Ukrainians in the First World War

SEMINAR 5

TOPIC 5

WORLD WAR I AND REVOLUTION

Ukrainians in the First World War

In 1914 a great war started in Europe which involved many countries in the world. Two powerful military blocks - the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria) and the Entente (Great Britain, France, Russia, and others) - tried to redraw the map of the world.

For Ukraine this war was especially tragic as Ukrainian soldiers had to kill each other (3.5 million Ukrainians fought in the Russian army and 250,000 served in the Austrian army).

At the beginning the war went well for Russia. When Russia occupied Western Ukraine in 1914 it decided to eradicate the Ukrainian national movement there. The tsarist government proclaimed Western Ukraine to be an “ancient Russian land” that now “reunited forever with Mother Russia”. All Ukrainian cultural institutions and periodicals were shut down. Russification policy in schools was introduced. Russian officials and Russophiles (Moskvophiles) replaced the old bureaucracy. The Greek Catholic church, a hallmark of West Ukrainian uniqueness, was persecuted. Moreover, the head of Greek Catholic Church was the Roman Pope. That made it very difficult for Russia to control the church. Thus Russia decided to eradicate this church gradually. Hundreds of Greek Catholic priests were exiled to Russia and replaced by their Orthodox counterparts who urged peasants to convert to Orthodoxy.[1] As a result, about 200 Greek Catholic parishes[2] were converted into Orthodoxy.

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