Chapter II - Moscophiles and Old Rusyns

Summary

Formation of the pro-Russian party

The development of Moscophilism and the Old Rusyn movement in the Lemko region during the interwar period was closely connected with political movements which developed in the Lviv, Stanyslaviv, Sambir, Zolochiv, and Rava Ruska areas, and in other cities scattered around the former Eastern Galicia. Lemkos did not have forms of social or political organization evolving exclusively from their local traditions. The organizations in which they actively participated took form mainly through the inspiration of Lviv activists. This was a natural state of affairs, considering that the centers of all of the more important and influential provincial institutions were located in Lviv. The processes through which the structures of such institutions developed in the Lemko region must therefore be presented in the context of the activity in Lviv's political centers.

The fall of Tsarist Russia and the emergence of the Polish state brought about a revaluation in the political consciousness of many actors – hence pro-Polish, pro-Russian, and pro-communist sympathies equally became visible. The accumulated archival documents do not allow us to precisely separate out the above political tendencies in the immediate postwar period, yet they did find a place in the party called the Halych-Russian National Organization, hereafter HRNO, formed in 1919, whose executive organ was the Russian executive Committee (Russkii Ispolnitelnyi Komitet) in Stanyslaviv. The chaos was aggravated by the fact that – as Ivan Kedryn attests – this Committee recognized the authority of the Western Ukrainian National Republic, which could signify the entry of the Moscophiles on the path of identification with the Ukrainian movement.