The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv

Since the late nineteeth century, the city of Lviv in western Ukraine has held symbolic and institutional status as a centre of Ukrainian nationalism, defined in classical ethno-linguistic terms. Amid the country’s wider geopolitics of identity, it represents a clear polarity on a variegated spectrum of identifications, blending linguistic, religious and regional forms. Deploying a keen eye for contradiction and counterpoint, Tarik Amar’s book unpacks how this identity today rests on the city’s oxymoronic reshaping as ‘Soviet Ukrainian’ after 1939. This evinces a further paradox: that Lviv had previously been a multi-ethnic, borderland city, and neither Soviet nor particularly Ukrainian in terms of population size. Ukrainians came third to Jews, who in turn were second in size to the majority—Poles, who shaped official culture in their image. The work’s relevance in the contemporary Ukrainian context is therefore obvious, and, while the Soviet period of Lviv’s history is now gradually gaining better coverage by scholars, Amar’s sustained focus on the related topoi of urban milieu, borderland and Ukrainian identity at large is welcome

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