[edit]
Main article: History of Lviv
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Lviv.
Historical affiliations
Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia c. 1250–1340
Kingdom of Poland 1340–1569
Poland (First Republic) 1569–1772
Austria/A.H. Empire 1772–1918
Poland (Second Republic) 1918–1939
Soviet Union ( Ukrainian SSR) 1939–1941 (occupation)
Nazi Germany (General Government) 1941–1944 (occupation)
Soviet Union ( Ukrainian SSR) 1944–1991
Ukraine 1991–present
Archaeologists have demonstrated that the Lviv area was settled by the fifth century, with the gord at Chernecha Hora-Voznesensk Street in Lychakivskyi District attributed to White Croats. The city of Lviv was founded in 1250 by King Daniel of Galicia in honour of his son Lev as Lvihorod which is consistent with names of other Ukrainian cities, such as Myrhorod, Sharhorod, Novhorod, Bilhorod, Horodyshche, and Horodok.
Earlier there was a settlement in the form of a borough with a characteristic layout element—an elongated market square. Daniel's foundation of the stronghold was its next reconstruction after the Batu Khan invasion of 1240.
Lviv was invaded by the Mongols in 1261. Various sources relate the events, which range from the destruction of the castle to a complete razing of the town. All sources agree that it was on the orders of the Mongol general Burundai. The Shevchenko Scientific Society says that Burundai issued the order to raze the city. The Galician-Volhynian chronicle states that in 1261 "Said Buronda to Vasylko: 'Since you are at peace with me then raze all your castles'". Basil Dmytryshyn states that the order was implied to be the fortifications as a whole: "If you wish to have peace with me, then destroy [all fortifications of] your towns".
After Daniel's death, King Lev rebuilt the town around 1270, choosing Lviv as his residence, and made it the capital of Galicia-Volhynia. Around 1280 Armenians lived in Galicia and were mainly based in Lviv where they had their own archbishop.
In the 13th and early 14th centuries, Lviv was largely a wooden city, except for its several Galician-style stone churches. Some of them, like the Church of Saint Nicholas, have survived, although in a thoroughly rebuilt form. The town was inherited by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1340 and ruled by voivode Dmytro Dedko, the favourite of the Lithuanian prince Liubartas, until 1349.
In the 13th and 14th centuries the city and region was a destination of 50,000 Armenians fleeing from the Saljuq and Mongol invasions of Armenia.
Galicia–Volhynia Wars[edit]
During the wars over the succession of Galicia-Volhynia Principality in 1339 King Casimir III of Poland undertook an expedition and captured the city in 1340, burning down the old princely castle. Poland ultimately gained control over Lviv and the adjacent region in 1349. From then on the population was subjected to attempts to both Polonize and Catholicize the population. The Lithuanians ravaged Lviv land in 1351 during the Halych-Volhyn Wars with Lviv being plundered and destroyed by duke Liubartas in 1353.
Casimir built a new city center (or founded a new town) in a basin, surrounded it by walls, and replaced the wooden palace by masonry castle – one of the two built by him. The old (Ruthenian) settlement, after it had been rebuilt, became known as the Krakovian Suburb in reference to the city of Kraków.
Kingdom of Poland[edit]
High Castle built in 1362 by Casimir III of Poland (engraving by A. Gogenberg, 17th century)
In 1349, the Kingdom of Ruthenia with its capital Lviv was annexed by the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. The kingdom was transformed into the Ruthenian domain of the Crown with Lwów as the capital. On 17 June 1356 King Casimir III the Great moved the city to a new location and granted it Magdeburg rights, which implied that all city matters were to be resolved by a council elected by the wealthy citizens. In 1362, the High Castle was built with stone. In 1358, the city became a seat of Roman Catholic Archdiocese, which initiated the spread of Latin Church onto the Ruthenian lands.
After Casimir had died in 1370, he was succeeded as king of Poland by his nephew, King Louis I of Hungary, who in 1372 put Lwów together with the region of Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia under the administration of his relative Vladislaus II of Opole, Duke of Opole. When in 1387 Władysław retreated from the post of its governor, Galicia-Volhynia became occupied by Hungary, but soon Jadwiga, the youngest daughter of Louis, and also the ruler of Poland and wife of King of Poland Władysław II Jagiełło, unified it directly with the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland.
The city's prosperity during the following centuries is owed to the trade privileges granted to it by Casimir, Queen Jadwiga, and the subsequent Polish monarchs. Germans, Poles and Czechs formed the largest groups of newcomers. Most of the settlers were polonised by the end of the 15th century, and the city became a Polish island surrounded by the Ruthenian Orthodox population. In 1356, the Armenian diocese was founded centered at the Armenian Cathedral. Lwów was one of two main cultural and religious centers of Armenians in Poland alongside Kamieniec Podolski. In the early modern period, it also became one of the largest concentrations of Scots and Italians in Poland.
In 1412, the local archdiocese has developed into the Roman Catholic Metropolis, which since 1375 as diocese had been in Halych. The new metropolis included regional diocese in Lwów, Przemyśl, Chełm, Włodzimierz, Łuck, Kamieniec, as well as Siret and Kijów (see Old Cathedral of St. Sophia, Kyiv). The first Catholic Archbishop who resided in Lwów was Jan Rzeszowski.[citation needed]
Lwów in a lithograph from 1618
In 1434, the Ruthenian domain of the Crown was transformed into the Ruthenian Voivodeship. In 1444, the city was granted the staple right, which resulted in its growing prosperity and wealth, as it became one of the major trading centres on the merchant routes between Central Europe and Black Sea region. It was also transformed into one of the main fortresses of the kingdom. As one of the largest and most influential royal cities of Poland, it enjoyed voting rights in the Royal elections in Poland, alongside other major cities such as Kraków, Poznań, Warsaw or Gdańsk. During the 17th century, it was the second largest city of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, with a population of about 30,000.
In 1572, one of the first publishers of books in what is now Ukraine, Ivan Fedorov, a graduate of the University of Kraków, settled here for a brief period. The city became a significant centre for Eastern Orthodoxy with the establishment of an Orthodox brotherhood, a Greek-Slavonic school, and a printer which published the first full versions of the Bible in Church Slavonic in 1580. A Jesuit Collegium was founded in 1608, and on 20 January 1661 King John II Casimir of Poland issued a decree granting it "the honour of the academy and the title of the university".
The 17th century brought invading armies of Swedes, Hungarians, Turks, Russians and Cossacks to its gates. In 1648 an army of Cossacks and Crimean Tatars besieged the town. They captured the High Castle, murdering its defenders. The city itself was not sacked due to the fact that the leader of the revolution Bohdan Khmelnytsky accepted a ransom of 250,000 ducats, and the Cossacks marched north-west towards Zamość. It was one of two major cities in Poland which was not captured during the so-called Deluge: the other one was Gdańsk.[citation needed]
John II Casimir, King of Poland, pledging an oath at Lwów's Latin Cathedral, by painter Jan Matejko. Collection of the Wrocław Museum.
At that time, Lwów witnessed a historic scene, as here King John II Casimir made his famous Lwów Oath. On 1 April 1656, during a holy mass in Lwów's Cathedral conducted by the papal legate Pietro Vidoni, John Casimir in a grandiose and elaborate ceremony entrusted the Commonwealth under the Blessed Virgin Mary's protection, whom he announced as The Queen of the Polish Crown and other of his countries.[citation needed]
In 1672, it was surrounded by the Ottomans who also failed to conquer it. Three years later, the Battle of Lwów (1675) took place near the city. Lwów was captured for the first time since the Middle Ages by a foreign army in 1704, when Swedish troops under King Charles XII entered the city after a short siege. The plague of the early 18th century caused the death of about 10,000 inhabitants (40% of the city's population).
