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Center for Urban History
6 Bohomoltsia Str. Lviv 79005, Ukraine

National City

In the period of the autonomy, granted to Galicia by the Habsburgs, Lviv became the center of confrontation between two national projects: the Ukrainian one and the Polish one. Jews, the second largest community in Lviv, also held public actions in the city, but unlike the first two groups mentioned, they did not claim an exclusive right to this territory.

Instead, Ukrainians and Poles did not just compete, they literally fought for the right to this city and province. The former claimed that Lviv was "the city of Prince Leo, the ancient capital of Galician Rus", while the latter declared it "the capital of the freest part of divided Poland."

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Commemorations of the Polish January Uprising (1888, 1913)

 The anniversary of the January Uprising is an important date for the Polish national movement. Given the political situation and the level of freedoms in different parts of the divided Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (German, Austrian and Russian), it is natural that the most favorable conditions for celebrating such anniversaries were present in Galicia.
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The murder of Butkowski, a seminary professor, by Dzhehala, a student (1913)

 On 11 June 1913, Illia Dzhehala, a student of the teacher seminary, shot dead Karol Butkowski, a professor. This event, as well as the demonstrations it provoked, not only revealed the radicalization of young people and their desire to solve problems with a gun but also showed the trajectory of the Ukrainian-Polish confrontation.
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The "war game" of the Polish Sokół in Lviv (1913)

 In 1913, Lviv hosted not just a regular Sokół's rally, but a real military demonstration. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the January Uprising, more than 8,000 armed and equipped members of the gymnastic society and scouts held a "training" on the topic of "the battle for Lviv against the Russian army".
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Shevchenko's Sokil's Rally (1914)

 On June 28, 1914, a large-scale celebration of the 100th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko's birth, known as “Shevchenko's Rally,” took place in Lviv. According to the organizers' plan, this event was supposed to demonstrate the organizational and physical readiness of Ukrainians in Galicia for the upcoming war against the backdrop of growing Ukrainian-Polish tensions.
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October 1918 in Lviv

 In October 1918, in the context of the struggle for the formation of national states, Lviv became the subject of disputes between the Ukrainians and Poles.
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