A later offensive by General Brusilov in 1916 recovered for Russia a small area in the southeast, but of course the advance of the armies on Ukrainian territory only revived the oppression of the population. Until the Russian revolution, there could be no talk of any Ukrainian movement in the Russian Empire. Milyukov, it is true, once brought to the attention of the Duma the sad condition of these Western Ukrainians in Russian exile and prison camps but he aroused no enthusiasm, for liberals and reactionaries alike insisted that the Ukrainians were Russians and that there was no Ukrainian question at all. On the other hand the return of the Austro-German armies to Galicia after the Russian retreat brought back the status quo in the province. The Ukrainian institutions were reopened, where they had not been completely destroyed by the Russian occupation. At the outbreak of the war there had been established at Vienna a Society for the Liberation of Ukraine by various refugees from Russia. This endeavored to keep the Ukrainian question before the eyes of the Austrian authorities in the hope that the Central Powers would create an independent Ukraine out of any territory that might be detached from Russia. This was broadened in 1915 to form a General Ukrainian Council to consider all phases of the Ukrainian question and to oppose the activities of the Poles of Galicia. Like the Polish Legions of Pilsudski, the Ukrainians established the Sichovi Striltsi (The Riflemen of the Sich) and organized two regiments, although the development of the Austro-German policy prevented these from playing any important part in the war. On November 23, 1916, the Emperor Francis Joseph gave orders to prepare a decree establishing Galicia as a Polish state, with almost as much independence as had been planned for the Kingdom of Poland, to be set up by the Germans out of Polish territory taken from Russia. This was a severe blow to the Ukrainians, for they had hoped that Galicia would be divided and that the Ukrainian section would receive special recognition. It was not to be, but the Ukrainians protested sharply against the idea of adding the province of Kholm to the Polish lands. Yet they became bitterly disillusioned, for they realized that even during the strain of a War which was placing greater and greater burdens upon all the citizens of the Dual Monarchy, the blighting hand of the Hapsburgs was still working against them and preventing, as in the past, any final settlement of the position of the province. The activity of the Polish National Committee in the lands of the Entente seemed to the authorities a greater menace than the domestic feeling of the Ukrainian peasants and as these had been unable to get an effective hearing throughout the world and were the object of a vicious propaganda by Russia, it hardly seemed worthwhile to the government at Vienna to give much thought to the already devastated province.