The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv: A Borderland City Between Stalinists, Nazis, and Nationalists

by Tarik Cyril Amar

The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv reveals the local and transnational forces behind the twentieth-century transformation of Lviv into a Soviet and Ukrainian urban center. Lviv's twentieth-century history was marked by violence, population changes, and fundamental transformation ethnically, linguistically, and in terms of its residents' self-perception. Against this background, Tarik Cyril Amar explains a striking Soviet rule, which came to Lviv in ruthless Stalinist shape and lasted for half a century, left behind the most Ukrainian version of the city in history. In reconstructing this dramatically profound change, Amar illuminates the historical background in present-day identities and tensions within Ukraine.

Genres: History, Ukraine, European History, Soviet Union, Nonfiction

372 pages, Hardcover

First published November 3, 2015

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a misleading title, as the title implies it was more about interwar Lviv. Instead Amar looks at how the Soviet authorities "Sovietized" and "Ukrainianized" the city in the aftermath of the war, and how the initial Soviet (1939-41) and Nazi (1941-44) occupations impacted that. It was still interesting, as it looks at the city in the immediate post-war era (largely in the 1940s and 1950s), and how the Soviets kind of had a test city to try out things, even though they had the uncomfortable issue of dealing with the Polish and Jewish populations (which as he notes, the Nazis helped deal with). It has a neat section on Soviet historiography as well, in how they had to incorporate a communist history in a region that was part of bourgeois Austria-Hungary and then Poland (and thus no Bolshevik impact), as well as showing that the east-west divide in Ukraine was very important then, as it is now.

[Roman Sviastyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

russian propaganda knows no bounds

[Валерій Дьогрик · Rating 1 out of 5]

Typical russian shit

[TealSaiga · Rating 1 out of 5]

russian sh_t

[Lily Knyazevych · Rating 1 out of 5]

russian propaganda

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the intro + conclusion for my Hilary 2024 Option paper. Enjoyed the book and the ideas presented, hoping to return to it this summer.

[Andrii Melnyk · Rating 1 out of 5]

Typical rissian propaganda shit