The Spaces of Nostalgia(s) and the Politics of Belonging in Contemporary Chernivtsi,Western Ukraine

The Spaces of Nostalgia(s)

The urban landscape is actively used and reconfigured by politicians, architects, urban planners, and artists in order to shape and implement their visions of not only history and national identity but also place attachments. ⁵ Urban place might be the source of personal memories and emotions through which individuals can relate to the experiences of others. ⁶ What should be remembered and how it should be represented through the materiality of the urban landscape seemed to be the most important questions in any urban transformation project. In the same way, however, as people have the ability to shape the cityscape, the city through architecture and various forms of monumentalizations can accumulate historical experiences and in turn shape people’s perceptions. Space can be both a representation of the remembered past as well as a kind of instruction for people’s memories. ⁷

In Svetlana Boym’s words, we face today “a global epidemic of nostalgia.” ⁸ This medical metaphor highlights, on the one hand, the widespread presence of nostalgic feelings in the modern world and, on the other, the peculiar origins of the term. Coined by Swiss doctors in the seventeenth century, nostalgia was used as a term describing “pathological homesickness.” ⁹ Far more than by physicians, nostalgia was adopted by poets and writers trying to grasp the range of feelings — emotional, aesthetic, and ideological – haunting their souls. ¹⁰ The “hypochondria of their hearts” ¹¹ was supposed to be an antidote to politics, but then it remained a powerful political trigger that manages to significantly shift people’s perception of themselves and their relations to the past and to space. Carried by different people, or, as Renato Rosaldo would call them, “nostalgic agents,” ¹² nostalgia, as a form of cultural practice, depends on individuals’ experience of the present and their relations to both space and time. ¹³ This might be a very personal and intimate feeling as well as a much more collective “passing for the past that people themselves have transformed.” ¹⁴ Rather than a marker of any kind of authenticity and truth-claim about the past, nostalgia is a marker of social change and transformations experienced at present. ¹⁵ In the urban context problematized in this article, nostalgia is defined as a form of urban affect that ties people to particular forms of the urban landscape and shapes their aesthetic experience of the city. ¹⁶ Various forms of nostalgic feelings carried by individuals or produced by the built environment do not need to be mutually exclusive but rather represent hybrid ways in which people experience the space.

If today we face a global flood of collective nostalgic feelings, in Central Europe those feelings manifest themselves through Habsburg nostalgia and a growing number of commemorations linked to the prewar legacies and imaginations of the cosmopolitanism of Austrian cities and the richness of their culture. ¹⁷ Whether in the form of intellectual representations as described by Pamela Ballinger in her discussion of Trieste, ¹⁸ commemorative rituals, ¹⁹ or marketization strategies, ²⁰ Habsburg nostalgia has been a potent resource for establishing distance from the socialist past and creating much more heterogenic, multinational, and finally aspirational “European” images of the cities in the region.

The “post-socialist city” framework has been the most dominant paradigm through which scholars have tried to understand the phenomenon of the urban revival observed in the region. ²¹ Through my case study of the (re)interpretations of Habsburg nostalgia in Chernivtsi, I intend to show that this framework only partially reveals what Tanya Richardson calls the “cultural kaleidoscope of Ukrainian cities.” ²² Certainly the post-socialist framework helps in the effort to grasp the nature of spatial continuities between the socialist past and the post-socialist present ²³ as well as the nature of the persistent in-between positions of many urban centers in the region. ²⁴ Still, this seems not to fully problematize the role of more intangible cultural and affectual elements in the changing urban space as well as the various forms in which collective memories and pre-Soviet urban imaginations have played a role in the transformation process. Rather, recently observed urban revival processes show the multiplicity of actors involved in urban transformations, the multi-directionality of changes, and the (re)emergence of pre-Soviet, colonial, and imperial narratives as dominant frames. ²⁵

In the case of Ukraine, the process of reshaping the urban landscape has been uneven and regionally diverse. The tempo of de-sovietization and nationalization of the cityscapes; the persistence of the socialist signage in urban planning; and, finally, the different local narratives came into play as master frames directing the process of urban restoration in various parts of the country. West Ukrainian cities, such as Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk were the first to symbolically break the ties with the communist past and incorporate a new nationalist narrative into the urban planning politics. In Central and East Ukrainian cities, on the other hand, the monuments of Lenin were demolished only recently as a result of the implementation of the rapid de-sovietization law introduced by the post-revolutionary government. In Crimea, as in other East Ukrainian cities torn by war, Soviet street names and monuments dedicated to Soviet heroes and Communist party leaders have remained fully integrated parts of the urban landscape.

