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E-book
Author Risch, William Jay, author.

Title The Ukrainian West : culture and the fate of empire in Soviet Lviv / William Jay Risch
Published Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2011

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 360 pages) : illustrations
Series Harvard historical studies ; 173
Harvard historical studies ; v. 173.
Contents pt. 1. Lviv and the Soviet West -- Lviv and postwar Soviet politics -- The making of a Soviet Ukrainian city -- The new Lvivians -- The Ukrainian "Soviet abroad" -- pt. 2. Lviv and the Ukrainian nation -- Language and literary politics -- Lviv and the Ukrainian past -- Youth and the nation -- Mass culture and counterculture -- Conclusion -- Appendix: Note on interviews
Summary In 1990, months before crowds in Moscow and other major cities dismantled their monuments to Lenin, residents of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv toppled theirs. William Jay Risch argues that Soviet politics of empire inadvertently shaped this anti-Soviet city, and that opposition from the periphery as much as from the imperial center was instrumental in unraveling the Soviet Union. Lviv's borderlands identity was defined by complicated relationships with its Polish neighbor, its imperial Soviet occupier, and the real and imagined West. The city's intellectuals--working through compromise rather than overt opposition--strained the limits of censorship in order to achieve greater public use of Ukrainian language and literary expression, and challenged state-sanctioned histories with their collective memory of the recent past. Lviv's post-Stalin-generation youth, to which Risch pays particular attention, forged alternative social spaces where their enthusiasm for high culture, politics, soccer, music, and film could be shared. The Ukrainian West enriches our understanding not only of the Soviet Union's postwar evolution but also of the role urban spaces, cosmopolitan identities, and border regions play in the development of nations and empires. And it calls into question many of our assumptions about the regional divisions that have characterized politics in Ukraine. Risch shines a bright light on the political, social, and cultural history that turned this once-peripheral city into a Soviet window on the West
Months before crowds in Moscow dismantled monuments to Lenin, residents of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv toppled theirs. Risch argues that Soviet politics of empire created this anti-Soviet city, and that opposition from the periphery as much as from the imperial center was instrumental in unraveling the Soviet Union
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-339) and index
Notes In English
Print version record
Subject Nationalism -- Ukraine -- Lʹviv -- History -- 20th century
Ethnicity -- Ukraine -- Lʹviv -- History -- 20th century
Ukrainian language -- Political aspects -- Ukraine -- Lʹviv -- History
HISTORY -- Europe -- Eastern.
HISTORY -- Europe -- Former Soviet Republics.
HISTORY -- Europe -- Russia & the Former Soviet Union.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Ideologies -- Nationalism & Patriotism.
Ethnicity
International relations
Nationalism
Politics and government
Social conditions
Ukrainian language -- Political aspects
Politik -- historia.
Nationalism -- historia.
Etnicitet -- historia.
Internationella relationer -- historia.
Ukrainska språket -- politiska aspekter -- historia.
SUBJECT Lʹviv (Ukraine) -- History -- 20th century
Lʹviv (Ukraine) -- Politics and government -- 20th century
Lʹviv (Ukraine) -- Social conditions -- 20th century
Lʹviv (Ukraine) -- Relations -- Soviet Union
Lʹviv (Ukraine) -- Relations -- Europe
Soviet Union -- Relations -- Ukraine -- Lʹviv
Europe -- Relations -- Ukraine -- Lʹviv
Subject Europe
Soviet Union
Ukraine -- Lʹviv
Ukraine -- West
Lemberg
Lemberg.
Ukraina -- Lviv.
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780674061262
0674061268