For the uninitiated reader, any story about Lviv must begin with an important caveat: it is one of the most paradoxical places in Ukraine. On the western edge of the country, its people’s heads are full of unresolved contradictions. Behind the facade of an exemplary post-Soviet, pro-European city lies a reality tacked together from shreds and patches. It is a looking-glass land where nothing is simple. A web of invisible borders divides not only its various population groups, but the consciousness of each inhabitant.
Perhaps that is why people are so intent on constructing coherent images and stereotypes for themselves – the exemplary patriot, the exemplary European, the exemplary Ukrainian. But there is no more complex place in the country than Lviv.
All this leads us to the question of Russian culture here – a much less alien presence than people tend to imagine.
