The relevance of the problem indicated in the title is determined by the need to understand not only the past, but also the current challenges in the field of legal, social, economic, and cultural policy. The Austrian reforms in eighteenth-century Galicia are of great historical significance, as they significantly influenced the further development of the region, its socio-economic structure, and cultural landscape. We believe that their consequences are still indirectly visible today in certain signs of the development of education, culture, and identity of the local population. In addition, the analysis of social transformations associated with the reforms allows us to better understand the relationship between government, society, and the economy, which is important for a modern understanding of political and social dynamics.
Hence, the purpose of the article, which is based on the dialectical method of cognition of socio-political and legal phenomena and processes, is to identify and analyze the impact of the reforms of “enlightened absolutism” implemented by the Austrian authorities in the eighteenth century on the Galician peasantry, and more broadly, on Western Ukrainians in general.
It is argued that the Austrian reforms in eighteenth-century Galicia were based on the ideas of enlightened absolutism as a policy of achieving general welfare and social peace in the state. The author emphasizes that they were aimed, on the one hand, at unifying legislation, creating a unified system of justice, developing education and promoting religious peace. On the other hand, they are aimed at strengthening state control over land resources and regulating relations between landowners and peasants. It is emphasized that these lines of reforms objectively affected the situation of Ukrainians first of all – in the Rzeczpospolita they were perhaps the most oppressed national (ethnic) community. It is emphasized that the need to achieve social peace in the state, coupled with the spirit of the Enlightenment in the monarchy, primarily required the easing of the life of the peasantry, the largest social stratum in the empire. The author substantiates the thesis that the legislative activity of the Austrian monarchs-“enlighteners” was aimed at qualitative changes in the legal status of the Galician peasant, and that its main result was the establishment of the basis of subjectivity for the Galician peasant.
It is finally concluded that the actual elimination of the peasant’s personal serfdom in Galicia as a result of the Austrian reforms of “enlightened absolutism” was actually leveled by the absence of any real changes in terms of his attachment to the land. At the same time, it is argued that the far more profound consequences of the Austrian reforms of the time for the Galician peasant should not be underestimated: he was already beginning to realize himself not as a lord’s but as an imperial subject.
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