In search of the other Europe: The city of Ivano-Frankivs’k in the works of Yurii Andrukhovych

Abstract

Yurii Andrukhovych is one of the first writers in post-Soviet Ukraine who created their own concept of Central Europe with a particular focus on the historical region of Galicia as a legacy of the Habsburg Empire. The West Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivs’k, the author’s place of birth and residency, appears in his texts as a part of the historical region of Eastern Galicia and the embodiment of Andrukhovych’s vision of the region and, by extension, Central Europe. Showing the relationship of the city to the Habsburg monarchy while referencing his own family memories, Andrukhovych combines the pre-war history of the town with contemporary history. Thus, Ivano-Frankivs’k is depicted by the writer not only through the prism of its Habsburg era, but also through post-Soviet reality. Furthermore, in his first publications, the Habsburg history of Galicia represents the idea of belonging to European civilization as an alternative to the more recent totalitarian past, but Andrukhovych has always attempted to create a new image of modern Ivano-Frankivs’k rather than to reconstruct the Austro-Hungarian past of the region: the subjective and personalized Austrian past of the city is more akin to a point of reference and signpost to other perspectives. Both Ivano-Frankivs’k and Eastern Galicia are portrayed by the author as ambivalent and hybrid spaces. On the one hand it is a peripheral area between East and West; but, on the other hand, it is Andrukhovych’s personal part of Europe, where the processes and figures that shaped the continent gain an individual, unique dimension.