Читать книгу Diversity in the East-Central European Borderlands - Группа авторов - Страница 25

A second Soviet General Plan was conceived as early as in 1946. Largely unrealized, it had two specific features: on the one hand, street axes and memorials glorifying the Soviet ideology, making L’viv “Soviet, not only in essence but also in form,” and on the other hand, some acknowledgement of L’viv’s historical and cultural heritage. One of the plan’s authors, Anatolii Shvets’ko-Vinets’ky, was a Soviet pioneer in the field of cultural heritage preservation, drafting a list of important architectural monuments of L’viv and thereby saving them (Tscherkes 2005: 217–18).67

A three-kilometer-long north-south axis following present-day Chornovola,68 Svobody, and Shevchenka Avenues was planned, and also a west-east axis, from the main railway station to the High Castle area, along the present Horodots’ka and Uzhhorod streets. At their intersection, near the Opera, a central parade square of 250 x 160 meters was planned, requiring demolition of parts of the Old Town, distinguished by its Jewish character.69 The square, with a huge Stalin statue and an honorary tribune for party and military leaders, was to be surrounded by monumental neo-classic buildings with apartments, hotels, and offices and the local Soviet and party building, with a tall clock tower. A fifty-meter-high Lenin statue was planned at the Castle Mountain, to be visible from all over the city and symbolically erected on the former Union Hill, established in 1869 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Lublin Union of Poland and Lithuania. These expressions of the Soviet triumph over the old, Central European Polish, Austrian, and Jewish culture, never materialized. A modest Lenin memorial was erected in 1952 in front of the Opera building, not conflicting with the surrounding buildings.

The 1956 General Plan for L’viv, also remaining on paper, was intended to develop the city center northwards along the new Chornovola Avenue. A new square with a monument was planned in this area. The revised 1966 General Plan, anticipating 700,000 inhabitants in 1990, included extension of the main west-east axis through the Old Town between the Church of Our Lady in the Snow and the Benedictine monastery, destroying the urban space of the Rybna and Pisha Streets. Widening of Chornovola Avenue would cause the demolition of all buildings between Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi Street–Zamarstynivs’ka Street and present-day Panteleimona Kulisha street, among them the preserved Glanzer synagogue from the 1840s. Hotel L’viv was erected according to this plan, on the former marketplace Zbożowy. The plan would also cause extensive demolitions along Pid Dubom, Tatars’ka, Bazarna, Zamarstynivs’ka, Horodots’ka, and other streets.70 Compared with the 1946 plan, urban design was now changed from neo-classicism to modernism with larger and free-standing constructions and open areas, more demolition, and greater contrast to the older, traditional urban blocks. However, the historical area around the Rynok Square was to be preserved together with the medieval Old Town east of Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi street.

A 1970 plan revision, likewise never implemented, would have introduced four motor tunnels and a larger system of pedestrian streets and areas. Under this revision, Chornovola Avenue was to be extended into a pedestrian urban space, 650 m x 130 m, partly furnished with free-standing tower buildings and edged by huge constructions. The “New Town” was not affected by the plan. In the building inventory of the Old Town, only a few buildings north of the Opera (excluding the old churches) were described as valuable, although they formed a partly well-preserved environment with nineteenth-century buildings along medieval streets. The Glanzer synagogue was marked as valuable, but nevertheless to be demolished.