Habsburg Empire[edit]
18th century map of Lemberg (Lviv, Lwów)
In 1772, following the First Partition of Poland, the region was annexed by the Habsburg monarchy to the Austrian Partition. Known in German as Lemberg, the city became the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. Lemberg grew dramatically during the 19th century, increasing in population from approximately 30,000 at the time of the Austrian annexation in 1772, to 196,000 by 1910 and to 212,000 three years later; rapid population growth brought about an increase in urban squalor and poverty in Austrian Galicia. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries a large influx of Austrians and German-speaking Czech bureaucrats gave the city a character that by the 1840s was quite Austrian, in its orderliness and in the appearance and popularity of Austrian coffeehouses.
During Habsburg rule, Lviv became one of the most important Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish cultural centres. In Lviv, according to the Austrian census of 1910, which listed religion and language, 51% of the city's population was Roman Catholics, 28% Jews, and 19% belonged to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Linguistically, 86% of the city's population used the Polish language and 11% preferred Ruthenian.
The Racławice Panorama opened in 1894
In 1773, the first newspaper in Lemberg, Gazette de Leopoli, began to be published. In 1784, a Latin language university was opened with lectures in German, Polish and even Ruthenian; after closing in 1805, it was reopened in 1817. By 1825, German became the sole language of instruction. Lemberg University was opened by Maria Theresa in 1784. By 1787, her successor Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor opened "Studium Ruthenum" for students who did not know enough Latin to take regular courses.
During the 19th century, the Austrian administration attempted to Germanise the city's educational and governmental institutions. A number of cultural organisations which did not have a pro-German orientation were closed. After the revolutions of 1848, the language of instruction at the university shifted from German to include Ukrainian and Polish. Around that time, a certain sociolect developed in the city known as the Lwów dialect. Considered to be a type of Polish dialect, it draws its roots from a number of other languages besides Polish. In 1853, kerosene lamps as street lighting were introduced by Ignacy Łukasiewicz and Jan Zeh. Then in 1858, these were updated to gas lamps, and in 1900 to electric ones.
Stanisław Skarbek Theatre in 1900
After the so-called "Ausgleich" of February 1867, the Austrian Empire was reformed into a dualist Austria-Hungary and a slow yet steady process of liberalisation of Austrian rule in Galicia started. From 1873, Galicia was de facto an autonomous province of Austria-Hungary, with Polish and Ruthenian as official languages. Germanisation was halted and censorship lifted as well. Galicia was subject to the Austrian part of the Dual Monarchy, but the Galician Sejm and provincial administration, both established in Lviv, had extensive privileges and prerogatives, especially in education, culture, and local affairs. In 1894, the General National Exhibition was held in Lviv. The city started to grow rapidly, becoming the fourth largest in Austria-Hungary, according to the census of 1910. Multiple Belle Époque public edifices and tenement houses were erected, with a number of the buildings from the Austrian period, such as the Lviv Theatre of Opera and Ballet, built in the Viennese neo-Renaissance style.
The Galician Sejm (until 1918), since 1920 the Jan Kazimierz University
At that time, Lviv was home to a number of renowned Polish-language institutions, such as the Ossolineum, with the second-largest collection of Polish books in the world, the Polish Academy of Arts, the National Museum (since 1908), the Historical Museum of the City of Lwów (since 1891), the Polish Copernicus Society of Naturalists, the Polish Historical Society, Lwów University, with Polish as the official language since 1882, the Lwów Scientific Society, the Lwów Art Gallery, the Polish Theatre, and the Polish Archdiocese.
Furthermore, Lviv was the centre of a number of Polish independence organisations. In June 1908, Józef Piłsudski, Władysław Sikorski and Kazimierz Sosnkowski founded the Union of Active Struggle in the city. Two years later, the paramilitary organisation, called the Riflemen's Association, was also founded in the city by Polish activists.
At the same time, Lviv became the city where famous Ukrainian writers (such as Ivan Franko, Panteleimon Kulish and Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky) published their work. It was a centre of Ukrainian cultural revival. The city also housed the largest and most influential Ukrainian institutions in the world, including the Prosvita society dedicated to spreading literacy in the Ukrainian language, the Shevchenko Scientific Society, the Dniester Insurance Company and base of the Ukrainian cooperative movement, and it served as the seat of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. However, the Polish-dominated city council blocked Ukrainian attempts to create visible monuments for their own. The most important streets had names referring to Polish history and literature, and only minor roads referred to Ukrainians.
