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Tamara Zlobina
struggle, popular culture, religion, old traditions and new customs. It was of interest to
me how official declarations and intellectual ideas become (or not) apparent in everyday
public space.
Taking into account this particular goal I chose the example of the city of Lviv, a re-
markable city in the Ukrainian context. Situated near the western border of Ukraine, Lviv
is perceived as the capital of Western Ukraine, an influential center of nationalist Ukrai-
nian movement during last few centuries and a reference point for the Ukrainian discus-
sion of Central Europe. I tried to analyze two levels of public discourse in Lviv (official
statements and intellectual writings; popular culture narratives) and find some similarities
or contradictions between them.
The notion of urbanism was always problematic in the Ukrainian context. During the
nineteenth century the biggest cities were influenced by dominant cultures of two em-
pires – Russian in the East and Austro-Hungarian in the West. The Ukrainian population
in the cities was the minority, more or less active in the fight for its rights. This situation
changed during the Soviet times when industrialization brought a huge amount of work-
ing class people from the countryside to the cities. But Ukrainians were in the position of a
repressed majority in the Soviet Ukraine until the declaration of Ukrainian independence
in 1991. I shall not retell the whole history of the Ukrainian nation coming into being
here. Instead I shall concentrate on particular
story/stories about one city crucial for the
Ukrainian national discourse.
Lviv was founded as a fort in the mid-13th century by Prince Danylo Halitski of Gali-
cia. It was situated at the trade crossroads and quickly became the centre of trade and
commerce for the region. In the 14th century Galicia and Lviv were occupied by Poland.
There were several national groups coexisting and conflicting with each other – Poles,
Germans, Armenians, Jews and Ukrainians. The national composition of the population
and local authorities changed during the centuries. In 1772 Galicia became a part of the
Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire but still remained dominated by Poles. With the col-
lapse of the Hapsburg Empire at the end of World War I, Lviv was proclaimed capital of
the independent Republic of Western Ukraine. Lviv was also crucial for another national
discourse – Polish, so Poles soon took control over the city until the Red Army got the
control over it in September of 1939. Lviv was occupied by Germany from 1941 to 1944.
In 1944 Lviv again went under the Soviet rule and remained a Soviet city until 1991. In in-
dependent Ukraine Lviv is the main centre of Ukrainian nationalism with the domination
of the Ukrainian culture and language and clear
pro-European orientation
1
.
It is the first time in the city history when Ukrainians become representatives in Lviv.
There is a bit of irony in the historical conditions that generated such a situation. The
transformation of Lviv into a Soviet industrial centre after the Second World War entailed
a certain increase of the population and changes in its combination. Previous city dwell-
ers (most of them were killed during the war or removed by Communists soon after the
war) were replaced by party officials, technicians and engineers from Russia and other
Soviet republics and local working class people who came to work at Lviv’s factories from
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Cultural Markers of Ukrainian Public Space: Mixture and Instability. The City of Lviv Case
neighboring villages. The old historical downtown was surrounded with industrial areas
and residential districts built behind them. The modern city map shows alternation of
historical-industrial-residential urban zones so typical of a post-Soviet city.
Soviet past and Soviet heritage are crucial for the Ukrainian present much more than
it has been articulated. The post-Soviet trauma led to the atmosphere of silence when it
came to problems of management and transformation of Soviet heritage. During the So-
viet times it was obvious that there was only one main ideology. As a set of beliefs based on
the communist doctrine this ideology influenced life in the whole Soviet Union whether
someone believed it or not. The Communist way of life wasn’t composed just of official
declarations and Party slogans. Power strategies of this regime demonstrate craftiness and
resourcefulness of ideology reproducing itself at the micro level of a daily life. Let us look
at a particular example. In 1939 the Soviet rule was established in the city of Lviv. Fortu-
nately, the city was not destroyed much during World War II. Soviet government faced
the problem of Lviv’s transformation into an ordinary Soviet city from the city with a rich
national
heritage of Poles, Jews and Ukrainians.
Lviv was transformed without any major reconstruction of its historical center. The
prominent narrative, which one can find in Soviet texts about Lviv, is an industrial dis-
course. There is one essential text quoted in any historical book or guidebook, namely,
paragraph 32 from the law about a five-year plan (1946-1950) that prescribes to trans-
form Lviv into a large industrial center of Ukraine. Taking into account the fact that Lviv
never was an industrial center (the city used to be concerned with trade and administra-
tion) and there were no deposits of coal or other natural resources it was decided to
built high technology plants (most of them collapsed together with the Soviet Union in
the 1990s) there. It is obvious that economical reasons weren’t the sole motive for these
processes. New factories were prominent visual signs of Soviet power in Western Ukraine
showing its successfulness. On the other hand, factories were structures that provided
facilities for thousands of people meanwhile holding possibilities to control and influence
the masses.
Another great Lviv narrative was the inheritance of historical development. Proper
facts from the past (workers’ revolts, demonstrations, socialist publications, etc) were dis-
covered in books and honored (together with the soviet heroic pantheon) in the names of
streets, monuments and museums, mostly situated in the city center. The story organiza-
tion shows strategies used to transform the city. The construction of new districts or fac-
tories was as important as the organization of a proper discursive field. Tours around the
city were organized in a special way for visitors to pay considerable attention to the Soviet
heritage and Soviet present of the city. Factories, residential districts, new monuments
were tourist must-see objects. In the case of non-Soviet heritage (especially churches) the
emphasis was made on the ideologically correct current use of the buildings as archives,
museums etc. Monuments, memorable boards, names of streets served as symbolic signs
of the Soviet state. The constructed image of the city was single and clear. After the col-
lapse of the Soviet Union it broke into pieces.