Sources

In the late Soviet era, Lviv’s intellectual and artistic circles developed a distinctive survival strategy within the party-state system — what could be called an “ethics of parallel existence”. During late socialism, labor was regarded not only as an economic necessity but also as a core ideological concept. The Soviet state considered labor both a moral duty for its citizens and the primary tool for shaping the “new man”. According to socialist ethics, labor was the ultimate form of human self-realization and a person’s contribution to the collective good. These principles were systematically reflected in Soviet sociology of labor, which argued that participation in a labor collective [trudovyi kolektyv — tr. note] was...

The interview published here is part of the project “Un/archiving Post/industry”, implemented in 2020 – 2021, with the aim of collecting surviving industrial heritage materials from Lviv and Donetsk regions, and establishing a dialogue between generations, regions, and institutions. In 2021, biographical interviews were conducted with employees of the radio-electronic, machine-building, processing, light, and food industries of Lviv. The processed materials were included in the collection of oral narratives “Industrial biographies of the city”. The collection recorded the memories and reflections of respondents about their childhood and family, the city, education, work, and society, starting from the 1950s. 

The interview published here is part of the project “Un/archiving Post/industry”, implemented in 2020 – 2021, with the aim of collecting surviving industrial heritage materials from Lviv and Donetsk regions, and establishing a dialogue between generations, regions, and institutions. In 2021, biographical interviews were conducted with employees of the radio-electronic, machine-building, processing, light, and food industries of Lviv. The processed materials were included in the collection of oral narratives “Industrial biographies of the city”. The collection recorded the memories and reflections of respondents about their childhood and family, the city, education, work, and society, starting from the 1950s. 

Stanisław Laskownicki (1892–1978), a graduate of Lviv University and a future professor of urology, left behind a collection of memoirs titled "Sword, Bayonet, Lancet" ("Szpada, bagnet, lancet"). In these writings, he described the leisure activities of Lviv's youth, including their involvement in sports. He paid particular attention to fencing, which was highly popular in student circles at that time, and to duels as a method of conflict resolution.

This document is an excerpt from the minutes of a meeting of the party organization at the Lviv Tobacco Factory in Vynnyky, which addressed issues such as theft, shortages, defects, and other — mostly minor but very common — violations. Most of those present at the meeting were members of the Communist Party, yet the discussion focused on the factory’s operations and every employee’s performance. This illustrates the party’s “leading and guiding” role, its omnipresence in both ideological and productive spheres, and its importance for both vertical and horizontal integration. The minutes were recorded in Russian, the dominant language in the public sphere during the late Soviet era. The minutes present a systematic...

The interview published here is part of the project “Un/archiving Post/industry”, implemented in 2020 – 2021, with the aim of collecting surviving industrial heritage materials from Lviv and Donetsk regions, and establishing a dialogue between generations, regions, and institutions. In 2021, biographical interviews were conducted with employees of the radio-electronic, machine-building, processing, light, and food industries of Lviv. The processed materials were included in the collection of oral narratives "Industrial biographies of the city". The collection recorded the memories and reflections of respondents about their childhood and family, the city, education, work, and society, starting from the 1950s.

This report, prepared by the head of the Lviv oblast party committee, and addressed to Nikita Khrushchev on 14 October 1944, offers an official assessment of Polish attitudes in the region one month after the signing of the Polish-Soviet population exchange agreement. Presented as a “report on moods,” it contains a series of quoted remarks attributed to local inhabitants. These very manifold moods highlight the complexity of the population transfer on the ground. Far from a smooth or unanimous process, the implementation of resettlement encountered hesitation, fear, ambivalence, and selective compliance. While the report depicts some readiness to leave, it also underscores that departures were often driven less by ideological conviction than by pragmatic considerations, security,...

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...

The meeting of the heads of regional party committees and the leaders of republican executive bodies, held on November 17, 1965, was dedicated to organizational and party work within the CPU (Communist Party of Ukraine) in preparation for the “worthy reception of the 23rd Congress of the CPSU,” scheduled for March 1966. Attendees heard reports from the head of the Ukrainian party organization, Petro Shelest, as well as from nine regional CPU committees. In his speech, an excerpt of which is published below, Petro Shelest addressed preparations for what he called a “momentous event in our lives,” a “landmark date in the life of our Party and our people – the 23rd Congress...

After the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR of the 12th convocation in March 1990, female representation in parliament decreased from 234 (36%) deputies to 13 (2.7%). One of the reasons for this was the introduction of alternative voting, which brought real competition to the elections, and thus the practice of previous "women's quotas" no longer worked. Correspondent Lyudmila Shushrina, in the preface to the article "Bring us our Ukraine!", bitterly acknowledged the formal role of women in the previous convocations of the supreme councils, where their presence was meant to demonstrate "equality and full citizenship," creating the appearance of the workers' and peasants' sovereignty, but they rarely got re-elected...

Valentyna Shevchenko (1935–2020) had a distinguished Soviet political career. She began her professional path in 1954 as a school Pioneer leader in Kryvyi Rih. Three years later, she transitioned to work in the Komsomol, and later moved into Party structures. In 1962, she assumed the position of Secretary of the Central Committee of the Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine (LKSMU). From 1975 to 1985, Shevchenko served as Deputy Chair of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, and in 1985 she became its Chair — making her, under the 1978 Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR, the head of the republic’s highest state authority. Her interview, published in the newspaper...

The materials in the archive file below document the organization of the resettlement of Poles from the USSR in late 1945–early 1946, as well as the specifics of its implementation in the Izmail Oblast of the Ukrainian SSR. On July 6, 1945, an agreement was concluded between the Soviet leadership and the Provisional Government of National Unity of the Republic of Poland, granting persons of Polish and Jewish nationalities—who had held Polish citizenship before September 17, 1939, and resided in the USSR—the right to renounce their Soviet citizenship and move to Poland. To implement this agreement, a Soviet-Polish joint commission was established, which developed and approved instructions on the procedure for accepting and...