Lviv was also a major centre of Jewish culture, in particular as a centre of the Yiddish language, and was the home of the world's first Yiddish-language daily newspaper, the Lemberger Togblat, established in 1904.
World War I[edit]
Russian army entering Lviv in 1914
Lemberg (Lviv, Lwów) in 1915
In the Battle of Galicia at the early stages of the First World War, Lviv was captured by the Russian army in September 1914 following the Battle of Gnila Lipa. The Lemberg Fortress fell on 3 September. The historian Pál Kelemen provided a first-hand account of the chaotic evacuation of the city by the Austro-Hungarian Army and civilians alike.
The town was retaken by Austria-Hungary in June of the following year during the Gorlice–Tarnów offensive. Lviv and its population, therefore, suffered greatly during the First World War as many of the offensives were fought across its local geography causing significant collateral damage and disruption.
Polish–Ukrainian War[edit]
Further information: Polish–Ukrainian War
After the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of the First World War, Lviv became an arena of battle between the local Polish population and the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. Both nations perceived the city as an integral part of their new statehoods which at that time were forming in the former Austrian territories. On the night of 31 October – 1 November 1918 the Western Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed with Lviv as its capital. 2,300 Ukrainian soldiers from the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen (Sichovi Striltsi), which had previously been a corps in the Austrian Army, made an attempt to take over Lviv. The city's Polish majority opposed the Ukrainian declaration and began to fight against the Ukrainian troops. During this combat an important role was taken by young Polish city defenders called Lwów Eaglets.
The Ukrainian forces withdrew outside Lwów's confines by 21 November 1918, after which elements of Polish soldiers began to loot and burn much of the Jewish and Ukrainian quarters of the city, killing approximately 340 civilians (see: Lwów pogrom). The pogromists were tried by Polish authorities and three were executed. The retreating Ukrainian forces besieged the city. The Sich riflemen reformed into the Ukrainian Galician Army (UHA). The Polish forces aided from central Poland, including General Haller's Blue Army, equipped by the French, relieved the besieged city in May 1919 forcing the UHA to the east.
Despite Entente mediation attempts to cease hostilities and reach a compromise between belligerents the Polish–Ukrainian War continued until July 1919 when the last UHA forces withdrew east of the River Zbruch. The border on the River Zbruch was confirmed at the Treaty of Warsaw, when in April 1920 Field Marshal Piłsudski signed an agreement with Symon Petlura where it was agreed that in exchange for military support against the Bolsheviks the Ukrainian People's Republic renounced its claims to the territories of Eastern Galicia.
In August 1920, Lviv was attacked by the Red Army under the command of Aleksandr Yegorov and Stalin during the Polish–Soviet War but the city repelled the attack. For the courage of its inhabitants Lviv was awarded the Virtuti Militari cross by Józef Piłsudski on 22 November 1920.
On 23 February 1921, the council of the League of Nations declared that Galicia (including the city) lay outside the territory of Poland and that Poland did not have the mandate to establish administrative control in that country, and that Poland was merely the occupying military power of Galicia (as a whole), whose sovereign remained the Allied Powers and fate would be determined by the Council of Ambassadors at the League of Nations. On 14 March 1923, the Council of Ambassadors decided that Galicia would be incorporated into Poland "whereas it is recognised by Poland that ethnographical conditions necessitate an autonomous regime in the Eastern part of Galicia." This provision was never honoured by the interwar Polish government. After 1923, the region was internationally recognized as part of the Polish state.
Interwar period[edit]
A panorama of Lwów before 1924
During the interwar period Lwów was the Second Polish Republic's third-most populous city (following Warsaw and Łódź), and it became the seat of the Lwów Voivodeship. Following Warsaw, Lwów was the second most important cultural and academic centre of interwar Poland. For example, in 1920 Professor Rudolf Weigl of Lwów University developed a vaccine against typhus fever. Furthermore, the geographic location of Lwów gave it an important role in stimulating international trade and fostering the city's and Poland's economic development. A major trade fair named Targi Wschodnie was established in 1921. In the academic year 1937–1938, there were 9,100 students attending five institutions of higher education, including Lwów University as well as the Polytechnic.
