War in a European Borderland: Occupations and Occupation Plans in Galicia and Ukraine, 1914–1918 by Mark von Hagen (review)

401 Ab Imperio, 1/2009 чьи имперские коннотации более чем очевидны.11 Отвечая на мои замечания, Миллер написал, что считает неинтересной полемику с авторами такого уровня, а о Мар- чукове вообще впервые узнал из моей статьи. Тем приятнее было обнаружить в “Наследии импе- рий” характеристику писаний г-на Марчукова как “постыдных” (С. 49). Подозревая, что главной чер- той современности является ее непрогнозируемость, автор этих строк сохраняет надежду на то, что удел истории и историков все же шире “обслуживания” текуще- го политического момента. 11 ИМихутина, и Марчуковизображают“большуюрусскуюнацию”какбезусловную социальную реальность, а украинское движение – как всего лишь инспирированный извне деструктивный проект горстки людей. При этом Марчуков, описывая 1930-е годы, противопоставляет разрушению памятников архитектуры – строительство заводов, изъятию из библиотек книг “запрещенных” авторов – быстрое развитие кинематографа; критике педагогической науки – открытие Ботанического сада и Института электросварки. По мнению Марчукова, “то, что власть работала пре- жде всего не для себя, а для страны, тоже было для всех очевидно”. См: Марчуков. Украинское национальное движение. С. 494-495. Этот поверхностный панегирик сталинизму прошел незамеченным в российской научной периодике. Serhy YEKELCHYK Mark von Hagen, War in a European Borderland: Occupations and Occupation Plans in Galicia and Ukraine, 1914–1918 (Seattle: The Herbert J. Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, University of Washington , 2007). xii+122 pp. (=Donald W. Treadgold Studies on Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia). ISBN: 978-029-598-753-8. In Ukrainian history, the experience of World War I, significant and traumatic as it was, is usually overshadowed by the discussion of subsequent and somewhat contemporaneous events – in particular the story of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Carried away by their nation-building narratives, modern historians tend to forget that this polity claimed full independence in January 1918, precisely in order to be among the signatories of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty, which ended the war on the Eastern Front. The war’s role in the shaping of 402 Рецензии/Reviews twentieth-century Eastern Europe becomes greater still if one includes the notions of mass mobilization in the name of a nation, and ethnicity as a marker of loyalty – both of which were introduced in this region during World War I. Mark von Hagen’s excellent small book helps the reader to appreciate this conflict’s importance for Ukraine. He shows that the war did not just lead to the collapse of multinational empires, which gave Ukrainian nationalists a chance to build their state. Rather, imperial belligerents themselves prepared the ground for the future European order by promoting ethnic solidarity as a means of destroying each other. Both the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires tried to undermine each other by flaunting the notion of an autonomous and united postwar Poland, but it did not occur to the imperial bureaucrats that the future Polish state would be independent and not part of their empires. The Ukrainian case was more complex. The tsarist government wanted to reclaim Austria’s Ukrainian lands on the basis of ethnic criteria, but as “Russian” ethnic territories, while the Central Powers wanted a puppet Ukrainian state carved out of the Russian Empire, but not including Austria’s own Ukrainian lands.What both sides achieved in their conflicting efforts was the “militarization of the empires’ nationality problem” (P. 14) in general and the Ukrainian problem in particular. Ethnicity became a mobilization tool, and the notion that peasants on both sides of the Russo-Austrian border belonged to the same nationality became common currency. These were the ideological foundations of modern Ukraine. Even before the war broke out, the prominent Russian right-wing politician Petr Durnovo warned against the annexation of Eastern Galicia, because this would encourage “Little Russian separatism” in Russian Ukraine (P. 19). He was proven wrong in the short run, as there were no signs of this when the Russian army occupied the region duringAugust and September 1914. The official Russian rhetoric was that of reclaiming “a Russian land from time immemorial” (P. 20), but there was never a consistent government program of cultural absorption. The first governor of the region, Sergei Sheremetev, actually relied on pro-Russian, upper-class Poles to administer the land. The second governor, Georgii Bobrinsky, who is often presented in Ukrainian historiography as an ardent Russian nationalist and fervent assimilator, was in fact under constant attack from the right for his lack of missionary zeal. He had a long-standing conflict with the Synod’s plenipotentiary to Galicia, Archbishop Evlogii, who pushed for more radical measures 403 Ab Imperio, 1/2009 against the Uniate Church, but was eventually removed by the tsar. There were closures of Ukrainian newspapers, deportations of some nationalist activists, and (very late in the process) attempts to introduce the Russian language in courts and schools. Yet, Bobrinsky insisted on 75 percent of parishioners voting to “return” to Orthodoxy before an Orthodox priest could be sent to a parish vacated by a Uniate cleric who had fled. This did not advance religious conversion very far. The Russian administration also managed to antagonize its natural allies in Galicia, the local Russophiles, by refusing to appoint them to any positions of influence. Instead, unqualified and inept bureaucrats were imported from Russia. After...