Lviv: Encyclopedia II - Lviv - History

Lviv - History

Lviv - Early history

Recent archaeological excavations show that the area of Lviv has been populated since at least the 5th century. At the dawn of history, the area became incorporated into the Empire of Great Moravia, then became an area of contention between two emerging states: Poland (during the reign of Mieszko I, ruler of the Polans) and the Kievan Rus. Mieszko is thought to have controlled the area from 960 to 980. According to Nestor's chronicle, in 981 this area was conquered by Volodymyr the Great, ruler of Kievan Rus.

However, the city itself was founded in the 13th century by King Danylo of the Ruthenian duchy of Halych-Volynia, and named in honor of his son, Lev. Other sources mention that it was his son himself who founded the city. Thus the toponym might best be translated into English as Leo's lands or Leo's City (hence the Latin name Leopolis).

The first mention of Lviv in early chronicles is from 1256. It soon displaced the town of Halych as the capital of the duchy. In 1323, the Romanovich dynasty (local branch of the Rurik Dynasty) died out. The city was inherited by the heir of the Romanovich dynasty (on his mother's side)—Boleslaus of Masovia (also from the Piast dynasty on his father's side). He took the name of Yuriy and converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, but failed to gain the support of the local nobles and was soon poisoned.

After his death in 1340, the rights to Lviv were claimed by his cousin Casimir III of Poland, who successfully invaded the duchy and occupied it by 1349. In 1356 he granted the city with Magdeburg rights which implied that all city issues were to be solved by a city council, elected by the wealthy citizens. This started a period of fast development: among other facilities the Latin Cathedral was built. Also, new self-government attracted a big Armenian community that built its Armenian Cathedral in 1363.

In 1386, this area was directly included into the Polish Crown by Jadwiga of Poland. The city later served as the coronation site of some of the Kings of Poland.

Lviv - Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

As a part of Poland (and later Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) Lwów became the capital of the Ruthenian Voivodship, which included five regions: Lwów, Chełm (Ukrainian Kholm), Sanok, town of Halych and Przemyśl (Ukrainian Peremyshl). The city was granted the right of transit and started to gain significant profit from the goods transported between the Black Sea and the Baltic. In the following centuries, the city's population grew rapidly and soon Lwów became a multi-ethnic and muli-religious city and an important centre of culture, science and trade.

The city's fortifications were strengthened and Lwów became one of the most important fortresses guarding the Commonwealth from the south-east. Three archbishoprics were once located in the city: Roman Catholic (est. 1375), Greek Catholic and Armenian Catholic. The city was also home to numerous ethnic populations, including Germans, Jews, Italians, Englishmen, Scotsmen and many others. Since the 16th century, the religious mosaic of the city also included strong Protestant communities. By the first half of the 17th century, the city had approximately 25-30 thousand inhabitants. About 30 craft organizations were active by that time, involving well over a hundred different specialities.

Lviv - Decline of the Commonwealth

In 17th century Lwów was besieged unsuccessfully several times. Constant struggles against invading armies gave it the motto Semper fidelis. In 1649, the city was besieged by the Cossacks under Bohdan Chmielnicki, who seized and destroyed the local castle. However, the Cossacks did not retain the city and withdrew after receiving a ransom. In 1655 the Swedish armies invaded Poland and soon took most of it. Eventually the Polish king Jan II Kazimierz solemnly pronounced his vow to consecrate the country to the protection of the Mother of God and proclaimed Her the Patron and Queen of the lands in his kingdom at Lwów Latin Cathedral in 1656 (Lwów Oath).

They laid siege to Lwów, but were forced to retreat before capturing it. The following year saw Lwów invaded by the armies of the Transylvanian Duke George I Rákóczi, but the city was not captured. In 1672 Lwów was again besieged by the Turkish army of Mehmed IV, however the Treaty of Buczacz ended the war before the city was taken. In 1675 the city was attacked by the Ottomans and the Tatars, but king John III Sobieski defeated them on August 24 in what is called the Battle of Lwów. In 1704, during the Great Northern War, the city was captured and pillaged for the first time in its history by the armies of Charles XII of Sweden.

Lviv - Partitions

In 1772, following the First Partition of Poland, the city as "Lemberg" became the capital of the Austrian province, the so-called Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. The official language was changed to German and most of the posts in city's administration were taken by Germans and Czechs, yet the city remained an important centre of both Polish and Ukrainian cultures. Initially the Austrian rule was somewhat liberal. In 1784, the Emperor Joseph II reopened the University. Lectures were held in Latin, German, Polish and (from 1786) also in Ukrainian. Wojciech Bogusławski opened the first public theatre in 1794 and Józef Maksymilian Ossolinski founded in 1817 the Ossolineum, a scientifical institute. Early in the 19th century, the city became the new seat of the primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Archbishop of Kyiv, Halych and Rus, the Metropolite of Lviv.

