4 ms·
Lwów was probably most Polish city in the region, and generally what's now Western Ukraine had skewed towards polish in cities and ukrainian in rural areas. In
by p_l 4y ago
Lwów was probably most Polish city in the region, and generally what's now Western Ukraine had skewed towards polish in cities and ukrainian in rural areas.
In reality, for as late as 1939 the main differences were language and religion, and considerable chunk of rural population considered themselves "locals" not linking with nation-state idea.
This reflects on Commonwealth being rather multi-ethnic and Austro-Hungarian occupation and repression changing little on the areas they took.
- bootsup 4y agoEastern and Central European history has less stable borders/states than Western/Northern Europeans and Americans often assume. Nationalities existed under various empires without much state-aspirational nationalism until the 19th century. People practicing various religions, speaking various languages lived under changing lords or free in the wild fields, then fled en masse in times of conflict and lived somewhere else. Forced mass-conversions and massacres changed demographics a number of times over the last thousand years. Bureaucracies remained largely intact through their posession by empires, soviets, then nation(ish)-states. Modern states in the region are real, but contingent, and shouldn't falsely be projected backwards through history.
- p_l 4y agoThat's why I mentioned the idea of "locals" - apparently during census in interwar Poland, some rural regions especially in modern West Ukraine had as much as over 20% declaring their nationality as just "locals".