Eastern Trade Fair (Targi Wschodnie), main entrance.
While about two-thirds of the city's inhabitants were Poles, some of whom spoke the characteristic Lwów dialect, the eastern part of the Lwów Voivodeship had a relative Ukrainian majority in most of its rural areas. Polish authorities were obliged through international agreements to provide Eastern Galicia with autonomy (including the creation of a separate Ukrainian university in Lwów), and even though a bill was enacted the Polish Sejm in September 1922, this was not fulfilled.
The Polish government discontinued multiple Ukrainian schools which functioned during the Austrian rule, and closed down Ukrainian departments at the University of Lwów with the exception of one. Prewar Lwów also had a large and thriving Jewish community, which constituted about a quarter of the population, but were accused of having collaborated with the Ukrainians.
Unlike in Austrian times, when the size and number of public parades or other cultural expressions corresponded to each cultural group's relative population, the Polish government emphasised the Polish nature of the city and limited public displays of Jewish and Ukrainian culture.[citation needed] Military parades and commemorations of battles at particular streets within the city, all celebrating the Polish forces who fought against the Ukrainians in 1918, became frequent, and in the 1930s a vast memorial monument and burial ground of Polish soldiers from that conflict was built in the city's Lychakiv Cemetery. On the other hand, Ukrainians strove to create their own memorial culture in the town. An underground military organization attacked Polish institutions, as well as Polish politicians.
World War II[edit]
Soviet occupation and incorporation[edit]
Further information: Battle of Lwów (1939)
Red Army parade in Lviv following the city's occupation in 1939
Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and by 14 September Lwów was completely encircled by German Army units. Subsequently, the Soviets invaded Poland on 17 September. On 22 September 1939 Lwów capitulated to the Red Army. The USSR annexed the eastern half of the Second Polish Republic with Ukrainian and Belarusian populations. The city became the capital of the newly formed Lviv Oblast. The Soviets reopened uni-lingual Ukrainian schools, which had been discontinued by the Polish government.
The only change over imposed by the Soviets was the language of instruction, with the actual net loss of about 1,000 schools in short order. Ukrainian was made compulsory in the University of Lviv with almost all its books in Polish[citation needed]. It became thoroughly Ukrainized and was renamed after Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko. Polish academics were laid off. Soviet rule turned out to be much more oppressive than Polish rule; the rich world of Ukrainian publications in Polish Lwów, for instance, was gone in Soviet Lviv, and multiple journalism jobs were lost with it.
German occupation[edit]
Main article: Battle of Lwów (1941)
On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany and several of its allies invaded the USSR. In the initial stage of Operation Barbarossa (30 June 1941) Lviv was taken by the Germans. The evacuating Soviets killed most of the prison population, with arriving Wehrmacht forces easily discovering evidence of the Soviet mass murders in the city committed by the NKVD and NKGB. The German administration falsely blamed the massacres on Jews, contributing to the start of pogroms against the city's Jewish community. On 30 June 1941 Yaroslav Stetsko proclaimed in Lviv the Government of an independent Ukrainian state allied with Nazi Germany. This was done without preapproval from the Germans and after 15 September 1941, the organisers were arrested.
Memorial to Lviv ghetto victims of the Holocaust, erected in 1992 on Chornovola Street. The inscription reads "remember and keep in your heart".
The Sikorski–Mayski Agreement signed in London on 30 July 1941 between the Polish government-in-exile and the Soviet government invalidated the September 1939 Soviet-German partition of Poland, as the Soviets declared it null and void. Meanwhile, German-occupied Eastern Galicia at the beginning of August 1941 was incorporated into the General Government as Distrikt Galizien with Lviv as the district's capital. German policy towards the Polish population in this area was as harsh as in the rest of the General Government.
