On the basis of evidence never before systematically analyzed—principally newspaper reports, memoirs, and statistical materials—Stella Hryniuk has written a socio-cultural history of a region of Eastern Galicia in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The book studies developments in education and in agricultural productivity, the impact of self-help movements and of the expansion of transportation networks, and improvements in preventive health care in Southern Podillia.

Cumulatively, the effects of these developments led to the emergence of an increasingly self-confident society in the region from which the majority of early Ukrainian immigrants to Canada came. By showing that this rural area was experiencing real progress, Dr. Hryniuk challenges the standard interpretations of eastern Galicia, which have portrayed it as a region characterized by backwardness and economic stagnation. See Bukovyna, Carpathian Mountains, Principality of Galicia-Volhynia, Dilo, and Boyars in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine.