Boryslav in Flames - Ivan Franko

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Boryslav in Flames

by
Ivan Franko

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Title:	Boryslav in Flames
Author:	Ivan Franko
Genre:	Novel
Written:	(1880-1) (Eng. 2023)
Length:	315 pages
Original in:	Ukrainian
Availability:	Boryslav in Flames - US
	Boryslav in Flames - UK
	Boryslav in Flames - Canada

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

	directly from: Glagoslav

Ukrainian title: Борислав сміється
Serialized in 1880-1; first published in book-form in 1922
Translated by Yuri Tkacz
With an Introduction by Marko Pavlyshyn

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Our Assessment:

B : an interesting but unfortunately incomplete story of collective action and (much) more in nineteenth-century Galicia

See our review for fuller assessment.

The complete review's Review:

While the title refers to Boryslav in Flames, the novel actually begins in nearby Drohobych. It opens with the laying of the foundation stone of a grand new house Leon Hammerschlag is building there.
By this time -- the late 1860s -- Boryslav had become an early oil boomtown. Workers continued to flock there, to work in oil mining as well as the mining and refining of earth wax (ozokerite). Fortunes were to be made there -- though not by the workers, as there were always more than enough, keeping wages low -- and relatively new arrival Hammerschlag came here two years earlier to make his. He came: "already with considerable capital" and was certain he would quickly add to it: He:

was well-versed in commerce, and had read books on mining, and thought that it was enough for him to simply appear in Boryslav, and things would fall at his geet. He would become an absolute nobleman. He had plans to buy up extensive and very suitable tracts of land for mining, to acquire machines for faster and cheaper extraction of the earth's treasures, to improve the prestige of the entire oil industry, to be able to raise and lower market prices at will. But things had turned out to be completely different.

Hammerschlag found out:

Boryslav already had its established powers, and Leon found it challenging to compete with them, with Hermann being the most formidable figure among them.

       Hermann is Hermann Goldkrämer -- "the most respectable (in other words, the wealthiest) of the town's inhabitants". Goldkrämer also comes to the laying of the foundation stone, and Hammerschlag finally gets a bit closer to him. He even suggests tying the families closer together: his daughter Fanny is of marriageable age, and Goldkrämer has a son, Gottlieb, apprenticed to a merchant in Lviv, who surely would be an appropriate husband. However, Gottlieb is a spoiled brat who soon abandons his apprenticeship; he has a doting mother, Goldkrämer's awful wife Rifka, who cares only for him, while he doesn't get along at all with his father. Nevertheless, and on his own, he comes to fall head over heels in love with Fanny -- a love story that bubbles up from time to time over the course of the novel.
       The main character, however, is Benedio Synytsia, a mason's assistant -- one of those helping to build Hammerschlag's new house --, who is slightly injured at the laying of the foundation stone. After recuperating from his injury he hopes to get back to his work -- but lucks into a better opportunity when Hammerschlag hires him to supervise the building of a new factory he has planned in Boryslav -- a steam mill, he tells Benedio, though that's not really the kind of factory he has planned ....
       Benedio rents a room from an old oil worker, Matiy, -- in whose house a group of workers also regularly meet, keeping track of the injustices the workers have suffered with notches in sticks. They plan to take action at some point, but it's slow going; as one complains:

"Remember when we joined forces to gather all the wrongs inflicted upon the people and to mete out workers' justice to those who couldn't be brought to trial in the noblemen's courts ? You promised us back then that once enough of people's suffering had been accumulated, we would assess it to see whose cup was overflowing. Is that not so ?"
"Yes," Andrus replied somewhat reluctantly.
"Well, for almost a year now we've been accumulating those notches denoting inflicted wrongs. Brother Derkach has notched a whole pile of sticks. And we ask you, when will the time for action arrive ?"

It is a year with a bad harvest -- and the capitalists take advantage of the situation:

Indeed, the wealthy residents of Boryslav couldn't have asked for more favourable circumstances. They had long harboured hopes of a significant famine that would greatly increase their profits, and their wishes were fulfilled. Hordes of cheap and compliant labourers arrived, tearfully begging for work, regardless of the pay, which continued to plummet.

