ECONOMIC AND ADMINISTRATIVE ISSUES OF THE UKRAINIAN POPULATION AT THE SESSIONS OF THE GALICIAN REGIONAL SEJM (1908–1914)

Abstract

The economic and administrative issues of Ukrainians in the activities of ambassadors of the Galician Regional Sejm in 1908–1914, on the eve of the First World War are studied in this article. The author aims to identify the main economic and administrative problems of the population of Galicia, to find out the number of contributions submitted by Ukrainian ambassadors and their effectiveness, to reveal the overall activity of the Ukrainian representation of Sejm and individual political parties, the most active deputies and those who behaved more passively. In particular, the contributions of the Ukrainian representation of Sejm raised the issues of providing assistance to residents to combat the consequences of natural disasters, construction of infra­structure, solving social problems, promoting agriculture, adopting regional laws in the economic sphere and amending them, allocating new administrative and judicial units within the region. The problems of the work allow to study the most urgent needs of everyday life of Galician Ukrainians, to find out how quickly and effectively they were solved by the local legislative authorities. It was established that it was difficult for Ukrai­nian ambassadors to solve the problems of the region's inhabitants, which was due to the small number of Ukrainian deputies of the Sejm and the difficulty of adopting laws, especially their approval by the central government of the Habsburg monarchy in Vienna. Nevertheless, Ukrainian figures pursued an active policy in the Galician Sejm, regardless of which political parties they belonged to. Despite the general differences between the Ukrainian and Polish political movements, Ukrainian deputies tried to use the support of some Polish politicians to solve problems in the economic and administrative sphere, for example, on some issues cooperated with the People’s Party.

Keywords: Galician Regional Sejm, ambassador, deputy, Ukrainians, Poles, economic and admi­nistrative issues.