The pace and directions of the de-sovietization and nationalization of the cityscape of Chernivtsi, however, have been neither as rapid as in other West Ukrainian cities nor as resistant to them as in Eastern Ukraine. The historically formed ethno-national diversity of the Bukovina region, its borderland Ukrainian–Romanian location, and the strong presence of Habsburg nostalgia created a very unique blend that gave Chernivtsi its own distinctive trajectory in the contemporary landscape of the Ukrainian urban transformation processes. In this sense, the image of cosmopolitan Chernivtsi and the Bukovinian tolerance is much more similar to other narratives of previous multicultural Habsburg provinces such as Banat and Trieste. ²⁶ An immanent part of this image is the narrative of vibrant and multicultural Habsburg cityscapes shaped mostly by Jewish German-speaking inhabitants. ²⁷ The multicultural cityscape of Chernivtsi, however, was represented not through the culture of one dominant group but the peaceful coexistence of its many nationalities as embodied in the idea of the so-called “national houses,” a cultural centers for German, Jewish, Romanian, Ukrainian, and Polish inhabitants. As I show in the next part, Habsburg nostalgia is not just a mythic construct ²⁸ but is reenacted and reused by different actors both inside and outside of Ukraine. It plays a powerful role in the place-making practices in the contemporary city. ²⁹

The Myth of Czernowitz

The “Habsburg myth” of Chernivtsi originates in the literary representations. The Land between “East and West,” “the Switzerland of the East,” “the European citadel,” “little Vienna of the East,” and, finally, “Jerusalem on the Prut river” are only a few examples of the various ways in which Chernivtsi and the Bukovina region have been described by various writers and poets. ³⁰ The contemporary city of Chernivtsi, variously known as Czernowitz (1775–1918), Cernăuți (1918–1940 and 1941–1945), and Chernovtsy (1945–1991), has been marked by constant shifts of borders, movements of people, and cultural fluidity.

Each name of the city represented new power dynamics in the region and marked a transformation of both its physical and symbolic space. Every time Chernivtsi changed its governor, the city’s space changed as well: new buildings were constructed, monuments erected, and streets renamed. Austrian rule brought the most significant transformations. During this period Czernowitz advanced from a peripheral, irregular settlement into a city with cobblestone streets, eclectic architecture, and monuments glorifying Habsburg emperors. This city attracted migrants from the most distant parts of the empire, among them were Polish clerks, priests, teachers, and artisans who came here mostly from Galicia; Germans who came here in two waves represented by first farmers, and then clerks, university professors, lawyers, and doctors as well as other Slavic-speaking population attracted by the economic growth of the region. ³¹ Probably the most important group to form the cultural specificity of Chernivtsi were Jews who settled both in the outskirts of the city (mostly Hasidic Jews) and in the city center where together with other German-speaking population became the local elites. ³² All these groups together with the more native to the land of Bukovina, Ukrainians and Romanians formed the cultural specificity of Chernivtsi.

Already in the Habsburg time Czernowitz became much more than just a physical space but a literary topos popularized in the works of authors who later became important national symbols, including, among others, Ukrainian writers Jurij Fedkovych and Olha Kobylianska; Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu; and most importantly Jewish writers Paul Celan and Rose Ausländer. As early as 1876, Karl Emil Franzos concluded that Bukovina was a “Half-Asia”: a place where it was possible to encounter European culture alongside Asian barbarism, Western progress next to Eastern indolence, and where there existed “neither bright day or dark night but rather an eerie twilight.” ³³ It goes beyond the scope of this article to analyze whether the nineteenth-century Chernivtsi was an example of “actually existing cosmopolitanism” ³⁴ or the “national indifference.” ³⁵ Rather, it should be pointed out that although Czernowitzers felt they were in the center of Europe, for ordinary Viennese, Bukovina was a distant and backward land. At the same time, for the Austrian elites the constructed visions of more authentic and traditional borderland cultures helped them to define their own modern and Western identity. The contemporary (post)Habsburg nostalgia in Chernivtsi is, then, not just a product of the uncertainties of the post-socialist transformation but is rather rooted in orientalizing forms of “innocent yearning for an exotic other” ³⁶ visible already during the Austrian period both inside and outside the city.

