Information on the thesis

The dissertation investigates the ideas and practices of the three Ukrainian
conservative environments in Galicia in the first quarter of the XXth century –
Russophiles, Ukrainian Christian-social movement and Greek Catholic Church – with
special attention to the national-political dilemmas of this time. In the context of
contemporary methodological discussions about the nature of conservatism, his
Ukrainian Galician variants are considered as a style of thinking about politics and
society, but not as an ideology. The period of the first quarter of the XXth century was
chosen because of new dilemmas, which conservatives confronted: thr spread of
modern ideologies (nationalism, socialism), secularization and the growing mass of
political processes. The territorial scope of the research is, first of all, Eastern Galicia
initially within the framework of the Habsburg Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, and
later – of the Lviv, Ternopil, and Stanislaviv provinces of interwar Poland.
The study is performed on the basis of a wide source material, in particular,
contemporary press, memoirs, official documents of political organizations and parties,
private correspondence. The most part of unpublished documents were taken from a few
Ukrainian and Polish archives: Central National Historical Archive in Lviv, Department
of Manuscripts of the Vasyl Stefanyk Lviv National Scientific Library of Ukraine,
Department of Manuscripts of the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature, Krakow
National Archive and Department of Manuscripts of Jagiellonian Library in Krakow.
The dissertation presents an analysis of the Russophile conservative idea, its main
principles and problems with which it encountered in the first quarter of the XXth
century. Attention is paid to finding solutions to these problems and their impact on the
ideological evolution and practical activity of Galician Russophiles. In the analysis of
the Ukrainian Christian-social movement the concept of «organic labor» was considered
as the foundation of this environment’s conservatism, as well as a vision of the
problems of the Polish-Ukrainian relations in Galicia. The influence of modern political
culture on the problems of creation of Christian-social political organizations and the
functioning of the «Ruslan» newspaper was studied. Also, different types of
conservative thought within the Greek Catholic Church were analyzed, where, in search
of answers to the dilemmas of a new era, existed both ultraconservatives and
moderately liberals among the higher hierarchs and priests in the province.
Separate part of the research is the comparison of Ukrainian conservative
environments with the Polish, Slovenian, Czech and the Great Ukrainian conservatives,
which allows us to understand clearly the dilemmas of Ukrainian conservatism in
Galicia in the first quarter of the XXth century and their similarity to the general
problems of conservative movements in Central and Eastern Europe.
Key words: conservatism, Galicia, Galician Russophiles, Christian-social
movement, Greek Catholic Church, Central-Eastern Europe