SUMMARY:

The article tells the story of a Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko from Habsburg Galicia. He had many identities and loyalties (he commanded at least four languages – German, Polish, Yiddish, and Ruthino-Ukrainian; his cultural orientations changed over time ranging from German and Polish to Ukrainian; he was a federalist before he became a Ukrainian nationalist; etc.). Franko is remembered and venerated today as a Ukrainian national poet – as a matter of fact, as the greatest Ukrainian national poet, second only to Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) from the Russian Ukraine. By the end of his life Franko was considered an unparalleled leader of the development of a modern Ukrainian identity insofar as the Ruthenians shifted from being a largely illiterate, agrarian, and self-sufficient peasant community to being a largely literate, mobilized, and integrated society – in short, to being a modern nation. Franko became a role model for many educated Ruthenians of his and the next generation. In this sense, his personal choice of Ukrainian identity had significant social consequences. Yaroslav Hrystak offers an interpretative essay of Franko’s transformation into a Ukrainian national poet. The main claim of the article is that this transformation can be adequately understood only in a wider transnational and imperial context: Franko rose to the status of national poet not in spite of, but due to the multiethnic and multicultural facts of his biography.