Bohorodczany itself was changing. As it had for centuries, the town still had strong links with the surrounding farms. There were busy cattle, horse, and poultry trading yards not far from the central square. During weekly market days, this was a busy place where farmers could sell or buy any imaginable agricultural product. But in the six years since Helena’s arrival there, Bohorodczany had grown to be more than just a place for the farming community to gather. The town’s center, with its one- and two-story buildings, had just been rebuilt after a recent fire.23 There were 120 registered businesses and many shops. Eleven blacksmiths produced horseshoes, nails, hooks, and other metal items; among them was a shop that belonged to Alexander Swirski, Franciscus’s godfather. These shops were mainly owned by Poles and Ruthenians; in contrast, the leather business was firmly in Jewish hands. Busy tanneries situated closer to the river were receiving hides and providing dyed leather to 22 shoemaking firms and 20 furriers. But the latter certainly did not produce the fancy furs expected in large cities. Rather, they made tailored sheepskin coats, with the warm fleece inside; these came in handy during long, cold winters. There were also weavers spinning flax yarn into linen, and small shops selling the popular ribbons or lace to adorn clothing.
Market day in a sub-Carpathian town in Galicia. (Dorothy Hosmer Lee Collection, UCR Sweeney Art Gallery, University of California, Riverside.)
Even on Sundays, the sounds of blacksmiths forging wrought iron and shoemakers tapping leather soles with different types of hammers were heard along the main road, where several small shops were located. To the chagrin of pious passersby on their way to church, the market square, with its display of housewares on sale, piles of fruits and vegetables, and bundles of wrapped goods ready to be hauled away, conveyed an image of a busy trading day rather than the customary day of rest. When a few complained about the “unholy” atmosphere in Bohorodczany’s center, the town’s official laconically stated, “It is what it is”—making it clear that nothing would be done to slow the pace of work in order to pacify a few unhappy citizens.24
Bohorodczany was clearly opening to the world, with three transportation companies where one could hire wagons or carriages with coachmen to transport people and goods as far away as Stanislawow. Two inns and five restaurants were now in town, but Helena more likely visited Eizyk Rothstein’s bookstore; she liked reading novels and popular books about exotic lands. Nearby, she could purchase groceries at Joseph Schmerler’s delicatessen, or buy meat from a couple of butcher stores. Fresh dairy products could easily be bought in town, and just a bit further away in Old Bohorodczany, Helena could buy a tasty sharp cheese made of sheep’s milk (bryndza) that would always remain her favorite.
Back in the town center, there was a lamp store that also sold mirrors, porcelain, and glass. From time to time, Helena purchased kerosene from either Izrael Engelberg’s or Feiga Lanczer’s shop—without this, evenings at home would have been dark. (Kerosene was cheap; the region around the nearby village of Starunia and further south was dotted with oil rigs, pumping the petroleum from shallow deposits.) Bohorodczany had six clothing stores, including those selling accessories, stockings, and linens. There were shoe stores for men and for women, and for those needing professional tailoring, one could choose from five tailors. If Helena wanted something fancier, Stanislawow, with its many stores, was not too far away, though her teacher’s salary likely limited such extravagances.
Sometime in the spring after her marriage, Helena discovered that she was pregnant. Certainly this was a happy event, but one often approached with some apprehension because childbirth killed so many women at that time. However, everything turned out all right, and on October 5, 1913, with the help of a midwife attending her at home, Helena delivered a baby daughter. “Irka,” as she would be later called by her mother, was the first grandchild of Joseph and Stephania Regiec; it is uncertain whether the infant was the first grandchild of Andreas and Anna Sobolewski, who already had a number of married children.
Carolina Sobolewska Kubas (1888-1964), Wilhelmina Sobolewska (standing), Franciscus Kubas (Carolina’s husband), and Mania Kubas in a photograph from the beginning of the twentieth century.
