Kiev As the Ukraine's Primate City Author(S): ROMAN SZPORLUK Source: Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol
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The President and Fellows of Harvard College Kiev as the Ukraine's Primate City Author(s): ROMAN SZPORLUK Source: Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol. 3/4, Part 2. Eucharisterion: Essays presented to Omeljan Pritsak on his Sixtieth Birthday by his Colleagues and Students (1979-1980), pp. 843- 849 Published by: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41035877 . Accessed: 03/10/2014 05:37 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and The President and Fellows of Harvard College are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Harvard Ukrainian Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 70.60.21.104 on Fri, 3 Oct 2014 05:37:19 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Kiev as the Ukraine'sPrimate City ROMAN SZPORLUK In his celebratedarticle entitled "The Law of the Primate City,"the Americangeographer Mark Jeffersondeclared: "All overthe worldit is theLaw ofthe Capitals that the largest city shall be supereminent,and not merelyin size but in nationalinfluence."1 Jefferson argued that its size gives the largestcity "an impetusto growthat cannot affectany other city,"causing it to draw away fromall othersnot onlyin size, butalso in character.Citing statistical evidence from many lands, Jefferson formu- lated a "primacyindex" for measuring the degree to whichcapitals have succeededin establishingtheir preeminence. He countedthe values of the populationsof a country'sthree largest cities as percentagesof thevalue of the largestcity. Thus, forexample, in Austriathe primacyindex was reflectedin the relationship"100 - 8 - 6," in which 100 represented Vienna(population of 1,874,000),and thenext two numbersrepresented Graz (153,000) and Linz (109,000), respectively.In thisway Austriawas shown to be a highlyintegrated state, whereas Italy, with an index of 100 - 96 - 75, was shownto be lackingin unity.(Rome's populationin 1936 was 1,156,000;Milan's 1,116,000;and that of Naples, 866,000.)2 Jeffersonwas clearlyaware thatcertain primate cities lose theirstatus whileother cities achieve it, but he did not offerany explanation why this was so. He acknowledgedthat in 1914, Naples, not Rome, was Italy's largestand therefore,on his terms,primate city, and in measuringpri- macyas of 1914 he assessed Milan's and Rome's standingin relationto Naples. (Naples was 100, Milan 96, and Rome 85.) By 1936,Rome and Naples had changedplaces, but, in Jefferson'sview, Italian unity had not reallyincreased: the new primate city, Rome, was about as strongin rela- tion to Naples and Milan as the old primatecity, Naples, had been in relationto Milan and Rome twentyyears earlier.3 Admittedly, Jefferson 1 MarkJefferson, "The Law ofthe Primate City," Geographical Review 29 (1939): 2 Jefferson,"Law," p. 228. 3 Jefferson,"Law," p. 232. This content downloaded from 70.60.21.104 on Fri, 3 Oct 2014 05:37:19 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 844 ROMAN SZPORLUK saidhe expected Rome now to increasefurther the ascendancy that it had firstachieved in 1931by becoming Italy's largest city, but he did not say whyhe expected this. A historiancould have pointed out that Rome owed itsvictory of 1931 to thepolitical decision made in 1870,which gave it the rankof a capitalcity. That decision had nothing to do withRome's size, but it had everythingto do withRome's historical image and status. WhenRome finally became Italy's largest city, demographic reality was madeto conformto historicalideal, for ideally Rome had always been Italy'sprimate city. Jefferson'sneglect of the political factor is revealedin another facet of his thesis:the assumption that the primate city is notsimply the most populous,but also the one which"expresses the national disposition morecompletely than any other city Primacyof a leadingcity is ... an earmarkof intense nationalism."4 This geographic onesidedness led the authorto see in Austriaand Viennathe most convincing demonstration ofhis thesis - a strangeclaim to make at any time, but especially so inthe 1930s. It is pointlessto dwellon Jefferson'slimitations. Despite them, the thesishe presentedhas provedto be stimulatingand fruitful,and his articleis readtoday, decades after its first publication. Let us takeup, then,a themeJefferson suggested but did not care to develop and explore: the problemof the primatecity of a nation that lacks political independence.How is such a nation's"ideal capital"related to the actuallyexisting largest