The Real History of Galicia

Galicia. Many consider this region to be a kind of heart of Ukraine. I will not comment on the story that some very sincere Ukrainians live there. I always say that Ukrainians are the same everywhere.

But the fact is that in Galicia, despite the policy of Russification, it was the Ukrainian cultural space that was able to survive, and from there, after the collapse of the USSR, it returned to the rest of Ukraine. In my opinion, a fact.

In the first presidential elections during independence, Galicians voted for Chornovil, then for Kravchuk against Kuchma, then against Yanukovych. Galicians were active participants in two Maidans.

And what is the power of historical figures originally from Galicia? King Danylo, Stepan Bandera, Ivan Franko, Les Kurbas, Petro Konashevich Sahaidachny. And the list can go on for a very long time.

It was here, in Galicia, that the OUN was born, and later the UPA, which originated in neighboring Volhynia, was active. So what is the secret of Galicia? Is there really a little more Ukraine here than in other regions? We will look for answers in the past.

My name is Akim Galimov, and this is a true story. [music] First, let's figure out what Galicia is. Many people think that this is only the territory of the Lviv region, but no, friends, since the 10th century, it has been customary to divide the historical region of Galicia into two parts: eastern and western.

Western is part of the territory of modern Poland. And the eastern one includes Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and most of Ternopil regions. In addition to the three Ukrainian regions, Eastern Galicia also includes part of modern Polish territories along the Sien River.

The city of Przemysl, or Przemysl in Polish, is the largest in these areas. Ukrzaliznytsia launched the first available train to the European Union here. It is the most popular among Ukrainians crossing the border.

Przemysl stands right on the Siang River. Historically, it was a border fortress of Rus', so some in Ukrainian society consider these territories historically ours. Perhaps some of you remember the full lyrics of the song that became our anthem, with the words of Pavlo Chubynsky: "Ukraine is not dead yet.

" The second verse contained the words: "Let us rise, brothers, into a bloody battle, from the sian home." These lines once caused controversy in the Verkhovna Rada, because they could be regarded as a territorial encroachment by Ukrainians on the territory of Poland. That is why, after long discussions, only the first verse and chorus were left as the official text of the anthem.

But this is only a historical context. There is no need to demand that the Poles return Przemysl. Modern civilized people, unlike Russians, live within modern internationally recognized borders and do not raise this topic. And this, by the way, also applies to some Poles, who from time to time mention something about the eastern borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth three hundred years ago.

All this is in the past. And the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Russian Empire with the USSR, and the state of Rus with Kiev in the center and the Rurikovichs at the head. So, we have outlined the borders of Eastern Galicia.

Of course, the borders changed at different times. For example, regarding the events of 1229, our chronicler noted that Danylo Romanovych gathered the Galician land from Biberka to the Ushica and Prut rivers. That is, in the realities of the 10th century, Bukovina and the southern part of the Khmelnytskyi region were also Galician lands.

It was only later that the regions of Bukovina and Podillia appeared. But in general, when people in Ukraine say Galicia, they mean the historical region of eastern Galicia: Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, most of Ternopil regions, and part of modern Poland before the Second World War. If we look at how Ukrainians voted during the first presidential elections, we can clearly see the borders of eastern Galicia within Ukraine.

Galicians voted for Chornovol. Galicia is also visible on this map. It shows the concentration of churches of the Moscow Patriarchate as of 2025. As we can see, in the Lviv region, the communities have completely expelled the Moscow Patriarchate.

Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil have almost completed this process. What is the phenomenon of such patriotism of Galicians? Let's look for answers in history. More than a thousand years ago, a prototype of a state, impressive in its scale, existed on the territory of modern Galicia.

[music] 50 km from Lviv, in the villages of Dubrovo and Stilsko, there is a unique place where our ancestors lived long before the formation of Rus. This place is called Stilske hillfort.

A huge complex of caves and defensive structures in the centuries was as developed as a city for those times. Its territory reached 250 hectares, and the total length of the defensive walls was 10 km.

For comparison, Kyiv at that time had an area of only 10 hectares. Ukrainian archaeologists discovered this site in the 1970s, and the first thorough excavations there began in 1987. In Stilsk, archaeologists found an entire temple complex consisting of rock-cut ovens.

The largest of them has a depth of almost 40 m. The settlement had a powerful system of fortifications. From the west it was protected by mountains.

To the north and half of the hillfort were deep ravines, and to the east was an earthen rampart with a wooden palisade and a ditch behind it. These two-meter fragments of the ramparts have survived to this day.