This documentary source provides valuable information about complaints from Soviet citizens who arrived in the Izmail oblast concerning extremely difficult material and living conditions, low levels of property provision, and the negative attitude of the local population towards newcomers. The return of Soviet power to Budzhak (the historical name of the southern part of the Odesa oblast; in 1940–1941 and 1944–1954, the Izmail oblast of the Ukrainian SSR) in August 1944 was presented by official propaganda as a “liberation from the fascist yoke.” However, a significant portion of the local population, having experienced the Soviet occupation of 1940–1941, fled en masse to Romanian territory. According to the secretary of the oblast committee, very...

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, oil workers in Boryslav formed a diverse and uneven group that included local Ukrainian peasants, Polish migrant workers from Western Galicia, Jews, and skilled workers from other countries. Some were seasonal labourers who came to work in the mines only when there was no field work in the villages where they permanently resided. Shared origins from the same locality or belonging to the same ethnic or religious group often took precedence over a sense of themselves as a professional group or class. In this respect, the industrial environment in Boryslav resembled the mining industry in new towns such as Yuzivka...

The 13 notes presented here are a compilation of all the diary entries by Teofil Hrushkevych, a retired Lviv gymnasium teacher, that mention a servant in his household named Maria Linchak (most often referred to as Marynka or Marynia). These references span more than three years, from 1906 to the autumn of 1909, marking the period during which she worked for the Hrushkevych family. Among all the notes the author made about the servants in his household, Maria Linchak is the most frequently mentioned. Alongside her name, we find at least nine other women who worked for the Hrushkevychs before or after Maria, up until the outbreak of World War I. With the...

This short story by Mark Cheremshyna (real name Ivan Semaniuk; 1874–1927), a Ukrainian writer, lawyer, and Doctor of Law, explores the aftermath of the First World War and the struggles faced by its veterans, all set against the vivid backdrop of Hutsul culture.

Ihor Kostetskyi was just one example of several several million individuals who were taken by the Nazi Army from occupied eastern European territories and had to work as Ostarbeiter in the German war industry. Before the war, Kostetskyi was involved in several cultural, artistic, and creative projects and initiatives. Born in Kyiv, he made little declaration of his Ukrainianness until Carpathian Ukraine started to seek independence in 1938. When he was mobilized into the Red Army at the start of the German invasion in 1941, he was in the process of changing his real name, Ivan Merzliakov, to the pen name, Ihor Kostetskyi. This is the name he would use in the future....

The Ukrainian DP journal KHORS was initially planned to be quarterly. However, the first KHORS edition in 1946 was also the last. The following documents provide insight into the reasons for the failure to publish subsequent issues and interesting evidence about the financial situation of the Ukrainian diaspora in the American occupation zone in general. The second and third issues of KHORS were planned to be published shortly after the first. A handwritten list of the planned content for these two issues confirms this thesis. It was written in an old document form of the German Air Force from the Second World War. These forms were distributed to the residents of the DP...

The Ukrainian DP journal KHORS focused on culture, arts, and cinema. It was published by a small team around the writer Ihor Kostetskyi. In its statutes, KHORS was not only displayed as a journal. Instead, it would be somewhat of a worldwide movement that people could join or leave, as they wish, in the future. The overriding principle was to accept the “primacy of the artistic form,” art for art’s sake. Every artist who shared these postulates was allowed to belong to KHORS “regardless of race, nationality, confessional or political convictions.” Only one group was excluded, the communists because “their ideology does not acknowledge the primacy of form.”  Kostetskyi dreamed that in the...

The Ukrainian DP journal KHORS was planned as a quarterly about art and culture. It was published by a group of editors headed by writer Ihor Kostetskyi. Although the second issue was never published, the editorial notes and pre-written articles ready for publication in the planned second issue speak a lot about the potential inherent in the project. In its statute, KHORS resolutely distanced itself from communism and the Soviet Union. The reason for this position, among other things, was the Soviet ideologization of art. For Ukrainian DPs in the Western occupation zones of postwar Germany, such criticism was not only commonplace but almost expected. However, KHORS went one step further. One of...

The quotes from the interview published here are part of the project “The Voices of Euromaidan in Global Protest and Solidarity Studies”. The project focuses on the edited and thematically organized materials from the collection of oral history interviews called “Voices of Resistance and Hope,” that were recorded in two stages, the first in December 2013 and the second in February 2014 (more then 100 interviews). They were gathered in the base “Intimate Chronologies of the Euromaidan”, which is available on Urban Media Archive website. This collection includes 17 themetical categories. The category “Perception of European integration and European values” combines quotes related to the expectations of Euromaidan participants from possible European integration, as...

The quotes from the interview published here are part of the project “The Voices of Euromaidan in Global Protest and Solidarity Studies”. The project focuses on the edited and thematically organized materials from the collection of oral history interviews called “Voices of Resistance and Hope,” that were recorded in two stages, the first in December 2013 and the second in February 2014 (more then 100 interviews). They were gathered in the base “Intimate Chronologies of the Euromaidan”, which is available on Urban Media Archive website. This collection includes 17 themetical categories. The category “Motivation of Mobilization” has the quotes describing the motivation of Euromaidan participants that prompted them to join the protests. Answers...

The quotes from the interview published here are part of the project “The Voices of Euromaidan in Global Protest and Solidarity Studies”. The project focuses on the edited and thematically organized materials from the collection of oral history interviews called “Voices of Resistance and Hope,” that were recorded in two stages, the first in December 2013 and the second in February 2014 (more then 100 interviews). They were gathered in the base “Intimate Chronologies of the Euromaidan”, which is available on Urban Media Archive website. This collection includes 17 themetical categories. The category "Heroes and antiheroes in the history of Ukraine" contains the views of the interviewed participants of the protests about the...

The fund of the Ukrainian publicist and public character Oleh Lashchenko at the Central State Archive of Public Associations of Ukraine contains seven letters and one postcard from Kateryna Biletska (Kandyba by first husband), Oleh Kandyba’s wife (literary pseudonym Oleh Olzhych), a poet and member of the Ukrainian nationalist underground movement, head of the cultural and educational department of the Provid of Ukrainian Nationalists (PUN) and the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) (1939-1941). Lashchenko was not only a longtime friend of the Kandybas, but also the godfather of their only son. He was born in Kyiv in 1914, in 1920 he emigrated to Poland with his parents and elder...

