Austro-Hungarian Galicia was critical for the development of Ukrainian nationalism, since the Austrian government reversed the Polonisation of "Ruthenians" in the region to build a counterweight to the more anti-Hapsburg Polish nationalism.
Thanks for the flowers for us Austrians (or at least for the Casa d'Austria - some of them are my neighbours...)!
Indeed: During the revolution of 1848 the relicts of the METTERNICH-system encouraged the Ukrainians to rebel against the rebellious Polish szlachta (as was done with Croats&Serbs against the Hungarian gentry). But after the defeat of 1859 against Italy the monArch had to integrate both aristoCracies and before the introDuction of universal suffrage 1906 every government relied on the Polish Club (the Poles put nationalism above catholicism sive liberalism and stood together in 1 faction). What brought lots of subVentions for the region and a certain degree of autoNomy within CisLeithania - yet, both mainly for the Polish&Jewish upper&middle classes. And finally, when the army performed terribly at the beginning of WWI, even the well-informed army-HQs assumed even internally, that it would be the fault of Ukrainian-orthoDox "traitors", resulting in executions of priests aso..
True is surely, that they had it better than in Russia.
That's interesting, you probably know more than me about the details as it relates to the Austrian crown. And yes, a main complaint of Ukrainian nationalists was that the traditionally Ruthenian areas which had been the centre of the Principality of Halych since Kievan Rus were haphazardly annexed by the Austrians to a bunch of Polish speaking areas including Krakow which politically dominated, as the maps you posted show. Not to mention the dominance of Polish landlords over Ruthenian peasants throughout the province...
But really what Hapsburg rule did for Ukrainians is grant the language use in public schooling, and perhaps even more importantly recognised the existence of the Greek Catholic Church and assisted in the reform of its clergy, who became the intelligentsia of Ukrainian society. So in relation to the bit about priests, Russophilia pretty much died out in Galicia because it de facto meant assimilation into the Moscow Patriarchate, the Uniate Church (and an autonomous Metropolitan of Kiev) having been liquidated in the Russian Empire.
I liked this anecdote from The Ukrainians by Andrew Wilson: "Large numbers of Ruthenians were
Kaisertreue - even in the 1990s one could still find pictures of Emperor Franz Joseph in west Ukrainian homes."