In a move somewhat unusual for the times, the traditional family celebration that marked the birth was delayed. We can only guess that both parents wanted to allow for the arrival of family members from faraway places. Times were clearly changing, and as we have already noted, many of the Sobolewskis’ siblings and cousins no longer lived in the same town. A lovely, hand-written postcard from one Sobolewski sister to another spoke of coming home soon and the opportunity to share gossip about their large family. Between the lines, the sender was asking how Helena, her sister-in-law, and the baby were doing at home in Bohorodczany.
At last, with the arrival of the holidays and everyone gathered, Irena Maria Sobolewska was baptized on New Year’s Day, 1914, in the same Dominican church in Bohorodczany where Sobolewski children had been baptized for generations. It is not difficult to imagine a frosty day in this sub-Carpathian region, with roofs and roads covered by snow. Although normally the family walked to the town center, Helena and Franciscus most likely arrived at the church in a sleigh, holding their daughter tightly bundled up against the cold.
Bohorodczany. The winter scene. (Postcard from the twentieth century.)
Franciscus Kubas, Carolina Sobolewska’s husband (top row, middle) is pictured with his coworkers in Czortkow. The picture was sent by Carolina to Wilhelmina Sobolewska in Bohorodczany in the fall of 1913.
Records of this event identify parents and grandparents from the Regiec and Sobolewski families. But these names, already familiar to us, were joined by entries of two other individuals who played special roles in the ceremony. Ladislaus Sobolewski, the second among Franciscus’s brothers and a sergeant major in the Austro-Hungarian cavalry regiment of Czerniowce, was chosen as Irena’s godfather. The other person was Carolina Kubas, who was the aforementioned postcard-writer, longing just a few months before for a visit home. Carolina was Franciscus’s sister; she lived with her husband further east in the town of Czortkow and had been chosen as Irena’s godmother.25 Unlike the Sobolewski men, her husband, Franciscus Kubas, was a rather slim individual who sported an impressive mustache, its tips carefully curled up (a very trendy fashion statement of the time). We can be sure that the gathering also included Stephania and Joseph Regiec with their younger daughter, Wanda, who would have made the short trip from Stanislawow for this joyous occasion.
Ladislaus Sobolewski, older brother of Franciscus, in the wedding picture with his bride, Helena Guminska, and her brother. The photograph was taken in Czerniowce in 1910.
FOR SOME TIME, A PALPABLE sense that Galicia’s old order was about to evolve into something different had been in the air. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, speculation about impending change had become frequent, in both conversation and newspaper commentary. Initially, the ideas put forward were somewhat unclear: exactly what this change might be, how it might happen, and what sort of country would ultimately emerge, no one could really say. What was clear was that with this uncertainty, different elements of Galician society were gravitating toward disparate goals. The tensions that built up among them seemed to bode trouble for the years ahead. This climate was right for a proliferation of political parties, with some becoming increasingly nationalistic, populist, and even anti-Semitic.
Poles of Galicia had always agitated for more autonomy and continued dominance in civil affairs, while trying to wrest more fiscal control from the central government in Vienna. They were increasingly supported by assimilated Jews who’d had successful careers in Polonized society. Other members of the Jewish community tried to remain neutral, aware that taking sides could bring about a backlash. At the same time, large numbers of them were leaving Galicia for other parts of the empire and, often, the United States.
Ruthenians (by then often called Ukrainians) had split into three groups by this time.1 The so-ca
lled Old Ruthenians, the smallest of these, had a sense of belonging to a distinct group of East Slavs but largely advocated cultural and literary activities within the boundaries of Austro-Hungarian Galicia, without much animosity toward Poles. The second group, which was increasingly vocal, was often called Ukrainophiles; its members saw their future as very distinct from the current status quo. This populist movement voiced, in no uncertain terms, aspirations for a separate statehood extending from the Carpathian Mountains (covering eastern Galicia) to the Caucasus Mountains (including the territory of tsarist Russia, where most Ruthenians lived). Members of the third group, the Muscophiles, dismissed the Old Ruthenians’ cultural aspirations within Galicia and the statehood aspirations of the Ukrainophiles. They considered all Ruthenians as part of a common Russian nationality. Given Polish hostility toward tsarist Russia, and Austrian wariness of its eastern neighbor, it is not surprising that the Muscophiles were viewed with suspicion by everyone, including Poles, Ukrainians, and the central government, and were often accused of sedition.
