My
father finished the war at the First Ukrainian Front. They went through
Belarus, Poland. It was rumoured that there were many vacant apartments in
Lviv. (...) And they stopped in some acquaintances’ place, and then my father
saw an announcement reading "Firewood for sale", on a road-post
there, at the Rohatka. This was a signal that not firewood was being sold but
an apartment (...) The Pole was one of those who did not have time to leave in 1945.
The family was going away and leaving the apartment, so he was happy to get at
least some money. There was a nice bed there, an iron one, resembling a lace…
And that stove — a green, light one. So we remained here.
(Interview
with V. H., whose family settled in Lviv in 1945, collection of the Center for
Urban History)
In the first years after the war, Lviv was a city
where large-scale evictions and settlements took place simultaneously. Despite
the rapid loss of Jewish and Polish populations, postwar Lviv quickly gained
new residents — Ukrainians, Russians, and Soviet Jews. As early as July 1946,
the Kyiv Central Committee recorded the population of Lviv at 352,013, slightly
more than in 1939. As of 1949, about 70% of Lviv's residents came from other
regions of the Soviet Union. According to historian Tarik Amar, new Lviv
residents created new identities, but the strongest opposition in the public
space of the postwar years was between "locals" and "newcomers"
or "Easterners". There were also other important categories, such as
party affiliation, Soviet social status, experience of living in
German-occupied territory, experience of military service, categories of
religiosity, age, gender, and, of course, ethnic and linguistic differences.
In Galicia, the extermination of Jews and the
resettlement of Poles meant the loss of entire groups of specialists in various
professions. Lviv was an important destination for a large-scale operation to
recruit qualified personnel. Less than a year after Lviv accessed the Ukrainian
SSR, the Kyiv Central Committee sent about 2,000 specialists in industry,
communications and transport to the city; more than 1,200 for militia, courts
and prosecutors; and 115 for key party positions. The peak of immigration came
in 1945 and 1946, mainly people from Russia, eastern and central Ukraine, and
other regions of the Soviet Union, as well as demobilized soldiers. As early as
October 1944, fifty-seven of the seventy-three directors of large industrial
enterprises were newcomers. The career opportunities of local residents under
the new regime were very limited. They were mainly employed in low-paid jobs,
low-ranking or minor management positions in small enterprises.
Higher education was a mobility tool as well: lots of
students kept coming to the city. One-fifth of Lviv's post-war students were
war veterans. In the 1944/1945 academic year, the number of first-year students
was 2,200. Studying in Lviv was not necessarily voluntary as many students were
sent to Lviv as an alternative to working at remote mines or factories. Locals
were not excluded from the higher education system. As of 1950, almost half of
Lviv's students came from Western Ukraine. At the same time, most of the
teaching staff came from other regions of the USSR.
Post-war Lviv was also a destination for internal
refugees fleeing the famine of 1946-47. Among the newcomers were those
returning from forced labour in Germany and Ukrainians expelled from Poland.
The Soviet Union, which had suffered heavy casualties, was interested in the
return of war-displaced people, primarily to rebuild the postwar economy. An
agreement on the mandatory repatriation of Soviet citizens was reached at the
Yalta Conference in February 1945. Conditions of detention in repatriate camps
were very difficult; their fate was uncertain. In total, the Lviv region was a
major Soviet transit point, with about 350,000 repatriates passing through nine
camps.
Lviv's housing suffered relatively little damage
during the war: just about 15% of houses were destroyed and damaged. Post-war
migrants inhabited Lviv apartments in various ways. Legitimate settlement
required a housing warrant, which was issued for vacant apartments or after the
eviction of previous residents. According to historian Halyna Bodnar, the best
apartments were inhabited by newly arrived Soviet government officials,
employees of the party apparatus and security services, servicemen, lawyers,
doctors, and others. The central streets, the modern neighbourhoods of
Kastelivka and "Altayski Ozera", vul. Pekarska and vul. Lychakivska,
as well as the Professors' Colony were considered prestigious districts of the
city. The Housing Department, the body that issued warrants for apartments, was
established in November 1944 at the City Council. The warrant was considered
valid for 10 (later 30) days after its issuance. During this time it was
necessary to occupy the provided apartment and to pass the warrant to the house
management office to be stored. Despite the ban, there were cases of
unauthorized occupancy of apartments.
In 1945, Soviet soldiers were returning from the front
via Lviv; some of them remained here for permanent residence. Former soldiers
first settled themselves and later transported their families. Newcomers were
often housed with Polish families, who later left. Officially, Poles were not
allowed to sell their own homes. The vacated apartments were inventoried and transferred
to the city authorities. At the same time, speculation on the black housing
market was widespread. The housing department was also involved in these
processes; eyewitnesses recall that a bribe was often required to obtain a
warrant for an apartment. By the summer of 1945, the black market price for the
right to move into a furnished apartment had increased 3-4 times (to 15-20,000
rubles). There was also barter; sometimes the right of real estate and
furniture of possession was exchanged for products or other valuables:
Our
apartment was bought by Ivan Boyko from Kyiv. As such transactions could not be
done for money, he gave us many consumer products for our apartment, a whole
variety of them. My father, who was a lawyer, carefully wrote it all down and
had a whole list of what we got in two languages. Butter for the chair, and so
on. The only thing we couldn't trade was the piano. It could not be evaluated
in lard or other foods.
(Memoirs
of Leszek Allerhand, recorded on September 4, 2016; collection of the Center
for Urban History)
Despite the fact that the architecture of Lviv was
almost not damaged during the war, the city's population changed dramatically.
In the postwar years, a new society and new identities of Lviv were formed,
which reflected the changing political realities. Over the following three
decades, Lviv became a major industrial center, strategically important among
other Western Ukrainian cities, and attracted new residents. There was a rapid
urbanization, primarily due to migration of the Ukrainian rural population of
the western regions. The urbanization was facilitated, on the one hand, by the
industrial development of Lviv, which created additional employment
opportunities, and, on the other hand, by the attractiveness and comfort of
life in the city. In the 1950s and 1980s, the number of Lviv residents doubled.