However, in the beginning of the 19th century the Austrian authorities started a campaign of Germanization. The University was closed in 1805 and re-opened in 1817 as a purely German academy, without much influence over the city's life. Most of other social and cultural organizations were banned as well. The harsh laws imposed by the Habsburg dynasty led to an outbreak of public dissent in 1848. A petition was sent to the Emperor asking him to re-introduce local self-government, education in Polish and Ukrainian and granting Polish with a status of official language.

Most of these pleas were accepted twenty years later: in 1861 a Galician parliament (Sejm Krajowy) was opened and in 1867 Galicia was granted vast autonomy, both cultural and economical. The University was allowed to start lectures in Polish. The province of Galicia became the only part of the former Polish state with some cultural and political freedom, and the city then served as a major Polish political and cultural centre. Similarly, the city also served as an important centre of the Ukrainian patriotic movement and culture. Other parts of Ukraine were at that time were part of Russia, and, prior to 1905, all publications in Ukrainian were prohibited there. The city was also granted with a right to delegate MPs to the parliament in Vienna, which made many prominent cultural and political leaders move to the city, which served as a meeting place of Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish and German cultures.

Lviv - 20th century

Population of Lwów, 1931

Source: 1931 Polish census

During the World War I the city was captured by the Russian army in September 1914, but was retaken the following year (in June) by Austria-Hungary. With the collapse of the Habsburg Empire at the end of World War I, the local Ukrainian population proclaimed Lviv as the capital of the Western Ukrainian Republic on the November 1st, 1918.

The withdrawing Austro-Hungarian and German armies agreed to hand over the city to Ukrainian authorities. However, the same day the Polish population of Lviv started an armed uprising and soon took control over most of the city centre; unable to break into the central areas, Ukrainian forces besieged the city, defended by Polish irregular forces including the Lwów Eagles. After the Inter-Allied Commission in Paris agreed to leave the city under Polish administration until its future was resolved by a post-war treaty or a referendum, the regular Polish forces reached the city on November 19. However, the heavy fights in the city's vicinity, with several minor cease-fire periods, did not end until July 1919. Both Polish and Ukrainian victims of this conflict are buried at the Lychakivskiy Cemetery. Ashes of one of the unknown soldiers killed in the fighting are buried in the Unknown Soldier Monument in Warsaw.

In the following months, other territories of Galicia controlled by the government of the Western Ukrainian Republic were captured, either by Polish Army advancing from the west, or by the Red Army advancing from the east. Following the agreement with Semen Petlura, the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic decided to enter into a military alliance with Poland and recognized Poland's right to the city and agreed for a border at the Zbruch river in exchange for Polish military assistance against the bolsheviks.

During the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 the city was attacked by the forces of Aleksandr Yegorov. Since mid-June 1920 the 1st Cavalry Army of Semyon Budyonny was trying to reach the city from the north and east. At the same time Lwów was preparing the defence. The inhabitants raised and fully equipped three regiments of infantry and two regiments of cavalry as well as constructed defensive lines. The city was defended by an equivalent of three Polish divisions aided by one Ukrainian infantry division. Finally after almost a month of heavy fighting on August 16 the Red Army crossed the Bug river and, reinforced by additional 8 divisions of the so called Red Cossacks, started an assault on the city. The fighting occurred with heavy casualties on both sides, but after three days the assault was halted and the Red Army retreated. For the heroic defence the city was awarded with the Virtuti Militari medal.

Following the Peace of Riga the city remained in Poland as the capital of the Lwów Voivodship. The city became one of the most important centres of science and culture of Poland.

Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and the German 1st Mountain Division reached the suburbs of Lwów on September 12 and began a siege. The city's garrison was ordered to hold out at all cost since the strategic position prevented the enemy from crossing into the Romanian Bridgehead. Also, a number of Polish troops from Central Poland were trying to reach the city and organise the defence there. Thus a 10 days long defence of the city started and later became known as yet another Battle of Lwów. On September 19 a Polish diversionary attack under General Władysław Langner was launched and was unsuccessful. Soviet troops (part of the forces which had invaded on September 17 under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) replaced the Germans around the city. On the 23rd Langner formally surrendered to Soviet troops under Marshal Timoshenko.

The Soviet and Nazi forces divided Poland between themselves and a forged plebiscite absorbed the Soviet half of Poland, including Lwow, into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Depolonisation tactics began immediately, with huge numbers of Poles deported eastwards into the Soviet Union. When the Nazis broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the NKVD spent a week executing prisoners held in the Brygidki and Zamarstynów prisons. Many thousand were killed.

