Громадянське рівноправ’я в обмін на етнічне самозречення: інтеґрація євреїв Галичини в Габсбурзьку державу

Abstract

The paper concludes that the integration of Jews of Galicia in an ethno-political body of the Habsburg empire took place in four areas: communicative-linguistic, political, legal, social, and economic. Each of them provided a decisively influential ethnic / confessional factor. In the first case, the government constructed a common information space and a German-speaking environment in terms of the diversity of cultures and a policy of tolerance. This problem has been one of the most important for the formation of state identity and territorial patriotism. Specific ethnic and political models of the Habsburg Monarchy included the guarantee of equal rights to groups but the non-recognition of their cultural features. That is the position of the central government advocating a “Jewish” perspective. Its essence boils down to the assertion that Austrian citizens being equal, the Jews were deprived of the rights of national community, that anti-Semitism existed, was a respected influence within the dualist monarchy. This conclusion not only corrects to some extent established scientific assessment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but also expands the horizons of ethnic patterns that state embodied in particular in Galicia in the modern period. Perhaps it is possible to determine the nature of this offer of civil equality in exchange for ethnic self-denial. In this model, the “foreign” offered a peculiar variant of equality, which de facto meant inequality.