Lviv, Ukraine

[Chicagoguy]

Nice article in today's [Sat./Sun - June 6/7] Wall Street Journal about Lviv, Ukraine.

[Anotherkiwi]

Nice article in today's [Sat./Sun - June 6/7] Wall Street Journal about Lviv, Ukraine.

Here's a link to the story:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-most-hopeful-city-lviv-1433512065?KEYWORDS=lviv+ukraine

I don't subscribe to the WSJ, so I can't read it.  Does anyone have an open link to the full story?

[Boethius]

By Anne Applebaum
Ukraine's Most Hopeful City:  L'viv

On a recent evening in Lviv, the sound of a guitar and a Ukrainian singer drifted into my window. I leaned out and looked down: On the street below, two restaurants had occupied a narrow cobblestone passageway. Both were full. I heard clinking glasses, laughter, chatter, the sounds of a thriving city—and further proof, if more were needed, of why so many stereotypes about Ukraine are wrong.

Certainly, if you follow the Russian media, you would have to conclude that what I heard is impossible.  Several weeks ago, Russian television dropped its claim that Ukraine is a Nazi state, replacing it with the claim that Ukraine is a failed state.  Ukraine can't pay its debts, Moscow newscasters now argue.  Ukraine's allies are drifting away, hunger approaches and the next revolution is on its way.  Thanks to the incompetent nationalists, the people live in Hobbesian anarchy and fear.

By that reckoning, Lviv should be even worse off than the rest of the country. Lviv is in Galicia, the western slice of Ukraine that belonged to Poland until World War II and to Austro-Hungary before that. Since the 19th century, it has been an important center of Ukrainian nationalism and patriotism.

Perhaps because they had to compete with the Poles and the Jews who dominated the city before the war, Lviv’s Ukrainians once built dozens of cultural and political societies, self-help groups and clubs. One of the most prominent buildings in the city center, just off the old market square, is a fine example of turn-of-the-century Vienna Secession architecture, but with Ukrainian folk motifs. Among other things, it contains what used to be a gymnasium, built to strengthen Ukrainian youth.

As the Soviet Union crumbled, the strongest push for Ukrainian independence came from Lviv. Kiev’s Lenin statute lasted until 2013; Lviv pulled its own Lenin monument back down in 1990. On my first trip there in that same year, little knots of people would gather on the city’s central plaza every evening to argue with one another and sometimes to shout. Blue and yellow flags were already ubiquitous, even though independence had not yet arrived.

Back then, there was still an uneasiness in Lviv. Although theoretically Ukrainian, the bureaucrats spoke Russian, and a lot of people who lived there came from elsewhere in the Soviet Union, having drifted into the city’s half-empty townhouses after the war. Lviv seemed almost anachronistic, a piece of central Europe somehow cut off and stuck inside the U.S.S.R. A quarter-century later, that uncertainty is now gone, replaced by a clear sense that this is a Ukrainian city.


On the plaza where the little knots of people used to argue, the city has now built a statue of Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s national poet. On the day I was in town, boys and girls, both in embroidered peasant blouses, were posing in front of the statue. They were taking selfies and commemorating the last day of school.  By themselves, the statue and the blue and yellow flowers at Shevchenko’s feet wouldn’t mean much. But the patriotic renewal that they signify has played a role in the city’s economic fortunes too. In 1990, the city was waiting to be rescued by foreign investors who never came. In the two decades since then, far more change has come about thanks to better local government, strong local organizations and local businesses—as well as a growing, if not entirely rock solid, belief in the city’s ability to enforce the rule of law.


All of these things are in turn now linked to Andriy Sadovyi, Lviv’s current mayor. Over coffee one morning, Mr. Sadovyi told me that he believes himself to be the first Lviv-born, Ukrainian-speaker ever to run the city. In the past there were Poles or Germans or simply people who came from somewhere else: “But I know every stone, every building…” Mr. Sadovyi’s political party, Samopomich—the name means “self-reliance”—is modeled very consciously on prewar Ukrainian civic groups, and he himself is firmly anchored in Ukraine’s long tradition of civic activism, having run a Lviv city development fund before going into politics.


Mr. Sadovyi was elected in 2006, and his term in office has coincided with a visible change in the city’s fortunes. During this time, Ukrainians finally began to invest in hotels, restaurants and other small businesses. Many of them had been working abroad, and their shop windows often point to their former homes, advertising “products of Turkey” or “clothes made in Poland.” These small entrepreneurs had Mr. Sadovyi’s blessing: “Ten percent of the world economy is connected to tourism and travel. Why shouldn’t some of that business come to Lviv?”

The European football championships, held in Poland and Ukraine in 2012, helped to popularize the city internationally. Some of the matches were held in the Lviv stadium, and a few new luxury hotels were built in anticipation of rich foreign tourists.


But to everyone’s surprise, most of the tourists are not foreigners but Ukrainians—and no wonder. Lviv has the ambience of Prague or Krakow, but without the prices or the crowds. Ukrainians can’t go to Crimea anymore, and visas are tough. But in Lviv, you can eat a good meal for a few euros, go to the opera or just sit in the parks and watch people for free.


The city still has major obstacles to overcome, mostly created by the Ukrainian government. The Lviv city council doesn't control the licensing of new buildings, for example. Absurdly, those decisions are made in Kiev, as are all kinds of other decisions that in most countries would be made locally.


Mr. Sadovyi is doing his best to reshape what he calls the “Byzantine” politics of the Ukrainian capital. His party won a surprising 10% of the national vote in the 2014 elections and now controls 33 of the 450 seats in the parliament. But he is sanguine about what can be achieved in the near future: “Everyone is building parties for tomorrow. I am building for a decade.” It may be a long time before Lviv’s model works in the rest of Ukraine, which was part of the U.S.S.R. for much longer.


Meanwhile, the economic crisis is deepening, and there may come a time when Ukrainians haven’t got the money to travel, even to stay in a two-star hotel in Lviv. But for the moment, it feels like a city in which things are happening. On one night last week, the Israeli ambassador to Ukraine was presiding over a jazz concert, while the Opera House was putting on a one-man play by Bernard Henri-Levy.


I was in town for the Lviv Media Forum, a combination conference and training session that now takes place in the city every year. There were 600 journalists in attendance, from all over the country, the vast majority under 30. All of those I met were enthusiastic and optimistic about the future of Ukraine, despite the overwhelming obstacles. Perhaps theirs is the generation that will finally overcome them.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-most-hopeful-city-lviv-1433512065

[Anotherkiwi]

Thanks, Boe.  It's a nice story.

[ML]

Thanks much Boe for posting this.  My WSJ subscription expired and I haven't renewed.