Multicultural Lviv, Tolerance and Attendant Myths

The political scientist and cultural studies expert Taras Vozniak, editor-in-chief and founder of the independent culture journal Ji, is our guest on the program “Encounters.”

Iryna Slavinska: How distinctive is Lviv’s multicultural environment?

Taras Vozniak: This concerns not only Lviv. Lviv simply promotes itself the most. Kharkiv and Odesa were no less mosaic formations as cities.

Lviv experienced several periods when this diversity was changing due to either cataclysms or wars, or through the strength of assimilatory processes.

The mythologized historiography of Lviv suggested that there had been three Lvivs until the end of the 18th century. They had allegedly supplanted one another, turning into a monolith. First there was “Rus Lviv,” that is the Ukrainian. Afterwards came “German Lviv” in the 14th to 15th centuries. After that, polonization took place in the 16th to 18th centuries and “Polish Lviv” appeared. These are the myths.

Lviv used to be a small city of twenty to thirty thousand people in a huge ethnic sea—Ukrainian, Rus, Rusyn, name it what you want. The situation in the town itself was quite like a mosaic and the communities were very diverse. Lviv until the end of the 18th century resembled Jerusalem, that is, a city of four quarters. Medieval Lviv was comprised of four quarters, namely the Armenian, Rusyn, Jewish, and Roman Catholic (Polish, German, Hungarian). It existed in this mode until 1772, the year when the gates of the quarters, which used to be locked for the night, were demolished by the order of the progressive Voltaire-inspired Austro-Hungarian administration. Emperor Joseph II had read a lot of Voltaire and decided that all people were equal. The Patent of Tolerance was issued.

Iryna Slavinska: Did the tolerance decree in the 18th century work out?

Taras Vozniak: Definitely. If not for this Patent, Ukrainians, Jews, or Hungarians would not have been able to serve in the army, or become officials or ministers of the Austro-Hungarian government. It opened a huge corridor of possibilities for ethnic minorities. It also did emancipate some communities—for instance, the Jewish community, which had been driven into a ghetto and concurrently isolated itself, not wishing to be emancipated. When the Patent was implemented, Orthodox Jewish leaders were against it, for they realized that their flock of souls was emerging and could no longer be controlled. This was true for each community, including the Ukrainian. As a result, in Lviv a special atmosphere of tolerance had been created among people. This does not mean there were no conflicts. Parallel processes of arising national self-awareness and the emergence of political nations were happening. Real political communities who saw their future together—Polish, German, Ukrainian—began to form from the emergence of nationalisms resulting from the post-Romantic syndrome. The differentiation of Ukrainians, Czechs, Germans, and the proclamation of their equality were happening side by side.

Iryna Slavinska: How did this melting pot function within the context of the creation of political nations? How could various identities be united into something single, political and national?

Taras Vozniak: It did not unite into something single right away. Due to circumstances Lviv saw three national revivals, because the atmosphere here was freer than that in Prussia or Russia. The Polish national revival and emergence of Poles as an ethnic and language community happened here. The Ukrainian national revival happened here. Zionism was born here. These were parallel processes, but sometimes they interacted and borrowed a lot from each other. These three were not the only communities. For instance, many ideas for community mobilization were borrowed from the Germans via the Czechs. For example, the Czechs created the Sokol youth sport society. In turn the Poles created the Sokol sport movement. The Ukrainians created the Sokil sport organization, not to mention the Jews. We can clearly see the exact adoption of technologies here.

Iryna Slavinska: Does this imply horizontal ties?

Taras Vozniak: Definitely, among leaders of those movements. They did not live in isolated communities. They all resided in different apartments of one building, and used to visit the same café and the same theatre. These nationalisms are mirror reflections and they are totally identical.

Iryna Slavinska: Is there a Jewish myth of Lviv?

Taras Vozniak: There is, just like the Polish, the Ukrainian, or the modern Ukrainian myth. I would say more—there is no one single myth, there are several of them. One is the myth of the old city, that of Danylo the King, the Lion King, which had been totally Ukrainian…well, it feels a bit uncomfortable due to the word “Rus.” It was “Rus Lviv.”

The second myth is that of Lviv of the 19th-20th centuries, when the national revival was in place. Judging from our literature, it used to be very Ukrainian at that time, with the Polish component being mentioned as hostile, and the Jewish component not mentioned at all. The same is true in Polish discourse. They have the cheerful Polish Lviv with no Ukrainians, and even if there were some, they were street cleaners, and maybe just a few decent people.

The same is the story of Jewish Lviv. I remember my friends from Manhattan or Israel coming to visit Lviv in the early 1990s. Without speaking the language, they were admiring our beautiful city silhouettes and asking, “Is this Jewish?” I had to joke that not everyone in Lviv was Jewish. I am of course being ironic.

Concerning the real situation, the ethnic communities of German or Bohemian origin of the 17th century were being polonized, and the same happened to Armenian communities. Some were ukrainianized, but most of them were polonized. This was the same mechanism.

