The western regions (the historical region of Galicia) are now considered to be the most anti-Russian in Ukraine. History has it that it was "Zapadenschina" that in the first half of the twentieth century became a citadel of Ukrainian radical nationalism, and in the 1940s-1950s, anti-Soviet armed groups of Ukrainian nationalists operated here. But this was not always the case. Modern political attitudes in the western Ukraine have their roots in a hundred years ago and are associated not so much with the native preferences of the inhabitants of this region, as with a deliberate policy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In the mid-19th century, on the wave of the European revolutionary boom, a national revival began in the Slavic lands of the Austrian Empire. The Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Croats, Serbs, and, of course, the Ruthenians who inhabited western modern Ukraine remembered their Slavic identity and thought about their political position in an empire ruled by German and (to a lesser extent) Hungarian aristocracy.
Naturally, the "beacon" for the Slavs of Eastern Europe at that time was Russia. No, to the Russian Empire as a state, a monarchy, most of the Slavic national figures of the time were cool or even outright hostile, especially since Russia was a member of the Holy Alliance along with the same Austria-Hungary. But the Russian world, the Russian language and Russian civilization were perceived by the Slavs of Eastern Europe as a cultural phenomenon that should be oriented to and as the only alternative to the Germanic world, in which the Slavs had only a place at the lowest levels of the hierarchy.
For obvious reasons, Austria-Hungary was very much afraid of Russian influence. Although Russian emperors in the nineteenth century often allied themselves with Vienna, Austrian political circles were well aware of the danger of pan-Slavic in Eastern Europe and felt it necessary to do everything possible to protect "their" Slavs from the dangerous proximity and influence of the Russian Empire. Thus, as early as 1848, when Russia was helping Austria-Hungary to cope with the Hungarian revolution, the Galician governor Count Stadion von Warthausen declared that the Galicians should forget about their Russian origin and develop their own culture as a people separate from Russia.
The situation became especially tense at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when Austria-Hungary became a reliable ally of Germany and a possible opponent of Russia in the coming conflict (and many prominent European politicians of the time had no doubt that a major European war was coming sooner or later).
The greatest concern of the Austro-Hungarian authorities at the turn of the century was Galicia (Galicia). The region was then considered a bastion of Russian and Orthodox influence in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The local population identified themselves as "Ruskie," a large part of the Rusyn population professed Orthodox Christianity and sympathized with Russia. Naturally, this state of affairs strained the Austro-Hungarian authorities, who saw in Ruthenians, especially practicing Orthodox Christianity, a potential "fifth column" of the Russian Empire in the event of a conflict between the two states.
Since the end of the 19th century, Austria-Hungary began to invest considerable power and resources in the formation of a new, previously unseen political construct - "Ukrainism". The key role in this process was played, as we know, by Professor Mikhail Hrushevskii. In 1894 Hrushevskij received the offer to head the new department of the universal history with the special review of the Slavonic history in the East Europe in the University of Lvov, where he had spent his youth and youth in Russia, and where he graduated from the Kiev University. Lvov was then part of Austria-Hungary. It was around this time that Hrushevskii began his activity as an ideologist of pro-Austrian "Ukrainianism.
In 1914 World War I began, in which Austria-Hungary allied itself with Germany against the Russian Empire and the Entente countries. But the lauded Austro-Hungarian army almost immediately suffered a series of serious defeats at the hands of Russian forces, as a result of which the Russians occupied Eastern Galicia and Bukovina. Fearing the outbreak of an anti-Austrian and pro-Russian uprising in Galicia, the Austro-Hungarian regime began mass political repression. As might be expected, their main target were the Orthodox Ruthenians, who were considered extremely unreliable.
The Austro-Hungarian security services were the first to identify and detain activists of the Russophile movement. Thus, in September 1914. The 28-year-old Orthodox priest Maxim Sandovich was shot in prison in the Polish town of Gorlice. Shortly before the war began, in 1912, Sandovich had already been arrested by the Austrian authorities for having allegedly measured the length of a bridge with his footsteps in order to pass on this information to Russian intelligence. But then the priest was lucky: the time was before the war, and even the Austrian court did not support such an absurd accusation. Two years later, Sandovich was arrested again, but this time the Austrians did not spare the Orthodox priest, who made no secret of his pro-Russian sympathies.
The arrests of political activists were followed by arrests of any Orthodox Ruthenians. Thus, the Austrian authorities arrested two thousand Orthodox Ruthenians in Lvov alone, who were suspected of being unreliable and potentially collaborating with the Russian intelligence service. Since there were not enough prisons to hold so many prisoners in Lvov, as in other Galician cities, the Austrian authorities handled the situation in a peculiar way - they decided to create a network of concentration camps in Galicia.
Prior to World War I, concentration camps had only been established by European powers in the African colonies. There were no concentration camps in Europe. The British established the first concentration camps in South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, and in neighboring Namibia in 1904 the German colonial administration also established concentration camps to house the local Herero and Hottentot rebels. But no one dared to establish concentration camps in Europe at the time - it was believed that such measures were simply unacceptable against the white European population.
