“Rural in the City”: Lviv’s Agricultural Sector and Its Contribution to the City’s Postwar Economy

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to shed light on the interesting phenomenon of post-war Lviv in 1940s and 1950s, which is interaction between the city and the village within the Lviv city space. Rural and urban practices that coexisted in one area of post-war Lviv had a serious impact on the daily life of the city, changed its cuisine and ethnic color.

The author uses general scientific methods – causal, comparative and systematic approaches and other.

Scientific novelty. For the first time, the activities of agricultural enterprises that actively used the land within the city are covered. A separate aspect, being analyzed, is the production of local food enterprises and their popularity among the citizens. The author also determined the level of providing the population with food. The article demonstrates the methods of preserving food in the time of the absence of refrigeration equipment. It has been proved that agrarian experiments in the city were rather exceptional and caused by post-war disturbances. As a result of the cooperation between the city and the village, a twofold social environment was conducted in Lviv, with peculiar impact on the post-war city.

Conclusions. In the first post-war years, the traditional farms of post-war Lviv coexisted with rural practices that were expressed in the cultivation of agricultural units, utility and individual farms. The employment system in agriculture correlated well with the party’s policy of class representation in all spheres of urban life. Ancillary farms, agricultural unions and feeding complexes, organized under conditions of food shortage as one of the elements of post-war survival were not typical phenomena of the post-war city. The author states that despite the small size of Lviv agricultural sector, its contribution to the city-wide financial system was more tangible. Only one collective farm named May, 1, gave the city large profits, not to mention less successful unions and farms. An important aspect of its operations was the provision of raw materials for local meat-packing plants and dairies, thus creating a closed cycle of food supply in Lviv. The supplies of Lviv dairies were a small part of the total milk consumption in the city. At the same time, by raising animals and growing vegetables and fruits, Lviv citizens not only provided themselves with an additional cuisines, but also formed a kind of social environment of post-war Lviv that differed from the typical urbanization processes of other cities.