Galicia’s Moment

The Wall Street Journal (Online)
December 2, 2004
Commentary

By Kamil Tchorek

LVIV, Ukraine — The statue of St. Yury depicts a towering rider lodging
his lance straight through the mouth of a huge snake. As fate would have
it, the monument sits opposite this western Ukrainian town’s police
headquarters, where crowds gathered to banish another scourge, Lviv’s
chief of police.

As the “people’s revolution” unfolded in Ukraine last week, Lviv’s
regional assembly was the first in the country to formally reject the
results of the fraudulent presidential election. The assembly also fired
the Kiev-appointed chiefs of police, customs and tax and elected its own
governor, Petro Oliynyk, an ally of the opposition leader and
presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko. “We will not sit down and play
chess with an opponent who wields a club,” said Mr. Oliynyk, rebuking
suggestions that Lviv’s unilateral dismissals and appointments are
unconstitutional.

Lviv has been waiting and preparing for years for this moment. As the
cradle of Ukrainian nationalism, its people have resisted oppressors,
both foreign and domestic, since the 14th century. When the candidate of
the disliked central government, Viktor Yanukovych, tried to steal the
election, Lviv decided to act, reforming the political system here
without waiting for a green light from Kiev. However this national
crisis ends, the region of western Ukraine, with Lviv at its center, has
already gone a long way toward shaping its destiny.

History and geography have given Lviv a unique, defiant character. With
800,000 people, Lviv is one of the most affluent and cosmopolitan cities
in the Ukraine, just 70 kilometers from the Polish border, the new
eastern boundary of the EU and NATO. Like all border towns, Lviv has
long been the site of both conflict and assimilation, a home to rebels,
misfits and pioneers alike.

In 1349, the then capital of the Kingdom of Galicia, Lviv was annexed by
the Polish king. For centuries under Polish rule, the city had a
thriving cosmopolitan community that included Poles, Ukrainians, Jews,
Armenians, Germans and Hungarians. “We are all Ukrainian,” said Witek
Zembowski, a resident of the Lviv suburbs. “But many of us have
grandparents who were not. We vote Yushchenko, and if we go to the
east….” he jokingly drew his finger across his neck as if it would be
severed by a knife.

With the first partition of Poland in 1772, Lviv came under
Austro-Hungarian rule. From then until 1918, Lviv was the capital of the
Hapsburg province of Galicia, joining a network of cities such as
Prague, Budapest, Vienna and for some time even Venice and Milan. Though
now cut off from a united Europe by the border lines drawn by the past
century of history, Lviv’s stunning combination of medieval and
Secessionist architecture puts its beauty on a par with every great
European city. Here, there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that Ukraine
belongs in the West.

Its people have an unswerving faith in the West as its protector. “If
our country breaks up, there will be a national crisis,” said Viktor, a
taxi driver. “But Europe and America will help us. They will save our
currency. They will save our economy.”

Lviv’s elegant coffee houses and bars are now filled with groups of
friends excitedly talking about the success of their revolution.
Somewhere, on all of them, is a flash of “Yushchenko orange,” the color
adopted by the opposition campaign.

The most famous example of Galician resistance is the West Ukrainian
Republic, which had its capital in Lviv in 1918-23, until the region was
swallowed up by Poland. Its political successors formed the Organization
of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), an armed struggle against successive
Polish, German and Soviet occupiers that fought well into the 1950s.
Speaking from Kiev, Vasyl Kuk, the 91-year-old veteran commander
-in-chief of the OUN said, “I spent years in a Soviet jail for fighting
communism. And I voted Yushchenko because I believe in democracy, not in
nationalism.”

After centuries of bitterness and conflict with Poland, and recent
memories of wartime atrocities, the Galician Ukrainians have remarkably
been able to make up with their western neighbors. Just over the EU
border, Polish companies and groups are supplying the city with buses
(now in short supply) for the convoys of activists that leave every day
to protest in Kiev.

The once-banned black-and-red flag, representing Ukrainian blood and
soil, of the nationalist rebels also occasionally flies alongside the
Solidarity flag in the sea of orange Yushchenko banners that now
dominate the constant winter carnival being celebrated in the streets of
Lviv. The flag is not flown in Lviv by armed partisans who aspire to
Galician secession, chanting anti-Semitic or anti-Russian songs, as Mr.
Yanokovych’s propagandists would have it. These are euphoric people with
a proud legacy. They have democracy in their hands, and the power to
keep hold of it.

The unilateral changes implemented in the past fortnight by leaders in
western Ukraine, such as the decision in Lviv to oust its centrally
appointed officials, raise concerns among the Russian-speakers in other
parts of the country. In Soviet times, as well as in the last 13 years
of independence, politicians in eastern region have exploited fears of
Ukrainian nationalism to win votes or scare electorates. The regional
governors who called for, then backed away from, a referendum on
autonomy for the east earlier this week were doing just that.

In reality, “Western Ukrainian nationalism” has evolved and matured into
the democratic assertiveness of the city of Lviv and its surrounding
region. This evolution has enabled the city to undergo a revolution that
has not needed to overthrow the ruling elite, but in which local leaders
are acting with the support of their people. In a city with St. Yury as
its patron saint, no one should expect anything less.

Mr. Tchorek is a journalist based in Warsaw.

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