Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T23:01:22.441Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The border as pain and remedy: commemorating the Polish – Ukrainian conflict of 1918-1919 in Lviv and Przemyśl

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Tatiana Zhurzhenko*
Affiliation:
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Helsinki FI-00014, Finland
*

Abstract

The fight for Lwów/Lviv in 1918 was the first military conflict in the difficult twentieth-century history of Polish–Ukrainian relations. In the inter-war period, an impressive military memorial, the Eaglets Cemetery, was constructed in Lwów to honor the young defenders of the city. A monument to the Eaglets was also erected in the neighboring Przemyśl. In inter-war Poland, the Ukrainians, who had lost their cause for state independence, created their own cult of national heroes, the Sich Riflemen. Their graves in Lwów and Przemyśl, as well as in many smaller towns, became sites of public commemoration and national mobilization. This article traces the emergence, the development and the post-World War II decay of both competing memorial cults, focusing on their revival and political uses after 1989. It examines the trans-border aspects of memory politics in Lviv and Przemyśl and analyses the role of war memorials in (re-)establishing the link between ethnic communities and their homelands.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amar, Tarik Cyril. 2011. “Different But the Same or the Same But Different? Public Memory of the Second World War in Post-Soviet Lviv.” Journal of Modern European History 9 (3): 373396.Google Scholar
Bartov, Omer. 2007. Erased: Vanished Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Buzalka, Juraj. 2007. Nation and Religion: The Politics of Commemoration in South-East Poland. Münster: Lit.Google Scholar
Copsey, Nathaniel. 2008. “Remembrance of Things Past: The Lingering Impact of History on Contemporary Polish-Ukrainian Relations.” Europe-Asia Studies 60 (4): 531560.Google Scholar
Cynarski, Wojciech J., and Cynarska, Elżbieta. 2009. “Turystyka sentymentalna Polakówna Kresy wschodnie [Sentimental tourism to the Eastern borderlands].” IDO – Ruch dla Kultury/Movement for Culture 9: 201-209. http://www.idokan.pl/txt/tomIX/(18)%20Wojciech%20J.%20Cynarski,%20El%23U017cbieta%20Cynarska%20-%20Turystyka%20sentymentalna%20Polak%23U00f3w%20na%20Kresy%20wschodnie.pdfGoogle Scholar
Dyak, Sofia. 2008. “In Place of Displacement: Commemorating Deportations in Lviv after 1991.” Paper presented at the Fourth Annual Danyliw Research Seminar in Contemporary Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa, October 2325.Google Scholar
Fastnacht-Stupnicka, Anna. 2010. Zostali we Lwowie. Wroclaw: Sator Media.Google Scholar
Filar, Władysław. [1939]1991. “Przyczyny i przebieg bojów o Lwów i Małopolskę Wschodnią r. 1918-1919.” In Przewodnik po Cmentarzu Obrońców Lwowa. Lwów: Staraniem i nakładem Straży Mogił Polskich Bohaterów we Lwowie w dwudziestą rocznicę powstania Towarzystwa. Reprint Warszawa http://www.lwow.home.pl/orleta/orleta39.html Google Scholar
Hann, Christopher. 1998. “Religion, Trade and Trust in South-East Poland.” Religion, State and Society 26 (3-4): 235249.Google Scholar
Henke, Lutz, Rossolinski, Grzegorz, and Ther, Philipp, eds. 2007. Eine neue Gesellschaft in einer alten Stadt : Erinnerung und Geschichtspolitik in Lemberg anhand der Oral History. Wrocław: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT – Wroclawskie Wydawnictwo Oświatowe.Google Scholar
Hrytsak, Yaroslav, and Susak, Viktor. 2003. “Constructing a National City: The Case of Lviv.” In Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities, edited by Czaplicka, John J., Ruble, Blair A. and Crabtree, Lauren, 140164. Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Huk, Bohdan. 2006. Pokhody na mohyly voiniv ukrains'kykh armii v Pykulychakh. Kolektsiia istorychnykh materialiv [Marches to the graves of the soldiers of the Ukrainian armies in Pikulice. Collection of historical materials]. Przemyśl: WiB.Google Scholar
