Jewish Life in the Eastern Galician Triangle, 1860-1939

The Eastern Galician Triangle made its way into history as an ethnically and religiously heterogeneous population which at the beginning of the 20th century had been inhabiting 49 eastern districts of the Habsburg crown land. During the considered time frame of eight decades, the population consisted of 3 - 5.5 million people; 60-66% of those were Greek Catholic Ukrainians, 20-30% were Roman Catholic Polish people and 10-13% were Jews. Additionally, there were small groups of Germans and Armenians. The project centres on the social co-existence of Eastern Galician Jews with their neighbours in various social milieus in the countryside, in smaller and larger towns, in the oil producing area around Boryslav. It is the aim of the project to on the one hand reconstruct the social co- existence as detailed as possible based on individual perspectives and to on the other hand put it into an economic-historic and socio-historical context. This includes the change of the political framework in that Eastern Galician area between 1860 and 1939 starting in the time of the Habsburg monarchy and continuing through to the Polish nation-state. The sheer volume of sources for this project consist of comprehensive economic and population statistics, numerous social-historical sources and the contemporary Jewish, Polish and Ukrainian media; it further draws from ego-documents mainly memoirs and literary personal testimonials from the different cultural and social spheres. The interconnectedness of those sources facilitates an approximation towards numerous forms of social co-existence without losing sight of the bigger picture with its main strands. This project makes use of an innovative method by combining socio-historical approaches with numerous individual perspectives. These perspectives not only represent three ethno-cultural communities; they are also structured according to social and gender-related aspects. What is more, these aspects are to be compared thereby contributing to a more comprehensive but simultaneously more differentiated overall picture. The overarching term is culture, which here includes not only the symbolic order with its encryption and codes, the attitudes, norms and values but also experiences, ways of perception, of thinking and processing which are shown in our behaviour. Further, the term encompasses the immediate environment of people, their economic and social positions and their living conditions. Accordingly, intercultural contacts, conflicts and delimitations between the Eastern Galician Jews and their Ukrainian and Polish neighbours will be reconstructed and analysed as a connected whole. Due to the interconnectedness of a lifeworld approach and the socio-historical perspective the development which went hand in hand with social, economic and political changes between 1860 and 1939 will be spelled out and will illustrate intercultural patterns of perception and behaviour.

The Eastern Galician Ukrainian-Polish-Jewish triangle had been forming since the 13th century, and was shaped by feudal society. Ethnic-religious assignments corresponded to social ones: the predominantly Polish Roman Catholic nobility, the mostly Ukrainian peasants of Eastern Christian rite, Jewish intermediaries between the landlords and peasants and between town and country. On the individual level, these cultural and social patterns were inherited and relived from generation to generation. The project focuses on the period of most intense change in this triangle between 1860 and 1939. Individually, for both men and women, the transition from cyclically repeatable to open-ended life courses became apparent. Structurally, the traditional social hierarchy tied to land ownership came under pressure from the capital and knowledge. Socially, notions of modern nation or class society gained increasing importance over the old classifications. Parallel to and out of the traditional social structures, new kinds of structures emerged. Politico-legally, civil equality in the 1860s and the transition from the Habsburg multiethnic state to the Polish nation-state after 1918 were decisive. The influence of these transformations on intercultural coexistence was examined in terms of their individual, structural, and political-legal levels. Self-testimonies and biographies; police and court records, files of the political administration; documents of various business societies and numerous civil associations were evaluated. Contemporary fiction contributed to the understanding of intellectual currents and the emotional and psychological sphere of the period under study. The selection of sources took into account not only ethnic-religious but also local, social, professional and gender perspectives. Cases of civil conflicts, criminal offenses and political tendencies were examined using the example of the Stanislau district Court as well as some other district courts before and after 1918. On one hand, the increase in the potential for social conflict between the two world wars was noticeable. The determining factor was the preventive-repressive attitude of the young nation-state towards the majority non-Polish population of Eastern Galicia, which in turn favored radical sentiments among this population. Not coincidentally, local cells of the Communist Party, for example, had mainly Ukrainian and Jewish members. On the other hand, there are numerous case studies of cross-cultural cooperation in the everyday struggle for survival of village and small-town residents. Successful institutionalized cooperation developed around the issue of labor migration, common to all three sub-societies, in 1928-1939. Changes in the occupational and social structure gave rise to new fields of intercultural contacts, illustrated in the project on the basis of the artistic and medical milieus. As long as the necessary political and legal framework existed, these three sub-societies, despite all the tensions and conflicts, had the potential to continue living together peacefully until 1939.