“Ghosts of Nationalism”: attempts to transform the Austrian Empire into a federation in the 19th – early 20th centuries

The work is devoted to the search by Austrian politicians for ways to solve the national question through the federalization of a multinational empire in the 19th – early 20th centuries. The purpose and objectives of the study: the study of political and legal concepts devoted to the issues of federalization and the solution of the national question within the boundaries of a multinational state, which became widespread in European thought in the 19th – early 20th centuries. We use comparative legal, historical, comparative and system-structural me-thods. The use of these methods of cognition allows us to analyze and summarize the historical and legal material in detail, draw the necessary conclusions and identify ways to solve the identified problems within the framework of modern trends. In the course of study, we analyze the concepts of reforming the Habsburg Empire by W. von Andrian-Werburg, L. von Lohner, O. Ostrozhinsky, A. Fischhof, A. Popovichi, K. Renner, O. Bauer, K. Luger, I. Seipel, G Lammash and other prominent representatives of the political and legal thought of Austria-Hungary. We consider various approaches to the process of federalization of the Austrian Empire from theological to ethnic-legal concepts. The data obtained can be used in further historical and legal research devoted to the study of the general problems of federalism and the peculiarities of the design of federalism in multinational state formations. We prove that the multinational empires that appeared in the Middle Ages, which were united mainly by the dynastic principle, faced with the problems of nationalism in modern times, had to respond to the challenges of their time. One of the ways to solve the problem was the transformation of empires on a federalist basis. However, the federalization of the Austrian Empire in the 19th – early 20th century did not happen due to the rejection of radical reform and the desire to “slow down” the processes of modernization of the empire, which became one of the main reasons for the collapse of the multinational state after the end of the First World War.