Book presentation "Fear Anatomy. Sovietization of Lviv Region in 1944-1953" (Anatomia strachu. Sowietyzacja obwodu lwowskiego 1944–1953)
March 6, 2019 / 6.30 pm
Sheptytskyi Center at UCU, Park Room, Lviv, Stryiska str. 29
Published in 2018, it is one of the first books in Polish historiography covering Lviv and the surroundings after the end of military action in the first post-war decade. Key research focus is on representing the process of Sovietization as illustrtated by Lviv region. The area became one of the most remote westward provinces of the Soviet Union in 1944. The author shows the processes of violent unification and radical transformation of the region that was supposed to be another arena for implementation of Communist visions and making of a new reality and a new person.
The book describes changes within the structure of the region; displacement as part of the so called transfer of population between the Communist Poland and the Ukrainian SSR; deportation of families of members of Polish and Ukrainian underground; and the influx of population from the depth of the Soviet Union, among them the party staff, security authorities, and the working class. The author characterized the party and public security officials, and the military elite of the region; he showed their practices and deviations typical for the nomenclature system they developed from. The book explores resistance of Ukrainian and Polish underground, and repressions striking the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and Roman Catholic Church, as well as huge economic transformations such as the collectivization of villages and the vision of Lviv as a leading industrial center of Western Ukraine. However, the main focus is on mass terror and the powerful repression apparatus indispensable for Soviet administration to keep its hold in the region.
Presentation will be conducted in Polish.
a historian, a publicist, researcher of history of East Central Europe, with a special focus on the history of Poland and Ukraine, as well as on collective memory, and memory policy. His Master’s degree and the PhD in Humanities were awarded in Warsaw University. He obtained scholarships from many research centers, such as the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe (2013). He published the books on: Fear Anatomy. Sovietization on Lviv Region in 1944-1953 (IPN Publishing, Warsaw, 2018), Two Uprisings. Battle for Lviv on November, 1-22, 1918.; War and Contemporary Conflict of Memory (Literary Publishing, Krakow, 2019). He is author of over a hundred of research articles, essays, and reviews. He worked in the Council for Preservation of Memory of Struggle and Martyrdom, at the Ministry for Culture and National Heritage, at the Institute of National Memory.
The presentation will be moderated by Dr. Sofia Dyak, director of the Center for Urban History in Lviv.
Damian Karol Markowski
The book presentation is part of the research workshop "Movements Across Borders: Post-War Migration and Experiences of Borderland People" organized in partnership with the Institute of Political Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Center for Urban History, and the Department of Modern and Current History of Ukraine of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.
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