The Stauropegion Institute was one of the most important cultural and educational institutions in Galicia (today western Ukraine) from the end of the 18th century until World War II. For much of its history it was controlled by Galician Russophiles.
The Stauropegion Institute was one of the most important cultural and educational institutions in Galicia (today western Ukraine) from the end of the 18th century until World War II. For much of its history it was controlled by Galician Russophiles.
The Stauropegion Institute was founded in Lviv in 1788 on the orders of Joseph II, Emperor of Austria soon after Austria annexed Eastern Galicia, now western Ukraine, from Poland during the First Partition of Poland. It was based on the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood, a Ukrainian Catholic religious brotherhood. [1]
Until the mid-19th century the Stauropegion Institute was the only large educational and cultural institution in western Ukraine. It operated a printing press, bound and sold books, maintained a scholarship fund, and published textbooks and spelling primers. In the mid-19th century the Institute was taken over by Galician Russophiles and controlled by them until 1915. It was then controlled by the Ukrainophiles until 1922, when the Polish government restored Russophile control over the Institute. From the late 19th century its publications were written in Iazychie (a Western Ukrainian academic language that combined Russian, Church Slavonic, western Ukrainian and Polish speech) before switching to the Russian language in the 20th century. The Stauropegion Institute was liquidated by the Soviet authorities when they annexed western Ukraine in 1939 and its collection was transferred to the Lviv's branch of the Central State Historical Archives of the Ukrainian SSR. [1]
The Stauropegion Institute had a large endowment and owned several parcels of land and buildings throughout Lviv. It housed numerous important historical and cultural documents. The Institute's collection included the 12th century Horodyshche Apostolos, the 13th century Horodyshche Gospel, The Book of the Soul Named Gold written by Peter Mogila, 17th century Metropolitan of Kiev, Galicia and all Ruthenia', the Lviv Chronicles, various royal Polish patents, grants, and charters from the years 1522–1767, 16th and 17th century documents from Moldavian princes and from the Patriarch of Constantinople, printed books from the 15th century and onward, and religious art. [1]
Galicia is a historical and geographic region spanning what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine, long part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It covers much of the other historic regions of Red Ruthenia and Lesser Poland.
The West Ukrainian People's Republic (WUPR) or West Ukrainian National Republic (WUNR), known for part of its existence as the Western Oblast of the Ukrainian People's Republic, was a short-lived polity that controlled most of Eastern Galicia from November 1918 to July 1919. It included the cities of Lviv, Ternopil, Kolomyia, Drohobych, Boryslav, Stanislaviv and right-bank Przemyśl, and claimed parts of Bukovina and Carpathian Ruthenia. Politically, the Ukrainian National Democratic Party dominated the legislative assembly, guided by varying degrees of Greek Catholic, liberal and socialist ideology. Other parties represented included the Ukrainian Radical Party and the Christian Social Party.
The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, also known as Austrian Galicia or colloquially Austrian Poland, was a constituent possession of the Habsburg monarchy in the historical region of Galicia in Eastern Europe. The crownland was established in 1772. The lands were annexed from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as part of the First Partition of Poland. In 1804 it became a crownland of the newly proclaimed Austrian Empire. From 1867 it was a crownland within the Cisleithanian or Austrian half of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. It maintained a degree of provincial autonomy. Its status remained unchanged until the dissolution of the monarchy in 1918.
The Polish–Ukrainian War, from November 1918 to July 1919, was a conflict between the Second Polish Republic and Ukrainian forces. The conflict had its roots in ethnic, cultural and political differences between the Polish and Ukrainian populations living in the region, as Poland and both Ukrainian republics were successor states to the dissolved Russian and Austrian empires. The war started in Eastern Galicia after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and spilled over into Chełm Land and Volhynia (Wołyń) regions formerly belonging to the Russian Empire, which were both claimed by the Ukrainian State and the Ukrainian People's Republic. Poland re-occupied the disputed territory on 18 July 1919.
Rohatyn is a city located on the Hnyla Lypa River in Ivano-Frankivsk Raion, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, in western Ukraine. It hosts the administration of Rohatyn urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Population: 7,521 .
Western Ukraine or West Ukraine is the territory of Ukraine linked to the former Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, which was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, Austria-Hungary and the Second Polish Republic, and came fully under the control of the Soviet Union only in 1939, following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. There is no universally accepted definition of the territory's boundaries, but the contemporary Ukrainian administrative regions or Oblasts of Chernivtsi, Ivano-Frankovsk, Lviv, Ternopil and Transcarpathia are nearly always included and the Lutsk and Rivne Oblasts are usually included. It is less common to include the Khmelnytski and, especially, the Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr Oblasts in this category. It includes several historical regions such as Transcarpathia, Halychyna including Pokuttia, most of Volhynia, northern Bukovina, and western Podolia. Less often the Western Ukraine includes areas of eastern Volhynia, Podolia, and small portion of northern Bessarabia.
Galician Jews or Galitzianers are members of the subgroup of Ashkenazi Jews originating in the levant having developed in the diaspora of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, from contemporary western Ukraine and from south-eastern Poland. Galicia proper, which was inhabited by Ruthenians, Poles and Jews, became a royal province within Austria-Hungary after the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century. Galician Jews primarily spoke Yiddish.
Lviv is an administrative center in western Ukraine with more than a millennium of history as a settlement, and over seven centuries as a city. Prior to the creation of the modern state of Ukraine, Lviv had been part of numerous states and empires, including, under the name Lwów, Poland and later the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; under the name Lemberg, the Austrian and later Austro-Hungarian Empires; the short-lived West Ukrainian People's Republic after World War I; Poland again; and the Soviet Union. In addition, both the Swedes and the Ottoman Turks made unsuccessful attempts to conquer the city.
