Kiev As the Ukraine's Primate City Author(S): ROMAN SZPORLUK Source: Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol

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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

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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.

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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,respectively.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 nationalism.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.

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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 and both enjoyingthe statusand prestigeof historicalcapitals, became, under the impact of capitalism, major indus- trial,financial, and transportationcenters, while at the same timefunc- tioningas centersof theirnational movements.In consequence,they helped modernizethe Czech and Polish peoples withoutfostering their denationalization.In theUkraine such centers did notoverlap: commerce and transportwere concentrated in Odessa; Kharkivand Katerynoslavled in industry;and Lviv was thecenter stage of political and culturalactivity. Kiev, meanwhile,was the Ukraine's ideal capital, its primatecity in pectore,deriving status from the past, when it was thegreat capital during the Kievan period of Ukrainianhistory. Wheredid Kiev standin termsof the Jefferson formula, modified, however,to recognizea nation'sspiritual capital as itsprimate city, regardless of thatcity's actual size? As could be expected,Kiev did not emergeas a strongcenter: to its 100 points,Odessa registered163 and Kharkiv,70. Combined,these two citiesexceeded Kiev's population two and one-third

6 PatriciaHerlihy, "The EthnicComposition of the City of Odessa in the Nineteenth Century,"Harvard Ukrainian Studies 1, no. 1 (1977): 53-78.

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 847 times.Clearly, Kiev was no capital to them.Obviously, the Ukraine was less integratedin 1897than Italy was in 1914,a conclusionthat one some- how sensesto be correctwithout recourse to arithmetic. The formatof this essay does not allow a discussionof the political eventsof twentieth-centuryUkrainian historyin termsof the role of primatecities or the urban hierarchyin the Ukraine.It is obvious, for example,and has been noted by historiansthat duringthe Ukrainian Revolution,the Ukrainianswere handicapped not only by an overall weaknessin thecities, but also bythe fact that their center, Kiev, lacked a clearposition of primacy in relationto Kharkiv,Katerynoslav, or Odessa. The Sovietsalso encountereddifficulties in theUkraine that were due to lack of communicationbetween their regional groups in the east, the south,and the west. The Bolsheviksof Kharkivand Katerynoslav,for example,refused to recognizethe claims of thosein Kiev to organizean all-UkrainianBolshevik network. Instead, each regionalcenter preferred to communicatedirectly with Petrogradand then Moscow.7 Afterthe revolutionand civilwar, the government of the Ukrainian Soviet Social- ist Republicestablished its seat in Kharkiv.It was not until1934 that the capital was moved to Kiev,where Ukrainian national governments had been locatedin thepost-1917 period. For consistency'ssake, however, let us considerKiev the Ukraine'scapital citythroughout the post-revolu- tionaryera. The census of 1926 revealedthat Kiev had become the actual number one city in the Ukraine. Its population was 514,000, compared with Odessa's 421,000and Kharkiv's417,000.8 On Jefferson'sindex we register a definitestrengthening in Kiev'sposition: with Kiev valued as 100,we get 82 for Odessa and 81 for Kharkiv.By 1939,when the nextcensus was taken and when Kiev had already functionedfor severalyears as the capital of the UkrainianSSR, its relativestrength had declined,reflect-

7 As examplesof scholarlyworks in whichthese problems are discussed,see Jurij Borys,The RussianCommunist Party and theSovietization of Ukraine(Stockholm, 1960); ArthurE. Adams,Bolsheviks in the Ukraine:The Second Campaign,1918- 1919 (New Havenand London,1963), p. 328; YaroslavBilinsky, "The Communist Take-overof the Ukraine," in Taras Hunczak,ed., The Ukraine,1917-1921: A Study in Revolution(Cambridge, Mass., 1977),pp. 104-127;and S. M. Korolivs'kyi,M. Á. Rubach,and N. I. Suprunenko,Pobeda Sovetskoivlastina Ukraine (Moscow, 1967), pp. 33-34. 8 ChauncyD. Harris,Cities of theSoviet Union: Studies in TheirFunctions, Size, Density,and Growth(Chicago, 1970), p. 256. Harrisprovides a wealthof data concerningcities and townsof theSoviet Union, including many in the Ukraine. See also Iu. I. Pitiurenko,Rozvytok mist i mis'kerozselennia v Ukrains'kiiRSR (Kiev, 1972),p. 121,which contains a tablegiving the population growth of the eight largest Ukrainiancities (as of 1970)from 1897 to 1970.