Kateryna Biletska (Kandyba by her first husband), the wife of Oleh Kandyba (known by the literary pseudonym Oleh Olzhych), a poet and member of the Ukrainian nationalist underground, head of the cultural and educational department of the Provid (Leadership) of Ukrainian Nationalists (PUN) and the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) (1939-1941), wrote her memoirs for decades. She first mentions the idea of writing a memoir in letters to a mutual friend of the Kandybas since the 1950s, Oleh Lashchenko. One of the last surviving memoirs is dated May 1994. She sent some of her memoirs to Lashchenko and wrote that she had more. These memoirs mainly cover the years...

The quotes from the interview published here are part of the project “The Voices of Euromaidan in Global Protest and Solidarity Studies”. The project focuses on the edited and thematically organized materials from the collection of oral history interviews called “Voices of Resistance and Hope,” that were recorded in two stages, the first in December 2013 and the second in February 2014 (more then 100 interviews). They were gathered in the base “Intimate Chronologies of the Euromaidan”, which is available on Urban Media Archive website. This collection includes 17 themetical categories. The category "Identities of protest participants" is built around the respondents' thoughts about their identities, which were strengthened during the Euromaidan. During...

Stanisław Laskownicki (1892-1978), the first Polish professor of urology, stands out as one of the most intriguing memoirists chronicling Lviv. Born into a family of esteemed Lviv journalists, he possessed an extensive knowledge of the city’s notable figures and the inner workings of various editorial offices. Additionally, with a diverse range of interests, he offered insights into the leisure activities of Lviv’s youth, including sports, duels, and academic pursuits. His memoirs, titled Szpada, bagnet, lancet were published in two editions in 1970 and 1979. The excerpts provided here illuminate Lviv’s daily newspapers, recount typical anecdotes from the lives of journalists and their friends and shed light on the founding and evolution of the...

This newspaper article comprises reports by workers’ correspondents on the state of cultural and educational activities in Kharkiv clubs. The authors critique the process of electing club boards, offer recommendations on conducting them, highlight nepotism in position distribution, and denounce the use of alcohol and smoking in club premises. The Soviet government endeavored to transform workers’ clubs into model leisure facilities. Soviet leisure, as envisioned, encompassed active political engagement, self-education, and self-improvement for club attendees. However, visitors often favored traditional forms of recreation, and cultural workers frequently approached their duties perfunctorily. Clubs aimed to strike a balance between propaganda and entertainment, though maintaining it proved challenging. Hence, such reports were commonplace in periodicals....

The article outlines the key features of a socialist town near Horlivka in Donbas region. This initiative mirrors similar projects undertaken in Kharkiv (“New Kharkiv”) and Zaporizhzhia (“Sixth Village”). The aim of the project is to maximize the socialization of workers’ daily lives. To achieve this goal, there were plans to develop an extensive network of catering and social infrastructure, including nurseries, kindergartens, clubs, and more. Designers envisioned these architectural solutions to alleviate women from household chores and involve them in community service or industry. The socialist town project exemplifies Soviet standardized housing construction, with neighborhoods, residential buildings, and interior designs intended to shape a new socialist lifestyle for its residents. Although such...

This document highlights the emergence of a totalitarian regime in the Ukrainian SSR at the grassroots level. In January 1929, J. Stalin emerged victorious over Leon Trotsky in the internal power struggle and opted to exile him from the USSR. Subsequently, there was a wave of arrests targeting supporters of the Trotskyist opposition or those perceived as such by the authorities. This crackdown extended to various enterprises in Kharkiv, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR at the time. The text captures the workers’ reflections on the government’s actions, their views on Trotsky, as well as the prevalence of anti-Semitic sentiments, among other topics. Discussions among workers at Kharkiv’s factories revolved around the arrests...

The source provided below is a promotional booklet from the Soviet amateur film studio “Volyn,” located in Lutsk. Unlike studios that were under the authority of and funded by trade union organizations, this studio was affiliated with the oblast department of culture. The booklet highlights the achievements and activities of the studio. This type of publication was widely circulated and exchanged at competitions and festivals of various levels. The presence of such printed materials could further indicate the level of financial support for the studio.

This program is part of the multi-stage film selection for the Soviet-wide competition "For You, Motherland, Our Hard Work." It features a compilation of works from the most active studios in the Ukrainian SSR at the time, including film titles and authors' names. It provides information on the gender and social distribution within the amateur filmmaking movement, as well as its geographic spread. It is striking to note that most listed authors are men. Characteristically, each name is accompanied by a profession, though not always accurate, highlighting the diversity of individuals involved in amateurism. Attention can also be drawn to the film titles and their formats. Many amateurs utilized the professional 35mm format,...

This document is a resolution of the Lviv Oblast Council of Trade Unions regarding the organization of an oblast seminar for leaders of amateur film studios, clubs, and cinematographers. It is a common example illustrating the degree of formalization and bureaucratic structuring within the coordinated amateur film community during the Soviet era. In its contents, we discern a distinct chain of command prevalent within the inter-republican hierarchy: the Ukrainian Republican Council of Trade Unions — the Lviv Oblast Council of Trade Unions — the Lviv Oblast Club-Laboratory of Trade Union Cinematographers — People’s Film Studio (one among several).

The letters presented here are from the correspondence of the Hlynskyi family: the Greek Catholic priest Isidor Hlynskyi, his mother Yuliia Hlynska (née Bilynska), and Anastasia Kuzyk, the housekeeper in Isidor's household. They discuss various topics, including the festive menus of church celebrations in the Galician village of Butsniv near Ternopil, where Isidor Hlynskyi served as a priest from 1887 to 1931. The author of the first two letters, dating approximately from 1890 to 1892, is Yuliia Hlynska, the widow of the priest Kuprian Hlynskyi, Isidor's mother, who lived in Cherneliv-Ruskyi. These letters are written in Ukrainian and transcribed in Latin script. The choice of the Latin alphabet was likely influenced by Hlynska's...