Galician Russophilia or Moscophiles were participants in a cultural and political movement largely in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary. This ideology emphasized that since the Eastern Slavic people of Galicia were descendants of the people of Kievan Rus' (Ruthenians), and followers of Eastern Christianity, they were thus a branch of the Russian people. The movement was part of the larger Pan-Slavism that was developing in the late 19th century. Russophilia was largely a backlash against Polonisation and Magyarisation that was largely blamed on the landlords and associated with Roman Catholicism.
The Polish minority in Ukraine officially numbers about 144,130, of whom 21,094 (14.6%) speak Polish as their first language. The history of Polish settlement in current territory of Ukraine dates back to 1030–31. In Late Middle Ages, following the extinction of the Rurik dynasty in 1323, the Kingdom of Poland extended east in 1340 to include the lands of Przemyśl and in 1366, Kamianets-Podilskyi. The settlement of Poles became common there after the Polish–Lithuanian peace treaty signed in 1366 between Casimir III the Great of Poland, and Liubartas of Lithuania.
The Conversion of Chełm Eparchy, which occurred from January to May 1875, refers to the generally forced conversion of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Chełm–Belz, the last of the original Ruthenian Uniate eparchy in the Russian Empire, which was centered in the city of Chełm (Kholm) in Congress Poland, to the Russian Orthodoxy.
The Christian Social Movement in Ukraine was a political movement that existed in Western Ukraine from the end of the 19th century until the 1930s.
On the basis of a secret clause of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, capturing the eastern provinces of the Second Polish Republic. Lwów, the capital of the Lwów Voivodeship and the principal city and cultural center of the region of Galicia, was captured and occupied by September 22, 1939 along with other provincial capitals including Tarnopol, Brześć, Stanisławów, Łuck, and Wilno to the north. The eastern provinces of interwar Poland were inhabited by an ethnically mixed population, with ethnic Poles as well as Polish Jews dominant in the cities. These lands now form the backbone of modern Western Ukraine and West Belarus.
On August 18, 1914, the Russian Empire invaded the Austrian Crownland of Galicia. On August 19, the Imperial Russian Army defeated the Austro-Hungarian Army, advanced 280–300 kilometers into the territory of Austria-Hungary and captured most of eastern Galicia. The principal city, Lemberg fell into Russian hands on September 3. Eastern Galicia had a population of approximately 4.8 million people.
The Eastern Catholic clergy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church were a hereditary tight-knit social caste that dominated Ukrainian society in Western Ukraine from the late eighteenth until the mid-twentieth centuries, following the reforms instituted by Joseph II, Emperor of Austria. Because, like their Eastern Orthodox brethren, married men in the Ukrainian Catholic Church could become priests, they were able to establish "priestly dynasties", often associated with specific regions, for many generations. Numbering approximately 2,000-2,500 by the 19th century, priestly families tended to marry within their group, constituting a tight-knit hereditary caste. In the absence of a significant culturally and politically active native nobility, and enjoying a virtual monopoly on education and wealth within western Ukrainian society, the clergy came to form that group's native aristocracy. The clergy adopted Austria's role for them as bringers of culture and education to the Ukrainian countryside. Most Ukrainian social and political movements in Austrian-controlled territory emerged or were highly influenced by the clergy themselves or by their children. This influence was so great that western Ukrainians were accused by their Polish rivals of wanting to create a theocracy in western Ukraine. The central role played by the Ukrainian clergy or their children in western Ukrainian society would weaken somewhat at the end of the nineteenth century but would continue until the Soviet Union forcibly dissolved the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Ukrainian territories in the mid-twentieth century.
Denis Ivanovych Zubrytsky (Ukrainian: Дени́с Іва́нович Зубри́цький, was the first Ukrainian historian in Galicia and a major early figure in the Galician Russophile movement.
The shliakhta were a noble class of ethnic Ukrainians in what is now western Ukraine, that enjoyed certain legal and social privileges. Estimates of their numbers vary. According to one estimate, by the mid-nineteenth century there were approximately 32,000 Ukrainian nobles in the western Ukrainian territory of Galicia, over 25% of whom lived in 21 villages near the town of Sambir. They comprised less than 2% of the ethnic Ukrainian population. Other estimates place the number of nobles at 67,000 people at the end of the 18th century and 260,000 by the end of the nineteenth century, or approximately 6% of the ethnic Ukrainian population. The nobles tended to live in compact settlements either in villages populated mostly by nobles or in particular areas of larger villages.
With the arrival of the Hungarians into the heart of the Central European Plain around 899, Slavic tribes of Vistulans, White Croats, and Lendians found themselves under Hungarian rule. In 955 those areas north of the Carpathian Mountains constituted an autonomous part of the Duchy of Bohemia and remained so until around 972, when the first Polish territorial claims began to emerge. This area was mentioned in 981, when Vladimir the Great of Kievan Rus' claimed the area on his westward way. In the 11th century the area belonged to Poland, then reverted to Kievan Rus'. However, at the end of the 12th century the Hungarian claims to the principality turned up. Finally Casimir III of Poland annexed it in 1340–1349. Low Germans from Prussia and Middle Germany settled parts of northern and western Galicia from the 13th to 18th centuries, although the vast majority of the historic province remained independent from German and Austrian rule.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Lviv, Ukraine.
Lviv Dormition Brotherhood also known as Lviv Stauropegion Brotherhood was an influential religious organization associated with the Dormition Church in Lviv and one of the oldest Brotherhood Orthodox organizations. It was first an association of Orthodox and then, from 1708, also Greek Catholic burghers in Lviv. Like other brotherhoods in Ukraine, it is also a military force tasked with defending the Orthodox church and the faith, particularly against Polish and Latin influences.