Archaeologists also found a large number of ceramics, tools, as well as weapons and jewelry, which speak of the status of the local residents. It is believed that this city was the capital of the Croats.

Only not those who live in Croatia today, but those who once lived in Ukraine. Yes, friends, there were such people. I am now talking about the Slavic tribe of White Croats.

Historically, it lived precisely within the borders of Eastern Galicia, and then some moved to the Balkans. during the great migration of peoples.

It was these immigrants who would become the ancestors of modern Croats. However, some White Croats remained to live in the old town. This, for example, is mentioned by the Byzantine emperor Constantine the Purple-born in his work on governing the empire.

Archaeologists also put forward the theory that this mysterious city was founded by other Slavic tribes, the Dulibs or Volhynians. Whoever founded it, the remains of this impressive complex today testify to the fact that a developed Slavic civilization existed on the territory of Galicia even in the pre-Christian period.

It is believed that Prince Vladimir the Great was the first to annex these territories to Russia. There is a mention of this in the Tale of Bygone Years. Later, Bolesław the Brave, the first Polish king, competed for power in these lands.

But after long disputes, the territory of the White Croats returned to the rule of Kyiv, and from the mid-11th to the mid- 14th century, the territory of modern eastern Galicia was an integral part of Rus' as an independent state. We talked about this in detail in our episode, about how the territorial disputes between Poland and Ukraine began.

[music] At the end of the 11th century, Rus', like all the states of Europe at that time, began to break up into principalities, which were attached to certain representatives of the ruling dynasty. Thus, in 1084, the separate Principality of Galicia was formed.

It was headed by the eldest grandson of Yaroslav the Wise, Rostislav Volodymyrovych, and his descendants Rostislavich. The name "Principality of Galicia" comes from the largest city and at that time the capital of the Principality of Galicia.

The first Galician ditynets, that is, a fortified fortress, was located a little south of the modern city of Halych in the village of Krys. Its remains have survived to this day.

We have filmed there many times and I want to tell you that it is an incredible place with an incredible atmosphere. Friends, if you haven't been there yet, be sure to stop by.

It is not known for certain where the names Halych and Galician Land came from. Most modern Galicians like the Celtic theory. According to it, the name of the region was given by the Eastern Celts, who lived here before the Slavs.

At the beginning of the first millennium, before the Great Migration of Peoples and even before the emergence of the Slavic Stil settlement, the Celts did indeed inhabit vast areas of Europe from western Ukraine to the shores of Spain and Britain. One of their names is Gala.

Do you remember the cartoon about Asterix and Obelix? They are Gauls, that is, Celts. The Gauls left behind many toponyms. For example, in Spain there is the region of Galicia, and in our country, respectively, there are Halych and Galician Land.

But there is another theory of the origin of the name Galicia, an economic one. And it is connected with the history of Russia. According to her, the name Halych comes from the Greek word galas, which translates as salt.

Indeed, salt has become a true white gold for the Galician land and the main export commodity since the end of the 10th century. In general, salt was a strategically important commodity in the Middle Ages, because people used it to preserve food.

There were no refrigerators then. By the way, we were once discussing the meaning of salt in those days in our closed chat, and one of the sponsors voiced an interesting theory that the English word "salary" came to us from the times of the Roman Empire and meant money issued in salt. Interesting theory, right? Already in the 10th-11th centuries, the Galician Principality became one of the richest in Rus'.

This is indicated, among other things, by the huge number of seals found in the territory of Galicia. Seals were special family emblems and signs used by princes and the upper classes of medieval society to seal agreements.

Friends, it is important to explain what is special about Galician seals. On the territory of other Rus' principalities, mainly princely seals were found, while on the Galician land, a large number of merchant and boyar seals were preserved. They were decorated with an image of a jackdaw bird, as the coat of arms of the principality.

This means that in modern Galician, the middle class was highly developed. There were many boyars here, that is, local nobility, and trade was thriving here. As a result, the boyars of Galicia had great influence on the politics of their principality.

While in other principalities in the 123rd century the word of the prince was mostly decisive, in Galicia the Slavic tradition of the veche, at which local elites adopted laws and put forward conditions to the princes, worked effectively. It was virtually impossible to be a prince in the Principality of Galicia without an understanding with the boyars.

Galician boyars repeatedly invited princes they liked to the throne, and expelled those who did not suit them. It was the Galician boyars who would invite the Volhynian prince Volodymyr Mstislavich to the throne, and he would unite the Galician and Volhynian principalities into one state.