Teofil Hrushkevych a teacher of classical languages at the Second (German) Gymnasium in Lviv, commenced his diary in 1895, though it was only after his retirement in 1906 that his entries became regular. The extant handwritten diary comprises eight notebooks, documenting entries for 1895, 1903, and 1906 (intermittent), and for 1908-1915 (almost daily). Typically, the author penned his notes in the evening, commencing with a depiction of the weather, followed by an account of the day's events: personal matters, such as receiving a pension, settling bills, visiting friends or acquaintances, attending church services, and social engagements, such as participating in meetings of Ukrainian societies to which he belonged, attending the theatre or a...

Ryszard Gansiniec was a distinguished Polish classical philologist and linguist. From 1920 to 1941 and again from 1944 to 1946, he served as a professor and head of the Department of Classical Philology at Lviv University. His work Lviv Notes comprises a series of letters addressed to his wife, who relocated to Stryżow, Poland, in May 1944. Meanwhile, Gansiniec remained in Lviv until June 1946, where he continued working at Lviv University and the Academy of Sciences. However, in January 1945, he was arrested and detained until May of the same year. Upon his relocation to Poland, he assumed a professorial role at the University of Wroclaw. Later, from 1948 until his passing,...

This unattributed letter was addressed to Anastasia Kuzyk, the housekeeper of Isidor Hlynskyi, a Greek Catholic priest from the Galician village of Butsniv, near Ternopil. Penned by a former female resident of Butsniv or one of the neighboring villages who had immigrated to America and resided in New Haven, Connecticut at the time of writing, the letter bears the date of 11 July 1921. It was composed in the aftermath of the recent Ukrainian-Polish conflict and the subsequent Ukrainian defeat. While the letter does not directly mention these events, it cautiously alludes to them, perhaps due to apprehension regarding censorship and potential repercussions for the recipients. The author reflects on her immigrant experience,...

This source is a folklore text representing the developments of the First World War. Katria Hrynevycheva (1875-1947), a writer, public activist, head of the Ukrainian Women's Union (Soiuz Ukrainok), recorded a variation of the song in the city of Gmünd (Lower Austria), during her stay in the war refugees displacement camp. The recording was found in the archives of Volodymyr Hnatiuk. It is probably that Hrynevycheva was motivated by Hnatiuk’s call to document war-inspired pieces (see below the entry on “War and Folk Poetry”) and her personal story as a mother of two volunteer combatants from the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen (USR, Ukrainian National Military Formation within the Austro-Hungarian Army). The camp...

This letter is part of the correspondence between its author, Olha Barvinska (1874-1955), and her father, Oleksandr Barvinskyi, an influential Ukrainian politician. The Barvinsky family lived separately at the time. As an ambassador to the Austrian parliament, Oleksandr was permanently in Vienna while his family lived in Lviv. This letter, among other things, contains an interesting story about Olha's teaching career, which began almost immediately after she graduated from the city women's teacher's seminary. In September 1893, Olha started working as a Ruska (Ukrainian) language teacher at the city's incomplete secondary school. In the letter below, the author describes her invitation to work at the first Ukrainian women's private educational institutions in Lviv,...

This document contains workers' reflections on the Soviet policy of involving women in manufacturing. The authorities intentionally collected them [reports] in order to enable a more realistic assessment of the current domestic political situation. The study of such reports became possible after Ukraine gained independence, as they were all classified during the Soviet era. Analysis of this source will allow us to see the implementation of Soviet gender policy in industry on a daily basis. The text describes the problems that women faced at work: prejudiced attitudes of men, difficult working conditions, pay inequality, the declarative nature of changes in the status of Soviet women, etc. The document records men's reactions to women's...

This source comprises correspondence between branches of the tsarist bureaucracy on the issue of the pornography trade in Kyiv at the beginning of the twentieth century. The sale of visual and textual materials deemed to be ‘obscene’ (nepristoinyi) and ‘immoral’ (beznravstvennyi) deeply concerned the tsarist authorities and was broadly regarded as a negative consequence of modernisation. The tsarist authorities were not alone in their concern about the increasing availability of ‘obscene’ materials in this period. Across the European continent, innovations in photographic technology, falling costs of printing and distribution, and the development of postal systems generated an explosion in pornography in old and new media in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries....

Ryszard Gansiniec is a classical Polish philologist and linguist. In 1920–1941 and 1944–1946 he was a professor and Head of Classical Philology Chair of Lviv University. His “Notes of Lviv” are a compilation of his letters to his wife who left for Stryzow (Poland) in 1944. R. Gansiniec stayed in Lviv until June 1946, working at Lviv University and at the Academy of Science under Soviet authority. In January 1945 he was arrested and kept in jail until May. After he moved on to Poland, he was appointed the position of professor of Wroclaw University. In 1948 and until his death, he was a professor of Jagiellonian University. In the compilation of letters presented, R....

The presented report shows the reaction of population in the USSR to the Soviet-Chinese conflict in July-December, 1929 over the control on Chinese Eastern Railway. The text includes opinions expressed by workers from Ukrainian industrial plants and mines in their private conversations, and in the work teams. They illustrate a wide range of opinions dominating in society: from ardent support of the Soviet Union in the conflict, and calls to go to the front, to denying the need for confrontation. It must be highlighted that discussions of the condition and provisions in the Soviet Army would often end up in reflections about the causes of internal economic problems in the country. Many workers...

This report was drafted by the political special service authority of the USSR named the State Political Board (SPD, functioned in 1922-1934) for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CC CP(b)U). It records the reactions of the population of the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) to the article by Stalin “Dizziness From Success (Concerning Questions of the Collective-Farm Movement)” published in the Pravda newspaper on March, 2, 1930. The text includes opinions expressed by workers from Ukrainian industrial plants and mines in their private conversations, and in the work teams. They are mostly quite skeptical and critical about collectivization, the activities of the party, and about Stalin in particular....

