HARVARD HISTORICAL STUDIES • 173 Published under the auspices of the Department of History from the income of the Paul Revere Frothingham Bequest Robert Louis Stroock Fund Henry Warren Torrey Fund Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM WILLIAM JAY RISCH The Ukrainian West Culture and the Fate of Empire in Soviet Lviv HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, En gland 2011 Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM Copyright © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Risch, William Jay. The Ukrainian West : culture and the fate of empire in Soviet Lviv / William Jay Risch. p. cm.—(Harvard historical studies ; 173) Includes bibliographical references and index. I S B N 9 7 8 - 0 - 6 7 4 - 0 5 0 0 1 - 3 ( a l k . p a p e r ) 1 . L ’ v i v ( U k r a i n e ) — H i s t o r y — 2 0 t h c e n t u r y . 2 . L ’ v i v ( U k r a i n e ) — P o l i t i c s a n d government— 20th century. 3. L’viv (Ukraine)— Social conditions— 20th century 4. Nationalism— Ukraine—L’viv—History—20th century. 5. Ethnicity— Ukraine—L’viv— History—20th century. 6. Ukrainian language— Political aspects— L’viv—History— 2 0 t h c e n t u r y . 7 . L ’ v i v ( U k r a i n e ) — R e l a t i o n s — S o v i e t U n i o n . 8 . L ’ v i v ( U k r a i n e ) — Relations—Europe. 9. Soviet Union— Relations—Ukraine—L’viv. 10. Europe— R e l a t i o n s — U k r a i n e — L ’ v i v . I . T i t l e . I I . S e r i e s . DK508.95.L86R57 2011 947.7'9—dc22 2010046740 Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM For my parents Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM Contents Foreign Terms and Abbreviations ix Note on Transliteration xi Introduction 1 I. LVIV AND THE SOVIET WEST 1 Lviv and Postwar Soviet Politics 17 2 The Making of a Soviet Ukrainian City 27 3 The New Lvivians 53 4 The Ukrainian “Soviet Abroad” 82 II. LVIV AND THE UKRAINIAN NATION 5 Language and Literary Politics 119 6 Lviv and the Ukrainian Past 147 7 Youth and the Nation 179 8 Mass Culture and Counterculture 220 Conclusion 251 Appendix: Note on Interviews 263 Notes 267 Archives Consulted 337 Oral Interviews 341 Ac know ledg ments 345 Index 349 Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM Foreign Terms and Abbreviations CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union CPU Communist Party of Ukraine estrada (n.), estradnyi (adj.) variety music (Ukrainian) gorkom City Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine KGB Committee of State Security Komsomol Communist Youth League KPZU Communist Party of Western Ukraine MGB Ministry of State Security moskal’ (sing.), moskali (pl.) ethnic Rus sians or Rus sian speakers (Ukrainian) MVD Ministry of Internal Affairs NKVD People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs obkom Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine OUN Or ga ni za tion of Ukrainian Nationalists OUN- B Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists— Banderite Wing OUN- M Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists— Melnykite Wing PryKVO Subcarpathian Military District rahul’ (sing.), rahuly (pl.) hicks, bumpkins (Ukrainian) Rukh People’s Movement of Ukraine samizdat underground literature (Rus sian) samvydav underground literature (Ukrainian) ix Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM x • Foreign Terms and Abbreviations SB Security Ser vice, affi liated with the OUN and the UPA seliukh (sing.), seliukhy (pl.) hicks, bumpkins (Ukrainian) sovdepiia Sovietdom, Soviet civilization (Russian) stiliag (sing.), stiliagi (pl.) fashion hounds, style seekers (Russian) tusovka collective youth bonding (Russian) UPA Ukrainian Insurgent Army VIA Vocal- Instrumental Ensemble zaida (sing.), zaidy (pl.) carpetbaggers (Ukrainian) ZUNR Western Ukrainian People’s Republic Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM Note on Transliteration Regarding transliteration, I have followed the Library of Congress system, leaving out all character modifi ers. For added clarity I have removed all diacritical marks from proper names and well- known terms (like glasnost) in the main text and authors’ names in footnotes. Some names refl ect the language of the historical period (Lwów instead of Lviv for the city’s Polish period). Because of