Indeed it was not until the end of the thirties, when Shevchenko was already doing some of his best work, that any serious attempt was made to introduce the speech of the people into literature. At that time Markian Shashkevich, a young priest, wrote a series of poems in the vernacular. They aroused a great deal of controversy and were refused publication in Galicia but the author succeeded in having them appear in Budapest. Still, such were the censorship laws of the time, that while they were officially approved in Hungary, every copy that reached Galicia was seized by the censor and police. Shashkevich died in 1843. His two closest friends, who survived him, ultimately left the Ukrainian cause. Ivan Vahilevich after some years accepted the Polish thesis as to the Ukrainians of Galicia, and Yakiv Holovatsky accepted a position in the Russian Archaeological Service. Already there had begun that linguistic feud which was to stifle the life and thought of Western Ukraine for many years. The vast majority of the intellectual leaders were Uniat priests and they, together with some of the more conservative people, held out strongly for the maintenance of the old artificial Church Slavonic language. Among the more progressive elements there were the followers of Shashkevich, but there were others who seriously wanted to adopt Russian as the form of the vernacular to be followed, and these developed into the Moscophile or Russophile party of later days. It must not be supposed however that these people knew any Great Russian. Very few were ever able to read any of the Russian classics which were already being written, but they followed the most elaborate theories that almost any Ruthene would be able to use Great Russian in one hour, if he really set his mind on it. They refused to face any of the difficulties in their position and simply idealized Russia because it was not Austria-Hungary, and because it was a Slavonic country. Had they even attempted to learn Russian, the situation would not have been so absurd. This feeling spread quite widely in Western Ukraine and in Bukovina and even more strongly among the Carpatho-Ukrainians, where it has continued to the present time, especially among the more illiterate portions of the population, and the Orthodox elements. It was a curious mixture of a romantic idealization of Russia, a confusion of rus’-sky and russky, and a desire to get away at all costs from the horrible and unsatisfactory present.