The noble class of Ruthenians in what is now Western Ukraine enjoyed a number of legal and social privileges. They were referred to by the term shliakhta ( Ruthenian:шлѧхта, , ). Estimates of their numbers vary. According to one estimate, by the mid-19th century, there were approximately 32,000 Ukrainian nobles in the western Ukrainian territory of Galicia, over 25% of whom lived in 21 villages near the town of Sambir. They comprised less than 2% of the ethnic Ukrainian population.John-Paul Himka. (1988). Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Century. Edmonton: MacMillan Press in association with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta. pp. 213-215 Other estimates place the number of nobles at 67,000 people at the end of the 18th century and 260,000 by the end of the 19th century, or approximately 6% of the ethnic Ukrainian population.L. Slivka. (2004). УКРАЇНСЬКА ШЛЯХЕТСЬКА ЕЛІТА: ПРОЯВИ САМОСВІДОМОСТІ ДРІБНОЇ ШЛЯХТИ ГАЛИЧИНИ НАПРИКІНЦІ XVIII – НА ПОЧАТКУ ХХ ст. The Ukrainian Noble Elite: View of self-image of the Galician Petty Gentry from the end of the 18th until the beginning of the 20th centuries. (Ukrainian) Ivano-Frankivsk: Ivano-Frankivsk State Medical University. The nobles tended to live in compact settlements either in villages populated mostly by nobles or in particular areas of larger villages.
Unlike in the case of their Polish ethnic counterparts, the szlachta, the Ukrainian nobility in Galicia as a class played a marginal role in western Ukrainian society, which came to be dominated by Eastern Catholic clergy families, who formed a tight-knit hereditary caste that constituted the wealthiest and most highly educated group within the Ukrainian population. There was considerable overlap between priests and nobles, however, with many priestly families also belonging to the nobility. During the late 19th century until the 1930s, more than half of the Ukrainian priestly families in western Ukraine had noble origins.Шляхетська свідомість збереглася в багатьох галичан 2010 12-04. Interview with Liubov Slivka by Vazyl Moroz, newspaper Galicia (Ukrainian) Such families tended to identify themselves primarily as priests rather than as nobles.
History and political activity
Origins The territory of western Ukraine was part of the medieval state of Kievan Rus'. After its collapse, that state's westernmost part formed the independent Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia. By the end of the 14th century, this territory had become part of the Kingdom of Poland. Over the following centuries, most of the wealthy native landowning nobility were eventually Polonized by adopting the dominant Polish nationality and also converting to Roman Catholicism, thus completely assimilating into Polish society.
The nobility in western Ukraine that retained its non-Polish identity was generally poorer and developed as a social class in the 14th century.
Ukrainian or East Slavic origins
According to mainstream Ukrainian historiography, the western Ukrainian nobility developed out of a mixture of three groups of people: poor Rus' boyars (East Slavic aristocrats from the medieval era), descendants of princely retainers or druzhina (free soldiers in the service of the Rus' princes), and peasants who had been free during the times of the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia.Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Entry: Petty Gentry, written by Yaroslav Isaievych Volume 3 (1993). Published by University of Toronto. During the 12th and 13th centuries, fortified villages were built by Kievan Rus' and Galician princes to defend the local lucrative salt trade and the borders with the Kingdoms of Poland and Hungary.
These villages were located southwest of Lviv and Przemyśl in areas such as those surrounding Sambir, which in modern times have been the heartland for Ukrainian noble settlement. These villages were populated and defended by poor or minor boyars and druzhina. After the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia was absorbed by Jagiellonian Poland in the 14th century as the Ruthenian Voivodeship, the noble status of these poor boyars and druzhina was confirmed in exchange for military service to the Polish Crown; those poor boyars who failed to confirm their noble status were reduced to the level of serfs or, more frequently, town servants and assimilated into those social groups. The Ukrainian nobility's development thus involved a process of poor Rus boyars and druzhina changing their allegiance from the defunct Galicia-Volhynia and its princes to that of the Polish state and becoming legally integrated into the Polish system as nobles.
Polish origins
In the 1930s the Polish government attempted to assimilate western Ukrainian nobles into Polish culture. At that time, Polish researchers claimed that the Ukrainian nobles were descended from poor Polish nobles who became assimilated into Ukrainian culture by adopting the Ukrainian language and Orthodox religion of the peasants among whom they lived. They noted that the period of Polish rule involved the settlement of newly acquired Ukrainian territories by Poles and that the Ukrainian nobility's speech frequently used Polish words and expressions. The Polish historians also pointed out that the early 19th-century western Ukrainian nobles tended to ally themselves with Polish rather than Ruthenian or Ukrainian causes politically. This was seen as a vestige of their originally Polish roots.
