Timothy Snyder, The Making of Modern Ukraine, Lecture #12: Habsburg Curiosity
For those who are not familiar with Timothy Snyder, he is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He speaks five and reads ten European languages, including both Ukrainian and Russian.
His book, “Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin,” which I highly recommend, is not only meticulously researched, it is essential reading for a complete understanding of WWII as well as Europe today.
I have undertaken to summarize all of Snyder’s lectures. I am also following along in the reading (see syllabus link below), which has not only been enlightening, but enjoyable. As always, my summaries are meant to be a guide, rather than a substitution for Snyder’s lectures.
Timothy Snyder’s twelfth lecture for his course, The Making of Modern Ukraine, focused on the Habsburg Empire.
The Habsburgs were simultaneously a family, a dynasty, and an empire. They managed to control a sizable chunk of the world’s territory simply by arranging strategic marriages. (“Let others wage war: thou, happy Austria, marry.”) At one point, the Habsburgs had control over the Spanish Empire, the Portuguese Empire, the Dutch Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire, putting all previous and following empires to shame. Eventually, the broader Habsburg line died out and their territory was limited to Central and Eastern Europe.
Where does Ukraine fit into the 600-year history of the Habsburgs? In 1772 the Habsburgs annexed Galicia from Poland. Galicia, located in what is now southeastern Poland and Western Ukraine, was an ethnically diverse region, home to Jews, Germans, Armenians, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Roma, and Ukrainians. Although Polish landlords still served as the Galician ruling class, the position of Ukrainians and other ethnic groups improved under the “enlightened monarchs.” Serfs were granted personal freedoms, such as the right to marry without the landowner’s permission, and work corvees were limited. In 1775, educational reforms allowed for instruction in Ukrainian, which, over time, resulted in a Ukrainian intelligentsia.
While conditions improved only a little for peasants under the Habsburgs, the Habsburg dynasty provided a haven for Ukrainian intellectuals. Russian control over Eastern Ukraine had resulted in bans of the Ukrainian language. (Banning a language is the first step toward stamping out a nascent national identity.) But in Vienna Ukrainians were free to write in their own language, and to join forces with Ukrainians in Russia. By the mid-nineteenth century there was a veritable explosion in Ukrainian political aspirations.
One thing that emerges throughout Ukraine’s long, fraught history is the development of the idea of “ethnic” nationalities. Before the 18th century, which was a turning point for many European political developments, the ethnic identity of a population was irrelevant. Native populations were governed by foreign rulers who had either married into royal families or conquered them through wars, and the vast majority of the wealth and land was owned and controlled by an elite who neither spoke the language nor shared the culture of the people they dominated. When the idea of ethnic identity started gaining ground, ethnic nationalities emerged, presenting a challenge to the ruling class.
The idea of nationality defined in ethnic terms has proven to be both a blessing and a curse. Who decides what the ethnic identity of a nation will be? And what does that imply for those cultural and linguistic groups which do not fit into that definition of national identity?
You can watch the twelfth lecture for The Making of Modern Ukraine here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO_SuY-4Sow
The syllabus for the course is here: https://snyder.substack.com/p/syllabus-of-my-ukraine-lecture-class
You can watch all of Timothy Snyder’s lectures for The Making of Modern Ukraine here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_
You can read my summaries of his lectures here: https://ericaverr.medium.com/
Erica Verrillo is the author of the Phoenix Rising Trilogy (Random House). Her short work has appeared in over a dozen publications. She is also the author of the definitive reference guide for treating myalgic encephalomyelitis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Treatment Guide, now in its second edition (first edition, St. Martin’s). She holds degrees from Tufts University (BA — History) and Syracuse University (MA — Linguistics) as well as doctoral work in Linguistics, Anthropology, and Speech Communication. Her professional life includes: Spanish language editor for the journal Mesoamerica, linguistics instructor (Dartmouth), Spanish and ESL instructor (Syracuse University), classical musician (Oxford Symphony Orchestra), Mayan linguist (SUNY Albany), and director of a non-profit NGO for Mayan refugees. She is the president of the American Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to to serving the needs of patients and caregivers through support, advocacy, and education. Her writing blog, Publishing … and Other Forms of Insanity, has received nearly 8 million page views. You are welcome to visit.