The positions of the united Volhynia-Galicia principality strengthened after 1204. Why? And the point, friends, is in business. The fact is that until that time, Byzantium was the main trading partner of Rus'.

We've all heard about the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks. Its main part ran from Kyiv to Constantinople. But in 1204, the Crusaders changed the world order.

These were knights who traveled from Europe to the Middle East to wage religious wars against local Muslim states. The Crusaders acted on behalf of the Pope, so the Orthodox Byzantine emperors were not an authority for them.

In 1204, they captured the capital of Byzantium, Constantinople, and established their control there. The Crusaders needed this city as an important logistical hub on the way from Europe to the Middle East.

This event undermines stability and trade throughout the region. Many merchants, especially Muslims, were simply afraid to sail to Constantinople. Byzantium and its capital lost their power forever, and the path from enemies to Greeks became history.

In the territory of Rus', they also began to look for other trade routes and increasingly traded with their western neighbors overland. Accordingly, now the main trade route ran from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Europe.

Actually, everything is the same as today, when our main trading partner is the countries of the European Union. And the Galician land, which still had many deposits of salt and other goods for export, was just on this path.

In 1240, another event occurred that was decisive for the history of Galicia and all of Ukraine, and which strengthened the western vector of the development of our state. The troops of the Mongol Empire attack Russia and destroy Kyiv.

They also capture the south of modern Ukraine, where the Polovtsy live. That is, from the middle of the 10th century, the Mongol Empire would control the exit through the Dnieper to the Black Sea. The ancient trade route from Galicia to the Dniester, further to the Prut valley and through it to the Danube and the Black Sea, will also decline.

The political and economic center of Russia finally moves to the west, where a charismatic leader, the future king of Russia, Daniil Romanovich, known to most as Galician, comes to power. Although a number of historians prefer not to call it Galician, because it was in the Russian Empire that they came up with such a regional marker for it.

And this regionalism can diminish the weight of our ruler. To be honest, I also try to call him King Danylo more often, but I often forget and by default this Danylo Galitsky immediately comes to mind. Well, as they say, school education is given in signs.

At the same time, Danilo Romanovich was the only one among the Rus' princes to challenge the powerful Mongol Empire in order to preserve the state traditions of Rus'. After the Mongol invasion in the 1240s, Danylo founded the city of Khol on the Ugorka River.

Today it is called Hel in Polish and is now the territory of Poland. It was here, to the western borders of his state, as far away as possible from the Mongol invaders, that he moved his capital. At Danylo's call, numerous merchants, artisans, and builders, fleeing the Mongol invasion, moved to Kholm.

That is, Danylo tried to preserve the economic potential of his country. He used all his diplomatic skills to find new allies in the confrontation with the Mongol invasion. And since diplomacy was traditionally conducted through marriages at that time, Danylo married his son Lev to the daughter of the Hungarian King Bela I, his son Svarn to the daughter of the first Lithuanian King Mindaugas, his son Roman to the heiress of the Austrian duchy Gertrude of Babenberk, and his son Steslav to the daughter of the Polovtsian Khan Taygakk.

Her daughters, Danylo Pereyaslav, Ustinya, and Sophia, became rulers. And all this had its results. Daniel makes an agreement with Pope Innocent I that he will grant him the title of king and help organize a European military contingent for Christ's campaign against the Mongol Empire.

Daniel, in return, had to recognize the spiritual supremacy of the Pope and Rome instead of Constantinople. Unfortunately, Danylo was never able to fully implement the agreements.

The rulers of Europe ignored the pope's call to gather a contingent for military aid to Russia. However, the pope did send Daniel a crown, and he received the title of king. In 1253, the Pope sent an embassy to Daniel, led by his personal representative, Legate Opizo, with the royal crown and scepter.

In the city of Dorohochin in December 1253, a representative of the Pope crowned Dany. From now on, he will bear the title of king, and his state will appear under the name Kingdom of Rus. Remember, friends, this is a key moment in our history.

The legal crown received from the Pope and the title of king would repeatedly influence the further history of Galicia and Ukraine in general. Culture Europe Holidays Galicia, where no one works on the day of a religious holiday.

The incredible Carpathians, trimbita, words like shmelts, St. Nicholas' Day, Christmas traditions, chapels of Mary in everyone's yard, Hutsul weddings, Hutsul carpets. These, friends, were the first associations people had in our closed sponsor chat, when during the preparation of this issue we asked: "What do you associate the topic of Galicia with?" So, as we see, Galicia is, first of all, traditions that all of Ukraine is proud of.