Contemporary Ukrainian historians write that while it is likely that some poor Polish nobles may have assimilated into Ukrainian culture in isolated instances, the number of Ukrainian nobles was simply too large to be accounted for by assimilated Polish nobles. They also point out that those arguing in favour the Polish origins, while writing about the Polonization of wealthy landowning boyars (nobles), completely ignore the documented existence of poor boyars and druzhina who inhabited western Ukraine before Polish rule and failed to account for what happened to this large group of people after western Ukrainian lands were absorbed by Poland. Furthermore, given that the Polish culture was dominant and that for centuries Poles controlled the local administration, it seems unrealistic that large numbers of Poles would assimilate to the subservient Ukrainian culture and to adopt the Ukrainian Orthodox or Greek Catholic faiths, which were at a disadvantage relative to the Polish Roman Catholic religion.L. Slivka. (2007). Етносоціальний розвиток дрібної шляхти в Галичині (1772 - 1914 рр.) Ethnosocial flowering of the petty gentry in Galicia, 1772-1914. Dissertation for the Completion of the doctoral Degree at the Prykarpattia National University of Vasyl Stefanyk in Ivano-Frankivsk. Moreover, some western Ukrainian nobles lived in villages populated exclusively by nobles. Such nobles had little contact with Ukrainian peasants and thus no means to be assimilated by them. In terms of political allegiance, although Western Ukrainian nobles did side with Poles against Ukrainian peasants during much of the 19th century, the nobility's loyalty was exclusively political in nature and focused on the retention of their traditional privileges; there was little movement to adopt the Polish language or Roman Catholic religion by the Ukrainian nobles despite their political cooperation with the Poles.
During the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Western Ukrainian nobles enjoyed the legal rights and privileges of other nobles. They had their own court system and unlike Ukrainian peasants were not under the authority of the Polish landlords. Villages populated exclusively by nobles were typically self-governing, and nobles living in mixed towns were under the authority of their own governing bodies. The elected heads of self-governing Ukrainian noble communities were called prefects. Noble villages tended to be older than other villages and typically carried the names of the noble families associated with them, such as Kulchytsi (Kulchytsky family), Mokhnate (Mokhnatsky family), etc. Unlike many Polish nobles, western Ukrainian nobles did not own serfs and instead worked their own lands. Their relative poverty served as a barrier to assimilation with the wealthy Polish landowners and helped them to retain their identity. Nobles usually lived in compact groups occupying entire villages or parts of villages. Although Ukrainian nobles were scattered throughout western Ukraine, two regions had particularly large concentrations of them: southern Galicia, north of the Carpathian Mountains and south-west of the city of Lviv; and in the western parts of Podolia, to the east of Galicia in what is now the Ternopil Oblast. The most commonly used coats of arms by western Ukrainian nobles were Sas and Korczak.
Despite their obligation to serve the Polish crown, during the 15th through the 17th centuries, western Ukrainian nobles sometimes took part in anti-Polish uprisings. At this time, the Ukrainian nobles considered themselves honour-bound to defend the Orthodox Church. Due to their shared Orthodox faith, when the Moldavian prince Bogdan III the One-Eyed invaded Polish-controlled Galicia in 1509, the local Ukrainian nobles joined this invasion en masse. After the Polish victory over Moldavian forces in 1510, many of the Ukrainian nobles' lands were confiscated by the Polish authorities, although they were returned to them after the Ukrainian nobles claimed that they had been coerced into joining the Moldavians. In 1511, the Polish king declared that Ukrainian nobles were banned from participating in religious ceremonies in Moldavia.Michael Hrushevsky. (1908).Ukrainian nobility at the break of the 16th and 17th centuries A part of vol. 6 "History of Ukraine-Ruthenia", chapter 3 "Cultural and national relations: national composition and national element". Translation reviewed and corrected by the author (applies to Polish translation -sp). Printed in: History of Ukraine, Commemorative Volume, edited by W. Lipinski, Kiev Opposition from the western Ukrainian nobles delayed the implementation of the Union of Brest, the recognition by the Orthodox Church in Ukraine of the Pope, by several decades in Galicia. Noble resistance resulted in Galicia being the last part of Polish-ruled Ukraine to accept the Union with Catholicism. Several western Ukrainian nobles travelled east and joined the Zaporozhian Cossacks. One of them, Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, became the leader of the Cossacks in the early 17th century. He remained loyal to Poland.
During the times when western Ukraine was part of the Kingdom of Poland, the nobles had a duty to defend the state they were in. Accordingly, they were obligated to participate in regular military reviews where they presented themselves and their weapons. The relative poverty of the Ukrainian nobility was evident in the fact that few owned armour, very few could afford to come on horseback, and they were typically armed only with sabres, muskets or even small calibre bird-hunting rifles.
Under Austria-Hungary and into the twentieth century
Abolition of serfdom and loss of status