or primatecity in its ethnic homeland? Modern- day Ukraineoffers an excellentcase studyfor the exploration of such dualitybetween the actual and theideal. Atthe close of the nineteenth century, when the first modern census in theUkraine under the Russian Empire took place, Odessa emerged as the largestcity located in Ukrainianethnic territory. Kiev, at somedistance behind,came in second.The actualfigures (rounded off to thenearest thousand)for the largest cities were: Odessa 404 Kiev 248 Kharkiv 174 Lviv 160 Dnipropetrovs'k 113 Mykolaiv 92 4 Jefferson,"Law," p. 231. This content downloaded from 70.60.21.104 on Fri, 3 Oct 2014 05:37:19 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions KIEV AS THE UKRAINE'S PRIMATE CITY 845 Chernivtsi 68 Zhytomyr 66 Kremenchuk 63 Kirovohrad 61 Kherson 59 Poltava 54 Source: ChauncyD. Harris,Cities of the Soviet Union (Chicago,1970), table 27, p. 256ff.Note: Katerynoslav and Ielysavethradwere the names of Dnipropetrovs'kand Kirovohrad,respectively, in 1897. Thislist includes not only the ten largest Ukrainian cities in the Russian Empire,but also twocities located in theAustrian Empire - Lvivand Chernivtsi,the respective capitals of Galiciaand Bukovyna,ethnically mixedcrownlands whose capitals were located in the predominantly Ukrainianportions of those two provinces. Followingthe Jefferson formula, we assign to Odessathe value of 100, and,correspondingly, those of 61 and 43 to Kievand Kharkiv,respec- tively.Since the sum of values for Kiev and Kharkivbarely exceeded the valueassigned to Odessaalone, it wouldseem that the Ukraine had a fairlystrong primate city, certainly a stronger one than Italy had in 1914. Butit does nottake much political or historicalwisdom to see thatthis indexcannot serve as an indicatorof the strength of Ukrainian national- ism.Nor does it reflectthe actual hierarchical relationship among the Ukrainiancities of the time. The city of Odessa, ranking third in size in the RussianEmpire, owed its growth to beingan imperialcommercial and transportationcenter, not to performingany specifically Ukrainian eco- nomicfunction. As forits role in Ukrainian nationalism, suffice itto say thatin 1897 only9.4 percentof Odessa'spopulace considered itself Ukrainianby nationality. In fact,except for Mykolaiv, where Ukrainians wereeven less numerous (8.5 percent),Odessa had thelowest share of Ukrainiansamong the ten or twelve largest cities in the Ukrainian ethnic homeland.There was onlyone majorcity situated in ethnicUkrainian territorythat had a Ukrainianmajority in 1897:this was Poltava, ranking tenthin size amongUkrainian cities in theRussian Ukraine alone and twelfthif those under Austria are included.5 5 For theethnic composition of Ukrainiancities in the Russian Empire, see Pervaia vseobshchaiaperepis' naseleniia Rossiiskoi imperii 1897 g., 89 vols.(St. Petersburg, 1899-1905).Data quotedhere are takenfrom table 2, "EthnicComposition of [the] Ten LargestUkrainian Cities, 1897," in StevenL. Guthier,"The Popular Base of UkrainianNationalism in 1917,"Slavic Review38 (1979): 41. This content downloaded from 70.60.21.104 on Fri, 3 Oct 2014 05:37:19 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 846 ROMAN SZPORLUK This fact,supported by the discoverythat no othermajor cityhad a populationmore than 30 percentUkrainian, reveals a significantfeature of nineteenth-centuryeconomic developments such as urbanizationand industrializationin the Ukraine.The mostrapid economicgrowth took place in those partsof the Ukraine, such as thesouth and theeast, where Ukrainianswere relatively weak and whichlay outsidethe historic "core area" ofthe Ukrainian nationality. Simultaneously, the traditional center of the Ukraine,Kiev, and such smallercities as Poltava and Chernihiv foundthemselves side-tracked in theprocess. One of theconsequences of thisdichotomy was the pressurefor Russification of Ukrainiansmoving to, or livingin, the rapidly growing urban centers. The mostdrastic case in point was Odessa.6 For reasons that cannot be discussed here, the political centerof modern Ukrainianorganized lifewas formedin Lviv, on the western peripheryof the Ukrainianethnic homeland, just at thetime that its eco- nomic centerswere developingalong the southernand easternperiph- eries. Lviv playedan exceptionalrole in Ukrainianpolitics and culture, but it could not assume the functionof an all-Ukrainiancapital. As a result,Ukrainian developments, as we can see, followeda patternquite differentfrom what the Czechs or thePoles experiencedin the nineteenth century.Both Pragueand Warsaw,located as theywere in thecore areas of theirrespective nations