Neighbourhood – close hostility. A microhistorical study againstthe macrohistorical background of Lviv in the 1930s

Abstract

The article is a microhistorical analysis of neighbourly relations in Lviv in the interwar period,especially in its second decade, placed in a broader cultural, social and political context. Archivalresearch helps demonstrate the interference between the sphere of national communities and thatof local communities, and between public discourses and narratives refl ecting and shaping interpersonalrelations, such as neighbourly conversations, gossip and intrigues. Accounts created byLviv’s neighbourhoods representing different nationalities – Polish and Ukrainian – for example theirdenunciations, testimonies and accusations, shed light on the tension between the physical (territorial)proximity of neighbours and their socio-psychological distance, or rather politically motivated hostility.