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 848 ROMANSZPORLUK ing, no doubt, the intensiveurbanization and industrializationdrive in theeast and southeastof theUkraine and a correspondingneglect of the centraland westernareas. Kiev and Kharkivwere almost equal in size in 1939: the formerhad a population of 847,000,and the latter,that of 833,000,which gave Kharkiv98 pointsagainst Kiev's 100. Third place was heldby Odessa (602,000), with7 1 points.9One can speculatethat but forthe transferof the capital to Kiev in 1934,which brought with it an influxof thousandsof officialsand an expansionin housingand service construction,Kharkiv would have surpassedKiev in size by 1939. The Second World War broughtimmense population changes to the Ukraine.One consequencewas an expansionof the UkrainianSSR to the west.This transformedthe geopoliticalposition of Kiev,giving it a morecentral location in the Ukraine.When the first postwar census was takenin 1959 - unusuallylate, one mightadd - it showedKiev witha populationof 1,110,000, followed by Kharkivwith 953,000, and, in third place, Donets'k with708,000. Kharkiv represented 86 percentof the value of Kiev,and Donets'k,64 percent;together, the two had a population50 percentlarger than Kiev's, but, relatively, Kiev had improvedits position by 19 points. By 1970, thirdplace was taken by Odessa (population 892,000)which just beat Donets'k (879,000),now numberfour. Kharkiv was safelyin the numbertwo position(1,223,000), and Kiev had forged ahead (1,632,000). 10 By thenKharkiv had 75 percentand Odessa had 55 percentof Kiev's population,and Kiev had furtherstrengthened its lead by 20 points.The mostrecent census, taken in January1979, shows Kiev continuingits surgeforward. Its populationhas passed thetwo million mark(2,144,000), whereas Kharkiv has yetto reach1.5 million (1,444,000). Dnipropetrovs'kheld thirdplace in 1979(1,066,000), thanks to adminis- trativeannexations carried out in 1978: withoutthem it would have remainedbehind Odessa, whichhad 1,046,000inhabitants in 1979 and was thus numberfour. (Donets'k slippedto fifthplace, althoughit has continuedto growand had 1,021,000people.)11 In percentagesof Kiev's population,Kharkiv had 67, and Dnipropetrovs'khad 50. Odessa, which in 1897was so muchlarger than Kiev, in 1979had lessthan half of Kiev's population.

9 Harris,Cities, p. 256,and Pitiurenko,Rozvytok, p. 121. 10 For boththe 1959 and the1970 censuses, see ItogiVsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1970goda, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1972),pp. 43-49. Thissource gives adjusted figures for Ukrainiancities in 1959,by taking into account administrative annexations carried out after1959 and omittedfrom the publication of 1959returns during the 1960s. 11 "Pro poperednipidsumky Vsesoiuznoho perepysu naselennia 1979 roku po Ukrains'kiiRSR," Radians'ka Ukraina,25 April1979, p. 3.

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Overall, Kiev's showingin the 1979census was thebest in morethan a hundredyears. For Kiev was smallerthan Odessa in the 1897census and, insofaras can be ascertained,smaller than Lviv earlierin thenineteenth century.12It can plausiblybe argued that by 1959 or 1970, Kiev had become not only the Ukraine'slargest city, but also the centralcity for Ukrainians.It registereda Ukrainianmajority in 1959and increasedit in 1970.13 (The nationalityportion of the 1979 census returnshas not yet been published.)Although its size does not correspondto the size that certaingeographers project for a capital ofa republicwith the Ukraine's population,14Kiev seemsto have establisheditself solidly as theunchal- lengedprimate city of the Ukraine.15

Universityof Michigan

12 Harris, Cities, passim, and Patricia Herlihy,"Ukrainian Cities in the Nineteenth Century,"paper presentedat the Ukrainian Historical Conference,London, Ontario, May 1978, p. 7. 13 See V. V. Pokshishevskii,"Urbanization and EthnogeographicProcesses," Soviet Geography 13 (1972): 117 and passim, for a discussion of the significanceof the changing ethnic composition of Kiev, Baku, Tashkent, and Tbilisi, as well as the capitals of other Soviet republics. For 1970 figures,see Itogi Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1970 goda, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1973), p. 178. 14 Harris, Cities, p. 135, writes:"Kiev ... is only about a thirdas large as would be expected fromthe networkof 301 citiesand towns of more than 10,000 population in the Ukraine." Peter Woroby, "Effectsof Urbanization in the Ukraine," Annals of the UkrainianAcademy of Arts and Sciencesin the U.S. 13(1973-77): 95 and 113-14,also arguesthat Kiev is an underdevelopedmetropolis, but he notesthat it improvedits positionbetween the censuses of 1959and 1970. 15 Such is the conclusionol David J. M. Hooson, ine òoviet union: reopie ana Regions(Belmont, Calif., 1966), p. 163.An interestingexamination of Kiev's place in the urbanhierarchy of the Ukraine,especially in comparisonwith the other supra- regionalcenters of Kharkiv, Odessa, Dnipropetrovs'k, Donets'k, and Lviv,appears in Iu. Pitiurenko,Territorial 'nye sistemy gorodskikh poselenii Ukrainskoi SSR (Kiev, 1977),pp. 80-84.Pitiurenko argues that Vynnytsia may be inthe process of becoming anothersuch supra-regional center, in view of its location between Lviv and Kiev,the twomajor cities of the western part of the Ukraine which are separated by an unusually longdistance (ibid., pp. 83-84).

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