THE UKRAINE PROBLEM
centralising work was completed by Catherine the Great, who deposed the last Hetman, Cyril Rasumovsky, in 1764, crushed the resistance of the Zaporogue Cossacks in 1773, introduced Russian administration in 1780, and three years later replaced the old peasant liberties of the Ukraine by serfdom in its most cruel form. The Church of the Ukraine was subjected to the Patriarch of Moscow, and “a vexatious clerical censorship” stifled literary development and russified education, which was far more advanced than the West is apt to imagine. It is estimated that in the middle of the 18th century there were in the province of Černigov 866 schools, dating from the period of Ukraine autonomy; but sixty years later not one of these survived.
The partition of Poland complicated the situation still further. The western fragment of the Ukraine fell under Austrian rule, and though this at first seemed to deliver it more than ever into the hands of the Polish nobility, it did in effect lay the foundations for a revival of national consciousness and culture in the 19th century. After 1815 in particular the Habsburg Court showed special favour to the “Ruthenes” and the Uniate Church: and their language was encouraged both in church and in school. Further concessions were obtained during the Revolution of 1848, and even under the reaction which followed the Ruthenes fared relatively better than any neighbouring race; for, in its alarm at the revolutionary movement among the Poles the Austrian Government sought a make-weight among the Ruthenes. But with the failure of the Polish insurrection against Russia in 1863 the whole situation rapidly changed. Galicia became a haven of refuge for the Poles, and Russian repression only served to facilitate an understanding between Cracow and Vienna. Austria found it well worth her while to buy the support of the Poles by what almost amounted to creating a Polish political monopoly in Galicia. The whole administration was Polonised, and in education and the courts the Ruthene language was subordinated to the Polish; while the most determined attempts were made to undermine that stronghold of Ukraine national feeling, the Uniate Church, and to introduce enclaves of Polish colonists among the Ukraine peasantry. For a generation past the struggle between Pole and Ukrainian has grown in acuteness, and has centred in the
135
