"Lviv was a Mecca for me” : memories of Ulas Samchuk

The article is devoted to the recollections of the Ukrainian writer, public figure Ulas Samchuk (1905-1987) concerning Lviv, reflected in his memoirs (On a White Horse, 1965 and On a Crow’s Horse, 1975), which he wrote in exile. Lviv of the 1920s appears as the centre of Ukrainian social and political life, with the most expedient, according to the writer, means of evolutionary and organic development. Lviv during the Nazi occupation of the 1940s, despite outright repression by the authorities, remained an important literary and publishing centre. Ulas Samchuk considered the imperial-Russian awareness, Stalinist and Nazi totalitarian systems to be the main enemies and threats to Ukraine. It was Lviv that the writer perceived as the centre of formation of a democratic Ukraine according to the Western model, which should be extended to the rest of Ukrainian territory.