The presented report illustrates types of information that are hard to find in other sources. Those are conversations during a celebratory demonstration. In the source text, we can see that people found pressing issues more important than party slogans. Workers were mostly interested in the availability of bread, work, and free sale of alcohol on festive days. Certainly, the quotes and statements of people presented in the report do not represent the entire range of topics discussed during the demonstrations. However, they allow us to at least take a look behind the settings of official manifestations. It is critical, for in 1929, Soviet celebration canon was still on the development stage. It is...

The Lists of Settlements were published by the Central Statistical Committee of the Russian Empire in the 1860-1880s. Each issue was dedicated to a separate governorate. It contained information about the region’s geographical and natural situation and its history. A complete list of settlements in the province was submitted according to the alphabetical principle, according to the staff distribution with statistical materials about each place. The “Lists” contained information about the number of inhabitants; their distribution by social and national aspects; the number of houses; the number of churches and educational institutions; bazaars and markets; factories, plants and manufactories; post offices, etc. The illustration provided here is a collection dedicated to the Kherson...

This is an excerpt from an interview with an actress in Lviv made in 2013. This actress talks about her wartime experience under German occupation and touches on the various cultural institutions she attended during the war. She went to the Lviv Opera Theater, run 1941-1944 by famous actor and director Volodymyr Blavatsky, who had worked with Kurbas’ Berezil and created a name for himself in avant-garde theater in Poland. He left for the west in 1944. She notes Lesia Kryvytska, an actress who worked in interwar Poland, Nazi-occupied Lviv, and then settled at the Maria Zankovetska Theater in postwar Lviv. She also mentions studying ballet at the Opera’s dance studio. Her mention...

This is an interview with an actress in Lviv who narrates her experience of World War II serving in the Red Army and her start in professional theater in Lviv. First, she tells us about her experience in the war: she served in Stalingrad as a communications operator and was deaf for 10 days from shelling. Her unit served with the First Ukrainian Front all the way to Lviv, where she ends up staying for the rest of her life. Note she never returns to any mention of her family again, so we can presume they did not survive the war. Her description of the war reveals the role that women played in...

This is an excerpt from an interview with a theater director, one of the only women to work her way up through a male-dominated cultural sphere. She worked at several theaters in Lviv and became well-known in late Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine. This source tells us about late Soviet theater, and the cultural world in general, and the different circulations and pathways between Lviv and Moscow. She mentions Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” (actually at the 20th, not 22nd Party Congress) and the cultural opening that happened in the 1950s and 1960s. Note that she applied to theater school in Kyiv, but was not accepted - because she auditioned with verse by dissident poet Lina...

This is an excerpt from an interview with a lighting designer in Lviv in which she talks about her mother, Tatiana Zorina, who for many years was the zavlit, or literary director, at the Theater of the Carpathian Military District on Horodotska Street in Lviv. This theater, called by locals simply PrykVO, was a Russian-language theater under the management of the Ministry of Defense that operated in Lviv from 1954 until the Soviet collapse. The theater continued, in various forms, under various state institutions, shifting and changing, until becoming today’s Teatr Lesi. Several interviews from the UMA collection linked here reveal the history of this fascinating theatrical institution. Tetiana Zorina, as the source...

The quotes from the interview published here are part of the project "The Voices of Euromaidan in Global Protest and Solidarity Studies". The project focuses on the edited and thematically organized materials from the collection of oral history interviews called "Voices of Resistance and Hope," that were recorded in two stages, the first in December 2013 and the second in February 2014 (more then 100 interviews). They were gathered in the base "Intimate Chronologies of the Euromaidan", which is available on Urban Media Archive website. This collection includes 17 themetical categories. “Leninopad” is one of them. The answers given in this category indicate the attitudes towards Lenin's monuments, to specific forms of urban...

Volodymyr Hnatiuk is a public and cultural activist, the first professional Ukrainian studies scholar in Halychyna during the First World War. He published a seminal article that included three parts: and then analytical introduction, an appendix with the text of different genres, and a questionnaire illustrated below. The experienced ethnographer and the folklore researcher raised an issue about the pertinent need to record war related folklore. He believed that oral speech actively responds to every critical historic social phenomenon, and the new creativity from the war is also a crucial information and propaganda source. Hnatiuk emphasized that the key task is to identify the popular view on the war, the attitudes to the...

The document presents a discussion between Ukrainian and Polish deputies in the Galician Sejm taking place in Lviv on May, 15, 1893. One of the issues during that day session was about the report of the budget commission requested by the executive committee of the 1894 Regional Exhibition on allocating a subvention the exhibition’s implementation. Despite the financial component of the matter, the discussion went beyond to a broader political dimension and showed Polish-Ukrainian relations in Galicia in the end of the 19th century. The first rapporteur among the Ukrainian deputies was Yaroslav Kulachkovskyi, director of the Dnister insurance company. He spoke about the goal of the future exhibition presented by the executive...

On Monday, January 31, 1905, the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Silesia (PPSD) initiated a meeting at the People's Theater on Shainokha Street in Lviv to discuss the revolutionary situation in Russia. Four Lviv newspapers (Gazeta Lwowska, Dilo, Kurjer Lwowski, Słowo Polskie) covered this event differently, depending on their ideological positions, political agenda, and target audiences. These publications reflect the ideological palette of the leading newspapers of the then Galicia about one historical event. This source allows us to analyze the algorithms of the design and functioning of information policies and the impact of the press.

This denunciation of a Ukrainian woman, probably done by a member of the SB OUN Żdan - commander of the Kuszczowa Division, self-defense (SKW) in the 3rd region of the OUN-Baturyn District II. Name unknown. Village Krowica Sama/ Коровиця Сама/ Korovytsia Sama was located within Lubaczów County within the 3rd region. The woman mentioned in the document was a 23-year-old Ukrainian, Justyna Barycz, who lived in Korovytsia Sama. The document accuses her of having sexual relationships with various men; first she was accused of having close relationships (sexual) with Ukrainian police during the war, then with a Polish man. (In 1945 she met a Polish man whom she married). The document also mentions...