These visions of distant and exotic Austrian borderlands were disrupted together with the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the emergence of a new nationalizing narrative that replaced it. For Romanians, Northern Bukovina was one of the crucial regions for imagining the greatness of the Romanian nation. Although the Romanian authorities did not transform the cityscape of Cernăuți significantly during the twenty-year period during which they ruled Bukovina, they embarked on a successful campaign to change many of its symbols. Streets were renamed; Romanian flags were raised on public buildings, and Romanian became the official language, appearing on storefronts, information boards, in everyday conversation, and official dealings. ³⁷ These linguistic nationalizing policies in Chernivtsi and Bukovina fitted into a larger framework of a Romanian master project of national unification. ³⁸

Perhaps the biggest changes to both the physical and mental topography of Chernovtsy was first the division of Bukovina between the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic and the Romania Socialist Republic and the rapid modernization brought by the Soviets. The city became a very important laboratory for socialist modernism associated with creating new forms of urban living in forms of micro-districts (mikrorayony), newly established, self-contained communities of residential quarters located on the outskirts of cities and centered on industry. ³⁹ Soon they became self-sufficient districts in which workplaces, apartments, hospitals, cultural centers, and other markers of urban life were located. Consequently, the old city center of Chernovtsy began to decline in significance for ordinary citizens. ⁴⁰ Nevertheless, the city center was never totally neglected. The Soviet authorities marked their territory, changing street names to commemorate Soviet heroes, erected monuments to Soviet leaders, and rewrote the history of public buildings on the pages of local textbooks and travel guides. ⁴¹

Although Russian became the most important language of official communication, still for many people Chernovtsy actually remained Chernivtsi. ⁴² The tradition of local Ukrainian organizations of the Austrian period such as “Ruska Besida” and the memory of writers like Fedkovych and Kobylianska attracted many Ukrainian artists to the city. Chernivtsi of the Soviet period was an important place for the development of Ukrainian popular culture, and the work of such artists as opera singer Dmytro Hnatiuk; singers Vasyl Zinkevich and Nazarij Jaremchuk associated with the “Smerichka” ensamble which all-Soviet popularity started with the performances in the Chernivtsi’s philharmonic; singer and composer Volodymyr Ivasiuk and Sofia Rotaru, and finally Ivan Mikolaichuk, one of the most important Ukrainian actors, best known for his leading role in Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. The popularity of Chernivtsi as an important place for Ukrainian language and culture led to the organization of the first Ukrainian langauge music festival, Chervona Ruta, in Chernivtsi. ⁴³ Still, the myth of cosmopolitan Czernowitz seemed to be forgotten in the city. It flourished, however, outside the Soviet borders and was carried on by poets, writers, and diasporic populations who fled the city after the Second World War.

The Independent Chernivtsi entered its most decisive moment of restoration in the first decade of the current millennium. In 2008, a large-scale project of revitalization of the entire city center marking the city’s six-hundredth anniversary was conducted. This was also the moment when Habsburg nostalgia entered the symbolic space of the city. As I show in my first case, this particular form of deep social recollection as defined by Fred Davis ⁴⁴ was carried to Chernivtsi by members of the Jewish diaspora who, since the mid-1990s, started to visit the city of their childhood memories and the origin and traces of their families. Although it is very personal and intimate, nostalgia, in a manner similar to that of memory, transcended the individual and became a collective phenomenon ⁴⁵ crucial for the situational formation of “groupness” ⁴⁶ among those who shared it. As a “traveling memory,” ⁴⁷ the diasporic nostalgia entered Chernivtsi and found fertile ground in and around local activists searching for the lost identity of their city in neglected buildings, antique bazaars, and poetry books. In their case, Habsburg nostalgia is not as emotional and intimate as in the experiences of the Jewish diaspora. Still, for many people, their passionate attempts to reshape the symbolic layers of the Chernivtsi cityscape are similarly important. The post-socialist transformation of the city is then a matter not only of changes in its physical appearance but also of shifts in more intangible symbolic layers that then shape people’s perceptions of space. Through their focus on the built environment, my last two cases show how Habsburg nostalgia manifested itself through the materiality of the cityscape and influenced the emotional attachments to the spaces.