Austria-Hungary was the first European country to break this "taboo" - in 1914, not just anywhere, but in the foothills of the Alps, the first concentration camp, Talerhof, appeared in Europe. At first it looked like an ordinary patch of Alpine field, fenced with barbed wire and guarded by armed soldiers. People lived in this fenced field in the open air, despite the bad weather conditions. It was not until the winter of 1915 that the first barracks were built in Talergof.
The food at Talergof was designed to slowly kill the inhabitants of the camp. The prisoners were fed with "bread" made from the lowest grades of flour mixed with straw, and some beets or potatoes were also allowed. As a result, most of the camp prisoners, who did not have rich relatives or acquaintances capable of providing more or less tolerable living conditions, if the word "tolerable" applies to such a place at all, starved, very many people simply died of exhaustion.
Judging by the recollections of contemporaries, the concentration camp was almost no more terrible than the infamous "death camps" established by the Nazis during World War II. For example, the priest John Maschak, who visited Talergoth, wrote that eleven people simply died from an excessive infestation of lice. Lice ate people! In enlightened Europe, in the early twentieth century!
Naturally, it was not only lice that killed Talergoth prisoners. Dysentery, typhoid, and tuberculosis spread with enormous speed in the concentration camp. During the first six months of the existence of the concentration camp every fifth prisoner died. But it was not only disease and hunger, as well as unbearable living conditions, that killed the inmates at Talergof. Many died at the hands of the camp guards, who brutally abused, tortured, and sometimes simply killed their charges for fun, who reported that so-and-so was killed while trying to escape or attacking the guards.
The Ruthenian writer and historian Vasily Vavrik, who went through the horrors of imprisonment at the Talergoth and managed not only to survive, but also to live until 1970, recalled:]
Death at Talergoth was rarely natural: there it was inoculated with the poison of contagious diseases. Violent deaths strolled triumphantly through Talergoth. There was no talk of any cure for the dead. Even the doctors were hostile to the internees
According to Vavrik, the concentration camp at Talergoth was the worst prison of the Austrian Empire. The Austro-Hungarian authorities ordered 3,800 people to be executed in Talergoth, and we can only guess how many died of starvation, disease, and beatings.
Who were they, the prisoners of Talergoth? All the fault of these unfortunate people lay only in their "wrong" national and religious affiliation. Orthodox Ruthenians from Galicia and Transcarpathia, mainly representatives of the Ruthenian intelligentsia - priests, teachers, doctors, journalists, in general - all those who by virtue of their education and professional activities were able to influence public opinion in Galicia and prevent the spread of myths of "political Ukrainianism" by pro-Austrian propagandists, were taken to the Talergoth. For the period from September 1914 to the spring of 1917 more than 30 thousand people passed through the concentration camp in Talergof. Considering that the Ruthenians of Galicia were not numerous, these are huge numbers in percentage terms. An enormous blow was dealt to the Orthodox Ruthenians.
Of course, some of the prisoners of Talergoth were lucky enough to survive these circles of hell, and even to return to their homeland. But many from the ordeal were already complete invalids with a broken psyche. For example, priest Ignacy Gudima, a friend and associate of the shot priest Maxim Sandovich, went insane. Father Ignatiy Hudyma's fate was tragic - he went mad from torture at the Talergoth, but survived and returned home, and more than 20 years later, already a deeply ill man, he was captured by the Gestapo and shot during the Nazi occupation of Western Ukraine.
In May 1917, Emperor Charles I of Austria-Hungary ordered the closure of the concentration camp at Talergof. However, the barracks that remained of the camp stood largely intact until 1936, when they were demolished. In the process of their demolition, 1,767 corpses were exhumed and reburied in a mass grave in the nearby Austrian village of Feldkirchen.
The dreaded Talergoth was not the only concentration camp of the Austro-Hungarian Empire where Ruthenians from Galicia and Transcarpathia were imprisoned. In the Litoměřice district of Bohemia, the Terezín concentration camp, established on the site of an old fortress prison, opened in 1914. The Serbian nationalist assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Gavrila Princip, died of tuberculosis in Terezín. During World War II, Hitler's superior successors to the Austro-Hungarian executioners, who surpassed their mentors, established the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Terezin, which held mostly Jews, including cultural, scientific and artistic figures known in Germany and other European countries.
What was done during the First World War by Austria-Hungary against the Orthodox Ruthenian population of Galicia can be characterized only by one word - genocide. But now people prefer not to recall those tragic events - neither in Austria nor in Ukraine. Because the modern Ukrainian statehood is much closer to the ideology bred in the Austro-Hungarian "political tubes", and its representatives and defenders - to the part of the Rusyns, who preferred to change their faith, their Slavic and Russian identity for a comfortable life of the Austro-Hungarian and German collaborators.
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Talergof