In general, a real-life story community is a community where we not only discuss but also create real-life stories together. In particular, we will meet in the near future to discuss the upcoming topics of real history for the fall of 2025.

And once again, I thank every sponsor of the real story for their support and active position. Without your support, our project, which breaks down enemy propaganda, would not be possible. Let me remind you that joining our community is very easy.

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[music] Danylo's descendants ruled the state for almost 100 years. However, in the middle of the 14th century, the last heirs in the male line, Andrei and Lev Yurievich, died in battle. The last sovereign Ruthenian ruler was the Polish prince Yuri I Boslav Troidenovich, a nephew of the deceased rulers.

He ascended the Rus' throne on the basis that his mother Maria was the daughter of Yuri, the grandson of Danylo of Galicia. But Yuri I Boleslav was poisoned by the boyars.

The Russian crown remains vacant. And this was quite a feat, because not every country at that time had a legal crown consecrated by the Pope. The highest proof in Europe of the independence of a secular ruler.

The death of Yuri I intensified the actions of our neighbors: the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Rus'. The ruling dynasties of these countries, the Piasts and Gedeminovichs, declared their rights to govern the Rus' lands on the basis of, you wouldn't believe it, family ties.

Now, follow these intricacies carefully. The Polish king Casimir the Great was a second-degree nephew of the deceased Yuri I. In addition, Casimir traced his descent from the Rus' ruling dynasty, known today as the Rurikovich.

Yes, this is the real Santa Barbara. And what happens next is even more confusing. Casimir's grandmother was the sister of Queen Constance of Russia, and Constance was the wife of King Lev Danilovich, son of King Daniel. The next queen of Russia after Constance, Euthymia, the wife of Yuri Lvovich, was Casimir's aunt.

It's difficult to understand this family tree. But the fact remained a fact. Rus was connected by blood ties to European leaders. It is also not surprising that the Lithuanian Gedeminovich dynasty also claimed blood ties to the Zaryurikovychs.

There is a version that the wife of the Lithuanian prince Lyubert Gedeminovich was the daughter of Andriy Yuriyovich, the great-grandson of King Danylo. Although this thesis has not been fully confirmed.

In short, both Casimir and Lubert proved their Ruthenian origin and family ties to King Daniel to convince the local Ruthenian boyars and the international community of their legitimate rights to the throne. Many modern Ukrainians consider this an interference in the sovereign affairs of our ancient state.

But that's not entirely true. At the time of the described events, the 14th century was underway. Countries based on national characteristics did not yet exist. Humanity has not yet formed nations like it is now.

The world functioned completely differently. All of Europe was divided between ruling dynasties, which ruled the states. It often happened that a representative of one dynasty ruled several states.

This was normal and did not mean that one of his states was disappearing. Therefore, from the very beginning of the conflict over the inheritance of the rulers of Rus, the Galician boyars and society as a whole were divided into two groups. the one that supports Casimir and the one that supports Lyubert.

The Russian elites at that time did not perceive the accession to the throne of a king from another country as an occupation. On the contrary, they saw this as an opportunity for development.

So, for several years, active fighting took place between Casimir and Lubert, which never determined a winner. Eventually, the opponents sign a peace treaty between themselves.

Its text, by the way, has survived to this day. Interestingly, this peace agreement was written in Old Russian, that is, Old Ukrainian. This suggests that Casimir and Lubert wanted to emphasize their legal status in the Rus' lands.

According to the agreement, Galicia and part of Volhynia were ceded to Casimir, but most of Volhynia remained under Lubert. There is another important detail in this story.

In 1370, Casimir the Great died without leaving an heir. But during his lifetime he concluded an agreement with King Louis of Hungary. According to the agreement, if Casimir had no male heirs, his place would be taken by Louis or his descendants.

Thus, after his death, Louis of Hungary became the new ruler of both the Polish Kingdom and the Galician Land through a dynastic agreement. What is important is that in Poland, for some reason, no one perceives this period as a Hungarian occupation.

In general, there has never been anyone in the entire history of the Polish king. And Poles, and French, and Hungarians, and Swedes, and Ruthenians, and Romanians. But they are all considered Polish kings.

Therefore, it is unclear what prevents us from considering Casimir or Lodovik as medieval Ukrainian kings. Write in the comments what you think about this.

