Multi-ethnic Lviv?
Since its foundation members of different ethnics groups and different religions have lived together in Lviv. Peaceful coexistence and mutual cultural enrichment as well as sharp, sometimes violently waged, conflicts are the two sides of the city’s history.
For hundreds of years, it was difficult enough to balance the opposing interests in the city. But Lviv had an additional problem which made the peaceful resolution of its conflicts more difficult in the 19th and first half of the 20th century.
The city was the point where imperial and national aims intersected. Neither the Poles nor the western Ukrainians could conceive of a nation-state without Lviv, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire did not want to relinquish the capital of its crown land, and the tsar of Russia looked at this offshoot of the Rus’ as an intrinsic part of his patrimony. During the Second World War Nazi Germany wanted to develop Lviv, or Lemberg as they called it, into a Germanic bastion against the Slavic East, while Stalin claimed the city and surrounding region for the Soviet Ukraine.
In the 20th century, all of these pretenders to the city controlled the city at least once. And with every change of power, the new rulers populated the public space with their own symbols. Streets were given new names, some monuments were toppled and others erected, new cemeteries were designed and others were destroyed. Lviv underwent imperial or national redecoration and repainting. The city was also given a new history which legitimised the claim of the new power to the city but marginalised the lives of other groups and their contributions to the city’s culture and history.
Lviv as a site of memory for the “good” Habsburg monarchy
The battle for monuments and street names raged long before the First World War. After 1867 the Polish elite made use of the leeway accorded them to expand their domination over the city. The university was polonised, Polish schools were opened, Polish banks and cooperatives were founded, monuments of Polish poets, politicians, kings and heroes were dedicated, and the streets were given Polish names. Jewish self-confidence found its expression in the building of impressive synagogues, almost all of which were later destroyed by the Nazis. Today, only memorial plaques recall the importance of the Jewish community in Lviv. As far as was possible, all things Ukrainian – with the exception of Greek-Catholic churches and the buildings of Ukrainian organisations – were edged out of the public space.
To a certain extent, today’s nostalgia for Habsburg is justified. Despite the predominant “Galician poverty” the last few decades before the First World War were incomparably better than everything that followed. While bloodshed was not uncommon in rural areas – particularly in the run-up to elections and during agricultural strikes – in Lviv conflicts tended to be resolved peacefully. But the darker sides of Austrian rule during the First World War should not be forgotten either. Austrian authorities executed thousands of Ukrainians as alleged Russian spies and interned tens of thousands in detention camps.
But that has not detracted from the Habsburg renaissance. Reviving the Austrian heritage is also profitable for tourism. Restaurants are decorated in imperial and royal styles, portraits of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph hang on their walls and cafés everywhere in the town attempt to revitalise former Austrian traditions.
Defence of Lwów (Lviv) – “November Deed” – Pogrom
In the popular Polish image of Lviv as an antemurale Christianitatis, i.e., as a bulwark of Poland and of Christianity, Europe was not merely standing tall against invasions by the Mongols, Turks and Tartars but was also being defended against the Cossacks, and later against the Russians and the Bolsheviks. In the Polish-Ukrainian War for East Galicia in 1918/19 this paradigm was projected on the Ukrainian troops. In contrast, West Ukrainian politicians saw themselves as placed on the wrong side of the wall; they interpreted the downfall of the Rus’ during the Mongol invasion and the collapse of Ukrainian statehood under the blows of the Red Army as a tragic sacrifice offered up by the Ukrainian nation for the salvation of Europe. But while such an antemurale concept could serve as a shared site of memory for Poles and Ukrainians, due to its anti-Russian and Kulturkampf connotations, this would not be particularly desirable.
November 1918 is the key to understanding the conflicts in Lviv and East Galicia in the inter-war period. For the Jews, November 1918 was irrevocably associated with the memory of the pogrom – a memory which is not amenable to any positive interpretation. This meant that in a key area – the Defence of Lwów – the Jews of Lviv were excluded from the Polish community of memory. In contrast the Ukrainians consciously developed their own community of memory and despite the unfavourable conditions created sites of memory which aimed to inspire Ukrainian patriotism. Given the inflamed popular passions of the inter-war period, the attempts made in November 1918 by moderate politicians on both sides to achieve a peaceful resolution of the conflict were viewed as almost amounting to treason. Would a closer investigation into these attempts at resolution and reconciliation show nonexistent civil alternatives which were later covered up by the martial metaphors of heroism and sacrifice?