During the occupation of the city, the Germans committed multiple atrocities, including the killing of Polish university professors in 1941. German Nazis viewed the Ukrainian Galicians, former inhabitants of Austrian Crown Land, as more aryanised and civilised than the Ukrainian population living in the territories belonging to the USSR before 1939. As a result, they escaped the full extent of German acts in comparison to Ukrainians who lived to the east, in the German-occupied Soviet Ukraine turned into the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.
The imprisoned Tango of Death orchestra
According to the Third Reich's racial policies, local Jews then became the main target of German repressions in the region. Following the German occupation, the Jewish population was concentrated in the Lwów Ghetto established in the city's Zamarstynów (today Zamarstyniv) district and the Janowska concentration camp was also set up. In the Janowska concentration camp, the Nazis conducted torture and executions to music. The Lviv National Opera members, who were prisoners, played one and the same tune, Tango of Death.[citation needed]
On the eve of Lviv's liberation, German Nazis ordered 40 orchestra musicians to form a circle. The security ringed the musicians tightly and ordered them to play. First, the orchestra conductor, Mund, was executed.[citation needed] Then the commandant ordered the musicians to come to the center of the circle one by one, put their instruments onto the ground and strip naked, after which they were killed by a headshot.[citation needed] A photo of the orchestra players was one of the incriminating documents at the Nuremberg trials.
In 1931 there were 75,316 Yiddish-speaking inhabitants, but by 1941 approximately 100,000 Jews were present in Lviv. The majority of these Jews were either killed within the city or deported to Belzec extermination camp. In the summer of 1943, on the orders of Heinrich Himmler, SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel was tasked with the destruction of any evidence of Nazi mass murders in the Lviv area. On 15 June Blobel, using forced labourers from Janowska, dug up a number of mass graves and incinerated the remains.
Later, on 19 November 1943, inmates at Janowska staged an uprising and attempted a mass escape. A few succeeded, but most were recaptured and killed. The SS staff and their local auxiliaries then, at the time of the Janowska camp's liquidation, murdered at least 6,000 more inmates, as well as the Jews in other forced labour camps in Galicia. By the end of the war, the Jewish population of the city was virtually eliminated, with only around 200 to 800 survivors remaining.
Soviet re-occupation[edit]
Main article: Lwów uprising
Soviet soldiers in Lviv, July 1944
After the successful Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive of July 1944, the Soviet 3rd Guards Tank Army captured Lwów on 27 July 1944, with significant cooperation from the local Polish resistance. Soon thereafter, the local commanders of Polish Armia Krajowa were invited to a meeting with the commanders of the Red Army. During the meeting, they were arrested, as it turned out to be a trap set by the Soviet NKVD. Later, in the winter and spring of 1945, the local NKVD continued to arrest and harass Poles in Lwów (which according to Soviet sources on 1 October 1944 still had a clear Polish majority of 66.7%) in an attempt to encourage their emigration from the city.
Those arrested were released only after they had signed papers in which they agreed to emigrate to Poland, which postwar borders were to be shifted westwards in accordance with the Yalta Conference settlements. In Yalta, despite Polish objections, the Allied leaders, Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill decided that Lwów should remain within the borders of the Soviet Union. Roosevelt wanted Poland to have Lwów and the surrounding oilfields, but Stalin refused to allow it.
On 16 August 1945, a border agreement was signed in Moscow between the government of the Soviet Union and the Provisional Government of National Unity installed by the Soviets in Poland. In the treaty, Polish authorities formally ceded the prewar eastern part of the country to the Soviet Union, agreeing to the Polish-Soviet border to be drawn according to the Curzon Line. Consequently, the agreement was ratified on 5 February 1946.
Soviet era[edit]
In February 1946, Lviv became a part of the Soviet Union. It is estimated that from 100,000 to 140,000 Poles were resettled from the city into the so-called Recovered Territories as a part of postwar population transfers, many of them to the area of newly acquired Wrocław, formerly the German city of Breslau. Poles who stayed in Lviv later formed the Association of Polish Culture of the Lviv Land. In March 1946 Lviv became the site of a Church synod organized under the pressure of KGB, which formally dissolved the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church by attaching its parishes to the Russian Orthodox Church.
