‘A city like a book’: how Lviv’s hippy spirit is surviving Russia’s invasion
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Loading... - Irene Floris
- 11 Apr 2023
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The Ukrainian city became a refuge for the long-haired rebels under the Soviets. That tradition remains very much alive, says novelist Andrey Kurkov
Two dozen cats live and work in the cafe at 1A General Grigorenko Street, in Lviv. They “work” as psychotherapists, bringing relief to customers stressed out by the war. People go there to drink coffee, eat cake and pet the cats. The cafe stays open even when a missile attack has caused power cuts throughout the city. Alik Olisevich sometimes goes along to make sure that the cats themselves are keeping calm.
Olisevich is Lviv’s best-known – and possibly oldest – hippy, and the keeper of the city’s hippy movement archive. He can most often be found in the Virmenka cafe in the Armenian quarter of the old town, an institution that has been operating since the 1970s central to Lviv’s hippy history. Local students occasionally pop in to see the old-timers – hippies, and writers who seem to have been sitting there since the place opened more than 40 years ago.
Near the bar, there is a small noticeboard with names written on bits of paper. The names are of people for whom a “suspended” coffee has been bought. Sometimes, my Lviv friends send me photographs of this noticeboard with my name pinned to it – a gentle reminder that they are waiting for me.
I have always been happy to go to Lviv, but the last time I was there was 26 February 2022 – the second day of the new Russian aggression – and I did not visit the Virmenka cafe. I drove into Lviv in my people carrier, picked up six passengers and drove towards the Carpathian mountains and the border with Hungary. The war put my relationship with Lviv on pause. But I’ll be back there soon.
The city of Lviv is kind of like a book – a leather-bound historical adventure novel. Despite its antique appearance, the character of the city is modern. (Although sometimes people dress up in historical costumes and walk around arguing about whether Sigmund Freud’s father ever visited Lviv.)
It is not easy to get your head around this city’s history. It was founded in the middle of the 13th century. In the middle ages, it was the capital of the Galicia-Volhynia principality and part of the Habsburg empire. From 1918 to 1939 Lviv belonged to Poland and was called Lwów. It was then that the city began to speak Polish and fell in love with cabaret. After the second world war, Lviv became a rather grey Soviet city, but its love of colourful spectacle and noisy parties remained. Read More…
