By that year, then, the top issues were still unsettled. The validity of the ‘Bohemian State Rights’ had not been admitted, but neither had the administrative division of Bohemia been sanctioned. The Germans’ defence of their positions had been so far successful that the basic ethnic line running through the rural districts had remained practically unchanged, and the ethnic character of the industrial complexes had not altered so much as might have been expected. As the local German populations had been unable, or unwilling, to satisfy the factory-owners’ demand for cheap labour, a large number of Czechs had come into these districts,105 but they were in fact something of a floating element, liable to disappear overnight if a factory ran into difficulties and dismissed all or part of its workers, and many of those who established themselves had Germanized. The Czechs had certainly made some gains: there were Czechs in many districts once purely German, such as Reichenberg and the Komotau-Aussig mining area. Their presence did not, however, affect the preponderantly German character of these districts, and, oddly enough, while the increase of the Czechs had been considerably faster than that of the Germans before 1880, it had slowed down greatly after that date, i.e., just when the German administrative pressure relaxed.106
But it was only in these respects that the Germans had held their own. They had awakened too late to the danger,107 and even now their national organizations were less widespread and less purposeful than those of the Czechs, whose leaders, moreover, always remained in Bohemia, while Germans who tired of the struggle migrated to Vienna. Up to 1879 (although not later) the Germans had the forces of officialdom working for them; but working for the Czechs were time and the inevitable effects of economic and cultural development. By 1890 it was no longer possible to recognize in the Czechs the submissive and really half-primitive peasant people of a century before. They had lost most of their aristocratic patrons, and were only just beginning to penetrate into high finance and big business; most of this was still in the hands of Germans or German-minded Jews. But besides a class of industrial workers, they now possessed a substantial small and medium bourgeois class of artisans, shopkeepers and minor officials: they had developed a special aptitude for the career of rond de cuir, and supplied easily the largest national contingent, after the Germans, to the administrative services of the Monarchy; it is true that here, too, they were found chiefly in the middle and lower levels. They had long possessed an elementary and secondary educational system adequate for those purposes, and since the opening of the Czech University in Prague in 1882 (a Technical High School had already been given them in 1869) were turning out an annual crop of young men educated nationally up to the highest level to which education went; young men who, moreover, took a pride in spreading what they had learnt among their people.
They possessed a flourishing national culture of their own: a National Theatre, built at the cost of great self-sacrifice out of popular subscription (the sacrifice was two-fold, for the first theatre, opened in 1881, had burned down, and had to be rebuilt), and an ample supply of local reading-rooms, etc. If their literary and artistic products of the time were not, as a rule, particularly distinguished, they were numerous, and in music the Czechs had contributed, in Dvořak and Smetana, two of the Monarchy’s, and Europe’s, great names. Prague, an almost purely German city two generations earlier, had become an almost completely Czech one. The unemotional Baedeker wrote of it in 1887 that there ‘and in the rest of Central and Southern Bohemia, the traveller will hear little but Bohemian (Czechish) spoken, while the names of streets, stations, shops, etc., are generally written in that language’. In fact, the Germans had dwindled to 18·5% of the population in 1880 and they were down to 10% in 1900 and to 8·5% in 1910, a substantial proportion even of these being German-speaking Jews. They lived a strange, unreal existence, almost like that of an army of occupation, meeting only one another, frequenting only their own clubs and restaurants and contriving to ignore the rest of the inhabitants except when (as happened not infrequently) assaulted by them.108
It should again be emphasized that, as in earlier years, the national struggle was much less acute in Moravia than in Bohemia. The Moravian Slavs had by now come to regard themselves as Czechs, and after 1881, sat with the Czech Club in the Reichsrat; but they always retained a certain particularist feeling, were not overly keen on the Böhmisches Staatsrecht, and were comparatively ready to compromise with the local Germans, as the Germans were with them, on a basis of reasonable give and take.
