THE PARADOX OF UKRAINIAN LVIV AND SOVIET LVIV

Iryna Sklokina outlines an agenda for the discussion of Tarik Cyril Amar's book The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv. She praises the book as a successful attempt to challenge the established national canon of Ukrainian historiography that tends to downplay topics such as the collaboration of Ukrainian nationalists with the Nazis or the modernizing and nationalizing aspect of Soviet rule. Amar's application of colonial optics helps to elucidate the dialectics of the development of contemporary Ukrainian identity as a product of both the official institutions of the Soviet state and popular resistance to them.