The Urban Experience in (East) Central Europe in the Twentieth
Century: Modernity, Transformation, Catastrophe and Re-Making
Tarik Cyril Amar, PhD
Academic Director, Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, Lviv
www.lvivcenter.org
t.c.amar@lvivcenter.org
The Course offers a short introduction to some key themes in Urban History in (East)
Central Europe through a small number of cases and texts. Both terms, Urban History
and East Central Europe, are interpreted deliberately widely: We will read and discuss
texts on cities as diverse and geographically far apart as Vilnius, Magnitogorsk, and
Salonica, while Urban History will refer to approaches from social, cultural, and political
history.
While not all readings listed below will be assigned as obligatorily, course participants
will be expected to read not less than 150-250 pages per week. Each meeting (except
the first – “Introduction”) will begin with one or two presentations by course participants.
Grading:
Each student’s final grade will depend in on his/her participation in class (which will
include the presentations) and on a final paper of five pages, which can be a book
review or an essay on a particular topic or question.
1) Introduction
East Central Europe: A Mapping
2) Imperial World Orders, Borderlands and Cities: Shared and Contested
Laimonas Briedis, Vilnius. City of Strangers (2008):
11-61 “Departures,” “The Brink of Europe,” and “Mapping Sarmatia”
Mark Mazower, Salonica. City of Ghosts. Christians, Muslims and Jews
1430-1950 (2004):
1-12 “Introduction”
31-179: From “Mosques and Hamams” to “Religion in the Age of
Reform”
Markian Prokopovych, Habsburg Lemberg. Architecture, Public Spaces, and
Politics in the Galician Capital, 1772-1914 (2009)
1-12 “Introduction – The Other Lemberg”
19-50 “Architecture, Public Space, and Politics Revisited”
3) Cities, Empires and Modern Times: Urbanization, Nations, and Nationalism
Mazower, Salonica:
185-304 From “In the Shadow of Europe” to “The Return of Saint
Dimitrios”
Michael F. Hamm (ed), The City in Late Imperial Russia (1986):
9-74 Joseph Bradley, Moscow. From Big Village to Metropolis and
43-78 James H. Bater, Between Old and New. St. Petersburg in the
Late Imperial Era
319-351 Daniel R. Brower, Urban Revolution in the Late Russian Empire
Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale. The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial
Russia (2002):
83-122 “Language, Ethnicity, and Urban Space”
4) Modernity’s War, Revolutionary Modernities? War, Revolutions, and the City
R.J.B. Boswell, Mussolini’s Italy. Life under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945
(2005)
150-158 (Part of) “Learning to Rule in the Provinces”
Briedis, Vilnius:
163-191 “German Intrusion”
Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire. Total War and
Everyday Life in World War I (2004)
1-24 (Part of) “Introduction”
Mazower, Salonica:
305-355 “The First World War” to “The Muslim Exodus”
Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in
the Russian Revolution (1989):
13-36 “Social Daydreaming before the Revolution”
79-100 “Festivals of the People”
Mark Thompson, The White War. Life and Death on the Italian Front, 19151919 (2008)
95-106 “Trento and Trieste!”
5) After the “Great War”: Peace, Nationalism Triumphant, A Socialist New Urban
Order?
Briedis, Vilnius:
193-218 “The Absent Nation”
Mazower, Salonica:
355-420 “City of Refugees” to “Greeks and Jews”
Shimon Redlich, Together and Apart in Brzezany. Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians,
1919-1945:
34-70 “The Good Years, 1919-1939”
Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as a Civilization (1995):
106-145 “The Idiocy of Urban Life”
Stites, Revolutionary Dreams:
190-204 “Utopia in Space: City and Building”
6) World War Two: Catastrophic Transformation
Karel Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair (2004):
141-231 “Conditions in the Cities”
Norman Davies, Europe at War, 1939-1945. No Simple Victory (2006):
16-25 “Geographical Limits”
297-303 “Bombing” to “Sieges and Fortresses”
Dov Levin, The Lesser of Two Evils. Eastern European Jewry under Soviet
Rule, 1939-1941 (1995)
198-203
Briedis, Vilnius:
221-251 “Maelstrom Europe”
Redlich, Together and Apart
78-140 “The Soviet Interlude” and “The German Occupation, 1941-‘44”
7) The Long Postwar (I):
David Crowley, Warsaw (2003):
7-16 “Introduction”
17-98 “Monuments in Ruins”
143-181 “At Home in the City”
Donald Filtzer, “Standard of Living versus Quality of Life: Struggling with the
Urban Environment in Russia during the early Years of Post-War
Reconstruction,” in Juliane Fürst (ed), Late Stalinist Russia (2006): 81-102
Rebecca Manley, “Where should we resettle the comrades next?” The
adjudication of housing claims and the construction of the post-war order,” in
Fürst, Late Stalinist Russia: 233-243
Mazower, Salonica:
421-461 “Aftermath”
Redlich, Together and Apart
141-152 “The Aftermath, 1944-‘45”
8) The Long Postwar (II)
Martin Åberg, “Paradox of Change: Soviet Modernization and Ethno-Linguistic
Differentiation in Lviv, 1945-1989,” in John Czaplicka (ed), Lviv. A City in the
Corsscurrents of Culture: 285-301
Omer Bartov, Erased. Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day
Ukraine (2007)
ix-xvii “Introduction”
1-10 “The Borderland”
11-82 (Part of) “Travels in the Borderland”
David Crowley, Warsaw:
182-191 “Conclusion: Whither Public Space?”
Padraic Kenney, “Lviv’s Central European Renaissance, 1987-1990,” in
Czaplicka, Lviv: 303-312
Siegrfried Mattl, “Vienna Since World War II,” in: John J. Czaplicka and Blair A.
Ruble (eds), Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities
(2003): 242-262
Olga Sezneva, “Dual History. The Politics of the Past in Kaliningrad, Former
Königsberg,” in: Czaplicka, Ruble, Composing: 58-85