RADZIECKIE OZNACZANIE PRZESTRZENI MIEJSKIEJ LWOWA W LATACH 1944–1953

During 1944-1953 the Soviet authorities tried to fill Lviv’s urban space with new ideological and emotional content, which was radically different from the Austrian and Polish ones. The Soviet and party leaders saw the city as an industrial center with the standard Soviet type of social relationsand spatial layout. The general plan of the urban development conformed to that purpose. The Soviet marking of Lviv’s urban space took place in several ways: by renaming streets (with an emphasis on the Russian-Soviet traditions including only a few Ukrainian geographic, cultural and historical names), by demolishing the old and constructing new monuments (indicative in this regard was the pantheon of Soviet soldiers, “The Hill of Glory” and the monument of Vladimir Lenin), by withdrawing sacred buildings from public space, interweaving Soviet and Communist symbols into the architecture of the city (especially in the interiors of new buildings), creating new recreational spaces aimed to perform ideological and political tasks. Despite the exorbitant ideologization of the socio-cultural sphere and a noticeable lack of creative people (arising from, among other things, the mistrust of the new government towards local artists) and funds, a significant part of the urbanspace of the postwar Lviv was filled by low-grade plaster statues of workers, farmers, sportsmen and pioneers. The superiority of the Soviet power in Ukraine was also to be visually emphasized by the red color, which dominated in numerous posters, panels and banners.