Lviv's Uncertain Destination: A City and Its Train Terminal from Franz Joseph I to Brezhnev by Andriy Zayarnyuk

Abstract

Reviewed by: Lviv's Uncertain Destination: A City and Its Train Terminal from Franz Joseph I to Brezhnev by Andriy Zayarnyuk Simone Attilio Bellezza (bio) Andriy Zayarnyuk, Lviv's Uncertain Destination: A City and Its Train Terminal from Franz Joseph I to Brezhnev (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020). 372 pp., ills. Bibliography, Index. ISBN: 978-1-4875-0519-6. In recent years, urban history has become particularly popular in Ukrainian studies. The field has been enriched with excellent publications, such as Serhii Bilenky's analysis of Kyiv's imperial development, which was awarded the American Association for Ukrainian Studies book prize in 2019.1 Reviewed here, Andriy Zayarnyuk's book about Lviv was awarded the same prize the following year. These are just two examples of numerous books and articles produced over the past decade that have been dedicated to the history of various Ukrainian cities: Odes(s)a, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Dnipro, and Donetsk. East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies periodically devotes special issues to the history of individual Ukrainian cities. Urban history provides an excellent context for studying the practices of daily life and the evolving sense of belonging as conditioned by cultural, social, and spatial factors. These topics [End Page 252] are also central for the research program of the innovative Center for Urban History of Lviv, where Zayarnyuk served as director for a few years. I believe that the high interest in urban history reflects Ukrainian society's concern about its political and national integrity, which has been further exacerbated by Russia's invasion. Cities present a model of a modern multicultural society, so the history of Lviv or Kyiv helps make sense of the existing differences and offers a story of successful construction of local, national, and transnational collective identities. The city of Lviv has attracted the most attention from historians, with numerous studies tracing out its transformation from a Polish city to Ukraine's second capital. Among more specific topics in the histories of Lviv are its Nazi occupation, the experience of migrants during the Soviet period, and the public memory of World War II victims. In the introduction to his book, Zayarnyuk explains how his work differs from previous scholarship in at least three aspects. First, it follows the so-called material turn in historiography, taking the railway station as the central point for an "archaeological" analysis of the materiality of the four regimes that ruled Lviv. Second, Zayarnyuk departs from the tendency to discuss Lviv simply as part and parcel of the region of Eastern Galicia, thus ignoring the specificity of the urban society. Third, he criticizes historians' preoccupation with ethnic differences in Lviv, which has led them to view nationality as the primary historical factor. Instead, Zayarnyuk underscores the role of social conditions in history, given that the absolute majority of Lviv's inhabitants were wageworkers and that "this experience was far more fundamental than either ethnicity or language" (P. 10). These principles have been implemented in the book with various degrees of success. Zayarnyuk consistently focuses on the experience of railway workers under the different political regimes that administered the city, supporting his argument that the ethnolinguistic factor plays a secondary role in the urban society. This proves more convincing in the part concerning the Habsburg period, as the workers' sense of political belonging to the socialist movement outweighed their national differences. However, overall, government agencies and outstanding individuals remain the principle historical actors in the book, and these actors seem to have attributed great value to ethnic, linguistic, and religious affiliations. Contrary to the author's intentions, the narrative rather corroborates the relevance of national dynamics in the historical evolution of Lviv. This is probably due to Zayarnyuk's lack of theoretical reflection [End Page 253] on social belonging and a reconstruction of social groups' agency (I would have written "classes," but Zayarnyuk does not use this term). Taking these factors for granted, he centers the study on the railway station as if it were a neutral and selfreferential medium of social interaction or a historical object with clear boundaries and fixed qualities. But it is not, and the available historical sources concerning the Lviv railway station were produced...