By the way, that's what the Glacier called itself. King of Hungary, Croatia, Poland, Galicia and Vladimir. But that's not even what's interesting.

In fact, this Glacier wasn't even Hungarian. He is descended from the Angevin branch of the French Capetian dynasty, which ruled Sicily. The founders of this dynasty are considered to be the French king Henry of Pepys and his wife Anna Yaroslavna or Anna of Kiev, daughter of Yaroslav the Wise.

So the circle closes and the descendant of our Anna of Kiev, Louis of Anjou or Louis of Hungary, will bear the title of King of Galicia and Volodymyr at the end of the 14th century. Moreover, this ruler was the third brother of the late Yuri I, and a maternal nephew of Kazym.

Louis made the Galician land a de facto province of the Hungarian Kingdom. But just 5 years after his death in 1387, the region was taken for Poland by Louis' daughter, the Polish Queen Jadwiga, and her husband Władysław Igal. [music] So, starting from the reign of Casimir the Great, the Galician land falls under the protectorate of the Polish crown.

Let's see how the lives of Ukrainians have changed. Answer: no way. If we talk about the social sphere, then from the middle of the 14th century to the end of the 10th century, almost nothing changed for ordinary people. It's just that power passed from the direct descendants of King Daniel to other dynasties.

Russian law was finally replaced by Polish law in the courts only in 1506. Russian nobility, boyars, who had some capital, land, or estates. continued to own them.

Merchants continued to trade. In fact, as I already said, the economy of the Galician land, even after the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, was oriented towards its western neighbors. Therefore, the management of large territories by one Jagiellonian dynasty, on the contrary, opened up additional opportunities for trade, reduced duties, and greater security of movement for Galician merchants.

Many people mistakenly think: "The Poles came and that's it, now Galicia is Poland. Everything Russian, that is, Ukrainian, is forbidden." This is far from true. In fact, the integration of the Galician land into the Polish kingdom lasted for over 100 years, during which people continued to live their lives.

Only in the middle of the 10th century did the administrative division change in the lands of the former Rus' kingdom. The Rus' lands were divided into three voivodeships.

It's like the Belskoe, Podolsk, and Rus' regions today. The Galician lands formed the basis of the largest Ruthenian voivodeship, which retained the ethnonym Rus' in its name. It was one of the largest and most influential voivodeships in the Polish kingdom.

At that time, the legislative system worked in such a way that each voivodeship had to send its representatives to the General Sejm, as the main legislative body was called. So, the Ruthenian voivodeship had the largest number of representatives, 23.

So our Ruthenian elites directly influenced the politics of all of Poland. Gradually, in the middle of the 10th century, the ruling class in the Polish kingdom became the Catholic nobility, which had the greatest rights and freedoms in the kingdom. The rube became a question of faith.

Belonging to the Catholic Church provided greater opportunities for career advancement and wealth acquisition. Representatives of the ruling Jagiellon dynasty, which ruled over, among other things, Galicia, were Catholics and sought support primarily among the Catholic nobility.

And therefore, they generously distributed many lands, including in Galicia, to representatives of the Roman Catholic nobility. In turn, some representatives of the Orthodox Russian nobility also wanted to gain the favor of the royal dynasty and have the same privileges as Roman Catholics.

To do this, they had no choice but to voluntarily convert from the Orthodox faith to the Catholic faith and learn Polish. As for language, I've already talked about it in previous episodes.

In the Middle Ages, people were polylingual, meaning they used several languages at once. For the Galician nobility in the 15th century, things were more difficult. At home, he could speak colloquial Russian, Old Ukrainian.

He had to know Polish and Latin. These are the languages of office work in the Polish kingdom, as well as Church Slavonic. They prayed with it, served in church, and even conducted some of the paperwork with it.

Even greater Polonization in Galicia intensified after the Union of Lublin in 1569. Then the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Ruthenia announced the formation of a joint state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Ukrainian nobles, and in general Galician nobles, were also present at this union and they mostly voted for the formation of this state.

The reason is the same. They wanted to gain the rights and freedoms of the Catholic nobility. The people inside began to contemptuously call a Russian nobleman who converted to the Catholic faith " Maso." Today this is a very common surname in Ukraine. But not all of the Galician nobility, descendants of the boyars, converted to Catholicism.

In fact, most of it remained with its native people, and a significant part, dozens of families having lost the opportunity to participate in state administration, became priestly families: the Bachynskyi, Vinnytsia, Hulevych, Levytsia, Shashkevych, Sheptytsia, Shumlyanskyi and many others, descendants of Ukrainian boyars and nobility with millennial roots. And they were proud of these roots.