ambiguities in cultural and national identifi cation, Lvivians’ names (except for authors’ names) have been transliterated ac- cording to their Ukrainian equivalents. Commonplace En glish spellings are used for well- known names (for example, Yeltsin) or places (for example, Gorky). Kyiv rather than Kiev and Dnipropetrovsk rather than Dnieprope- trovsk are used to refl ect Ukraine’s status as an in de pen dent state. Belarus and Belarusians are used instead of Byelorus sia and Byelorus sians to refl ect Belarus’s status as an in de pen dent state. xi Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM THE UKRAINIAN WEST Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM Introduction In Soviet times, Lviv was a picturesque yet sullen provincial city in Western Ukraine. In the mid- 1970s, a former Polish resident visiting it called it “a noisy city and at the same time somber; full of people, yet monotone; grey, like its daily life.”1 Yet it made history in the Soviet Union. While CNN and other major tele vi sion networks in 1991 featured the de mo li tion of Lenin monuments in Moscow, Leningrad, and other major Soviet cities, Lvivians had brought down theirs much earlier, in the summer of 1990.2 Earlier, in March 1990, non- Communist candidates swept city and regional council elections. All twenty- four of the Lviv Region’s deputies to Ukraine’s Su- preme Council were non- Communists advocating Ukraine’s in de pen dence.3 A former po liti cal prisoner, Viacheslav Chornovil, became head of the Lviv Regional Council. He told council members that Lviv, an “island of free- dom,” was to “end the totalitarian system.”4 Lviv epitomized this “island of freedom” by electing the fi rst non- Communist city government in the So- viet Union outside the Baltic republics.5 Lviv had been at odds with Moscow long before this seismic shift in public action. It was at the fault line of rival projects of nation building and imperial dominance. Its residents read Polish newspapers and magazines and tuned in to Polish radio and tele vi sion stations, more liberal than their Soviet counterparts. The city’s Re nais sance and early modern architec- ture, narrow winding streets, and cultural and intellectual traditions tied Lvivians more to Prague, Warsaw, Paris, or Florence than to Moscow or Kyiv. Older generations of Ukrainians and younger ones knew of past na- tional movements that Soviet power had repressed. They viewed Soviets as 1 Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/11/15 12:32 PM 2 • Introduction outsiders—“occupiers” or “carpetbaggers” (zaidy). Sometimes they called such outsiders moskali, a slur against Rus sians and Russian- speakers. Such tensions did not preclude cooperation. Young writers who had fl irted with nationalist underground groups against Soviet rule after World War II came to admire the ideals of Marx and Lenin. Moscow’s cultural life inspired young Lvivians. The nation did not govern daily lives. Still, Soviet offi cials unintentionally made Lviv Ukraine’s “nationalist” city. It was second to the republic’s capital, Kyiv, in the number of people arrested for po liti cal reasons in the 1960s and 1970s.6 Former po liti cal prisoners or- ga nized mass demonstrations in Lviv against Communist rule in 1988 and 1989, gathering up to 150,000 people.7 Demonstration organizers and new deputies to Ukraine’s Supreme Council had faced trial behind closed doors in 1966 or had protested these trials publicly.8 Chornovil’s publishing es- says abroad condemning this trial led to his own imprisonment.9 How Lviv managed so rapidly to become this island of freedom inspired this book. Empires, Nations, and Borderlands While Chornovil could proclaim Lviv an island of freedom in 1990, such an epithet looked silly before Gorbachev’s era of openness (or glasnost). Patterns of governance in Lviv and other parts of the post- Soviet sphere suggest that freedom has yet to arrive to much of it.10 Still, the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 produced a “paradigm shift” in understanding the Soviet past.11 Among others, Francine Hirsch, Terry Martin, Ronald Grigor Suny, and Yuri Slezkine have emphasized the Soviet Union’s role as an em- pire promoting a sense of nationhood among non- Russians.