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The Slovene and Croat movements were companion pieces to the Czech, on a smaller scale and in rather less strident colours. The Slovenes, at this stage, were particularist: the old Illyrianism had died away, Yugoslavism was yet to be born. They were thus definitely ‘Austro-Slav’, a fact which contributed not a little to the relative indulgence with which the Slovene movement was regarded by authority. The goal of their nationalists was, as before, the creation of a Great Slovene Crownland, comprising all Slovene areas of the Monarchy, with its own capital (at Laibach), language of administration and education, and High School.
By 1890 they had got no further than the Czechs with their demand for structural changes in the Monarchy, which were, indeed, in the opposite direction from the Czechs’, for while the latter, being in the majority in Bohemia and Moravia, wanted the conservation of existing Land frontiers, the Slovenes wanted Styria and Carinthia partitioned.109 Neither had they got nearly so far as the Czechs in the development of their national structure. They were still a preponderantly peasant people, with no aristocracy or big landlords, no haute bourgeoisie and a relatively small intelligentsia. Their national institutions – Press, co-operatives, patriotic societies and the rest – were all comparatively rudimentary. The older age-groups were still largely illiterate.
Nevertheless, they were making progress in all these fields. They had as yet no High School of their own, and their secondary school system was still meagre, partly because the local Germans blocked its development, partly owing to real shortages not yet overcome of teachers and school-books. But they now possessed an adequate network of elementary schools, and the Slovene boys who passed through German secondary schools no longer necessarily, or even generally, emerged from them Germans. The Slovene language had now been admitted to full equality in the public services and the Courts wherever the population figures justified this,110 so that there were now a substantial number of Slovene officials, as well as the priests and schoolmasters, while Laibach, now an eighty per cent Slovene town, contained a growing Slovene petite bourgeoisie of shopkeepers, small professional men, etc. The Slovenes now controlled all the rural districts in Carniola, except the German ethnic islet of Gottschee and one other, and even most of the towns, including Laibach itself, where they gained the majority on the Municipal Council in 1882. In 1883 they acquired the majority in the Landtag itself, and in 1887 the German members of that body were reduced to ten representatives of the Great Landlords’ Curia. Outside Carniola, the Slovenes were fully holding their own in South Styria111 and gaining ground in Gorizia, Istria, and even Trieste. Only in Carinthia was the trend still towards Germanization.
The Slovene areas of Austria were traditionally a stronghold of Catholicism, and for many years the Slovenes’ representatives in the Landtag belonged without exception to the Clerical, or Populist Party, a Party which was Conservative in its tenets (although its conservatism was rather of the Christian Social than the feudal brand), and formed part of the Hohenwart Club and of Taaffe’s Iron Ring. While the Clericals remained the strongest Slovene party up to 1918, and indeed beyond that date, their political monopoly began to be challenged in the 1880s by the more democratic ‘Young Slovenes’, or Slovene Liberals. While, however, the two Parties fought one another unsparingly when they had the field to themselves, they habitually combined against any national third party, German or Italian, which was in the field, and there was little to choose between the two in respect of national enthusiasm.
The ho
me of almost all the Croats now represented in the Reichsrat was Dalmatia, where successive censuses showed ‘Serbo-Croat’ to constitute the language of the overwhelming majority of the population.112 Meanwhile, while the Slavs had begun the modern era there as a people of peasants and fisherfolk, with the Italians constituting the bourgeoisie and commanding not only the Landtag but the municipal councils of most of the towns, the former had gained ground steadily, economically, culturally and also politically, until by 1870 they gained the majority in the Landtag, and by a few years later, in all the municipal councils except that of Zara.
One result of this had been partially to reopen the question of the status of Dalmatia within the Monarchy. As we saw,113 this had been left undecided in 1849, and it had not been reopened by the October Diploma or the February Patent. The Italians were, however, then still in the majority in the Landtag. In 1861 they had refused an invitation from Croatia to resume the negotiations ordained in 1849 and had expressed their gratitude for the Law of 1867, which included Dalmatia among the Lands to be represented in the Cis-Leithanian Reichsrat. On gaining the majority in the Landtag the Croats had, however, announced their wish that Dalmatia should be attached to Croatia-Slavonia, and had continued thereafter (although not unanimously) to press the demand.
