The Austrian-Hungarian Empire stretched from Galicia in the north to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the South. What this meant is the area called Galicia was just one small section in the larger empire. Even within the Empire, Galicia was divided between West Galicia (today within the borders of Poland) and Eastern Galicia (today within the borders of Ukraine). Poles and Ukrainians, sometimes called Ruthenians or Rusyns, co-existed, along with Germans, Jews, Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks and many more.

The map below shows the Austro-Hungarian empire and its ethnic groups. Poles are purple and Ukrainians are yellow and can be spotted in the top right in Galicia. There were pockets of a Polish majority in Eastern Galicia, mostly around L’viv.

Galicia was a large area and as such, a variety of different ethnic, sub-ethnic and religions co-existed, each with their own culture. It will be nearly impossible to list all of them here but the well known cultures have been listed below, under if they can be found in today’s Poland (Western Galicia) or Ukraine (Eastern Galicia).

In 1773, when the first partition of Poland occured, Galicia had about 2.6 million inhabitants in 280 cities and market towns and approximately 5,500 villages. There were 19,000 noble families (about 3% of the population). The serfs accounted for 1.86 million of the population, more than 70%. A few were full-time farmers but 84% of them had only small holdings or no possessions.

After the full completion of the partitions of Poland, and the new borders cutting Galicia off from many of its traditional trade routes, this resulted in stagnation of economic life and decline of towns in Galicia. The Austrian government determined to exploit Galicia and drained it of its manpower through conscription to the Army. The government also decided that the area would remain an agricultural hub, serving as a supplier of food products and raw materials, rather than developing industry.

This, unfortunately, led to widespread poverty in Galicia and eventually to many immigrating to North and South America.

Source

Rusyns

Rusyns came from Carpatho Rus, the cross roads of Europe where the East Slavic (Russian, Belarus, and Ukrainians) and West Slavic (Poles, Slavics and Czechs) cultures meet. They came from small villages in the Carpathian Mountain areas of what today are Southern Poland, Northeastern Slovakia and Western Ukraine. Their language and their religion (Orthodox and Greek Catholic) differed from the Poles and Slovaks.

The first wave of Rusyns immigrated to the U.S. between 1880 and 1900. About 1200 Rusyns settled in Minnesota.

• Northeast Minneapolis was the largest group, where many worked for the railroad.
• Chisholm and Hibbing Rusyn immigrants worked in the mines on the Iron Range.
• Browerville (Todd County) and Holdingford (Stearns County) provided farmland.

The Minneapolis Rusyns came from an area northeast of present-day Slovakia. Villages were Becherov, Lomlosa (known as Chemlova today), Regetovka, and Stebnik. They were Greek Catholics.

A second wave of Rusyns came to Minneapolis between 1900 and 1920, and came from a broader area of villages in the Carpathian Mountain area.

This information is from an article written by PGS-MN member, Karen Varian. The full article is HERE.

Galician Flag