Different but the Same or the Same but Different? Public Memory of the Second World War in Post-Soviet Lviv

Abstract

Different but the Same or the Same but Different? Public Memory of the Second World War in Post-Soviet Lviv

This article addresses the changes of post-Soviet culture of memory of the Second World War in the western Ukrainian city and regional centre of Lviv. Attempts to forge a heroic and innocent memory of Ukrainian nationalism in the Second World War have constituted the single most influential factor shaping the post-Soviet culture of memory. Yet, at the same time, the latter is a complex social phenomenon. This article argues that, despite real continuities, the influence of nationalism in contemporary Lviv cannot be understood as a simple «mirror image» of Soviet myth-making. The article also stresses that outcomes are open and can be dire as well as hopeful. In a bitter paradox, post-Soviet Lviv can turn itself into a substantially open urban society, intentionally producing a closed, intolerant, misleading and narrow-minded past for itself, as it were «from below», in a way that Soviet myths could never have achieved. On the other side, the manner in which nationalism now has to pursue its aims of closure and discursive hegemony may unintentionally help confirm modes of public discourse, which then can also open up alternatives.