Walking Memory Paths

This article is part of my broader research project on the urban transformation of post-Soviet Chernivtsi. In the course of two years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in three phases between 2010 and 2015, I was especially interested in the transformation of the built environment in the history of Chernivtsi and the present attempts to re-create the historical, multinational, and European image of Chernivtsi given the contemporary multiethnic character of the city and its borderland location. During the course of my research, I conducted participant observation among members of Polish, Jewish, and Ukrainian cultural institutions and collected twenty-five semistructured interviews with city officials, architects, and activists supported by numerous informal and frequent conversations with people who over time became my close friends. The following case study, although it draws from my entire research experience, is based on a peculiar form of participant observation that I define as the phenomenological experience of walking.

The investigation of nostalgic traces in the cityscape requires the use of a range of research methods helpful in grasping the much more subtle and intimate psychogeography of the city. ⁴⁸ Many people experience the city in a very individual way depending on their gender; class; work; and, more broadly, navigation of everyday life. ⁴⁹ Walking, one of the most fundamental forms of urban social practice, especially exposes the very personal trajectories of individuals in the urban space together with the emotional experiences associated with places. ⁵⁰ Walking, as Rebecca Solnit points out, is the acting out of imaginings and desires. ⁵¹ As a form of aesthetic experience, it rearranges the landscape, revealing elements which from the force of habit we have forgotten to see. ⁵² The urban experience of walking also shows various ways in which the materiality of the cityscape influences people’s perception of the space. Through walking, seen as a form of participant observation method, it is possible to grasp the dual nature of urban space as both being shaped by people but also shaping people’s imaginations.

During my fieldwork I conducted numerous walks with people who either live in Chernivtsi, come here as tourists, or return to the city of their childhood memories. In each case, I asked my interlocutors to take me on a tour of places that they considered the most important. Usually, these were the traces of their everyday life, favorite cafes, shops, beautiful buildings, and secluded city squares. Many of these places were connected to their memories and carried strong emotional attachments. Only later did I contextualize their stories within broader historical and visual representations of the city. In this article, my walking experiences are treated as forms of mapping and illustrating various cultural ways of practicing the Habsburg nostalgia embodied in Jewish homecoming, processes of revitalization, and the nationalization of the cityscape.

Reconstructing Czernowitz

I met Natalya one February afternoon, still in the early phase of my research in 2010, when I was especially interested in the Jewish heritage of Chernivtsi. Sitting in the main exposition room of the Museum of the History and Culture of Bukovinian Jews, Natalya was surrounded by old maps of Bukovina and various artifacts connected to past Jewish life. Since the late 1990s, she has become one of the most engaged people in rediscovering the pre-Soviet history of the city and an author of the first popular books dedicated to local Jewish culture. ⁶⁰

You know, in the past while I was wandering on local bazaars I used to gather all these artifacts; they were so beautiful! I have always been asking myself—what are they? We always knew that it used to be a Jewish city, but somehow it did not appear like this to us. All these buildings around us, all these streets they did not look like from Chagall’s paintings, they were European. So I started to dig into the history. I wanted to know. ⁶¹

For local cultural elites, the Austrian heritage of the city center has been the most important resource for the rebranding of the city. ⁶² If there was a bright future for Chernivtsi, it was to be found in its European past seen in the remaining built environment. The admiration for the city’s cosmopolitanism entered the rhetoric of local architects, city planners, and politicians in the beginning of the 2000s. The project of the revitalization of the city center was one of the biggest attempts to de-Sovietize radically the space of Chernivtsi, exhibit its Austrian heritage, and the European aspirations of local elites. The so-called “Soviet nostalgia” could have been still spotted among many Chernivtsi’s residents whose lives were centered on the previous mikrorayony. Even in the city center, Ukrainian symbolic markers still coexisted alongside Soviet imagery, setting Chernivtsi apart from other West Ukrainian cities. Monuments dedicated to the Great Patriotic War, the Afghan War, the Soviet liberation of Chernivtsi memorial, as well as numerous smaller plaques were an important part of Chernivtsi’s cityscape. The Habsburg nostalgia associated with the returning of “old Czernowitzers” and the activity of local cultural elites became mobilized as a potent resource in proclaiming the “return to Europe.” ⁶³

Marking the city’s six-hundredth anniversary, the municipality decided to transform the central urban space from an overcrowded traffic junction to a pedestrian zone with restored squares, a closed street, new pavement, benches, numerous garden cafes, restaurants, and exclusive shops. The renovation highlighted the Austrian origins of the city with eclectic architecture, the beautiful theater building, and the charm of paved alleys. Chernivtsi started to fully resemble other Central European cities, including Cracow, Prague, and Vienna. The town hall, the monument to the Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko, Ploshcha Filarmonii, and the monumental building of the local University were the key sites of restoration. On Kobylans’koi Street, Austrian-themed garden cafes and restaurants were opened, and small cobblestones with the names of the city in five languages (Ukrainian, Polish, Romanian, Yiddish, and German) were installed in the pavement.

