Submitted by VU 4/VIII-47
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine comrade Nikita Khrushchev
On Measures in the Field of National Policy in the City of Lvov
The ancient Ukrainian city of Lvov, after being seized by the Poles, was subjected to many years of colonization and was deliberately settled with a predominantly Polish population. As a result, the majority of Lvov’s current population is Polish. To restore the Ukrainian character of the city, the following measures are recommended:
1.Organize a voluntary mass resettlement of the Ukrainian population from Polish territory to the Lvov oblast, including the relocation of urban Ukrainians to the city of Lvov. Those who relocate should be provided with employment and housing.
2. Facilitate the voluntary resettlement of individuals of Polish nationality from Soviet Ukrainian territory to Poland.
3. Conduct a large-scale recruitment of workers and intellectuals from Ukraine’s eastern regions to relocate permanently to the western regions, particularly to the city of Lvov. Provide them with work and housing.
4. Immediately begin the restoration and establishment of Ukrainian Soviet scientific, cultural, and educational institutions in the city of Lvov:
a) Resume the operations of the Lvov Ukrainian University.
b) Resolve the issue of reopening the Lvov branch of the Academy of Sciences, including branches of the Institutes of History, Language and Literature, Economics, the Scientific Library of the Academy of Sciences, and the Museum of Natural History.
c) Resume the work of the Ukrainian Opera Theater; expedite the relocation of the Zankovetska Drama Theater to Lvov for permanent residence; establish a Ukrainian Theater for Young Audiences and a Musical Comedy Theater.
d) Resume the operations of the Lvov Conservatory and Music College; organize schools of folk art in Lvov.
5. Reorganize the museum system in the city of Lvov, ensuring that exhibitions highlight the centuries-old Ukrainian character of the city and its inseparable connection with the broader Ukrainian lands. Establish a Ukrainian Historical Museum in Lvov.
6. Significantly increase the number of Ukrainian-language secondary schools in Lvov and take steps to transfer the majority of departments in higher educational institutions to Ukrainian as the primary language of instruction.
7. Launch Ukrainian-language periodicals in the city of Lvov: a newspaper for youth, a children’s magazine, and a public literary magazine titled Lvov. Resume publication of the monthly journal of the Lvov branch of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.
8. Restore the historical names of streets in Lvov and rename several others.
9. Erect monuments in Lvov to honor Shevchenko [handwritten] I. Franko, and Bohdan Khmelnitsky.
10. Establish cultural and professional centers in the city, including a House of Scientists, a House of Literature and Art, a House of Teachers, and a House of Doctors.
3 August 1944.
Litvin
Hrushetskyi
Bazhan [?]
This memorandum, transmitted in Russian to the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Soviet Ukraine, Nikita Khrushchev, and signed by Kostyantyn Litvin (then deputy head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine), Ivan Hrushetskyi (First Secretary of the Lviv Oblast and City Committees of the CP(b)U), and a third eastern Ukrainian party official is a party document. It reflects the nationality policy measures taken after reoccupation in Lviv. Dated 3 August 1944, just one month before the Polish-Soviet population exchange agreement, it sets out measurement to incorporate the city into the Ukrainian Soviet Republic and legitimize the new power.
The document frames Lviv as an “ancient Ukrainian city” that had been subjected to “years of Polonization.” Such rhetoric reveals the ideological stakes: Soviet authorities aimed to overwrite the city’s historically multiethnic character, erasing not only the dominant Polish presence but also the remnants of its recently destroyed Jewish community.
The measures proposed can be grouped into three overarching objectives, each directed toward legitimizing Soviet rule:
Ukrainizazion of Lviv: Reestablish the Ukrainian character of the city through demographic engineering. This meant resettling Ukrainians from Polish territories into Lviv and providing them with housing and employment.
De-polonization: At the same time, the memorandum proposed the “voluntary” resettlement of the Polish population, not only from Lviv, but from across Soviet Ukraine, into Poland, anticipating the broader framework later codified in the Polish-Soviet population exchange agreement.
Sovietization: A further step was to “make the city Soviet” by transferring workers and members of the intelligentsia from eastern Ukraine to Lviv and the wider region. Beyond demographic shifts, the plan called for the Ukrainization of the city’s cultural landscape and the Sovietization of its institutions, particularly in education, history, literature, and the cities topography, in order to secure the long-term transmission of Soviet ideology and values.
While the measures bear some resemblance to the Ukrainization policies of the 1920s of Ukrainization (and korenizatsiya), there is a key difference: rather than empowering local cadres, the post-1944 approach was a top-down project carried out by party functionaries from the eastern oblasts. This ensured that Ukrainization was firmly subordinated to Soviet authority.
Strikingly absent from the memorandum is any reference to the religious sphere, which in 1944 remained one of the most influential institutions in Galicia and a source of resistance to Sovietization. Equally revealing is the silence surrounding the legacy of Nazi occupation. The German presence had radically altered the city’s demography, above all through the near-total destruction of Lviv’s once large Jewish community.