Cultivating Translocal Memory of the International Crisis: The Cases of Kyiv and Lviv in the late 19th Century

• In Event: Memories and Narratives of War: Public Opinion and Grassroots Interpretation of Violence in Authoritarian Settings

Abstract

Short Abstract: This paper addresses the cases of provincial imperial cities of Kyiv and Lviv during and after the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875-1878 and demonstrates that local inhabitants of both towns created and expressed memories about the crisis while it was unfolding, with the crisis gradually becoming a part of provincial everyday life. In addition to the individual and collective interpretations of the crisis on the ground, I highlight the adaptation of these narratives in light of the breakout of the Russo-Ottoman War and the annexation of Bosnia by Austro-Hungary. The paper further details the mechanisms behind these informational flows that shaped the public opinion in the imperial peripheries in response to the international dynamics of violence.

Long Abstract: When a crisis is over, the memories of it are not. They mark the persistence of the crisis even in areas not directly affected by it, as this paper will argue. A conventional historical account of an international crisis would feature a chronologically structured story of how the crisis developed, with its contested yet defined start and end. The scholarship of modern crises has followed that pattern, adapting it to new approaches within imperial history, intellectual history, or media history, leaving the memory aspect of the events to those interested in the events and its aftermaths. While staying in dialogue with these trends, my paper will look at the cases of provincial imperial cities of Kyiv and Lviv during and after the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875-1878 to highlight that local inhabitants of both towns created and expressed memories about the crisis while it was unfolding. Stressing that the crisis gradually became a part of provincial everyday life, I will demonstrate how its changing nature coincided with its parallel domestication in both localities. I will also address the impact of the Russo-Ottoman War and the annexation of Bosnia by Austro-Hungary on the enlarged involvement in the crisis, changing the perception of the crisis across the imperial borders. With that, I will underline the simultaneous presence of translated and original memories created based on collective and individual involvement in the crisis and influenced by accelerated information flows. Finally, I will reflect on the appearance of the international crisis in the grand narratives about the region’s history, posing the question of the (in)significance of its narrative potential. Thus, translocal memory about the crisis was generalized, while on the ground, in the imperial provincial cities, it remained heterogeneous in the direct aftermath of the Treat of Berlin, signed on July 13, 1878.

Author

• Yevhen Yashchuk, U of Oxford (UK)