The Polish-Ukrainian rivalry for the master interpretation continues to reverberate up until the present day, while the Jewish memory of the pogrom of November 22-24, 1918 has been completely overshadowed by the murder of the Lviv Jews in the Second World War. The 80th anniversary of the so-called “November Deed” (Lystopadovyj chyn) – i.e., the seizure of power in East Galicia and the founding of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic – were lavishly celebrated in Lviv.
The Second World War
Today, when discussions focus on inter-ethnic relationships in Lviv during the Second World War, interpretations continue to diverge as much as the interpretations of November 1918 differed in the interwar period: there can be no question of any transnational site of memory. Ukrainians authors prefer to evade questions about the participation of Ukrainians in pogroms and the role of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police or they point to the alleged collaboration of Jews with the Soviet power. Jewish memoirists in their turn severely reproach Poles and Ukrainians and accuse them of not assisting Jews or even of participating in the genocide. These different experiences have also had consequences for the memorial culture. As regards the Second World War there are not merely double memories but a threefold memory of the war.
After Ukrainian independence in 1991, West Ukrainians attempted to rid themselves of the most ostentatious symbols of their former affiliation to the Soviet Union. The Lenin monument disappeared almost immediately and other symbols of Soviet rule were similarly dismantled within a short period of time. The monuments commemorating the victory of the Red Army and the burial ground of the Red Army were left untouched. At the same time, the municipal authorities made a point of delivering a small pinprick to their large neighbour and called a street in the centre of the town after Dzhokhar Dudayev who had declared the independence of Chechnya from the Russian Federation.
Perspectives
Lviv needs evolve from being a point of dissension in Polish-Ukrainian relationships into a place of Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation and cooperation. The Polish military cemetery of the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918/19 exemplifies such an approach. Its reconstruction was agreed upon by the presidents of Poland and the Ukraine over the heads of the Lviv authorities and the local population. A faithful reconstruction of the old Polish military cemetery failed because of local opposition, and some subsequent rectifications were necessary to make the project palatable to the Ukrainians of Lviv. A Ukrainian military cemetery was placed in front of the Polish military cemetery as a counterpoint, with a Ukrainian memorial which includes some problematic elements of the national sacrificial mythology.
On the one hand, the reconstruction of the Polish military cemetery is a hopeful sign, on the other hand the arguments about its design show how difficult it is to turn Lviv into a transnational site of memory. The city is too important for the national self-image of West Ukrainians and their position in the Ukrainian nation-state.
The opportunity to turn Lviv into a site of reconciliation is there. But for that it would be necessary not to sweep the conflicts of the past in and for Lviv, the Holocaust, and the reciprocal murders of Poles and Ukrainians in the Second World War under the carpet.
Today Russians are the city’s largest national minority. As used to be the case between Poles and Ukrainians, the boundaries between Russians and Ukrainians are blurred. Mixed marriages are common, and it is unclear which culture the children of these marriages subsequently choose. But it would be naive to ignore the existing potential for conflicts.
The traces and symbols of various rulers and of ethnic and religious groups coexist, compete against and overlay each other. Over all of them lies a Ukrainian mantle through which traces of the other ethnic groups can still be dimly perceived or, today, are even deliberately laid bare. It started with a Habsburg revival, now a renaissance of the Jewish and Polish past of Lviv is apparent. Hidden Hebrew and Polish inscriptions are being excavated, at least one restaurant has decorated its rooms with Polish exhibits, and the synagogue of the Golden Rose will be rebuilt. Signs of a new communality?
translated from German by Helen Schoop
Christoph Mick PhD - British historian, 2005-2010 associate professor of the University of Warwick. Specializes in recent history of Russia and Central and Eastern Europe - particularly of Poland and Ukraine. The range of his scientific interest include also studies on history of science and technology.