The document describes the recreation for children and teenagers in the summer of 1968. Еhe report on the vacation of school children was drafted by the Lviv Regional Department of Public education. According to Soviet hierarchy of power in education, they initially drafted the order of the Ministry of Education of the Ukrainian Soviet socialist Republic “On the recreation of children for summer 1968.” It was followed by the local decisions of the regional and municipal departments for education, off party and Komsomol cells. They replicated the ministerial order, and used it as the guidance for the plan for summer vacations. When organizing and conducting events related to school education or recreation, Soviet...

Mykhailo Zubrytskyi is a Greek Catholic priest and a public figure who analyzes the phenomenon of migration to the United States from the Carpathian village of Lyutovytska, in the Ukrainian newspaper Dilo. The author describes the migration strategies of peasants, the stages of the migration process, adaptation to a new place, and difficulties with returning. Although the text focuses on Ukrainian migration, the author mentions Jews who were also leaving for the United States, as well as Jews who acted as intermediaries in migration. At the same time, for the author, as for a public figure, the influence of migration on Galicia was important, which he saw as multidimensional. Migration meant the outflow...

An excerpt from the autobiography of Ukrainian migrant, Vasyl Plaskonis, describes his experience of leaving interwar Poland for Canada in 1925. The motivation for emigration was not only economic, but also political, as Vasyl Plaskonis felt persecuted in Poland as a former participant in the Polish-Ukrainian war. The author considered his decision to migrate as temporary. The text describes the process of making a decision about the departure, journey, and the first months of adaptation in Canada. An important issue is the mediation of agents who helped emigrants to purchase tickets and leave. In Canada, new Ukrainian migrants found work in mines, or as day laborers on farms. The text explains how the...

The autobiography was sent to a competition of migrant autobiographies organized by the YIVO Jewish Institute. Its author is Ben Reisman from the Galician town of Kalush, who recalls his childhood in Galicia, his arrival to America in 1896, and his involvement in the socialist movement. The selected passage shows the process of travel and the importance of a network of social contacts between migrants from the same region. Such connections made it possible and easier to make a decision on migration, job search, or an adaptation to a new place. One of the typical moments of involvement in a new place is interest in politics. Ben Reisman arrived in the United States...

The notification states that the investigation into the death of Janina Knobloch (an arrested woman that the document mentions) was discontinued. She poisoned herself with strychnine in a bathroom during her interrogation. She was a liaison officer of OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) District II. The document was prepared by an investigation officer of MBP (Ministry of Public Security).

Memories of Zinaida Mirna about women in Central Council of Ukraine. Zinaida Mirna (1878-1950) was a civic and political leader. She was active in the Ukrainian women's movement and women's education movement, played an important role during Ukraine’s struggle for independence (1917–20) as a member of the Central Council (Tsentralna Rada) and the Little Council (Mala Rada). In 1919 Zinaida Mirna helped found the National Council of Ukrainian Women in Kamianets-Podilskyi, and served as its vice-president. Later she headed its Berlin branch. After settling in Prague in 1924, she served as the longtime president of the Ukrainian Women's Union in Czechoslovakia and gave much of her time to the Museum of Ukraine's Struggle...

This report, written by someone described as agent “Marysia,” is about Don (Wolodomyr Perezylo) and a woman identified as ‘S.’ The document discusses a romantic relationship (or perhaps an infatuation) between ‘S’ (possibly an OUN-B liaison in Poland – region V near Lublin/Zamość) and Don, a member of OUN security forces. The report was most likely written soon after the war. It is not completely clear what the purpose of writing this document was. The report was likely written in prison, quite possibly by ‘S’ in exchange for some favors from the Polish security forces. Yet the details that she provided regarding Don were not too harmful. Don appears as a person who...

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a long interrogation of Ivan Nestorak and his activities in the Ukrainian underground. Based on the information he provided, a female liaison was murdered by the Ukrainian insurgency. Her name was Maria Hac, and she was part of the UPA’s medical service. She had an STD and asked for money for treatment. She contacted Polish authorities MO (Citizens’ Militia) or UB (Department of Security) in Tomaszów Lubelski. She was murdered by the units of SB (Sluzhba Bezpeky) OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). Some potential topics that can be discussed based on this source are gender-based violence in the Ukrainian underground, treatment of Ukrainian women by...

Vira Szot was a Ukrainian woman and UPA liaison. After World War II, she arrived in southern Poland, where she set up transfer points for UPA members trying to reach Western Europe. Her arrest came on June 7, 1947. She was imprisoned at Jaworzno, Mokotów, and Fordon. She received a death sentence that was commuted to fifteen years, perhaps because she agreed to collaborate. She was released in 1956. She stayed in Poland after her release and in the 1990s, after the fall of Communism, applied for rehabilitation. In a letter from 1960 or 1961, which she called a confession and which is still in her IPN (Institute of National Remembrance) file, she...

The submitted text is part of a criminal case considered by the Criminal Division of the Lviv Regional Court in 1894 against four men accused of raping a woman named Maria Kopanska. The selected fragment is the testimony of the plaintiff, as well as of a witness Danyil Voloshyn. The event occurred on September 10, 1893, at about 11 p.m. in the Zhovkva neighborhood of the city, near the Brygidka prison. The presented document shows the peculiar nature of the information the judges requested from the injured party. This information was supposed to confirm not only the fact that the offense had been committed against the woman but also to justify her right...

This text presents a fragment of Maria Shutek’s interrogation in her 1870 infanticide trial, where she was accused by the Lviv Regional Court. In her testimony, she provides her account of the crime and the circumstances leading up to it. The detailed autobiographical statement required from defendants for investigative purposes not only sheds light on the crime but also offers a window into Shutek’s life. Though such accounts were written more out of compulsion than voluntary reflection, the autobiographical narratives of criminal cases paradoxically offer a more balanced representation than traditional autobiographies. This is because they were cross-referenced and corrected by the testimonies of others during their creation. For legal purposes, these narratives...

