Ruthenian Congress

Ruthenian Congress (Sobor Ruskyi). A political committee that was active in Lviv during the Revolution of 1848–9 in the Habsburg monarchy. It was founded in May by Polish and Polonized nobles and intelligentsia as a counterbalance to the Supreme Ruthenian Council. Its 64 members opposed the Polish-Ukrainian administrative partition of Galicia and collaborated with the Polish People's Council. Although it declared its loyalty to the Habsburg state, it criticized the government's liberal policies. The congress accepted the abolition of serfdom but opposed the expansion of peasant rights. Its leaders, such as L. Sapieha, A., J., and W. Dzieduszycki, and J. and L. Jabłonowski, claimed to represent the Ukrainian people simply because their ancestors had been Ruthenian nobles. Although a number of Polonophile Ukrainians, including Ivan Vahylevych (who edited the congress's organ Dnewnyk Ruskij), Mykhailo Popel, and Onufrii Krynytsky, were members of the congress, it received little Ukrainian support. On 6 October 1848 the congress was absorbed by the Polish People's Council, and ceased to exist as a separate organization.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]