Ukrainian Nationalism and the 1918 Law on National - Personal Autonomy

Abstract

Traditionally in Eastern Europe, one national group constituted a majority in the countryside but a minority in the urban areas. Thus, while the cities of Eastern Europe possessed a disproportionate share of an area's political and socio-economic resources, for the most part they were ethnically alien to the peasantry. This was not a problem until the nineteenth century, which by 1914 turned Eastern Europe into a cauldron of inter-ethnic and anti-Semitic tensions. In the subsequent struggle for power, the national movements of both the urban and rural areas claimed the cities as well as the surrounding countryside. Inasmuch as these movements did not possess a common set of interests, whatever the proposed solution — whether territorial autonomy, irredentism, independence, expansion, or the maintenance of the status quo — hardly any provision was made for minority rights.