CITY OF (NOT)OPPORTUNITIES. THE DEVELOPMENT AND DECLINE OF SAMBIR IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Abstract

The historical essay is devoted to the problems of interethnic, intercultural and interper- sonal relations in the multinational space of the Halychyna town of Sambir. Dynamic changes of borders and political foundations, combined with the mentioned transformations, economic upsurges and crises, form the image of hitherto unprecedented changes in scale. In the vortex of events, there were very representative ups and downs of entire cities and individuals, which is actually the topic of this study. The main attention is paid to the interwar period of Sambir’s history, but the understanding of complex processes also forces us to turn to the earlier periods of the late 19th – early 20th centuries and the postwar years. The institutional development of political, public and cultural organizations, the state of education, industrial opportunities of the territory, changes in the architectural portrait of the city are analyzed, as well as the peculiarities of everyday life of ordinary residents of Sambir are presented. The main question that has been attempted to answer is whether modernization was directly related to the dilemmas of war and to what extent the specifi cs of modern transformations in a small town diff ered from similar processes in the then large cities. No less important in this context is the topic of interethnic relations as a determinant of the normalization of urban life in the interwar years. The author also makes assumptions about the alternative history of Sambir and how the city could have developed if it had not been aff ected by the war.