The Phenomenon of the Multiple Loyalties in Eastern Galicia in the 19th Century

Speaker: Dr Natalia Gromakova, BASEES Ukrainian Scholar at Risk

The spread of new ideas and the formation of new values and worldview orientations became an important factor in modern transformations in Eastern Europe, which were constructed by new identities and models of social behaviour. The secularization of public life required new forms of self-identification, in which the individual choice of a person played an increasingly important role. Those choices were influenced by various factors, including the immediate environment and family environment, level of education, social status and professional activity, etc. At the same time, specific group norms and spatial localization played an important role, which made it possible to build horizontal communication networks. The horizontal connections become dominant in the conditions of the formation of new identities that seek quantitative growth through the mobilization of the population. This, in turn, actualizes the problem of loyalty, which is closely related to the process of self-identification of a person, determining his belonging to a certain social group and choosing life strategies.

The history of Eastern Galicia in the 19th century and its inhabitants provides very interesting material to research the problems of finding one's "self" in imperial conditions and the models of behaviour with the help of which they tried to solve the dilemmas of dynastic, imperial, territorial and national loyalty. The spread of the phenomenon of multiple loyalties among the inhabitants of the region was determined by the socio-political and ethno-cultural conditions in which their everyday life took place. And although throughout the entire period, the attitude towards the ruling Habsburg dynasty played an important role, it was always combined with a sense of belonging to a local, ethnic or social group, and from the end of the century - with the need to define one's attitude towards the corresponding national project (Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish). This assumption allows us to assert that loyalties, like the self-identification of a person, had not only a multiple but also a fluid character, often changing during a person's life.

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Speaker

My name is Natalia Gromakova. I am PhD in History and a post-doctoral researcher at the World History and Archaeology Department at Dragomanov Ukrainian State University (Kyiv, Ukraine).

Since the May of 2022 I am a Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Divinity, History, Philosophy & Art History University of Aberdeen, Scotland UK. Besides I am a Fellow of the ‘Royal Historical Society (RHS), British Association for Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (BASEES), Ecclesiastical History Society (EHS) and German History Society Scholars (GHS) via the Scholars at Risk programme.

My current project focuses on the public and cultural spaces of Ukrainian lands during the 19th and early 20th centuries which are characterized by dynamic changes that include all aspects of social life and accelerated the process of national self-identification of representatives of different ethnic communities living in the region.

Research Interests: East European History, Studies of Romanov and Habsburg Empires, Theory and methodology of historical science, Historical Comparative studies, National and social movements, Interethnic relations and Historical Anthropology.