The Ukrainian radical party in the election campaigns to the Austrian reichsrat in 1907 and 1911

Abstract

The purpose of the article is a comprehensive analysis of the participation of the Ukrainian Radical Party (URP) in the election campaigns to the Austrian Reichsrat in 1907 and 1911. The principles of objectivity, historicism, consistency, and problematicity served as the methodological basis of the article. There have been applied the methods of analysis and synthesis, problem-chronological, prosopographic, comparative, statistical methods for studying the role of the URP in the election campaigns of 1907 and 1911, the method of internal criticism of sources. The scientific novelty consists in the processing of a significant number of primary sources and scientific literature, owing to which it was possible for the first time to analyze the forms and content of the URP pre-election campaign in 1907 and 1911, to compare the participation of radicals in the two pre-war election campaigns. The Conclusion. The introduction of universal suffrage to the Reichsrat significantly improved the position of Galician political parties, which was evident during the election campaigns of 1907 and 1911. In order to bring its representatives to the parliament of Cisleytania, the URP joined the electoral movement actively. The key forms of agitation during these two campaigns were the organization of a secular movement and the publication of the party's printed organ, the newspaper “The Hromadsky Holos”, which published detailed information about the prerequisites, course and consequences of the elections of 1907 and 1911. The core of the URP's electoral base was the peasantry and rural intelligentsia. The highest level of support for radicals was observed in Kolomyisky, Tovmatsky, Horodenkivsky, Nadvirniansky, Kosivsky, and Stanislavivsky districts of Eastern Galicia. During the 1911 election, compared to the previous campaign, there was a slight decline in the popularity of the URP, which was caused by intra-party misunderstandings, financial difficulties and a decrease in enthusiasm among the rank-and-file members of the party. Conflicts between the leading Ukrainian political parties of the region had a negative impact on the election results. In some cases, there were attempts to cooperate with the Ukrainian National Democratic Party (NDP) and the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party (USDP) by radicals in order to join forces in opposing the Polish political forces. According to the results of the elections on the eve of World War I, with an electoral core of 8.5–9% of the region's voters, it was the third most influential Ukrainian political force in Eastern Galicia after the UNDP and the Muscophiles.