       Benedio understands that the only solution is collective action -- but: "How could one foster such consensus and solidarity among this vast sea of people, each preoccupied with their own survival ?"
       A labor strike could force the owners to increase wages -- but how could the workers survive even a short period without being paid, when they were barely eking out a living as it was ? But they figure it out, and behind the backs of the capitalists they organize and plan. Only one pit owner: "tirelessly sounded the alarm about the looming danger"; the others refused to see it or do anything about it. (Ironically, the workers' preparations involve also one very questionable -- indeed immoral -- act, to secure the necessary funds to tide them over for however long the duration of their strike would be, and it is the one capitalist who tried to warn the others that pays the highest price here.)
       The workers know that the capitalists will be under pressure to settle, because of their contracts and delivery-commitments and, indeed, when the well-orchestrated strike takes place the two sides quickly come to an agreement. But the guarantee the workers demand doesn't work out quite as planned: they are essentially duped -- but only because the other side isn't playing fair .....
       Boryslav in Flames is unfinished, and from the looks of it Franko may only have been about halfway through. The novel doesn't even reach the point where, as the title has it, Boryslav is in flames -- but it's certainly well on its way to getting there. Up in the air, too, is the love-affair between Fanny and Gottlieb -- with Rivka having an ... incendiary plan to overcome what is now Hammerschlag's opposition to seeing his daughter marry Goldkrämer's son. And the final chapter sees the arrival of the scientist who had developed a way of transforming earth wax into a product with more uses -- ceresin --; a process Goldkrämer had implemented, paying a commission to the inventor, while Hammerschlag had secretly come to an agreement with an assistant of the scientist and was planning on using the same process (that's what the factory was for ...) .....
       Clearly, capitalists and workers are set for further -- and more violent -- confrontation, while Fanny and Gottlieb must find a way to overcome what stands in the way of their marriage. And maybe both Goldkrämer and Hammerschlag put too many of their eggs in the ceresin-basket ... the pile Goldkrämer is waiting to hand over at the very end here: "now represented the greater part of his fortune" -- but those: "towering pyramids of wax blocks" sure look highly flammaable .....
       Boryslav in Flames reads quite well and is a quite exciting tale of fairness and injustice, and of the tension between the interests of workers and of capitalist-owners. Franko tries to stuff a bit much in here -- notably the would-be love-affair between Fanny and Gottlieb, with the latter, especially, being a rather peculiar figure; presumably Franko wanted to add a dash of romance (and felt it would be a distraction if it involved Benedio), but it's neither convincing nor very well tied into the story as a whole (though there certainly is some potential here). Problematic, especially for contemporary readers, is that the capitalists and the overseers are basically all Jewish, and antisemitic prejudices overlap all too easily here. It's generally not so blatant as Franko's naming of one (admittedly horrible) Jewish overseer as 'Blutegel' -- 'leech' --, but adds an unwelcome dimension to the basic worker-owner conflict.
       All that Franko packs in does make Boryslav in Flames more entertaining than the usual 'social' novel -- but he really doesn't need to have tried so hard; the best parts of the novel are when he focuses on the social issues, and especially the treatment of workers in these circumstances (with much wealth being created, while famine and other conditions force those without capital to seek work in these new industries). Pulled in too many other directions, he also doesn't manage to follow through with much that he brings up; the opening scene of the laying of the foundation stone is excellent, but the house then more or less forgotten.
       As an unfinished work, Boryslav in Flames is ... unsatisfyingly unfinished -- as, for better and worse, Franko has not signaled clearly what lies ahead (well, beyond that there's some stuff that's going to go up in flames; that seems a pretty safe bet ...). Still, as a novel of the time, place, and circumstances, and especially one of labor-organization, it is of interest -- and most of the story is pretty well told.

- M.A.Orthofer, 22 December 2025

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Links:

Boryslav in Flames:

Glagoslav publicity page

Reviews:

Historical Novel Society

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Eastern European literature
See Index of Books Written Before 1900

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About the Author:

Ukrainian author Ivan Franko (Іван Якович Франко) lived 1856 to 1916.

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