The majority of the local Croat politicians were by now vehement nationalists, but the issue was complicated by the existence in Southern Dalmatia of a considerable Serb minority, who during this period protested against the Croats’ wish for attachment to Croatia-Slavonia and in 1861 even petitioned for administrative separation ‘because they had never been Dalmatians.114
The Poles kept faithfully enough to their side of the bargain struck in 1873, completely abjuring irredentism or international conspiracy, and supporting the Government of the day and enabling it to get essential legislation through Parliament.115 They even abandoned their old boycott of the Austrian State services, which, on the contrary, they now entered on such a scale as to evoke complaints from the Germans of their excessive influence over Austrian affairs. Badeni, Dunajewski and the two Goluchowskis are examples of Poles who in fact in their day largely directed the fortunes of the Monarchy.
This did not mean that they had renounced the re-establishment of an independent and united Poland, as an ultimate ideal, but it is well possible that their impatience to see it realized was growing less acute; certain, that the feeling of national identity between all Poles was becoming qualified by an element of particularism, which was developing also among the Poles of Russia and was to produce considerable differences between the two branches, when the question became actuel in 1914, as to the form in which the unification should take place.
Another factor reducing their national impatience was probably their growing interest in money-making. According to one writer,116 the attainment of virtual autonomy by Galicia in 1863 ‘released the interest of the leading Poles from the political struggle which thitherto had almost absorbed them’, diverting it into material channels. This was even more true of the Poles of Russian Poland, which was developing into the leading industrial area of Russia. It should be added that the non-political activities of the Poles were not solely material. During the half-century, Cracow in particular, but also Lemberg, developed into centres of learning and the arts which gave birth to many brilliant products, some the works of native Galicians, others, of Poles from Russian and German Poland who found in Galicia an atmosphere of freedom lacking in their own homes.
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The fortunes of the Ruthenes during the absolutist period have been described; it should be added that when Goluchowski became Minister of State in 1859 he set about achieving from that position that complete domination of the Polish element in Galicia which Bach’s opposition had prevented him from putting through as Statthalter. The Ruthenes were now forbidden to use the Cyrillic script in communicating with the administrative authorities, and only strong protests from Mgr Joachimowicz prevented the same rule from being laid down for communications to the Courts. Schmerling’s appointment recovered them a little ground again: all prohibitions on the use of Cyrillic script were lifted and all officials in East Galicia were required to be conversant with that script, and with the Ruthene language. The Ruthenes secured forty-nine out of the hundred and fifty mandates to the Galician Landtag of April 1861 and eleven in the Reichsrat, all, to whichever school they belonged, solid in their opposition to the Poles’ autonomist programme, which they could still hope to see defeated if a centralist government maintained itself in Vienna. When, however, Schmerling fell and federalism was in the air again, the Ruthenes saw themselves being delivered up again to the mercy of the Poles, without any protection whatever. This gave the pro-Russian group its chance, and in 1866 its leader, a priest named Naumovics, announced in the Landtag that the Ruthenes were identical with the Russians, ethnically and linguistically. After Königgrätz the group’s organ, the Slovo, actually wrote that the future would inevitably bring about the disintegration of the Monarchy and the attachment of Galicia to Russia.117
Now the St George Party finally split, or rather, disintegrated. Naumovics’s followers claimed, indeed, to represent the old Party, and consequently took the name of Old Ruthenes; but their thesis of Russo-Ruthene identity differed fundamentally from that of the original St Georgites. The latters’ linguistic programme had, however, perished by now of sheer lack of vitality, the fact being that the Jasicza was a dead (or still-born) language which it was simply impossible to impose on the masses.118 The opponents of the Russophiles, who took the name of ‘Young Ruthenes’, turned instead to the Ukraine, proclaiming the ethnic and linguistic identity of the Galician Ruthenes with the inhabitants of the Great (sc. Russian) Ukraine.
