Modernization and nationalization in Batkivshchyna, Ukrainian village correspondence in an Eastern Galician newspaper, 1886-1889

• Main Author: Kowal, Tami
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1993/2641

The Ukrainian populist press in late nineteenth century Eastern Galicia serves as a window to the modernization and nationalization of the Ukrainian peasantry. This study, which functions on this premise, examines the Ukrainian populist newspaper 'Batkivshchyna' 1886-1889. Through an examination of the modernization and nationalization of the peasantry of other nations, such as France and French Canada, and a comparison of these peasant societies with the Ukrainian peasantry in late nineteenth century Eastern Galicia, a sense of continuity emerges. It becomes apparent that the modernization and nationalization of the peasantry was a common phenomenon throughout nineteenth century Europe (and European societies abroad) and that in their effort to achieve modernity and national identity, Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia were proceeding in the path of other nations. Finally, a brief examination of the continued rise of the Ukrainian national movement 1890-1925, in the Ukrainian diaspora (Canada and Brazil), as well as in Eastern Galicia and Eastern (Dnipro) Ukraine, illustrates that the modernization and nationalization of the Ukrainian peasantry documented by the Ukrainian populist press, did not represent a brief moment in history, but rather an ongoing process in the reshaping of the Ukrainian peasant into an active member of the imagined community of nation. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)