2014 11/18 Yaroslav Hrytsak

Center, Periphery and the Habsburg Dilemma: the Case of Ivan Franko (1856−1916)

Yaroslav Hrytsak

L’viv Catholic University

How intellectuals articulate their cultural identities depends to a great degree on whether they live in the center or on the periphery. According to Ernest Gellner, nowhere else the con. ict between di. erent ways of identifying oneself was as acute as in the late Habsburg empire. In my talk, I explore di. erent versions of Habsburg identities and di. erent scenarios of living them out using the case of Ivan Franko, an intellectual from peripheral Galicia who has contributed enormously to making the modern Ukrainian identity. Regardless of his status as a Ukrainian literary icon, the repertoire of identities which he tried out in the course of his life ranged from Jewish to German to Polish, and to hybrids of those. However his . nal choice was made in favor of a really marginal at the time Ukrainian scenario. I place this fascinating biography in the context of Franko’s encounters with Viennese modernism of the 1890s, and explore the

impact these encounters had on his life and on Ukrainian intellectual history.

Yaroslav Hrytsak is Professor of History at the Ukrainian Catholic University in L’viv and at L’viv National University in Ukraine. He is a proli. c scholar and in. uential public intellectual. Among his most recent books are: Strasty za natsionalizmom. Isrtorychni esei (= Passions after Nationalism, Historical Essays. Kyiv, 2004); Prorok u svoyiy vitchyzni: Ivan Franko i yoho spil’nota (=Prophet in His Fatherland: Ivan Franko and His Community, Kyiv, 2006 − the best book of the 2006 year in Ukraine); Nowa Ukraina. Nowe iterpretacje (=New Ukraine. New Interpretations. Wrocław, 2009 in Polish); Ukraina. Przewodni Krytyki Politycznej. Z Jarosławiem Hrycakiem rozmawia Iza Chruslinska. Wstup Adam Michnik (=Ukraine. Guidebook of Krytyka Polityczna. Gdansk-Warszawa, 2009, in Polish) and others. He is a member of the editorial boards of a number of leading journals in the .field of Slavic Studies, including Slavic Review, Ukraina Moderna (Lviv), Krytyka (Kyiv), Ab Imperio, and Harvard Ukrainian Studies. Professor Hrytsak directed a number of international research projects, including: “East and West of Ukraine: Comparison of Social Identities and Group Loyalties”; “A Tale of Two Cities: Ethnic and Confessional Relations on the Ukrainian-Polish Border” and “Non multum, sed multa: Reforming of History Research and Teaching in Ukraine”.