Aleksander Petrino. A Greek condottiere in the Austrian Parliament

Aleksander Petrino (1824–99) was the only Austrian government minister who came from its eastern-most ‘crown-land’, the Bukovina – the only one without a clear-cut ethnic majority. Ukrainians were the biggest group but were massively under-represented among the elites. A sizeable part of the leadership of the Rumanians consisted of Phanariot Greeks, such as Petrino. Austrian politics in the opening phase of constitutionalism during the 1860s was characterized by a cleavage between centralist German Liberals and federalist and Catholic Slavs. Bukovina representatives did not easily fit into either category. Petrino, who also worked assiduously as a lobbyist for railroad companies, initially sided with the German Liberals, then organized a gathering of minorities from different parts of the Austrian half of the Empire, including Italians and Slovenes. It was the decision of this squadrone volante to join the Czech and Polish boycott of the Vienna Parliament in March 1870 that persuaded the Emperor to finally dismiss the German Liberal Bürgerministerium (‘Citizens’ Ministry’)

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