Lyobomyr Borakovskyy's monograph is a doctoral thesis that was written within the setting of the Viennese doctoral program “Austrian Galicia and its Multicultural Heritage” (starting 2007). In five chapters, the author explores the representation of religious conflicts in works by German-, Polish- and Ukrainian-speaking authors who belonged to the cultural region of Galicia in the period between 1848 and 1914. The focus is on both internationally-acclaimed and lesser-known authors from this no-longer-existing, yet literarily still-prominent region: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Karl Emil Franzos, Ivan Franko, Michał Bałucki, Teodor Tomasz Jeż, Osyp Makovej, Józef Rogosz, and Jan Zachariasiewicz. As the author announces in the introduction, the objective of the investigation is to examine conflicts that were displayed from various ethno-cultural and confessional points of view. Largely based on this is the typology that underlies the division in chapters. However, the author also links this typology to the most relevant motifs which are related to religious problems in the texts in question: “Religious conflicts as a part of Jewish-Christian love relations” (Part 1); “Social-economic reasons behind the Jewish-Christian religious conflict” (Part 2); “Religious aspects of social-political conflicts between Poles and Ukrainians” (Part 3); “Clerical vs. secular. Anti-clerical motifs in the literary representation of a religious conflict” (Part 4); “Tensions between Jewish orthodoxy and enlightened rationalism in literature from Galicia” (Part 5). By doing so, Borakovskyy attempts to decode societal processes in Galicia that up to this date “have only been carried out in historical studies” (21).

It is precisely this objective that determines the strong historiographic nature of the volume, focusing on social, economic, and confessional conditions through the study of motivic structures in literary texts. The methodology of New Historicism (Stephen Greenblatt) and cultural semiotics (Iurii Lotman) (23–24) that are announced at the beginning seem to bear only little relevance in the following chapters of the book: the focus of attention is primarily on the analysis of the set-up of protagonists, events, and fictional or authorial perspectives that are indicative of specific historically-evolving characteristics of society. Among these characteristics is the conservative nature of religiously-determined behavior; the Ukrainians' low educational level or the ambivalent Austrian legal system. One of the peculiar facts that finds its expression in literature, for example, is that the conflict between the Roman-Catholic and Greek-Catholic population in nineteenth century Galicia was in fact more of a social tension. It was the clash between the privileged class of Polish noblemen, academics, and civil servants on the one hand, and the Ukrainian farmers on the other (127–29). The analysis of the plot shows the different weighing of Galicia's most significant conflicting parties and thus gives an impression of the interdependence between the motifs behind social tensions, and the various non-confessional conditions.

Little by little, Borakovskyy extrapolates the political stance of the authors through analysis of their literary diegesis. Franko, for instance, is inclined towards a high regard for Jewish tradition, education, and customs, yet he criticizes the economic activity of the Jews. In this respect, he differs from the Catholic-conservative Józef Rogosz. The passionate Polish patriot Jan Zachariasiewicz, himself of Ukrainian descent, propagated the idea of “gente Ruthenus, natione Polonus,” mainly directed against pro-Russian Ukrainian intellectuals (132). Interestingly, a consistently critical representation of Jewish businessmen can also be observed in “liberal” authors. Here, the author unfortunately hardly ever calls antisemitism by name, and in most cases rather mildly describes it as “criticism.”

Without a doubt, such an analysis contributes to a better understanding of the social processes and positions that were to be found at the crossroads of religion, economy, and education in eastern Europe at a time of modernization and secularization. Moreover, Borakovskyy traces a specific development in the representation of Galician society in works by individual authors, thus showing us a certain ideological dynamic. Historical developments such as the rise of socialist movements and of positivist ideas for their part enhanced the development of anti-clerical and enlightened stances in authors such as Franko and Makovej.

Lyobomyr Borakovskyy's work is of literary-historical value, for he observes a thematic structure that spans a series of partially- or little-researched works written in three languages—a structure which is coherent on geographical, historical, and cultural levels. Literature is thus looked upon as a particular testimony to history. Yet, precisely this proves to be the striking deficiency of Borakovskyy's study: it covers literature only marginally, as an independent discourse with its own way of producing meaning. The poetics of the texts, including their language, tropes, rhetoric, and style; their mythological dimension or even the artistic contextualization of the authors, play only a minor role, and thus the analysis to a large extent remains facto-graphic and rather illustrative. This may be caused by the already-mentioned enlightening, or educational stance assumed by the authors themselves, who treated literature as a polygon for their social views (Borakovskyy on several occasions points at the artistic shortcomings of some of the texts). Still, the chosen research method seems to mirror the discursive weakness of the texts, that, as one could argue, they are very close to journalism or to historical reporting and, from a literary perspective, seem to be rather shallow. This brings us back to the initial question of the volume: what is it that makes Galician literature Galician literature?