The newly redesigned spaces became some of the most powerful symbols of the lost and reborn urban life in Chernivtsi. According to Bitušikovă, the examples of the numerous city centers’ reconstruction in the former Eastern bloc does not differ from similar reconstruction efforts in Western European cities. ⁶⁴ The difference is hidden, however, in the intensity of feelings and enthusiasm of city inhabitants encountering these transformations as well as the different narratives that accompany the changes. In Chernivtsi, the restoration of the city center was met with overall applause and endorsement from the majority of inhabitants. Each of the communities, however, had a slightly different interpretation of the changes happening in the city.

For diasporic Czernowitzers, revitalization was a material representation of their nostalgia for the lost Austrian city. The cityscape of Chernivtsi finally resembled the Austrian Czernowitz of their childhood dreams. Revitalization highlighted, however, only some aspects of their imaginary space. It did not manage to fulfill all demands. They were alone in their long-lasting project of the conservation of the city’s Jewish cemetery and in the struggle to commemorate the victims of the ghettoization of the local Jewish community and the Holocaust.

Many of my Ukrainian friends also supported the project which brought more green spaces to the city and made it more people-friendly. The local municipality newspaper, Chernivtsi, however, reflected some of the fears that the Austrian heritage of the city might decrease the importance of Ukrainians in the development of city’s culture. To be fully incorporated into the vision of the city, Habsburg nostalgia needed to be first “ukrainiannized.” Although all of the renovated sites transcend the traces of the past multiethnic life of Chernivtsi and its economic, social, and ethnic diversity, it was actually important to show the very often hidden “Ukrainianness” of Chernivtsi’s cityscape. Each of the revitalized places, whether the old German market or the Turkish Square, were used to tell the distinct Ukrainian story in order to highlight the contribution of Ukrainians to the development of the city and its European image. In the pages of the local press, it was hard to find during the reconstructions any information on the Jewish, German, Romanian, or Polish ties to the city.

The revitalization was supported by a varied, increasing number of publications and maps showing the presence of Ukrainian heritage in the city, and the creation of various commemorative flags put on the buildings. Although Chernivtsi’s center was renovated based on the image of the Austrian city and the cosmopolitanism associated with it, in fact, the general ideology behind this project was to build a Ukrainian identity out of particular places and eventually the whole city. The ideas of Ukrainian identity were deeply embedded in the vision of Chernivtsi as a European capital through which Western ideas and values could be transmitted. Interestingly, the Habsburg nostalgia incorporated by the Ukrainian elites was also appropriated by other national groups, most importantly Romanians. For local Romanian elites, Bukovina is considered a heartland of Romanian culture and nation associated with the national figure of a poet Mihai Eminescu but also a Romanian period in the city’s history. Nevertheless, the western image of the city served the Romanian elites as a useful tool for strengthening their European aspirations. ⁶⁵

The Nationalization of Habsburg Nostalgia

When I arrived in Chernivtsi for the third phase of my research in June 2014, I noticed that a new memorial site had been established in the main city square. It was a small platform with a three-meter-tall cross surrounded by flowers. A poster in front of the memorial explained that this place would serve as a memorial to commemorate the Heavenly Hundred (ukr. Nebesnaya Sotnya), the victims of the Euromaidan revolution. The creation of the memorial reflected the recent anti-government and pro-European atmosphere witnessed in many Ukrainian cities, including Chernivtsi. ⁶⁶ I was surprised, however, that the creators of the Heavenly Hundred memorial site connected it to the Pietà, the old Austrian monument that stood here until 1918. The site of the former Pietà has historically been deeply controversial; at least three attempts since 1991 to rebuild the monument were undermined. At the core of the debates about the monument were questions about interethnic relations and the identity of Chernivtsi’s cityscape. Thus, the idea of re-creating the Pietà sculpture and establishing the Heavenly Hundred memorial site has revealed multiple and often contradictory narratives of the nostalgic Habsburg past and its importance in the present struggle to redefine the cityscape.

