The Nation’s Brightest and Noblest Narrative Identity and Empowering Accounts of the Ukrainian Intelligentsia in Post-1991 L’viv Eleonora Narvselius Linköping Studies in Arts and Science No. 488 Linköping University, Department of Social and Welfare Studies Linköping 2009 Linköping Studies in Arts and Science No. 488 At the Faculty of Arts and Science at Linköping University, research and doctoral studies are carried out within broad problem areas. Research is organized in interdisciplinary research environments and doctoral studies mainly in graduate schools. Jointly, they publish the series Linköping Studies in Arts and Science. This thesis comes from the Department of Social and Welfare Studies. Distribution: Department of Social and Welfare Studies Linköping University 581 83 Linköping Eleonora Narvselius The Nation’s Brightest and Noblest: Narrative Identity and Empowering Accounts of the Ukrainian Intelligentsia in Post- 1991 L’viv ISBN: 978-91-7393-578-4 ISSN 0282-9800 ©Eleonora Narvselius Department of Social and Welfare Studies 2009 Cover: Viktoria Mishchenko Printed by LiU-Tryck, Linköping, Sweden Contents Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………...1 Note on Transliteration and Translation……………………………………...5 Introduction……………………………………………………………………….7 Chapter 1. Orientation, Profile and Methodological Premises of the Study 1.1. What the research is about: aims, research questions, and actuality of the study………………………………………………………….11 1.2. Orientation of the study, orientation of the researcher: preliminary notes …………………………………………………………….14 1.3. Sources and methods of material collection……………………………..22 1.4. Narrative analysis, frame analysis, and ethnographic analysis…………..26 Chapter 2. The Research Field: Multiethnic, Multicultural, Nationalist Daily L’viv 2.1. L’viv: an (un)usual borderline city………………………………….......33 2.2. The ‘most Ukrainian, least Sovietized’ city in Ukraine………………….36 2.3. Post-Soviet L’viv and the vicissitudes of the local, the national and the glocal……………………………………………………39 Chapter 3. Subject under Scrutiny: Intelligentsia, Intellectuals and Articulation of the Nation 3.1. Conceptualizations of the nexus intelligentsia/intellectuals……………..43 3.2. Class belongingness of intellectuals……………………………………..46 3.3. Bourdieu’s conceptualization of intellectuals as cultural producers…………………………………………………………….48 3.4. The concept of intellectual field…………………………………………50 3.5. Intellectuals and the terrain of the ‘national’: mutual articulation and contradictions………………………………………………..53 3.6. West Ukrainian intelligentsia and Ukrainian national project(s) throughout history…………………………………………………55 3.7.West Ukrainian intelligentsia and the national mobilization in independent Ukraine………………………………………………………62 Chapter 4. Theoretical Focal Points of the Study: Intellectuals and Problematics of Culture, Nation, Power, Class and Generation 4.1. Culture as a ‘toolkit’. Human agency and actorship……………………..65 4.2. Power-culture link. Issue of ‘the national’ as a component of cultural capital………………………………………………...68 4.3. Nationalism, class, culture: connections and refractions………………...71 4.4. Morality, intelligentsia’s mission and the project of cultural nationalism…………………………………………………………...76 4.5. East-Central European intelligentsia and intellectuals in quest for symbolic power…………………………………………………..78 4.6. The notion of generation and dialectics of continuity and discontinuity of cultural production...........................................................84 Chapter 5. Incarnations of the Protagonist: Old Intelligentsia – New Intelligentsia – Pseudo-intelligentsia – Non-intelligentsia 5.1. Ukrainian intelligentsia: not dead yet…………………………………....89 5.2. Intelligentsia in general and intelihenty in particular……………………92 5.3. Rigid boundaries and striving for elitism: the old Galician intelligentsia and its descendants………………………………….103 5.4. Old boundaries redrawn: the case of the Soviet intelligentsia………………………………………………………………...109 5.5. Defending the established boundaries: the post-Soviet ‘quasi-intelligentsia’ and the conflict of generations……………………….115 5.6. The boundaries questioned: what are we going to (never) become?.............................................................................................118 5.7. Features of local specificity in the narrative identities of Ukrainian intelligentsia in L’viv………………………………124 5.8. Structures of plot development evident in the narratives of the informants………………………………………………....127 5.9. Summary…………………………………………………………..........131 Chapter 6. Between Kham and Knight: The L’viv Intelligentsia’s ‘Others’ and Alter Ego 6.1. Protagonist and antagonists: intelligentsia and its ‘others’…………….133 6.2.Turning a deaf ear to the intelligentsia’s rhetoric: khamy above and below……………………………………………………..134 6.3. Intelligentsia and the powers that be: waiting for Knights...