Friends, of course, at this point many of you may ask: "Why don't you talk about the Union of Brest as one of the main events in the history of Galicia and Ukraine?" Honestly, we wanted to, but this topic is so complex and large that we decided to dedicate a separate episode to it, which we will definitely do in the future. And today I will only note that in 1596, the authorities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth held the Union of Brest to form the Uniate Church.

A compromise option would be for the Orthodox to leave their rituals but submit to the Pope. But such a compromise only exacerbated the situation. Burghers, merchants, petty nobility, and peasants, unlike the elites, preserved their traditions and adhered to the Byzantine, or, as they said, the Ruthenian, rite.

Many of these people belonged to the middle class, had good earnings, and were able to support the Orthodox Church. In the middle of the 10th century, an informal organization, a kind of community of sponsors of the Orthodox Church, was formed in the Assumption Cathedral in Lviv.

A lot of time would pass and at the end of the 15th century, the members of this organization, wealthy Lviv burghers, brothers Ivan and Yuri Rohatyntsi and Ivan Krasovsky, would reach a fundamentally new level. They develop the charter of the Lviv Brotherhood and establish the Lviv Brotherhood School.

It was the first educational institution in Ukraine that could provide a European education to the children of Ukrainian Orthodox nobility, burghers, and merchants. By the way, based on this school, the Kyiv Brotherhood School was established in 1615, which later became the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

In general, the Ruthenian voivodeship, which included the Galician lands, existed as a separate administrative unit until the end of the 15th century, that is, almost a century. And during this time, the Ukrainians of Galicia preserved their identity.

I think it was precisely because of this experience that Galicians later became a driving force in the liberation struggles of the 20th century and the Ukrainian Maidans of the 10th century. Judge for yourself, this region has experienced the least social cataclysms and revolutions.

Galicia was the most developed Ukrainian territory in the Middle Ages. There were more free, not enslaved, peasants here than there were in Ukrainian lands. There were many petty nobility, burghers, and merchants.

There were even entire noble villages in the Carpathian region. In turn, Lviv became the largest Ukrainian city in terms of population in the 10th-14th centuries and remained so until the middle of the 10th century. In short, it was in the Galician lands that Ukrainians had the highest standard of living, and therefore, in my opinion, the greatest opportunity to realize and protect their identity.

But let's move on. At the end of the 15th century, due to a political crisis, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth disappeared from the world map. The territories of this state are divided between the Austrian and Russian empires and Prussia.

All Ukrainian ethnic lands from the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth then became part of the Russian Empire, except for Galicia. The latter and part of Volhynia become part of the Austrian Empire.

And this is a key event in the history of Galicia. [music] Why did most of the Ukrainian lands, Belarusian and even some Polish lands, fall into the Russian Empire, but not Galicia? The Russians actually really wanted to occupy Galicia. If they had done this, they would have almost completed the collection of the Rus' lands, but they were unable to do so.

Why? Here again, there are very complex dynastic relationships. At the time of the liquidation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the historical Hungarian Kingdom was an integral part of the Austrian Empire. That is, the Hapsburgs, the Austrian emperors, also had rights to the Hungarian crown.

And so the Austrians declared: "We, as representatives of the Hungarian crown, which once included the kingdom of Rus, have legal grounds to reclaim these lands." It was about Galicia and part of Volhynia. That, friends, is the collision.

Daniel's struggle against the Mongols for Rus' statehood and a series of dynastic marriages led to the Austrians asserting their claims to Galicia to the Russians. Well, the Russians could not deny the fact.

The Galician land and the Kingdom of Rus' never had any relation to either Muscovy or the Russian Empire, as its legal successor. By the way, the name Galicia became fixed for the region precisely during the time of the Austrian Empire, because before that they called it Galician or Ruthenian land.

However, the Austrians called the Galician land Galicia, and the Ukrainians, like the Poles, began to say it in their own way: Galicia. The majority of the local population, especially the nobility, sought to be under the rule of the Austrian Habsburgs, not the Russian Romanovs.

This is very clearly evidenced by one interesting fact, which was mentioned by Professor Ivan Shust of the Ternopil National Pedagogical University. He lived in the Ternopil region for 96 years, born in the village of Krasnosiltsi in 1921.

