Galician Russophilia () or Moscophilia () was a cultural and political movement largely in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary (currently western Ukraine). This ideology emphasized that since the Eastern Slavic people of Galicia were descendants of the people of Kievan Rus' (Ruthenians), and followers of Eastern Christianity, they were thus a branch of the Russian people. The movement was part of the larger Pan-Slavism that was developing in the late 19th century. Russophilia was largely a backlash against Polonisation (in Galicia) and Magyarisation (in Carpathian Ruthenia) that was largely blamed on the landlords and associated with Roman Catholicism.
Russophilia has survived longer among the Rusyn minority, especially that in Carpathian Ruthenia and the Lemkos of south-east Poland.
Terminology
The "Russophiles" did not always apply the term to themselves and called themselves Russians, Rusians, Ruthenians or Rusyny (Rusyns). Some Russophiles coined such terms as Obshche-rossy (Common Russians) or Starorusyny (Old Ruthenians) to stress either the differences within their faction, referring to commonness with all Russians, or their unique stand within the whole of the Russian nation.
The ethnonym Ruthenians for Ukrainian people had been accepted by both the Russophiles and the Moscophiles for quite a long period of time. The new name Ukrainians began to be accepted by the Ruthenian Galicians (as opposed to Polonian Galicians) around the 1890s, under the influence of Mykola Kostomarov and the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius in central Ukraine.
Background
After the fall of the westernmost East Slavic state in 1349, most of the area of what is now Western Ukraine came under the control of Poland and Hungary, with Poland ruling Galicia and Hungary controlling Carpathian Ruthenia. The loss of independence began a period of gradual, centuries-long assimilation of much of the native elite into Polish and Hungarian culture. This elite adopted a national orientation in which they saw the native Rus population of Galicia as a branch of the Polish nation who happened to be of the Eastern Christian faith. They believed that the native language was merely a dialect of Polish, comparable to Mazovian, and that assimilation would be inevitable.
This process of Polonisation was, however, resented by the peasants, the clergy, and small minority of nobles who retained their East Slavic culture, religion or both. The latter two groups would form the nucleus of native national movements that would emerge with the loosening of Polish and Hungarian control in western Ukraine, which occurred when the entire region came under the control of the Austrian Habsburgs in the course of the Partitions of Poland. The Austrian Emperor emancipated the serfs, introduced compulsory education and raised the status of the Ruthenian priests to that of their Polish and Hungarian counterparts. Furthermore, they mandated that Ukrainian Catholic seminarians receive a formal higher education (previously, priests had been educated informally by their fathers), and organized institutions in Vienna and Lviv that would serve this function. This led to the appearance, for the first time, of a large educated social class within the Ukrainian population in Galicia. Austrian reforms led to a gradual social mobilization of the native inhabitants of Western Ukraine and the emergence of several national ideologies that reflected the natives' East Slavic culture and were opposed to that of Roman Catholic Poland and Hungary. This development was encouraged by the Austrian authorities because it served to undermine Polish or Hungarian control of the area. The cultural movements included: Russophilia, the idea that Galicia was the westernmost part of Russia and that the natives of Western Ukraine were, like all of the Russian Empire's East Slavic inhabitants, members of one Russian nation; Ruthenianism, the idea that the people of Western Ukraine were a unique East Slavic nation; and Ukrainophilia, the idea that the people of western Ukraine were the same as those of neighbouring lands in the Russian Empire but that both were a people different from Russians — Ukrainians.