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By Bridget Hourican, The Irish Times, Dublin, Ireland, Mon, April 26, 2004
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THE EU: Saturday sees the EU expand with 10 new member-states.
In the first of three articles, Bridget Hourican looks at places that will
be just outside the enlarged EU, while feeling culturally and historically
part of it.
Lines of cars queue at the Polish-Ukrainian border. Most of them, like
ours, have Polish numberplates. We've been here an hour. Poles, unlike
Western Europeans, don't need visas to get into Ukraine, which explains
the delay: the border guards are asking the questions normally reserved to
the consulate.
We offer a guard $40 and he moves us into a faster line. An hour later
we're still there, but closer to the top. We joke that it's like the
Mexican border, but admittedly none of us has ever been to Mexico. In
another hour we're through.
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The Boims Chapel in Lviv
ArtUkraine.com Photo
(Click on images to enlarge them)
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This will be Europe's Eastern border from May 1st. We drive the 70 km to
L'viv, formerly Lvov, Lwow or Lemburg. In Poland you hear a lot about
Lwow, at least from the older generation, who wax nostalgic over its
beauty and cultural vibrancy.
L'viv has been tossed around by emperors since its foundation, but for
over half of its 800 year history it was Polish, and was, with Krakow, the
pride of Poland, a university town whose buildings run from 13th century
to Renaissance, to Polish Roccoco, to neo-classicism. The Austrians took
it after the partition of Poland in 1772 and ran it in their haphazard
Hapsburg fashion until Poland regained it after the first World War.
L'viv is in Galicia, one of the centres of Ukrainian nationalism, so
ownership of the city was always going to be in dispute, but the question
wasn't decided by Poles or Ukrainians, but by Stalin. In 1939 he moved in
and in 1945 refused to move out again.
At Yalta, Roosevelt pleaded for L'viv's return to Poland but he was in no
position to refuse the Russians. Stalin solved any future ethnic problems
by ruthless population exchanges across the border. L'viv was incorporated
into Ukraine which was incorporated into the USSR until, in 1991, it
gained independence.
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This is the city we're approaching - cut off from Poland by 60 years,
70km, one hour time difference, three hours border wait, $40 in bribes
and, soon, by Schengen. At night, by the very dim lights strung from wires
over the roads, it looks like another Eastern European glory, like
Budapest, Krakow, or Prague.
By daylight it looks more like an illustration for "poverty in grandeur".
All of Eastern Europe is poorer than the West, but L'viv isn't Eastern
European poor, it's Russian poor. Crowds of babushkas (grandmothers) line
the lovely cobbled streets, patiently selling bags of apples or bunches of
flowers. Every second building houses an exchange office, all offering
identical rates.
The magnificent buildings are crumbling where they stand. Open drains
release waste water onto the streets. Legs and noses have crumbled off
statues. Columns have fallen off buildings. A coat of dirt covers
everything.
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Lviv Poster, 1930
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In one sense, however, it's miraculously well-preserved. Nothing has been
torn down, no Soviet blocks put up. The only sign of the USSR is a few
statues in the brute realist style. Moscow ignored L'viv. If the Party had
held onto it much longer neglect would have finished it off. As it is,
there's nothing a massive injection of cash couldn't resolve.
Cash, however, is the problem. I walk the streets with Andrey Salynk, head
of an NGO for the preservation of L'viv's heritage. He is gallant as a
cavalier in the face of imminent ruin and given to sudden paroxysms of
mirth. "There are 1,000 concerned citizens in L'viv" (pause) "out of
800,000" (explosive laughter). "I have $6,200 for Boims chapel." (pause)
"I need half a million dollars" (explosive laughter).
The Ukrainian government has earmarked $5 million for L'viv in this year's
budget, which is enough to restore three buildings. Salynk estimates $3
billion would halt the process of decay. That figure doesn't include
renovation.
The EU is the Ukraine's biggest donor and has given ¬1.2 billion in aid
over the past 10 years but this money is for technical assistance,
administrative reform and nuclear safety. Ukraine has poverty and
Chernobyl. There isn't money for buildings.
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Lviv Postcard, 1900
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L'viv has the surreal, glazed look of a city which has changed hands too
often. Outside our hotel is a 19th century statue to the Polish poet Adam
Mickiewicz. To the Poles, Mickiewicz is a kind of Moore, Yeats and Joyce
rolled into one but in L'viv the people I ask have only the vaguest idea
of him. In the adjacent square is a massive recent black statue to the
Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko.
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Today, unsurprisingly, L'viv is putting out Ukrainian colours. Of the
seven main museums, three are devoted to Ukrainian peasant art and
ethnography. I look for the Scottish cafe, where in the inter-war Polish
years, L'viv's mathematicians, including Stanislaw Ulam, who later helped
invent the atom bomb, hung out and drew equations on the marble-topped
table. I can't find it. The tourist office says it's a bank; the internet
says it's a bar.
Jewish L'viv was obliterated by the Nazis. The city used to have the third
largest Jewish community in Poland. Now only stones of the 16th century
synagogue remain. There was a concentration camp here, called Janowska.
In Poland I'm told the camp is now a prison, but the tourist office disputes
this. They say it's been "absorbed" into other buildings. In any case it
can't be visited, but there is a plaque.
Austrian L'viv survives in the buildings. The authorities are resisting
erecting a statue to Leopold Sacher-Masoch, L'vivian author of Venus in
Furs and inventor of masochism. Maybe his just isn't an image they want
for their city.
Polish-Austrian-Jewish-Ukrainian. What everyone agrees is that it's a
European city. Ukraine, despite having cities, whose names - Odessa, Yalta
- are familiar to Western readers through Chekhov and whose inhabitants
only speak Russian, has distanced itself from Russia and applied for EU
membership.
The EU is being coy about this application. Agnes Schubert of the EU
delegation in Kiev says "we support Ukraine's strategy for entry" but
"integration isn't on the agenda yet". The Ukrainian press has noted
bitterly that the EU always uses words like "rapprochement" for the
Ukraine, never "integration". The latest EU word is "Neighbourhood Policy".
Says Schubert: "The Neighbourhood policy means Ukraine, and other
countries, like Belarus and Moldova, could have access to the internal
market but not yet to the EU institutions".
Ukraine isn't joining any time soon. In the meantime, its borders are
being regulated. On May 1st it will border three EU countries, Poland, the
Slovak Republic and Hungary. All three are currently implementing the
necessary visa restrictions.
Ukraine's Polish minority are indignantly flooding their consulate but
they're insignificant in numbers - about 5,000 in L'viv.
Ukraine's ex-foreign minister, Anatolii Zlenko has called the borders a
"Schengen Wall" but says Schubert: "The EU doesn't want dividing lines
between Ukraine and its neighbours." It's financing lots of cross-border
initiatives to smooth things over. These include a bridge into Poland.
In Auden's 1930s line, "where Poland draws its Eastern bow" was where
Europe began. This is still the case. Its bowis just being drawn further
west. L'viv is Ukraine's window onto Europe.
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