Relationships between Ruthenians and Poles ranged from relatively calm and cooperative through the 1890s to increasingly polarized in the first decade of the 1900s. Some of the views expressed by Ruthenian politicians ignited emotional fears in the Polish-dominant administration of Galicia. Whether they were lobbying Vienna for a division of Galicia along ethnic lines or demanding a separate Ruthenian university in Lvov, their demands were viewed with hostility by Poles. The Ukrainophiles, in particular, argued with some merit that the eastern part of Galicia was predominantly Ruthenian, with Poles exercising a disproportionate dominance over the poorer majority. Their proposal was to split Galicia along the River San, roughly separating the Polish majority in the west from the Ukrainian majority in the east. From time to time, newspapers in Galicia ran speculation about possible support for this plan by the government in Vienna and even alleged secret efforts of Ukrainian politicians to reach foreign powers, including Germany, in order to bolster their pleas.2
The agrarian strike in Galicia in 1902. The economic conflict about unfair wages escalated to tensions between Ruthenians (Ukrainians) and Poles. (Wiener Bilder August 6, 1902; ŐNB, Vienna.)
Demands for equality for the Ruthenian language—in both education and public affairs—were slowly accommodated through the creation of Ruthenian schools, newspapers, and published literature. Still, feelings that progress toward a multilingual society was inadequate, on the Ruthenian side, and that too many accommodations had been made, on the part of Poles, poisoned any attempt at constructive debate on the subject in eastern Galicia.
Another fracture point was the economic inequality of the Ruthenian population, who lived mainly in rural communities. Waves of agrarian strikes for higher wages were common in eastern Galicia in the first decade of the twentieth century; year after year, they were suppressed with force by the Polish administration. Initially, these were mainly isolated disturbances, but they became particularly widespread in 1902. In the middle of that summer, protests by farm laborers paralyzed what would otherwise have been a busy harvest season. This time, however, their actions were better organized than before; more than 100,000 farm hands went on strike, with over 200 villages affected. Within days of this event, it was apparent that economic losses would be huge, as crops lay rotting in the fields.
Owners of large estates, who were mainly Poles, called for help, and the government sent in the army and police. In some villages, the officers were met with throngs of women, throwing themselves on the ground to block their passage. This only served to add more drama to the workers’ cause, and what had started mainly as an economic conflict was quickly recast along ethnic lines. Where it was still possible to save some of the harvest, the government then resorted to the explosive step of bringing in laborers from neighboring Bukovina. Martial law and arrests followed in several districts. Some newspapers cautioned the government with headlines such as “Careful with Fire.” With the end of the harvest season, the storm quickly passed—only to recur in subsequent years. A deep-set polarization of eastern Galicia was becoming a reality.
Bohorodczany, although tense, remained fairly quiet through all this. We can only speculate that the Sobolewskis’ farmland had already been sold or leased to others, most likely their numerous Ruthenian neighbors. If there were any problems with the harvest on the few fields supplying their personal needs, those must not have risen to a level that warranted newspaper reports, and may have been resolved peacefully. Even the Stadion family’s landholdings, although large by Bohorodczany standards, were probably too small to trigger the ire of the strikers—and the Austrian heritage of their owners would have also been a mitigating factor. Over the next years, however, the town would witness its share of Ruthenian discontent, with passionate speeches and demonstrations in its center. Yet even the threats of a boycott did not escalate to violence; local ties between the neighbors, often extended families, seemed too strong to be easily broken in the heat of the moment.3
Adding to the atmosphere of mistrust were constant grievances over election law. The old system of voting was based on non-proportional representation that favored large landowners, mainly Poles. In effect, sometimes less than one hundred votes were sufficient to elect a deputy among landowners, whereas tens to hundreds of thousands were required to choose a parliamentarian from other voting blocks, called curiae.4 By 1907, however, universal male suffrage had been introduced for the national parliament; that increased the number of Ruthenian deputies sent to Vienna. Yet not long after the election, debate erupted in that body about alleged voting irregularities in Galicia. Predictably, Ruthenian representatives accused the provincial administration, largely in Polish hands, of election fraud. Stories about pre-printed ballots, with only the name of a candidate set to “win” the vote, were told during heated arguments. The testimony of the internal affairs minister of Austria did not assuage the situation. After reassuring those present that the governor of Galicia attested to the legality of the elections, he was met with ridicule by Ruthenian deputies.
