion could be implemented through conquest or peaceful means.
Third, the poly-ethnicity of a population alongside a politically dominant ethnos.
Fourth, the presence of a centralized government and hierarchically constructed stratum of privileged state officials.
Fifth, the existence of a state religion, ideology, and language.
There are two types of empires: traditional and colonial. The Roman and Chinese empires were classic examples of traditional empires.
The Roman Empire represented a separate phase in the existence of a civilization known at the time as Mediterranean, which is now called Euro-Atlantic. The ancient Roman heritage has played an important role in the history of the Euro-Atlantic civilization, even though the empire disappeared 1,500 years ago.
The destiny of the Chinese empire took an essentially different course. Nearly 35 centuries elapsed from the emergence of the Qing dynasty in the Huang He river valley until the proclamation of the republic in 1912. During that period hundreds of peoples inhabiting the subcontinent were being transformed into a single people that had developed an original and advanced civilization. So the fall of the last imperial Qing dynasty did not cause the country to fall apart. Even the millions of Chinese living in the diaspora in various countries remain true to the traditions of their forefathers. The modern People’s Republic of China is not an empire but an almost monoethnic country that displays an amazing ability to adapt the achievements of global scientific and technological progress.
In the distant past, empires fell apart from the blows of other conquerors. The last traditional empires collapsed during and after the Great War of 1914-1918. However, that war only strengthened the inner factors of instability of imperial-type states, which had been accumulating in previous decades. Here I am specifically talking about the disappearance of the imperium in the course of transforming absolute monarchies into constitutional ones, and, more importantly, about the formation of nations. Nations are cramped within imperial frameworks.
Colonial empires began to arise in the age of great geographical discoveries. Within a couple of hundred years Spain, Portugal, England, Holland, France, Belgium, Russia, and Germany turned practically the entire world into colonies or spheres of influence.
Unlike traditional empires, which are composed of provinces with more or less identical status, colonial empires were divided into a mother country and colonies. In fact, the expression “colonial empire” is not very accurate. It would be more accurate to say that states with colonies were not empires as such; they possessed colonial empires.
There are two exceptions from this rule: in the case of Germany, it is formal; but in the case of Russia, essential. Germany appropriated the status of the former Holy Roman Empire of the German nation but remained a nation-state, as a federation of German-speaking territories, except for Austria. Russia became a colonial empire after conquering Transcaucasia and Central Asia, but remained a traditional one.
Countries that owned colonies used them in a variety of ways. If colonies had large populations with a highly developed culture, the colonialists exploited their manpower and material resources in their own interests. The Spanish and Portuguese aristocracies squandered the wealth of the colonies, but in other Western European countries they became an important factor in accumulating capital and laid the foundations of their economic might. If the population of a colony was in the early stages of development and had a small population, the newly ceded territory was settled by colonists from the mother country
The North American colonies of Great Britain won independence in a war with the mother country, after which the settlement of the continent by people from many European countries acquired its own dynamics. From the outset the development of the United States did not have an imperial character, and it proceeded according to democratic principles, despite the tragic lot of the aboriginal population and the existence of slavery in the southern states until the mid-19th century. The Russian empire demonstrated a different type of progress. The colonization of Siberia and the Far East (by Ukrainians, among others) resulted only in the huge territorial expansion of the empire.
The colonial states (which were joined by Italy between the two World Wars) got rid of their colonies after the Second World War as a result of a powerful national-liberation movement on the part of oppressed peoples and the continuing democratization of the mother countries’ social and political systems. In many cases the second factor was crucial. The collapse of the British Empire proved to be the longest and at the same time comparatively painless. This official name was given in the 1870s to the totality of possessions of Great Britain throughout the world (colonies, protectorates, mandated and trust territories) on which the sun never set.