Kis, Oksana. 2009. “Displaced Memories of a Displaced People: Towards the Problem of Missing Polish Narratives in Lviv.” In Remembering Europe's Expelled People of the Twentieth Century. CFE Conference Papers Series, Vol. 4, edited by Barbara Törnquist-Plewa and Bo Petersson, 60-75. Lund: Lund University.Google Scholar
Konieczny, Zdzisław. 1993. Walki polsko-ukraińskie w Przemyślu i okolicy listopad-grudzień 1918 [Ukrainian-Polish fights in Przemyśl and surroundings in November-December 1918]. Przemyśl: Tow. PrzyjacióAł Nauk w Przemyślu.Google Scholar
Koselleck, Reinhart. 2002. The Practice of Conceptual History. Timing History, Spacing Concepts Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Kuchabsky, Vasyl. 2009. Western Ukraine in Conflict with Poland and Bolshevism, 1918-1923. Translated from German by Gus Fagan. Edmonton, Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.Google Scholar
Mazanowska, Wanda. [1926] 1991. “Geneza symbolu Nieznanego Żołnieza i przwiezinie zwłok ze Lwowa do Warszawy” [Origins of the Unknown Soldier as a symbol and the transfer of remains from Lviv to Warsaw]. In W obronie Lwowa i Wschodnich Kresów. Nakładem Strazy Mogił Polskich Bohaterów. Lwów. Reprint by Polski Dom Wydawniczy Spółka z o.o., Warszawa, 189201.Google Scholar
Nicieja, Stanisław Sławomir. 2009. Lwowskie Orlęnta: Czyn i Legenda [The Lwow Eaglets: deeds and legend]. Warszawa: Iskry.Google Scholar
Risch, William Jay. 2011. The Ukrainian West: Culture and the Fate of Empire in Soviet Lviv. Harvard: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sereda, Victoria. 2008. “Misto yak lieu de mémoire: spilna chy podilena pamyat'? Pryklad Lvova [The City as a lieu de mémoire: common or divided memory?].” Visnyk L'vivs'koho Universytetu. Seriia sotsiolohichna 2: 7399.Google Scholar
Smith, Anthony. 2000. Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Snyder, Timothy. 1999. “To Resolve the Ukrainian Question Once and for All: The Ethnic Cleansings of Ukrainians in Poland, 1943-1947.” Journal of Cold War Studies 1 (2): 86120.Google Scholar
Snyder, Timothy. 2003. The Reconstruction of Nations. Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569-1999. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Stępień, Stanisław. 2005. “Borderland City: Przemyśl and the Ruthenian National Awakening in Galicia.” Galicia: A Multicultural Land, edited by Hann, Chris and Robert Magocsi, Paul, 5270. Toronto: Toronto University Press.Google Scholar
Strilchuk, Ludmyla. 2009. “Pytannia etnichnykh menshyn u vidnosynakh mizh Ukrainoiu ta Pol'shcheiu [The issue of ethnic minorities in Ukrainian-Polish relations].” Istorychni studii Volyn'skoho natsional'nogo universytetu im. Lesi Ukrainky 2: 96-102. http://www.nbuv.gov.ua/portal/soc_gum/Istst/2009_2/zmist.html Google Scholar
Subtelny, Orest. 1988. Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Szeliga, Andrzej. n.d. Pomnik Orląt Przemyskich: symbol skomplikowanej historii mieszkańców pogranicza [The Monument to the Przemyśl Eaglets: A Symbol of the Complicated History of the Borderland Population]. www.kki.pl/pioinf/przemysl/dzieje/pomnik_orlat/pom.html Google Scholar
Verdery, Katherine. 2000. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Vermeersch, Peter. 2007. “A Minority at the Border: EU Enlargement and the Ukrainian Minority in Poland.” East European Politics and Societies 21 (3): 475502.Google Scholar
Vynnyk, Oksana. 2012. “Funeral Ceremonies, War Commemoration Rituals and the Creation of Collective Memory: the Cemetery of the ‘Young Eaglets’ in Lviv.” Paper presented at the 17th Annual ASN World Convention, Columbia University, April 19-21. Cited with the permission of the author.Google Scholar
Wendland, Anna Veronika. 2005. “Neighbours as Betrayers: Nationalisation, Remembrance Policy, and the Urban Public Sphere in L'viv.” In Galicia: A Multicultural Land, edited by Hann, Chris and Robert Magocsi, Paul, 139159. Toronto: Toronto University Press.Google Scholar
Winter, Jay. 1995. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wolczuk, Kataryna, and Wolczuk, Roman. 2002. Poland and Ukraine: A Strategic Partnership in a Changing Europe. London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs.Google Scholar