…………...138 6.4. Resisting the khamy: ghettoized intelihenty versus politicking intelligentsia……………………………………………..142 6.5. Superiority and inferiority of cultural choices: intelihent versus rahul’ and sovok……………………………………………….151 6.6. Antagonism of virtue and vice: intelihent versus blatnoi………………..160 6.7. Narod and intelligentsia as mirrored in youth cultures in L’viv in the late 1990s and early 2000s……………...…………………..162 6.8. Summary………………………………………………………………..165 Chapter 7. Intelligentsia’s Spaces in L’viv 7.1. Where is intelligentsia? Space metaphors of ‘field’, ‘cityscape’, and ‘arena’……………………………………………………..167 7.2. Civil society and sites of autonomy…………………………………….168 7.3. Academic spaces and the domain of student life……………………….171 7.4. Theatre and other sites for art consumption……………………………182 7.5. Private and semi-private spheres for ‘companies’, friends and acquaintances…………………………………………………...185 7.6. To the Carpathians!.................................................................................189 7.7. Public activities and organizations……………………………………..191 7.8. Media…………………………………………………………………...199 7.9. Summary………………………………………………………………..208 Chapter 8. Empowering Projects of the L’viv Intelligentsia and Intellectuals after the End of Soviet Rule: Narratives about L’viv’s Centrality and Peripherality 8.1. L’viv über alles ………………………………………………………...209 8.2. The tales of centrality: L’viv as a cultural metropolis and the capital of the ‘Ukrainian Piedmont’………………………………...211 8.3 The tales of peripherality: charming province, post-Soviet backwater or East-Central European Strasbourg?.......................221 8.4. Soviet L’viv: the power of the ‘counter-narrative’……………………..225 8.5. The ‘golden age’ and present-day dilemmas: stories about the Habsburg past……………………………………………..237 8.6. Summary………………………………………………………………..242 Chapter 9. Empowering Projects of the L’viv Intelligentsia and Intellectuals after the End of Soviet Rule: Narratives about (Be)longing, Ambiguity and Cultural Colonization 9.1. ‘Galician project’……………………………………………………….245 9.2. Europe! Europe… Europe?.....................................................................254 9.3. What to do with multiculturality? ……………………………………...262 9.4. L’viv-Kyiv-Donets’k: quests for a common myth?.................................273 9.5. Summary………………………………………………………………..285 Conclusions. Intelligentsia in L’viv: The Power of Location and Narration………………………………… .…………………………………..287 Appendix 1. Questionnaire…………………………………………………..295 Appendix 2. List of Informants………………………………………………297 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………...301 Acknowledgments This study, like any other piece of scholarly work, is a product of both aspiration and perspiration and of a personal desire to prove that “I can also do it”. It is the result of my eagerness to illuminate at least a little part of an exciting urban semiosphere in which I have been fortunate to spend a great deal of time. This dynamic environment stimulates considerable reflection due to its complexity, vitality and many contrasts. This study has been enriched greatly by the numerous personal encounters I had with fascinating people who, at various points and in various ways, significantly influenced my ideas and the trajectory of my research. My native city, L’viv, has been a place of many fortunate meetings. I shall always be indebted to Valentina Kharitonova, whose seminars on folkloristics and ethnology in the late 1980s and early 1990s, became an unforgettable experience for those numerous students at the Ivan Franko State University who were thirsty for unconventional humanistic knowledge and friendly encouragement. This bright woman and reputed scholar, whom I am honored to call my mentor and friend, presently continues her research of traditional spiritual practices at The Center for Medical Anthropology in Moscow and fosters new generations of ethnologists and anthropologists. The encouragement of Roman Kis’ motivated me to continue my academic carrier at the Ethnology Institute in L’viv. Over the years, Mr. Kis’ generously shared his ideas, stimulated scholarly curiosity and served as an example of devotion to independent scholarly investigation not only for me, but for a number of younger colleagues. He has also facilitated my contact with the field by way of advice and practical help. In the person of Mr. Kis’ daughter, Oksana Kis’, I found a good friend and colleague whose progress in the field of gender studies and oral history has inspired me through years. I have greatly benefited from our discussions and her practical suggestions, as well as from her extensive network of contacts in the academic world of L’viv. Acquaintance with Erik Olsson