At first the overseas territories settled mostly by British colonists lost their colonial nature. Canada acquired the status of a dominion, i.e., a self-governing territory, in 1867, the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, and New Zealand in 1907. With time Ceylon (today: Sri Lanka) and several other colonies with their local populace became dominions. In 1931, a separate act of parliament replaced the term “empire” by “commonwealth.” The British Commonwealth of Nations was being formed, i.e., a union of formally equal states, based on “a common allegiance to the Crown.” Substantial changes were made in the structure of the Commonwealth in 1949-52, which were aimed at asserting the sovereignty of its members. The modifier “British” was dropped from the name of the Commonwealth, and the principle of allegiance to the Crown was no longer mandatory. After 1965 the ruling organ of the Commonwealth became the conferences of its member states. A permanent secretariat was formed at the office of the Commonwealth Secretary, which took over the responsibilities of the British Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Commonwealth Affairs, the latter having been abolished after the creation of the secretariat.
4. UKRAINIAN LANDS IN THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE
Interest in the imperial type of political organization and culture has revived in modern journalism and history studies. Perhaps this may be explained by the expansion of the European Union. Although everyone understands the principal difference between the EU and an empire, certain political scientists are beginning to ponder categories that so far exist only in theory: post-national identity and post-sovereign nation.
On the other hand, the nation-states that were formed in Central Europe after the Great War of 1914-1918 are no longer regarded as the only possible type of political existence of human communities. The American historian Mark von Hagen, who headed the International Association of Ukrainian Studies until 2005, explained this by the awakening of nostalgia for certain multinational, dynastic empires that could regulate interethnic relations better than modern nation-states. He is referring first and foremost to the Austrian Empire, which lasted until 1918. Its nonexistence for almost a century is giving rise to a vacuum in modern social thought; hence, the presence of idealized views on inter-national relations in the Habsburg empire. In any case, this idealization is clearly apparent in Ukrainian diasporic and post-Soviet historiography.
The Austrian Empire had a territory about the same size as modern Ukraine (676,000 and 603,000 sq. km, respectively). Just as the Dnipro crosses Ukraine, the Danube bisected Austria. Its population was roughly the same size (over 51 million), which placed it third in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, after the Russian and German empires. Not coincidentally, the Austrian monarchy was described as a patchwork quilt. Over a period of several centuries the Austrian Habsburgs pieced it together from many countries with different historical destinies. It was inhabited by 12 million Germans, 10 million Hungarians, 6.5 million Czechs, 5 million Poles, over 4 million Ukrainians, 3.5 million Croats and Serbs, more than 2 million Romanians, 2 million Slovaks, and over 1 million Slovenians. The country consisted of two separate states divided by a border along the river Leitha: Cisleithania (the lands of the Austrian crown) and Transleithania (the lands of the Hungarian crown), as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina, which were annexed in 1908. Cisleithania comprised the Principality of Galicia and Lodomeria and the Principality of Bukovyna, where 3.7 million Ukrainians lived. Transleithania was inhabited by 470,000 Ukrainians (mostly in Transcarpathia).
The formation of nations in Central- Eastern Europe was delayed by at least one century in comparison with Western Europe. Transcarpathian, Bukovynian, and Galician Ukrainians practically did not communicate. They were an ethnographic mass deprived of a political and economic ruling class. Imperial bureaucrats did not deal with them but with their masters-Polish, Hungarian, and German aristocrats.
Changes began with the Spring of Nations, as Western historians call the revolution of 1848-1849. The clergy, as the only educated Ukrainian social stratum, demanded that the ethnic lands be united into a single crown land and granted autonomy. From then on this was the key demand of all Ukrainian political forces until the end of the empire.
Emperor Franz Josef, who ruled from 1848 to 1916, had a long rule as absolute and constitutional monarch. He was very flexible in his treatment of his subjects representing various nationalities, which gave rise to the legend about the wondrous tolerance of the Austrian Empire with respect to the national question. However, he made concessions only to the Hungarians, who were especially insistent in their demands for political rights. In 1867 the empire was divided into two separate multinational states: Austria and Hungary. Czech demands for identical rights to the lands of the crown of Saint Vaclav (Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia) were ignored. Slavs made up about one-half of the empire’s motley population but did not form a single front of the liberation struggle. Moreover, Ukrainian and Polish interests were at odds. Both peoples claimed the same territory. The Principality of Galicia and Lodomeria was formed out of the eastern part of Galicia (Halychyna) with the center in Lviv (until 1772 it was known as Ruske voievodstvo) and the western, predominantly Polish, part with its center in Krakow.
