Previous Subchapter → 1.1 History - Ukraine in Russia
While the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dwarfed by Russia it still controlled large portions of Europe; What the Russian Empire was to Europe’s East, Austria-Hungary was to its centre, the Austro-Hungarians had lasted longer than the Russians did, but like the Russians they were being brought towards disaster by the war.
In October 1918 the Hungarians decided to leave the Empire and form their own republic, spelling the end for Austria-Hungary and leaving the Empire’s scattered territories to decide for themselves what nations to join or build. The remnants were achieving self determination!
But with little experience in nation building, they weren’t able to form nationalistic ties through shared values, a kind of “civic nationalism”, instead relying on the abstract concepts of blood and race, “ethno-nationalism”, demanding a “Hungary for the Hungarians” a “Poland for the Polish”, a “Romania for the Romanians”, and so on.
This was where the 2 new ideas of nationhood were starting to butt heads, territorial integrity, every nation-state having its own land and borders, was hard to realise when the populations of these splintered territories weren’t neatly packed into different corners, where there were multiple populations each new state wanted the land for themselves, inside their borders, everyone wanted a piece of the pie, how could all of these groups have self determination, when they each determined the land was theirs?
On the 1st of November 1918 the Ukrainians formed what they called the “West Ukrainian People’s Republic” to represent regions of the former Austro-Hungarian territory where Ukrainians could be found, these regions were Galicia, Bukovina and Carpathian Ruthenia.
But there were other groups in these regions too, in Galicia around half of the population was Polish, in Bukovina a notable portion of the territory was Romanian and in Ruthenia a decent chunk was Slovakian.
The Polish formed their own state called the Polish Republic, the Romanians joined the neighbouring Kingdom of Romania, and the Slovaks united with the Czechs to form Czechoslovakia, leaving the Ukranians of West Ukraine facing 3 other countries that wanted the territory for themselves.
Bukovina was almost immediately lost to Romania but the other 2 territories, Galicia and Ruthenia, were fought over, suddenly Ukrainians were represented by 2 different states and both of them were under threat.