Under the various compromises that had been made in Austria-Hungary after the establishment of the Dual Monarchy, Galicia had passed entirely into the hands of the Poles, who furnished a large part of the higher officials of the province under Austrian rule. However, their power was not absolute, for it was the consistent policy of Vienna not to solve any of the main questions that confronted the Empire but to endeavor to maintain a balance between the various peoples in a given province, playing off one against another and thus preventing any definite lineup against the central authority. This had been the method adopted in 1848, when it looked at one time as if Austria would concede many rights to the Ukrainians in the province and even allow the establishment of a Ukrainian university at Lviv. It was never done, for the swing of reaction had blocked all moves in this direction. Nevertheless, much could be accomplished, if the Ukrainian population were really awakened to demand their rights and throughout the eighties a larger and larger number of persons appeared qualified to take the post of leadership in the undertaking. In many ways Ivan Franko played the leading role in this. As a journalist, novelist and poet, he worked steadily and effectively to arouse the people. He pointed out the economic needs of the province, he pictured the social defects of society, he translated into Ukrainian many of the masterpieces of European literature, and he worked energetically on all the progressive papers of the area. As early as 1868 there had been established in Lviv a cultural society, the Prosvita, and a little later in 1873 there was set up the Shevchenko Society, with the idea of publishing serious books in Ukrainian. Progress was very slow and it was more than ten years before enough funds were available to undertake any important work. Then it commenced to prosper. It was renamed the Scientific Society in 1892, and in 1898 it was again reorganized as the Shevchenko Scientific Society. It attracted the attention of scholars everywhere for the excellence of its publications. This and many other activities made Galicia the real centre for Ukrainian work and it gave a vitality to the Ukrainian cause which was impossible in Russia, where the censorship tried to block everything that was done. Early in the nineties there was made an attempt to unite the Poles and Ukrainians for political purposes but it came to nothing. By the beginning of the twentieth century, there had come a definite split between the two nationalities, and Polish and Ukrainian parties were set up.