Since the beginning of the German occupation of the city, the situation of the city's inhabitants became tragic. After being subject to deadly pogroms (see below), the Jewish inhabitants of the area were rushed into a newly-created ghetto and then mostly sent to various German concentration camps. The Polish population of the city was also subject to harsh policies, which resulted in a number of mass executions both in the city and in the Janów camp. Among the first to be murdered were the professors of the city's universities and other members of Polish inteligentsia. Initially, a great part of Ukrainian population considered the German troops as liberators after the two years of Soviet regime. Germans were associated with old Austrian times, the happiest ones in comparison to the later Polish and Soviet periods. On June 30, 1941, the first day of the German occupation of the city, one of the wings of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) declared restoration of the independent Ukrainian state, yet promised their allegiance to the Nazis. In a few days, the initiators of this action, Stepan Bandera, Yaroslav Stetsko and others, were arrested by Nazis Einsatzgruppe. The policy of the occupying power turned quickly harsh towards Ukrainians as well, the Ukrainian nationalists were driven underground; from that time forward, they fought against the Nazis, but continued also to fight against Poles and Soviet forces (see Ukrainian Insurgent Army).

As the Red Army was nearing the city in 1944, on July 23 the local commander of the Home Army ordered all his forces to commence the Operation Tempest. An armed uprising was started and after 4 days of city fights the city was captured by the Poles. After that the civil and military authorities were summoned for a meeting with Red Army commanders and arrested by the NKVD. The remaining forces of Colonel Władysław Filipkowski were either forcibly conscripted to the Red Army, sent to Gulag or returned to the underground.

Before the war, Lviv had the third-largest Jewish population in Poland, which swelled further to over 200,000 Jews as refugees entered the city. Immediately after the Germans entered the city, Einsatzgruppen and civil collaborants organized a massive pogrom, which they claimed was in retaliation for the NKVD's earlier killings, though Jews were also killed during the NKVD purge. Although some authors call the collaborators "Ukrainian nationalists", their actual political orientation and relation to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists is still subject to debate. During the four-week pogrom from the end of June to early July, 1941, nearly 4,000 Jews were murdered. On 25 July 1941 a second pogrom, called "Petliura Days" after the slain Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura, was organized; nearly 2,000 more Jews were killed in Lviv, mostly shot in groups by civilian collaborators after being marched to the Jewish cemetery or to Lunecki prison.

Following the pogroms, Einsatzgruppen killings, harsh conditions in the Ghetto, and deportation to the death camps resulted in almost the complete destruction of the Jewish population. By the time that the Soviets entered Lviv in 1944, only 200–300 Jews remained. Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal was one of the more famous Jewish inhabitants of Lviv to survive the war, though he was transported to a concentration camp, rather than remaining in the city.

In July 1944 the Soviet Army retook Lviv driving out the Axis forces from Ukraine. Since the main tank battle for city took place well south of the city centre, most of the city buildings, churches and other historical monuments were preserved and not destroyed in the fighting.

After the war the area, was part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Most of the remaining Polish population was expelled (especially to present day Wrocław, Poland, whose German population had been expelled) or left the city in fear of Soviet repression.

The migrants from the remote parts of the Soviet Union (mostly Russian speaking) as well as from Ukrainian speaking rural areas around the city were arriving to fullfill the need of the rapidly growing industry. This population transfer altered the traditional ethnic composition of the city that was already devastated as Polish, Jewish and German population was displaced or murdered.

With Russification being a general Soviet policy in the post-war Ukraine (see "Soviet rule" in Ukrainian language history) in Lviv it was combined with the liquidation of the of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (see History of Christianity in Ukraine) whose parishes were transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church. However, after the death of Stalin, the Soviet policies became somewhat less intolerant and western Ukraine and Lviv, its main cultural centre, having been subject to a shorter term of Stalinism and having avoided the Ukrainian famine of 1930s remain the major centre of Ukrainian culture (see "Soviet rule" in Ukrainian language history).

In the 50's and 60's, the city went through significant growth in both population and size. A number of prominent plants and factories were then established or moved from eastern parts of the USSR. This resulted in partial Russification of the city and some loss of its western flavour. Among the most famous were the bus factory (Lvovsky Avto Zavod), which produced most of the buses used in the entire Soviet Union and employed upwards of 30,000; TV factory "Zavod Elektron" which made the most popular brand of the television sets in the country; the front-loaders factory (Zavod Avto-pogruzchik); the shoe factory (Obuvnaya Fabrika Progress); confectionery Svitoch, and many more. Each of these employed tens of thousands of workers and were among the largest employers in the region. Most of them survive until today, although the economic difficulties put a drain on their production figures.

In the period of Soviet liberalization of the mid-to-end 1980s—early 1990s (see Glasnost and Perestroika) the city became the center of the political movement aimed at strengthening the Ukrainian autonomy within USSR and/or Ukrainian independence (see People's Movement of Ukraine or Rukh).

Today Lviv remains one of the main centres of Ukrainian culture with much of the nation's political class originating from the area.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki