While Canada was dealing with the problem of populating their vast swaths of empty land, the Ukrainian people were struggling to survive on ever smaller plots of land. At the time what is now the country of Ukraine was divided between the Russian Empire in the east and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the west.
Eastern Ukraine, which accounted for around 80 percent of the ethnographical territory, had been part of the Russian Empire since 1654 when Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the hetman of the Zaporizhian Cossacks agreed to a disastrous military alliance with Moscow. The idea had been to protect the Ukrainian people against the Catholic Poles in the west and the Muslim Turks and Tartars from the Black Sea coast, but the outcome was Ukrainian subservience to Russia which would last for over three hundred years. At the start of the twentieth century there were 17 million ethnic Ukrainians living in the nine south-western provinces of the Russian Empire. The region had experienced a population explosion in the mid-19th century which led to mass migration to Siberia and other parts of the Russian Empire. Few of the Ukrainians who came to Canada originated in this region (only 3% of Ukrainian immigrants prior to the First World War were from Russia).
The western part of modern Ukraine had become part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a result of the partitioning of Poland in 1791-93. There were three provinces which included large numbers of Ukrainians: Galicia (Halychyna) had 3 million Ukrainians, Bukovina had 300,000 and Transcarpathia another 400,000. In none of these provinces were the Ukrainians a majority of the population. The 1910 census showed the population of Galicia was 47% Polish, 40.2% Ukrainian, 11% Jewish and 1% German. In Bukovina it was 38.4% Ukrainian, 34.4% Romanian, 13% Jewish, 8.4% German, 4.6% Polish and 1.3% Magyar. Even in the more Ukrainian regions, eastern Galicia and northern Bukovina, the Ukrainians only made up 63% and 65% respectively.
Among the factors which would lead to the mass emigration of Ukrainians from these regions were the lack of political power, the lack of educational opportunities, the lack of land and the dependence on the large landowners in the region.
In Austria at the time the election to the central and provincial assemblies was done through the curia system. Under this system four groups were allowed representation: great landowners, chambers of commerce, towns and villages. The land ownership requirements meant that in 1900 of the 5.8 million peasants in Galicia only 13% were allowed to vote. In Bukovina it was 10% of the 520,000 peasants. Ukrainians represented 12.32% of the Austrian population but only held 6.4% of the seats in the Austrian Diet (Parliament). In industry Ukrainians were even less represented. In Eastern Galicia there were only 150,000 fulltime workers in industries such as textiles, matchstick making, salt mining, lumber, transportation and petroleum extraction. Of these only a quarter were Ukrainian while over half were Polish and the rest predominantly Jewish.
In Galicia in 1905 25% of children between the ages of seven and thirteen were not attending school. Among Ukrainians that was 40%. Ukrainians represented roughly 40% of the population of Galicia but only 26% of students in teachers’ seminaries, 19% of gymnasium (high school) students, 13% of law students, 7% of medical students and 6% of technical students. Most Ukrainian schools in Galicia and Bukovina only covered one or two grade levels. Thus, as of 1900, 80% of Ukrainian speaking Galician people were illiterate.
These factors meant that nearly all Ukrainians in Austria were engaged in farming. However, even that industry posed great difficulties. A farmer in Ukraine needed about 6 hectares (about fourteen acres) to provide a living for his family exclusively off the land. Very few farmers were even close to that number - over 50% of the land holdings in Galicia and Bukovina were less than 2 hectares and 85% were less than 5 hectares. Of these families, three quarters had at least one family member who was hired out to work on the estates of the larger landholders. The average farm of this size would also have at most one horse and usually one cow. In all of Galicia the 1.15 million households with less than 10 hectares of land combined to own a total of 34 sowers and 58 harvesting machines. Therefore most of the land was cultivated with wooden hoes and ox-drawn plows; grain was sown by hand, cut with a scythe and threshed with flails. Crop rotation systems were unknown. With each successive generation the land would be further divided amongst the children with the parcels getting smaller and smaller.
When serfdom was abolished in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1848, the nobility appropriated almost 2.1 million hectares of forests, meadows and pastures which had formerly been common lands. These great landowners therefore controlled 90% of the forests and 25% of the pastures and non-arable lands for which the peasants were required to pay for access which was often done through labor. The nobility also retained the right to monopolize alcohol production and sales which they usually leased to the local innkeeper (usually Jewish). By 1876 Galicia had 23,269 taverns which equated to one per 233 people. The annual consumption of 50% alcohol was 26L per person (compared to 10.9L for France and 9.4L for Germany).
In Galicia, the southeastern counties, especially the lowland region of southern Podilia (around Chortkiv) boasted the most fertile soil and one of the highest proportions of arable land in Galicia but also some of the highest mortality and illiteracy rates and highest population densities. What most distinguished these counties was the degree of aristocratic domination by the oldest, wealthiest and most prominent Polish families. Not only did these families control much of the arable land - 37.2 per cent in Chortkiv, 39.6 per cent in Husiatyn (at least 10 to 15 per cent above the Galician average) - they also owned up to 98 per cent of the forest land in southern Podilia (14 per cent above the Galician average) and 50 per cent of the pasture and meadow lands. Because the soil was so fertile, forest, meadow and pasture areas were constantly being converted into arable land. By 1890 arable land represented 67 per cent of the surface area of southern Podilia, leaving only 16.5 per cent in forest and 7.3 per cent in pasture and meadow. Even peasants with good-sized plots were thus reduced to near total dependence on the estate owners for timber, firewood and roofing needs, and for dietary supplements like fruits, berries, mushrooms and fowl, along with fodder for livestock. If they could not pay in cash (and with the exception of Kolomyia there were practically no towns of any size in which money could be earned), wage-free labor on the great estates was the sole alternative. The lack of opportunities to earn money almost meant that the wages the laborers could command were well below the Galician average. In fact, nowhere in Galicia was the peasantry as dependent on the landed aristocracy as it was in southern Podilia. Only in Bukovina were conditions comparable. In the county of Chernivtsi, for example, thirty-three secular and eight ecclesiastical landowners owned 27,360 hectares of arable, meadow and forest lands with the peasantry holding the remaining 20,235 hectares.
Another sore point among young Ukrainian males was compulsory service in the Austrian army. Illiterate and unable to understand the German language, young recruits were often abused by brutal foreign-speaking officers. While some young people likely deserted specifically in order to avoid this military service, many others who were emigrating for other reasons needed to sneak out of the country to avoid being enlisted.
These were some of the factors which had already led to Ukrainian emigrants leaving the region prior to any arriving in Canada. There was demand for industrial laborers and miners in the United States, Prussia, Germany and France which drew many Ukrainians, especially from the Transcarpathia region. Also, in 1888 slavery was abolished in Brazil which led to a need for cheap agricultural labor in that country. During a period of time known as the "Brazilian fever", between 1895 and 1897 more than 20,000 small farmers and landless peasants from Galicia came to Brazil after having been lured by promises of cheap land with good black soil. Some Ukrainian peasants were also encouraged by rumors that Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, had not died but had moved to Brazil and that he would welcome Ukrainian immigrants to that country.
The Ukrainians weren't the only group leaving Galicia at this time. Some two or three generations earlier, German colonists had been invited into the Ukraine in the hope that their farming practices would stimulate agricultural production and set an example to the native population. However, the Germans settled in villages of their own and there was very little integration with the Ukrainians. By 1870 government policy had changed and the Germans found themselves out of favor. They were suddenly denied the right to possess land and were ordered to sell their holdings by a certain date or forfeit them as well as being required to do service in the Austrian army. Thus, the Germans decided to look for land elsewhere, including in Canada. One of these Galician Germans was a man named John Krebs who would play a large role in the coming wave of Ukrainian emigration to Canada. To give a sense of how large the emigration would be from the region: 858,579 Galicians (10% of the population) emigrated including 390,827 from Eastern Galicia between 1881 and 1910 of which 251,615 were Ukrainian.