Golovna Ruska Rada

Golovna Rus’ka Rada 

a political organization of the Ukrainian bourgeois intelligentsia and the leaders of the Uníate clergy in Galicia; it had a pro-Austrian tendency. It was organized in L’vov on May 2, 1848, on the initiative of Austrian authorities. Uniate bishop lakhimovich was chairman.

The program of the Golovna Rus’ka Rada was limited to such demands as the division of Galicia into independent administrative units-eastern Ukrainian and western Polish; the unification of all Ukrainian lands (eastern Galicia, Bukovina. and Transcarpathia) into one province under Austrian authority; and the use of Ukrainian in the schools and in government notices. The Rada created cultural-enlightenment organizations (including the Galytsko-Rus-skaia-Matytsa) and a national club and published the newspaper Zoria galyts’ka in Ukrainian.

In political questions, the Golovna Rus’ka Rada was allied with the Austrian monarchist counterrevolution. It welcomed the suppression by Russian tsarism of the revolutionary movements in Poland and Hungary in 1849. It favorably received the agrarian reform of 1848, which actually did not give anything to the peasantry, declared those who struggled for land enemies, and called on the populace to submit to the Austrian authorities. The Golovna Rus’ka Rada was dissolved in 1851.

REFERENCES

Franko, I. “Panshchyna ta ii skasuvannia ν 1848 r. ν Galychyni.” In his book Tvory, vol. 19. Kiev, 1956.
Miller, I. S. “Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie i natsional’naia bor’ba ν Galitsii ν 1848 g.” In Revoliutsii 1848–1849, vol. 1. Moscow. 1952. Pages 390–417.