Ukrainian Literature - The "Ruska Triytsia" and Western Ukrainian National Revival

The "Ruska Triytsia" and Western Ukrainian National Revival

Although short-lived, a group of young Galician poets and scholars, established in the 1830s and known as the "Ruthenian Triad," played a decisive role in the Western Ukrainian cultural revival of the 19th century. Comprised by Markiian Shashkevych, Yakiv Holovatsky, and Ivan Vahylevych, the "Ruthenian Triad" united around itself other young people who began to research Ukrainian history and culture and actively promote the Ukrainian national cause at the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv. The members of the group maintained that the "Ruthenians" of Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia were all part of one Ukrainian people who had their own language, culture, and history. The great importance of their literary collection, Rusalka Dnistrovaia (The Dniester Nymph, 1836), was in that it was written in the spoken Ukrainian and not in the "learned" yazychiie; it thus initiated the use of vernacular Ukrainian language for literature in the Ukrainian lands in the Habsburg Empire. Because of their populist and national views, the group members suffered harassment by the conservative Ukrainian clergy and Austrian authorities.

Since the group came into being during the period of Romanticism, it retained the predominant interests and features of that movement — an interest in folklore and history and a striving for Pan-Slavic unity. Its Slavophilism was noticeable in the use of Old Slavic pseudonyms: Ruslan by Shashkevych, Dalibor by Vahylevych, and Yaroslav by Holovatsky. The group founders as well as other young people united around them were engaged in collecting folk oral literature, studying the history of Ukraine, and writing their own verses and treatises. They emulated the Ukrainians under Russian rule, and were especially influenced by Ivan Kotliarevsky's Eneida (Aeneid). The members of the group maintained that the "Ruthenians" of Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia were all part of one Ukrainian people who had their own language, culture, and history. The great importance of their literary collection, Rusalka Dnistrova (The Dniester Nymph, 1836), was in that it was written in the spoken Ukrainian and not in the "learned" yazychiye; it thus initiated the use of vernacular Ukrainian language for literature in the Ukrainian lands in the Habsburg Empire. Because of their populist and national views, the group members suffered harassment by the conservative Ukrainian clergy and Austrian authorities.