Poverty in Austrian Galicia
Reasons included little interest in reforms on the part of major landowners and the Austrian government, population growth resulting in small peasant plots, inadequate education, primitive agricultural techniques, a vicious circle of chronic malnutrition, famines and disease, reducing productivity.
Poverty in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria was so widespread that the expression "Galician misery" (nędza galicyjska) or "Galician poverty" (bieda galicyjska) became proverbial,[1] and Poles often mockingly distorted the name of the province of Galicia and Lodomeria to "Golicja i Głodomeria", incorporating plays on the Polish words, respectively, for "naked" and "hungry" ("Nakedia and Hungrymeria").
Unlike the German Empire, the Habsburgs were hostile toward the idea of building railway systems in the provinces and remained fixated on their own metropolis.
Railways were owned privately in Austria-Hungary before 1881 and only gradually acquired by the state interest until the outbreak of World War I. Viennese banks – wrote Clive Trebilcock of Cambridge – were tapping the eastern grain-plains [of Galicia] in fully colonial style.
[2] The new state borders had cut Galicia off from many of its traditional trade routes and markets of the former Polish Crown, resulting in economic stagnation and the decline of Galician towns.
After a short period of limited investments, the Austrian government started the fiscal exploitation of Galicia and drained the region of manpower through conscription to the imperial army.
The Austrians decided that Galicia should not develop industrially but remain an agricultural area to serve as a supplier of food products and raw materials to other Habsburg provinces.
[14][9][15] The situation in Northern (Polish) Galicia was compounded by the lack of good land and a growing population, resulting in the steadily diminishing size of an individual peasant's plot.
[20] She writes: It was Polish landlords who retained control over forests and meadows (and hence over sources of fuel and building materials) and blocked any reforms put forward in the imperial Parliament intended to improve the social or economic status of Austria's disenfranchised peasant population.
[21] The misery of Galician peasants was highlighted by a number of activists such as Ivan Franko and in several publications such as Scarcity and Famine in Galicia by Roger Łubieński (1880).
[10][18][24][25][26][27] The dismal state of the province's economy led people to mockingly refer to the region as Golicja i Głodomeria, a pun on the official name of the territory, Królestwo Galicji i Lodomerii, incorporating the Polish words "goły" ("naked") and "głodny" ("hungry") – "Nakedia and Hungrymeria".
[18] Some emigration was local, to richer parts of Galicia and nearby Bukovina; others moved to Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, or other provinces of Austria, Prussia and Russia (including Russian Poland).