In his autobiographical book, About Himself and His People, he recalled a story that his relatives and neighbors told him about a certain gentleman, or, as they say in Galicia, a landowner from the neighboring village of Zarudechko. When Austrian cartographers were to draw the border between the Russian and Austrian empires, he was ready to give his last money so as not to remain in Russia.

Well, then I will quote the author. A man who lived in Zarudechko but did not want to fall under Russian rule after the partition of Poland, bribed the soldiers who were demarcating the border. And they surrounded that village on three sides with border posts, leaving only a small isthmus that connected Zarudechko with Austrian territory.

End of quote. Here, friends, is this map. As we can see, the gentleman from Zarudechko managed to ensure that his village, surrounded on all sides by Russia, ended up in Austria, with which it was connected only by one narrow road. Did ordinary people benefit from joining Austria? Definitely.

Already in 1781-1782, Tsar abolished serfdom. The peasants became free. All that remained was the peasant's labor, the work for the landowner. In the Ukrainian lands under Russia, serfdom existed until 1861.

The landowner could sell people like cattle. As we can see, the difference in the attitude towards people between the two neighboring states was immediately apparent. There is another interesting story about the Ternopil region.

In 1809, Russia and Austria signed a peace treaty, according to which part of the modern Ternopil region, including Ternopil and Zalishchyky, passed from the Austrian to the Russian Empire. These territories were called Ternopil region.

The first buildings built by the Russians in Ternopil were a prison and the house of a Russian colonel. Six years later, in 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars, the Ternopil region returned to Austria.

According to legend, the locals were so happy that they staged the first-ever salute in Galician lands in honor of the arrival of the Austrian emperor's family. Of course, I won't say that Ukrainians in the Austrian Empire had a very sweet life.

In fact, Galicia and Bukovina were the poorest provinces in the Austrian Empire. But Ukrainian Galicians had more rights and freedoms to express their national identity. Most Galicians at the time of Galicia's accession to the Austrian Empire were Greek Catholics, that is, Orthodox Christians who recognize the supremacy of the Pope of Rome, not the Patriarch of Constantinople.

In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Greek Catholics, or Ruthenian Catholics, as they called themselves, had fewer rights than Roman Catholics. Instead, the Austrian authorities equalized the rights of these two denominations.

Already in 1774, Empress Maria Theresa approved the official name of Greek Catholics, which we still know today. And in 1808, the Galician Greek Catholic Metropolis was restored in Lviv.

Greek Catholic priests became one of the main leaders of the idea of national revival and independence of Ukraine, and their children became the core of the first Galician intelligentsia. In the 1830s, a group of Lviv Greek Catholic seminarians called the Ruska Trinity, led by Markiyan Shashkevych, Ivan Bagylevych, and Yakov Holovatsky, became the voice of the Ukrainian national revival in Galicia.

During the European Revolution of 1848, the first political organization of Ukrainians in Galicia, the Main Ruthenian Council, headed by Bishop Hryhoriy Yakhymovych, publicly and solemnly proclaimed that Galicians were part of the Ukrainian people. Thus, the Galicians, led by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, actually put an end to the projects to create some small nation of Austrian Ruthenians from them.

Friends, the history of Galicia shows that the east and the west have always been together, Ukraine has always been united. And Ukrainians, despite the borders of foreign empires, have always felt like a single nation.

And for me personally, a wonderful example of this unity is how the community of real history helps our soldiers, who courageously hold the line of defense despite the enemy's superiority and the fierce pressure that the occupiers are currently exerting in the east of our country. Let me remind you that a few months ago we opened a burning collection for UAH 1,800,000 for three high-traffic control points for the aerial reconnaissance units of the Special Operations Forces.

These points allow for very mobile and completely off-road access to the front line in order to identify important targets for defeating the enemy. These are very technological points that help and save the lives of our boys.

And I have good news for you. We almost closed this collection. As of now, UAH 1,412,000 has been withdrawn and transferred to the guys. With this money, we built and already sent two points to the front and began production of a third.

At the time I write this, there were 292,500 UAH in the bank and we only had 95,000 UAH left to collect. Friends, I think our community is quite capable of this.

So let's push a little more and close this collection and send the third high-altitude control point to the front to our guys, who are really waiting for it. And we will send the enemy to the back of history.

Every hryvnia matters. You can donate via the QR code you now see on your screen, or via the payment button below this video. Let's contribute together to our common victory.

Glory to Ukraine! In 1868, the public organization Society of Enlightenment appeared in Galicia. Its participants created branches of Prosvita in the towns and villages of Galicia. In these branches, educators opened libraries and bookstores where you could read the works of Ukrainian writers.

