Thus the weary years of war dragged along and still nothing was done to improve the condition of the Ukrainians or to satisfy in any degree their legitimate aspirations. They were still as they had been in the past--the forgotten members of the Hapsburg dominions. They could pay taxes and serve in the army, but whenever there came any talk of a readjustment of conditions in the Empire, they were overlooked. They had won what they had through profiting by the fears of the government as to Polish intentions but they were discarded as soon as a working agreement was made between the government and the Polish aristocrats. The Hapsburg Empire was in this pursuing its usual policy, for it was a cardinal principle of the government of Francis Joseph to support in every way the noble classes against all other elements of the population, up to the point where they menaced the integrity of the Empire and the delicate balance that had existed since the settlement of 1867. The loss of the old Ukrainian aristocracy which had been Polonized centuries earlier was now keenly felt by the people, for they lacked those aristocratic spokesmen who could penetrate to the inner circles of the Viennese court and plead their cause in a way that would appeal to the Emperor. When Francis Joseph died and was succeeded by his nephew, the Emperor Karl, at the end of 1916, it was too late to do more than outline a new policy, but already the Empire was obviously collapsing and the Ukrainians were almost openly looking forward to the creation of their own independent state. CHAPTER NINETEEN _UKRAINIAN INDEPENDENCE_ In February 1917 the position of the Russian government became more difficult. Rasputin had been murdered and an atmosphere of gloomy foreboding spread over the entire nation. Unrest began to spread and before any one realized what was happening, there broke out in Petrograd the revolution. This opened, by a strange coincidence, on February 25/March 10, the anniversary of the death of Shevchenko. Under the enthusiasm of the revolution, the ceremonies commemorating the great poet, which had always been an occasion for tsarist repressive measures, were held on a larger scale than ever before. On the next day, a regiment composed largely of Ukrainian soldiers was one of the first to go over to the Revolution as a mass and soon the glad tidings of the abdication of the Tsar swept over the country. Of course it was received joyfully in Ukraine but there was at first no clear idea of what this downfall of the Romanovs was actually going to mean in practice.