In 1997 Roman Szporluk, the director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, published an article in the journal Daedalus, in which he shed new light on the historical destiny of Ukrainians in the Austrian Empire. Before, historians stressed only one aspect of the changes in the Ukrainian way of life after the transition from Poland to Austria: serfs were now legal subjects and de jure human beings. Szporluk proved that Vienna created a new dimension in the process of forming the Ukrainian nation.
Indeed, socioeconomic reforms, beginning with the abolition of serfdom, created only the prerequisites for the formation of the nation. The attitude of the state was important. The state, which was personified not by the Polish king but the Austrian emperor, could create more favorable conditions for the Ukrainians’ national rebirth. After all, the Habsburg Empire had no reasons to impede the national rebirth of both the Ukrainians and Poles.
In his article Szporluk emphasized that the better organized Poles took greater advantage of Vienna’s tolerant national policy. After 1772, Polonization of the former Ruske voievodstvo in the Rzeczpospolita was carried out more intensively than during the four preceding centuries, from 1370 to 1772. The imperial government was more willing to make concessions in the national question to the consolidated Polish forces than the disorganized Ruthenians. In 1861, Galicia and Lodomeria acquired autonomy with a local sejm and government, but both were dominated by Poles. Beginning in 1867, Polish became the official language in the principality. All attempts to divide the territory into Ukrainian and Polish parts failed. Polish organizations had no desire to share territory.
As in the case of Galicia and Lodomeria, Bukovyna acquired autonomy in 1861, but the Bukovynian Ruthenians also failed to obtain sufficient cultural and ethnic rights. German remained the official language in Bukovyna.
A separate Ruthenian district was created in Zakarpattia in 1849. It was dominated by Ukrainians, who were now able to enjoy broad autonomy in education and self-government. However, after the formation of Austro-Hungary the gains of the 1848-1849 revolution were destroyed. The Hungarian government refused to recognize the Ruthenians as a separate ethnic group. In 1868 the sejm in Budapest proclaimed the entire population of the state the Hungarian nation.
The empire’s Ukrainian lands were in dire economic condition. Raw-material industries (salt and oil extraction, lumber industry) were the leading ones. Oil processing and woodworking lacked investments. Entrepreneurs did not go where there was no qualified labor force. Most industries existed as petty cottage industries.
The rural population suffered increasingly from agrarian overpopulation, the inevitable result of the concentration of the greater part of arable lands in the hands of landlords. In search of a better life peasants headed across the ocean. Nearly 300,000 emigrated from Halychyna and Bukovyna in 1900-1910, and over 40,000 from Zakarpattia in 1905-1914. This became the foundation of the powerful Diaspora in the US and Canada.
Socioeconomic conditions, historical memory, and the entire way of life of the Ukrainian communities in the Russian and Austrian empires were markedly different. Analyzing the amazing, at first glance, phenomenon of the formation of one Ukrainian nation in empires that were hostile to one another, Professor Szporluk noted two crucial circumstances. First, the Ukrainian lands in the Russian Empire had cultural resources that allowed the Galicians to compensate for their cultural and social backwardness; they made them competitive with regard to the Polish milieu. Second, in joining a unified Ukraine, the Galicians were becoming part of a national community that was larger than Poland. Not coincidentally, they called the Ukrainian lands in Russia “Great Ukraine.” Beyond the borders of that Ukraine the Galician ethnic community was the numerical equivalent of the Lithuanians or Slovaks.
On Jan. 22, 1919, two Ukrainian national republics that had emerged from the ruins of toppled empires united in a single, independent state. This historic event was preceded by decades of instructive work on the part of Ukrainian intellectuals, who convinced their fellow countrymen that they were one people. The intelligentsia followed in the footsteps of such giants of the Ukrainian renaissance as Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Ivan Franko. Learned Ukrainians were especially impressed by Hrushevsky’s article “Ukraine and Halychyna,” published by the Literaturno-naukovyi visnyk (Literary-Scientific Herald) in 1906. In it the scholar warned his fellow countrymen against following the road of the Serbs and Croats, two different nations that had one ethnic basis. He argued that commonality of ethnic origin does not guarantee the emergence of a single nation.
(To be continued)