Another mechanism operated in the 20th century during the Second World War. The city was changed in a violent way. Until 1939, the city was comprised of 30% Jews, 50% Poles, 15-18% Ukrainians, and some other ethnicities. During the war, Hitler killed the Jews; Stalin deported the Poles, exiled them, or they themselves fled from here. Local Ukrainians were deported or were fleeing. The city remained as a pile of stones. The Lviv we have now is reconstructed, both in terms of people and in terms of mentality.

Iryna Slavinska: Commemoration sites are another topic for discussion, including those of fabricated and despised memory.

Taras Vozniak: Of course, history has been fabricated, it was happening all the time during the USSR. They brutally formed a retrospective view, or history. Of course, history is rewritten all the time. The history we are being told that is based on points of reference, that is, commemoration sites, is being rewritten all the time, but not because of what we had in the past, but because of what we want to say in the present and in the future. History is an instrument of our current vision of ourselves. It’s like an 80-year-old girl who remembers herself as young when looking in a mirror, and this girl is becoming more and more beautiful. Of course, I am being ironic. But history is being rewritten in the same way—regardless of how in fact it was.

We, the Ukrainians, we also are constructing a new history. Sometimes we call it a return to the beginnings and the disclosure of truth. Of course, we could rely on the base of evidence, which used to be hidden in a vulgar fashion, but evidence is treated subjectively. In this context, history is, to a large extent, a construct. There is nothing bad about this, however. This simply helps us to build our future.

If we see Lviv now as more open, multicultural, a mosaic, we can create our future with an understanding and sincere discussion about the worst that had happened in the city.

Iryna Slavinska: To continue this topic of history being remembered, made up, or fabricated, a story of absent memory then arises. I remember a conversation with Anatolii Podolskyi who reminded us that Ukraine had a lot of sites (Martin Pollack wrote about it in Contaminated Landscapes) of mass killings, but without a monument or memorial, sites that have merged with the landscape. Does Lviv have such sites?

Taras Vozniak: Every city is a cemetery. There are many sites around the Cathedral, the Town Hall, and in the center that used to serve as cemeteries or sites of mass killings of certain groups or social classes. In some cases, these sites are being devastated, violated. For example, a public toilet was built in the 19th century on a site where Cossacks who were executed in Lviv in the 16th century were buried. This can be interpreted as unawareness or negligence, as outrage. Such sites are everywhere.

The question is whether we need to live only with the memory of such sites. Once we were preparing an issue of Ji magazine dedicated to the Volyn massacre—it was the anniversary of 2003. I, the editor, received horrific texts then. It doesn’t matter who killed whom. Anyway, a soldier shooting an abstract figure from five hundred meters is one thing. It is another thing when a neighbor is killing with an axe his neighbor, the one he used to live alongside with and with whom he visited the same tavern. Do we have to talk about this still warm flesh with people? Do we have to expose this pathoanatomy to a person?

In this context, one has to be an affectional person. For many, the tearing of wounds becomes a profession. So I prefer to look to the future. This does not mean there is no need to publish. But people need to be given a chance to live on.

Iryna Slavinska: How about the memory of the Holocaust in Lviv? Is there this page in the modern city?

Taras Vozniak: We do not have this problem now—the times we are living in are not as bloody. But this does not rule out that the animal in a person cannot appear again. We are the same as we used to be in the 1940’s. Another thing is that we are like a tram, riding the trails of tolerance. It’s good to have those rails and to keep the beast inside. We can now see women shooting our boys in today’s Donbas. Where does this beast come from?

Will this repeat; does it have political or social manifestations? Not now. But this does not mean there is no need for disinfection. If we do not disinfect, a plague can spread in the city.

It’s the nurturing of a human being in a human being, the nurturing of tolerance. Do not love me, but do not repress me.

Iryna Slavinska: In this context, there is a new challenge—displaced persons. Lviv obviously has the Crimean Tatar community and the Donbas refugee community.

Taras Vozniak: There are about two thousand Crimean Tatars in Lviv, as well as ten thousand internally displaced persons from the East [of Ukraine– ed.]. But this story is not new for Lviv. After the Second World War, entire factories with their employees were relocated to Lviv. For one moment on the brink of the 1950’s, 52% of Lviv residents were Russians from central Russia. Most of their descendants stayed here, adapted, and became Lviv residents. The same will happen to those several thousand displaced persons if they do not leave. I think the city is interested in them staying. If people who can cope arrive from the Donbas to Lviv, the city will only be enriched.

Iryna Slavinska: Are new cultures coming with them?

Taras Vozniak: The culture of the Crimean Tatars is developing. Cafés with Crimean Tatar cuisine have appeared. Armenians and Tatars came here the same way in the past. A shift has taken place, and it will stay. This story is here to stay. Even if Crimea returns to Ukraine or opens up to Ukraine, some of these people will stay here. This is good. It’s just another stone not impeding anyone.

“Encounters” has been created with the support of the Canadian charity fund Ukrainian Jewish Encounter.

Translated by Kateryna Babkina
Additional translation and editing by Peter Bejger