Lviv’s Uncertain Destination : A City and Its Train Terminal From Franz Joseph I to Brezhnev

"Lviv's Uncertain Destination examines the city's tumultuous twentieth-century history through the lens of its main railway terminal. Whereas most existing studies of eastern European cities centre their stories on discrete ethnic groups, milestone political events, and economic changes, this book's narrative is woven around an important site within the city's complex spatial matrix. Combining architectural, economic, social, and everyday life history, Andriy Zayarnyuk shows how different political regimes created dissimilar social spaces even on the same streets and in the same buildings. His narrative leads us to rethink how the late imperial Habsburg and Romanov, Stalinist and post-Stalinist Soviet, interwar Polish, and Nazi German regimes produced, structured, and controlled urban space. Focusing on railway workers, the book also draws attention to the history of Lviv's wage earners, who constituted the majority of the city's adult population."-- Provided by publisher Contents Figures and Tables Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration and Names Archives, Manuscript Depositories, and Related Abbreviations Abbreviations for Political Parties, State Offices, Associations, and Railway Divisions and Departments Introduction 1 City Gates of the Steam Age 2 The Shape of Things to Come 3 Steel, Stone, Sweat, and Imagination 4 Inter Arma 5 Virtuti Militari 6 The Catastrophe 7 “We Shall Rebuild Splendidly” 8 Order without Law 9 The Terminal for All Coda Notes Bibliography Index This book re-examines the history of twentieth-century Lviv by focusing on the city’s main railway terminal. It approaches the terminal as an embodiment of the city’s built environment and a microcosm of society.