This article is part of the Soviet Encyclopedia and was written by Semion Romanovych (in life Srul Rakhmilevich) Gershberg (1908-1984). He was a researcher of Soviet history who specialized in the topic of "labor strikers". From 1931 to 1949, Gershberg worked for the Pravda newspaper and was fired during the 1949 anti-Semitic campaign in the USSR. Since 1949, he worked at the publishing house "Soviet Encyclopedia", where he held the position of deputy head of the editorial board. In 1961, he published the book "Movement of Collectives and Strikers of Communist Labor" and based on this research created the same article for the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (third edition 1969-1978, which consists of 30...

This letter comes from a collection of individual inquiries sent to the Lviv Executive Committee and the Temporary Governmental Commission for Entrance into Lviv between summer 1944 and spring 1945 and kept in the State Archive of Lviv Region - DALO. This and other letters can be read in at least three larger contexts: massive mobility and displacement brought by the Second World War across the entire European continent, both as a part of war and as a part of postwar settlement; attempts by individuals to find home or a place of residence in the context of anticipated postwar; and a particular role of letter writing in citizen-state relationship. More specifically, the contexts...

Memories of Stepan Haiduchok, Ukrainian pedagogue, author of books on sports teaching, about the Ukrainian-Polish war of 1918-19 and female medical service.

This source presents two narratives and perspectives on the “female” and “male” views of the dramas of the First World War. The oral narratives were recorded by Oles Babij (1897-1975), a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army who later served as a rifleman in the Ukrainian Army (UGA). Additionally, he was a symbolist writer and the author of the lyrics to the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) anthem “Зродились ми великої години” [We Are Born of a Great Hawthorn Tree]. Both texts were recorded on November 12, 1917, in his native village of Serednie near the city of Kalush (now Ivano-Frankivsk oblast, Ukraine). These stories reflect the folk-religious experience and Christian imperatives of the...

It is a polemical essay by a young Ukrainian socialist, Anna Pavlyk, about urban female workers and the challenges of their status as wage-earners and low-paid participants in the urban labor market. Anna knew about the peculiarities of this status from the first month. The woman worked as a seamstress or a maid for most of her life. The essay was published in Lviv in 1887 in a women's almanac, "The First Wreath." It was initiated and published by writers Natalia Kobrynska and Olena Pchilka as the first Ukrainian-language publication of women authors. Anna Pavlyk attempts to produce a collective portrait of the lowest strata of the social ladder – the daughters of...

Kateryna Vitko-Stakh’s excerpt is from a book of recollections of women who were members of the Ukrainian underground in the immediate postwar years, collected by Maria Pankiv in the 1990s. Pankiv is a journalist and member of the Ukrainian minority that has lived in Warsaw, Poland, since the 1990s. In those years, she worked for “Slovo,” a Ukrainian Archive in Warsaw. She interviewed a number of women who had been arrested in Poland for their involvement in the Ukrainian underground. Based on these conversations, she composed two volumes of their recollections. The chosen fragments reveal a story of Vitko-Stakh (liaison of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army under the pseudonym “Zozulya”) about her childhood, the...

Memoirs of Olena Stepaniv - commander of the female detachment of the Ukrainian Sich riflemen (a national military formation in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War) about her military experience. The memoirs were published in 1934 in Lviv magazine "Nazystrich" (Towards).

The monument to the Soviet constitution, or the Stalin Constitution, was built in Lviv in October 1939. The authors were the sculptor Serhyi Lytvynenko and Kyiv artist Mykhailo Dmytrenko, it’s possible that, the artists adapted the project, originally conceived in Moscow, to the new city conditions. The sculptors Yevhen Dzyndra and Andryi Koverko carried out the project, but the participation of Lytvynenko’s student the young sculptor Yakiv Chaika is also a possibility. The monument was made in the ceramic-sculpture factory, which opened on Muchna St. in 1939. The location for the monument was chosen in the city centre, the “island” on the boundary mark of the Hetman embankments, between Yahellon’ska st. and Holy...

In addition to film studios, which predominantly comprised adults, the network of amateur filmmaking also encompassed groups tailored for children and teenagers, typically organized within houses of culture or schools. Oversight of these groups was typically carried out by representatives from People’s Studios and local film clubs. The archival caption of this photograph reads as follows: “Members of the cinema club at the House of Culture in the village of Novoaleksandrovka, Belovodsk district, Voroshilovgrad oblast, during a film shoot. From left to right: students Naydysh A, Petrov P, the club’s leader Kolesnik V. I., student Burian V. — village Novoaleksandrovka, 15 May 1981, by Y. Khromushyn (outdoors against the backdrop of a river).”

“The initiators of a film studio at the steam locomotive and truck repair plant (from the left to the right) Slutskyn S.S., Art Club Director of Tool and Inventory Shop, Skybalo G.L., Director of Radio Broadcasting Center, and Zirka A.V. are looking through the first shots of the new film about the plant, Lviv December 7th, 1956". This archival record accompanies this photograph in the Central State Audio/Visual and Electronic Archive (until the recent times called Central State G.S. Pshenychnyi Filming Archive) in Kyiv. Despite it is the official representation of film amateurs that was probably created for the purpose of media publications, careful analysis of the details makes it possible to discern...

This wall newspaper is part of a series of wall newspapers from the Kostiantynivka bottling plant, created in 1967. The series consisted of 13 excerpts dedicated to local participants in the fights against the White Guards after the First World War. Thirteen newspaper issues reveal the plant's history, explain its name "13 Executed Workers Plant", and call for the publication of photographs and memories related to the confrontation with the White Guards. The presented here example tells the story of the family of Bobylov Aleksandr Semenovych and Bobylova-Chumychkina Mariia Semenivna, who were participants in the revolutionary movement. In 1918-1920, Kostiantynivka underwent numerous power changes, seized first by the White Guards and then by...

The photo is part of the collection of press photos from the State Archives of Lviv Region showing different economic areas: industry, agriculture, culture, and sports. The photo shows a worker of Lviv Confectionery Factory, T.M.Etinger. According to the accompanying inscription, she is “one of the best” workers, a labour veteran). She is captured at making a Kremlin’s Savior Tower. The nature of this photo and of the entire collection implies the genre of press photos that had to accompanied by a text (newspaper publication). The photo was meant to illustrate the message, to make it sound more convincing, to encourage and inspire the reading workers to accomplish more in their labour. In...