They organized folk theaters, where they performed performances on Ukrainian themes, celebrated the anniversaries of famous Ukrainian figures and significant events in Ukrainian history. The heads of Prosvita branches were mostly Greek Catholic priests.

Later, they created and headed cooperatives and loan societies, which helped Galician Ukrainians pool their small capital and thus achieve success in business. Milk, butter, sausages, and cheeses from Galicia were exported to Europe as early as the 10th and first half of the 20th centuries.

Even fish from Ternopil Lake, which locals call a pond, a large pond, was transported to London. That's it. And Galicians in Austria had the right to elect their own deputies to parliament and address the authorities in their own language.

The most famous representative of the Greek Catholic Church today, a Galician, Metropolitan of Galicia Andrey Sheptytsky, was an active public and political figure, a member of the Galician Sejm. He advocated increasing the representation of Ukrainian deputies.

We made a film about Sheptytsky from the series Secrets of Great Ukrainians. Be sure to take a look. By the way, one of his descendants, Jan Sheptytsky, is the sponsor of the real story.

He was born in Poland, but during the war he learned Ukrainian and moved to Lviv and considers himself Ukrainian. This is such an interesting story.

In the Austrian Empire, there were no bans on printing in the Ukrainian language, similar to the Ems Decree or the Valuev Circular in the Russian Empire. Therefore, when Shevchenko's Kobzar was censored in the Russian Empire, the couple Alexander and Sofia Rusov, with the support of Mikhail Dragomanov, traveled to Prague.

Back then, it was also the Austrian Empire that published the first uncensored kobzar. The printed edition was smuggled back to the Russian Empire, and some remained in the territory of Galicia, where the kobzar was not banned. Thus, local elites adopted Shevchenko's ideas about the revival of the Ukrainian state.

It was on the territory of Galicia that the anthem of Ukraine was publicly performed for the first time. Ukraine is not dead yet.

Until recently, it was believed that this was done by a folk choir on March 10, 1865, on the anniversary of Taras Shevchenko's death in Przemyśl at a hotel called Pid providentinya. However, just recently, in 2025, evidence was found that the first performance of the anthem occurred even earlier, on July 1, 1864.

On this day, the Greek Catholic Diocese of Przemyśl celebrated the feast of John the Baptist. It was then that the song "Ukraine Has Not Died" was solemnly performed for the first time by a local choir. As contemporaries recall, the Bishop of Przemysl, Toma Polyanski, was present during the performance.

I quote: "With deep piety, he blessed both the composer and his work to the words of Pavlo Chubynsky. He blessed it in Kniazhgorod nad Syan.

It was a significant event. This patriotic song, like a rainbow, united the people of the Dnieper with the people of Galicia. End of quote.

By the way, the aforementioned composer of the anthem is a Greek Catholic priest from Galicia, Mykhailo Verbytsky. In 1873, the Taras Shevchenko Society was formed in Lviv.

At first, it operated as a literary society for publishing Ukrainian works. After all, after the Valu circular of 1863, it was impossible to publish Ukrainian works on the territory of the Russian Empire. The initiators of the creation of the society are considered to be the Ukrainian historian, professor of the Kyiv National University, Volodymyr Antonovych, and the public figure Oleksandr Kosynsky.

They were born on Ukrainian lands controlled by the Russian Empire, and the society was headed by the famous Galician lawyer and public figure Kornylo Sushkevych. Later, the society turned into the Unofficial Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.

The authorities of both the Russian and Austrian empires would not allow Ukrainians to officially establish an academy of sciences. So the Ukrainians acted semi-legally.

At the beginning of 1897, the NTSh was headed by historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the future chairman of the Central Rada. He was the chairman of the society for 16 years.

And it was at this time that the organization became mega-popular. And Hrushevsky himself wrote his most famous work, History of Ukraine Rus', in Lviv during this period, which became one of the foundations of the further development of Ukrainian historical science. So, friends, what is Galicia? Galicia is, first of all, the thousand-year history of Rus' and Ukraine.

This is a place where ancient Slavic and not only civilizations lived 2,000 years ago. A place where Rus' became a kingdom. The most powerful European dynasties competed for these lands.

And the main thing is a region that was lucky not to be occupied by Russia until World War I. It seems to me that this is the key feature of this region, which answers many questions. Not because there are some Ukrainians there.

They are the same there as everywhere else. It's just that Galicia is a little further from Moscow and its poisonous influence. What do you think? Write in the comments.