According to various estimates, Lviv lost between 80% and 90% of its prewar population. Expulsion of the Polish population and the Holocaust together with migration from Ukrainian-speaking surrounding areas (including forcibly resettled from the territories which, after the war, became part of the Polish People's Republic), as well as from other parts of the Soviet Union, altered the ethnic composition of the city. Immigration from Russia and Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine was encouraged,[citation needed] and during the 1950s ethnic Russians comprised almost a third of Lviv's population. During the same period, 28,000 Jews resided in the city, most of them being Russian-speaking immigrants from other parts of the Soviet Union. On 8 September 1956 the population of Lviv reached the number of 400,000 inhabitants.
Market Square in 1957
In 1950 the first regional agricultural exhibition was opened in Stryi Park, and in 1951 a children's railway was launched. In 1952 the city's first trolleybus line was opened. By 1960, the city was served by 262 buses, 380 taxis and over 50 trolleybuses. In 1955 the new airport terminal started operations. By 1955 Lviv had by 415 restaurants, cafes and canteens, but it was still not enough to cover the needs of the growing population. Several public parks, including Shevchenkivskyi Hai, were established during the 1950s.
Due to the development of industrial enterprises in old city quarters, local authorities introduced measures against noise pollution. At the same time, until 1958 Lviv continued to serve as a transit point for heavy military equipment. In 1958 a house in one of the city's streets collapsed due to the movement of self-propelled artillery in a nearby street. As a result, the transport of military hardware through the old town quarters was outlawed, and the division stationed in Lviv was transferred to Yavoriv.
During the early 1950s the Soviet government adopted a resolution to turn Lviv into a major industrial centre. In 1954 the Soviet Union's first kinescope tube was produced on a local factory, and in 1958 serial production of TV sets started. In 1956 the Lviv Bus Factory launched its production. A tank repair plant was also established in the city. In order to accommodate the working population, authorities ordered the construction of cheap housing. At the same time, much more comfortable buildings in Stalinist style were erected for the Communist elite. Despite the new construction, many people continued to live in communal flats or even in cellars. Central heating, water supplies and sewers were absent in many districts. Throughout the 1950s, several nearby villages and towns were administratively incorporated into Lviv, including Briukhovychi and Vynnyky. In December 1957 the Lviv TV centre made its first broadcast from the city's Opera Theatre.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the city expanded both in population and size mostly due to its rapidly growing industrial base. Due to the fight of SMERSH with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Lviv obtained a nickname with a negative connotation: Banderstadt, meaning the city of Stepan Bandera. The German suffix for the city stadt was added instead of the Russian grad to imply alienation. Over the years the residents of the city found this so ridiculous that even people not familiar with Bandera accepted it as sarcasm in reference to the Soviet perception of western Ukraine. By the time of the fall of the Soviet Union the name became a proud mark for the Lviv natives culminating in the creation of a local rock band under the name Khloptsi z Bandershtadtu (Boys from Banderstadt).
View on the Opera Theatre and Hotel Lviv in the late 1960s
During the 1960s, inhabitants of Lviv and the surrounding region benefitted from their access to Polish television and radio, as well as press publications from fellow Warsaw Pact countries. Many migrants from Ukrainian villages, who settled in the city during that time, had relatives abroad and could engage in correspondence across the Iron Curtain. In order to combat "bourgeois nationalism", Soviet authorities outlawed the combination of blue and yellow in printed production and media. In order to combat religion, the regime closed down Lviv's Dominican Cathedral and organized a museum of atheism in its building. Despite government pressure, Lviv's inhabitants continued to follow religious traditions, with many districts organizing vertep performances. During the 1960s Lviv also developed its own youth subcultures, which formed under the influence of Western music.