In the end, these claims of fraud were rejected in a parliamentary vote. In protest after the ballot, Ruthenian politicians rose and sang national songs, and government ministers were forced to abruptly leave the chaotic scene.5 But an additional problem had to be solved in Galicia. After a protracted debate in the province among politicians of many stripes, Poles demanded modification of the plurality law. Concerned about the future composition of the provincial legislature, they wanted some guarantee of their seats, in order to preserve their influence in the east, where they were a minority. Not surprisingly, Ruthenians interpreted these demands as another example of the political shenanigans of the more powerful Poles. During a time in history that we often imagine was gentler than today’s, surprisingly vitriolic language on this subject was common in the press. Political discourse in Galicia was becoming ruthless, full of accusations of political mischief and, often, the trading of personal insults between individuals.6
The campus of the University of Lvov was a frequent flash point of skirmishes between Polish and Ruthenian (Ukrainian) students. (Nowosci Illustrowane December 21, 1907.)
The University of Lvov was one frequent hotbed of unrest. This old and venerated institution had had its share of troubles when shelled by Austrian troops during a brief uprising in 1848. After reopening, the school had become a symbol of Polish identity in eastern Galicia. In a spirit of accommodation, the Austrian government had agreed to make Polish the university’s official language, with German and Ruthenian as auxiliary languages. At least in theory, examinations in Ruthenian were permitted as long as Polish professors had proficiency in that language. But times were changing and, increasingly, this concession was viewed as insufficient by nationalistically leaning Ruthenians, who made repeated demands for a separate university.7 In hindsight, we can see that the climate was set for an inflation of internal differences to something far worse than loud exchanges. Yet despite such tens
ions, this was still an age of innocence; nobody expected the heated debates to escalate to murder.
COUNT ANDREAS POTOCKI, OWNER of mines, estates, and factories in Galicia, Russia, and elsewhere, was a lawyer by education, a diplomat by training, and a former member of the parliament in Vienna who had been the supreme governor of Galicia since 1903. At this time, almost anyone could approach the governor during one of his Sunday audiences, to express a grievance or request assistance. These meetings were entirely private, with no scribes or security personnel present.
On April 12, 1908, as in previous weeks, there were only a few scheduled visitors waiting in the foyer of the governor’s office. A pharmacist from a small provincial town wanted to ask for help against the bureaucracy preventing him from opening a shop; a young man with an unknown petition waited in front of a mirror, checking to make sure his hair was in order; and the final petitioner, who was about to graduate from Lvov’s Polytechnic College, was hoping to plead with the governor for a job in civil administration. First, the clerk ushered the pharmacist into the inner office. The governor quickly assured him that he could return home with no worries, as his case would be simple to resolve. Next was the turn of the young man who had been concerned about his grooming. Surprisingly, that petitioner had left the waiting room, but he was quickly found in the adjoining coatroom, where he seemed to be looking for something. He rushed into the governor’s office and closed the door behind him. Almost immediately, three or four shots rang out. When the visitors and clerk hastily opened the door, they saw the governor, wounded in the head and arm, still conscious but kneeling on the floor just a few steps from the door, as though struck when going to greet the visitor. Count Potocki pointed at his attacker and said “Catch him!” The assailant, gun still in hand, calmly stated that he would not attempt to escape.8
Galician Trails: The Forgotten Story of One Family Page 16