and more conservative elements of the priesthood, while the latter ideology was more popular among the younger priests. The Russophilia of the Galician Ruthenians was particularly strong during the mid-19th century, although by the end of that century the Russophiles had declined in importance relative to the Ukrainophiles. The Austrian authorities during this time began to be more and more involved in the power-struggle with Russia for the rule of the Balkans, as the declining Ottoman Empire withdrew, and in so doing opposed the Russophiles. The Balkans themselves were largely Orthodox and crucial to the Russian Panslavism movement. In this situation, the Galician Ruthenians found themselves in the pawn's position. When the power struggle erupted into the First World War, the Russian Army initially quickly overran Galicia (see Eastern Front (World War I)). Free of Polish domination, unlike in other areas of Ukraine the Uniate church had become closely linked to the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian national movement. For this reason, the population in general were quite loyal to the Austrian Habsburgs, earning the nickname "Tyroleans of the East", and resisted reunion into the Orthodox Church. A minority of them, however, welcomed the Russians and reverted to Orthodoxy. After regaining the lost territories with the counterattack in late 1914, the Austrian authorities responded with repressions: several thousand Orthodox and Russophilic people died while being interred at a Talerhof concentration camp for those deemed disloyal to Austria. Already a minority, the Russophiles were largely extinguished as a religious-cultural force in Galicia as a result of these actions. Twentieth and twenty-first centuries Soviet Union After the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War the Bolsheviks seized power in the Russian Empire and transformed it into the Soviet Union. Religion in the new socialist society was assigned little value by the state, but in particular Russian Orthodox Church was distrusted because of its active support of the White Movement. Massive arrests and repressions began immediately. In the Ukrainian SSR (one of the founding republics of the USSR) as early as in December 1918 the first execution of the head of the Ukrainian Exarchate Metropolitan of Kyiv and Halych took place. This was only the start which culminated in mass closing and destruction of churches (some standing since the days of the Kyivan Rus) and executions of clergy and followers. Ukraine was controlled by several short-lived yet independent governments which revived the Ukrainian