During the 1970s the policies of Ukrainian Soviet leadership under Volodymyr Shcherbytsky resulted in a new wave of Russification. Many inscriptions and advertisements in Lviv's streets and in public transport were now written in Russian language. Meanwhile the economic situation worsened, with numerous goods disappearing form shops by the middle part of the decade. By the end of 1970s inflation became a major concern. At the same time, the city's trade network continued to expand, with more than 200 shops being built. New cultural trends continued to influence Lviv's population, and in 1979 two cult locations appeared in the city: youth palace "Romantyk", which became popular due to its disco, and the "Virmenka" coffee house, which became a gathering place for local bohéme. The 1970s saw the rise of the hippie movement in Lviv. In 1975-1977 the garden of the local Carmelite Monastery became a centre of gatherings for nonconformist youth from various parts of the Soviet Union.
Despite the conditions of Soviet Russification,[citation needed] Lviv became a major centre of the dissident movement. Starting from 1972, many of Lviv's dissident activists were arrested and held in the infamous Prison on Łącki Street.
In the period of liberalisation from the Soviet system in the 1980s, the city became the centre of political movements advocating Ukrainian independence from the USSR. On 17 September 1989 Lviv saw the largest rally in support of Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union, gathering some 100,000 participants.
Independent Ukraine[edit]
Protesters in Lviv during the 2004 presidential election
The citizens of Lviv strongly supported Viktor Yushchenko during the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election and played a key role in the Orange Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of people would gather in freezing temperatures to demonstrate for the Orange camp. Acts of civil disobedience forced the head of the local police to resign and the local assembly issued a resolution refusing to accept the fraudulent first official results. Lviv remains today one of the main centres of Ukrainian culture and the origin of much of the nation's political class.
In support of the Euromaidan movement, Lviv's executive committee declared itself independent of the rule of President Viktor Yanukovych on 19 February 2014.
In 2019, the citizens of Lviv strongly supported Petro Poroshenko over Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election. The percentage of votes counted for Poroshenko was more than 90%. Despite this level of support in Lviv, he lost the national vote.
Until 18 July 2020, Lviv was incorporated as a city of oblast significance and the center of Lviv Municipality. The municipality was abolished in July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Lviv Oblast to seven. The area of Lviv Municipality was merged into the newly established Lviv Raion.
Russo-Ukrainian War[edit]
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine[edit]
See also: Lviv strikes (2022–present)
Fire after a Russian strike on a fuel depot in Lviv, March 2022
In February 2022, after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lviv became the nation's de facto western capital as some embassies, government agencies, and media organizations were relocated from Kyiv due to the direct military threat to the capital. Lviv also became a safe haven for the Ukrainians fleeing other parts of the country affected by the invasion, their number exceeding 200,000 by 18 March 2022. A number of them used the city as a stopping point on their way to Poland. Lviv and the larger region around it also served as crucial arms and humanitarian supply route. Bracing for Russian attacks, local government and citizens, helped by Polish and Croatian advisers, worked to protect the city's cultural heritage by erecting makeshift barriers around historical monuments, wrapping statues, and safeguarding art treasures.
During the course of the war, the area in and around Lviv has been struck by Russian missile attacks. Yavoriv military training base was struck on 13 March 2022, the Lviv State Aircraft Repair Plant near the Lviv Danylo Halytskyi International Airport on 18 March 2022, and a fuel depot and other facilities within the city limits on 26 March 2022.
On 18 April 2022, the city was hit by five missile strikes, killing seven civilians and wounding 11, according to mayor Andriy Sadovyi. Regional governor Maksym Kozystkiy said that the targets were military factories and a tyre shop. A hotel housing evacuees was also hit, damaging its windows. The Russian Ministry of Defence claimed that all locations were struck by Russian missiles during the night of 18 April were military targets.
Lviv was targeted during the 10 October 2022 missile strikes on Ukraine, resulting in a city-wide blackout. On 11 October 2022, Sadovyi announced that the city was hit by a missile strike, resulting in a power outage and water supply shortage.
On October 5, 2025, the Russian on Lviv was the largest of the war in the Lviv region, said governor Maksym Kozytskyi, adding it involved 140 drones and 23 missiles. 5 civilians were killed and dozens were injured.
On the night of 8 January 2026, Russian forces launched an Oreshnik missile from the Kapustin Yar test site towards Lviv. It was the first time Lviv was struck by an Intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) in the Russo-Ukraine War.