This photo is a testimony to a photographic practice popular in the 1930s. It was about making portraits of passers-by on the city streets. Such photos often recorded people in motion in the middle of a large street, and seemed to emphasize the belonging of those depicted characters to urban culture. In view of this, the genre of such photography can be called street portrait, the street and commercial photography. The photo shows the great-grandmother and great-grandfather of Bozhena Pelenska — Olha-Maria Zhydacek and her husband Hryhoriy Bandurka (b. 1899). Based on the Bozhena's memories, the story was recorded of the photograph and of the people in it. The photo was taken on...

The photo is from Stepan Haiduchok collection. It is one of the series of photos of physical exercises. The format is adjusted to the composition: five women stand in one row and demonstrate the body positions as part of dynamic exercises (bending forward, arm stretching, steps). The static vertical lines of the trees in the background contrast with the movements of women. The expressiveness of the composition is built on tonal and texture contrast. The composition is divided in half by the horizon line. The background of the photos' lower part (grass) has a neutral tone, so the dark skirts and light legs are distinctly presented. Conversely, the background of the upper part...

Lewis Hine (1874-1940) was an American photographer who tried to draw attention to social issues such as migration or child labor. He took two series of photos on Ellis Island, an island near New York City that was the first stop and gateway for new arrivals. Photos of Lewis Hine are trying to show the identity of migrants, who were often exoticized and othered in the American press. The Jewish woman in the photo is dressed in clothes that do not distinguish her from other migrants from Eastern Europe. However, although Jewish migration was often also motivated by economic motives, in the public discourse and historiography of the early twentieth century, it was...

Lewis Hine (1874-1940) was an American photographer who tried to draw attention to social issues such as migration or child labor. He took two series of photos on Ellis Island, an island near New York City that was the first stop and gateway for new arrivals. Photos of Lewis Hine are trying to show the identity of migrants, who were often exoticized and othered in the American press. The name of the photo "Slavic Mother" shows that Eastern Europe for Americans was still a space, which differences and nuances they hardly noticed. Hine perceives the woman in the photo as a person who left Europe forever, taking along all her posessions, and having...

The photo shows a group of migrants from Galicia, probably Ukrainians in Canada. Despite the information that before emigration, peasants bought urban clothes, in this photo we see people in traditional attire, which is different from the Canadian environment. Attitude towards Eastern European migrants was arrogant. In particular, clothing would often become the basis for otherness. Thus, the process of successful integration involved “dressing up” in Western clothes. In the photo, we can see a large family, because often the first migrants who were young men and women, later transported their children or older parents.

Zofia Biesiadetska's office in Oswiecim in Western Galicia was organizing transportation to America. The promotional leaflet offers tickets for steamboats to America and Canada. The transport revolution in the 19th century proved to be one of the most important factors that enabled mass intercontinental migration. Transport was relatively convenient and fast, as well as relatively inexpensive. With the beginning of mass migration, networks of agents developed, like Zofia Biesiedetska's bureau, who helped with the organization of the trip. This facilitated the migration of people from villages or small towns. At the same time, agents were often accused of lack of integrity and profiteering on migrants. Biesiadetska Bureau was one of the most respectable...

“Bohdan Khmelnytskyi” is a 1941 Ukrainian Soviet historical propaganda film directed by Ihor Savchenko. It is about the life of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, the hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and the first years of Cossacks liberation war against the Polish nobility led by him. This film was shot at the Kyiv Film Studio (now the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Studio). Its script was based on the 1939 play of the same name by the Ukrainian Soviet playwright and publicist Oleksandr Korniychuk.

  A 1975 news report made for Lviv television describes the use of the ASUP (Avtomatyzovana systema upravlinnya pidpryjemstvom - Automated Enterprise Management System) at the Lviv Electron plant, one of the largest TV manufacturers in the Soviet Union. Developed in cooperation with the Kyiv Institute of Cybernetics between 1964 and 1969, the system employed an electronic computer to perform calculations and record production data, marking the first implementation of its kind in the Soviet Union. The story emerged during a period of technological optimism in Soviet state policy, with the fields of cybernetics and computer engineering having developed over nearly two decades. By 1967, more than 500 institutions and tens of...

  A 1971 television story produced for Lviv Television news describes an experiment using television cameras to regulate traffic at one of the busiest intersections in the center of Lviv. The source does not provide information about the authors or the context of the device’s development. However, it is known that the Electron plant, one of the largest TV manufacturers in the city at the time, operated a special design bureau for television equipment. This suggests the presence of technological expertise and infrastructure capable of developing such devices using the relatively new technology of transmitting images via television signals. This technology was becoming increasingly popular in various fields, including traffic control. The...

    A 1959 TV story filmed for Lviv Television’s Lvivska Nedilia (Lviv Week) (№19) captures the early years of Lviv television and depicts the Soviet modernization of the city. Although the sound is lost, the visuals effectively narrate the story of public transport operations and how remote communication enabled quick responses to breakdowns, preventing disruptions in the public transport infrastructure. In the context of Lviv at the time, the introduction of the trolleybus was a significant symbol of Soviet modernization. Previously, the city only had a tram network. The new trolleybus routes connected the historic city center with the outskirts, where large enterprises and working-class neighborhoods were located. This report highlights...

This newsreel is a valuable source on the history of the development of the Mariupol industry. It was produced by the city club of film amateurs. Following the example of the Ukrkinochronika studio in the capital city which published the main newsreels in the republic, the authors of this piece created a short film report with 4 stories that tell about the deputies, the introduction of innovations in blast furnace steelmaking, about the winners of the socialist competition, and about the meeting of workers with a Soviet cosmonaut.

  Television news of the Lviv Television Studio followed the operators of Ukrkinochronika who chose shoe factory No. 3 as a model enterprise of the city’s light industry. The television camera shows to the audience Kateryna Lysak, an exemplary employee of the enterprise that was granted a status of a “communist labor enterprise”. At such enterprises, the example of the pioneers was to be followed by other workers, and a television clip told the people of Lviv about leaders of production and how the shoe factory was developing.