This happened to be just the moment when the full force of Russian chauvinism was being turned on the Ukraine. The Russian Secretary of State for Public Instruction had issued a circular denying the existence of the ‘Little Russian’ language; what passed under that name was simply ‘bad Russian spoilt by Polish influences’. It was forbidden to print anything in ‘Little Russian’ except verses, stories and plays. The Ukrainian intellectual leaders consequently emigrated, several of them settling in Lemberg, which, under the benevolent eye of the Austrian Government, became the centre of Ukrainian national culture; the Shevchenko Society, founded there in 1873, became a sort of Academy of Sciences for the entire Ukrainian people. Thus fertilized, the Ukrainian cultural movement flourished mightily in Galicia. A national educational society, the Prosvita, produced and distributed good and cheap text-books and by this and other methods firmly established the basic Ruthene-Ukrainian identity. In this respect the Young Ruthenes won easily over the Old; the rival propaganda issued by the latter (with Russian funds) had little effect; indeed, the Old Ruthenes were driven to issuing their own propaganda in the local Ruthene-Ukrainian.
The Old Ruthenes suffered another set-back in 1882, when a number of their leaders were arrested on charges of high treason. The jury acquitted them of that charge, but Father Naumovics and three others were sentenced to terms of imprisonment for conduct prejudicial to the public order.119 After this, the Old Ruthenes were careful to repudiate any suspicion of disloyalty, and in fact the published programmes of the two parties differed little on essentials, each claiming that the Ruthenes constituted a separate nationality, which must find its salvation within the Austrian State. The main difference between them was that the Young Ruthenes claimed that an agreement with the Poles was possible, while the opponents denied that possibility. In this, it must be admitted, the Old Ruthenes had the better of the argument, for while in subsequent elections the Poles allowed a handful of Ruthenes to reach the Landtag and a thimbleful, the Reichsrat, on condition that they sat with the Polish Club and accepted the decisions of the majority, the number was always disproportionately small, and their wishes entirely disregarded; so much so that in 1889 the Young Ruthenes left the Club and formed a new pact with their rivals – only, indeed, to split
again a year later.
The Polish pressure was, meanwhile, continuing, and was not proving entirely ineffectual. The proportion of Ruthene speakers to the total population of Galicia fell from 50% in 1846 to 45% in 1857, and 42·9% in 1880, recovering to 43·1% in 1890.120 Emigration accounts for some of this decline, but it must also reflect an assimilation of some members of the nation to the Poles, just as the Slovaks, Ruthenes and Germans in Hungary were losing some members to the Magyars during the same period.
It was, however, only the weaker and, so to say, peripheral elements that were crumbling away. The core was remaining, and hardening. Thanks to the efforts of the Prosvita and kindred societies, and also to a measure of support received from Vienna and the Bukovina, the Ruthenes were, in spite of all their difficulties, making considerable cultural progress and developing a nationally conscious intelligentsia which no pressure would ever wipe out of existence.
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The Italians were already, of all the peoples of the Monarchy, that whose attachment to it was the frailest. This was not due to oppression, nor even to any big tangible grievance. It is true that in Gorizia, Istria and Dalmatia they were inexorably losing ground to the local Slavs, with the inevitable disappearance of the old conditions which had given them a weight disproportionate to their numbers. In the Trentino, where they had actually been gaining ground on the local Germans before 1866, their position had become less enviable after that date: the authorities found it necessary to exercise more vigilance in that area now that it had become a frontier one, and its middle classes had lost an appreciable source of income, for while Lombardy-Venetia had belonged to the Monarchy, the Government had staffed their administrative services largely with Italians from the Trentino.
The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918) Page 102