Cultural projects that promoted the linguistic assimilation of peripheral populations to formerly aristocratic languages (a process that in Western Europe turned "peasants into Frenchmen") facilitated the political incorporation of Western European borderlands. In Eastern Europe, the central state's introduction of such projects to broaden the appeal of high culture has frequently led instead to a proliferation of cultural and linguistic projects opposed to central and local elites alike, and devoted to asserting the national identity of Ukrainians, Ruthenians, Slovaks and other peasant populations. Sociologists of culture who focus on the crucial mediating role of producers and consumers of culture can help understand the problems of patronage that helped undermine state efforts to promote aristocratic culture. This analysis attempts to account for the initial phase of the adoption and reinterpretation of national ideology in 19th century Eastern Europe as it occurred within the domain of public theater. Early nineteenth century officials of the Russian empire sought to consolidate their state's legitimacy by creating a European-style national culture and spreading it through the establishment of public theaters and other elite cultural institutions in Russia's borderlands. Local elites in "Little Russia" at first expressed little sustained interest in supporting these new public theaters. Concerned about lack of public interest in "serious" theater, the region's cultural producers initiated efforts to broaden appreciation for high culture by writing and producing plays that examined problems facing rural Ukrainians. Although initially these rural plays lacked an audience, their ideology lent new legitimacy among Ukrainian peasants and soldiers to their national identity and language, formerly associated with rural life, uncouth manners, lack of sophistication, and backwardness. After the Russian empire's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]