In 1908, Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia, tensions rise between Russia and Austria, especially during the Balkan war in 1912-1913. The Poles want to capitalise on the political situation with the goal of creating their own state, so they organise youth groups and paramilitary units. The activities of the Polish high school society ‘Sokół’ [Hawk] are enhanced and reorganised; its first chapter was founded as early as 1867 in Lviv. It was also in Lviv that there appeared the ‘Squads of Bartosz’ – an organisation dedicated to military training for Polish youth – and, towards the end of 1910, the gymnastics and sport society ‘Strzelec’ [Rifleman] was established in Kraków.
New forms of military and patriotic training were soon devised by the Ukrainians as well. It was time, as Ivan Franko put it so accurately, for ‘new forces [to push] their way forward’, and ‘the living force of the idea’ created a new national awareness amongst the Ukrainian residents of Galicia.
Soon there would arise the Ukrainian youth organisations ‘Sicz’ (1900), then ‘Sokil’ and the scouting society ‘Plast’ (1910), which was meant to provide patriotic education for high school and younger students. The latter name, following the advice of Ivan Boberski, was introduced by the young educator and future organiser of the air forces of the Ukrainian Galician Army (UHA) Petro Franko (1890-1941), the son of Ivan Franko. ‘Plast’, an old Cossack word, unmistakably alluded to the ties between the education of young boys and girls and the Ukrainian military tradition (‘plastuns’ were the guard troops of the Kuban Cossacks). The most active members of ‘Plast’ later grew up to be the famed elders of the Ukrainian Sicz Riflemen: the historian and publicist Vasyl Kuchabskyi (1895-1945), the soldier and social activist Olena Stepaniv (1892-1963), later the commander of the women’s platoon of the Riflemen, Ivan Chmola (1892-1939), the author of a textbook for plastuns modelled on military drills, and Petro Franko, mentioned earlier. The role of the Sicz, ‘Sokil’ or ‘Plast’ in the mass organisation of the Ukrainian people cannot be overstated.
In such an atmosphere, there also arose Ukrainian paramilitary societies such as the Sich Riflemen (1913), whose active members became the ideological initiators of the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen (1914-1918). It was in those circles that the soldiers’ songs were composed and taught.
The researcher Adam Roliński notes that nearly forty percent of Polish legionnaires came from the intelligentsia, while in other Polish military formations the percentage of educated soldiers didn’t reach that level. The same can be said of the elite Ukrainian Sich Riflemen: the percentage of well-educated young people among them was also rather high.