Page:The New Europe - Volume 4.djvu/154

Rh the old methods of repression, and the Ukrainian language of instruction, which had been partially introduced after the Revolution, was again banished from the schools. In short, the movement was driven underground, and to the superficial observer it was for the time possible to deny its very existence. Indeed, the Russian nationalists adopted in regard to the Ukraine the very arguments by which the Magyars so long befooled Western Europe in regard to the subject nationalities of Hungary. It is, of course, true that the Ukrainian and the Great Russian are closer kinsmen, both racially and linguistically, than any other two branches of the Slavonic race. But against the common theory that Ukrainian is a mere local dialect of Russian may be set the formal pronouncement of the Petrograd Academy of Sciences in 1905, recognising it as an entirely distinct language. The essential difference is one of temperament and political outlook, for in the South the old democratic traditions of the Cossack Republic have never died out. Persecution only served to accentuate this difference, and fanned dying ashes into flame. Never even in the history of national movements was there a more perverse example of a government kindling, by its stupid intolerance, centrifugal tendencies among a population which might easily have been appeased with a tithe of what it afterwards came to demand.

The political interaction between Russia and Austria-Hungary has been very great for at least a generation past, despite the tremendous barriers which impede intellectual intercourse. This was at once apparent in 1905; for, it was really the Russian Revolution which made Universal Suffrage a living issue in Hungary, and carried it to speedy triumph in Austria. Here the chief obstacle to reform was the aristocratic caste, which still dominated the Polish Club, and the chief motive of their opposition was fear of the submerged Ruthene democracy, which so eagerly awaited political recognition. The Poles skilfully used their special position in the Reichsrat to extract unjust concessions at the expense of their rivals. Of the 103 seats for Galicia, 78 were assigned to the Poles, and only 25 to the Ruthenes, whereas, on a basis of population the proportions should have been nearly equal. None the less, the breach had been effected, and henceforth the Ukrainian Club was a factor