The original Pietà was first erected in 1827. In its original construction, it presented Virgin Mary with two angels by her side, kneeling in front of a cross and holding Jesus in her arms. The figures were situated on an obelisk standing three meters high that was placed in the middle of the Ringplatz, the center of the nineteenth-century city. ⁶⁷ The monument stood in the main square until 1923, when the new Romanian governor decided to remove the sculpture from the square (at that point renamed Piata Unirii), and placed it next to local Roman Catholic church. The statue was replaced by a Monument of the Unification, which commemorated the joining of Bukovina to Romania. ⁶⁸ The destruction of the monument was one of the first actions Soviet troops undertook when they entered Chernivtsi in 1944. Shortly thereafter, it was replaced by a statue of Lenin, which stood in the square until Ukraine’s independence in 1991. Soviet authorities also destroyed the Pietà monument completely, making its full reconstruction impossible.

For a group of local professionals—namely architects, historians, and artists—the re-creation of the Pietà monument was a step toward strengthening the Habsburg identity of Chernivtsi’s cityscape. As it was explained to me by Sergiej, an architect working in the local government, the importance of the Pietà monument lay in its aesthetic and historical value to the city center. ⁶⁹ Its reconstruction would encourage the city’s associations with the Habsburg past, highlight its authenticity, and consequently bring in more tourists. The creation of the Heavenly Hundred memorial site would at the same time reflect the contemporary revolutionary and patriotic spirit reigning in the country.

The struggle to restore the Pietà dates back to the late 1990s. The first initiative to reestablish the Pietà in Chernivtsi was in 1999 when the Ukrainian government passed a bill supporting the revitalization of the monuments to history and culture in Ukraine. From Chernivtsi’s district, only the Pietà appeared on the list. Although members of the local Greek and Roman Catholic communities tried to force the municipality to re-create the monument, no actions were taken. The same happened in the middle of the first decade of the current century, when a group of activists wanted to restore the Pietà as part of the celebration of the city’s six-hundredth anniversary and the associated revitalization projects.

The restoration was only recently approved when the Greek Catholic organization CARITAS proposed that the Pietà be reinstalled to commemorate the Heavenly Hundred. According to the initiators of the restoration of the Pietà monument, the local government had previously ignored every attempt, claiming that funds were too low to justify such an undertaking. However, my informal conversations with locals revealed that it was not only the government opposing the restoration, but members of local Orthodox churches, and especially Romanians, also opposed the restoration because of the persistent anti-Romanian rhetoric embodied in the restoration projects. In the historical account of the Pietà provided by one newspaper, the date 1923, the year that the former Romanian governor (or the “Romanian aggressor” as he was called in the article) removed the Pietà, was featured as one of the most important dates in the history of the sculpture. Additionally, the article stated that the monument was replaced by an “offensive” Romanian monument of unification, which was described as depicting a young couple.

In Chernivtsi, the erection of a new monument in April 2014 was widely acknowledged and attracted the attention of the local media. Although each local newspaper included coverage of the ceremony of raising a cross in the main square, the very provocative article headlines such as “Cross Replaced Lenin,” “Let’s Return the Mother of God,” and “The History That Cannot Be Returned” expressed the need to further symbolically transform the Chernivtsi’s landscape and detach it more from the Soviet past. For many citizens of Chernivtsi, the fact that the cross was raised in the same place where the monument of Lenin had once stood was one of the most important aspects of the inauguration.

The reconstruction of the Pietà monument gave yet another shift to the Habsburg nostalgia. Although even in 2008 the vision of a distinct, ethnic Ukrainian history of Bukovina was still present, by 2014 the national narrative had been merged with the Habsburg representation of lost cosmopolitanism. The city’s administration and Ukrainian elites utilized the new hybrid narrative to promote a multinational image of past and present Chernivtsi. This strategy, shared by local professionals, aimed at preserving the historical, and to their thinking European, character of the city represented in the narrative. Indeed, most local funds for urban development projects since the revitalization have been put toward the dual goals of transforming the city into a tourist-friendly place and emphasizing the Habsburg character of the city put forth in the hybrid narrative.

The restoration of Pietà has been part of this story. On the state level, the replication was fully supported, guaranteeing a reinstitution of one of the most important pieces of regional cultural heritage. The actual replication itself is a more contentious matter. Some artists and historians hoped to replicate the monument with strict adherence to the aesthetic values of the old monument, thus stressing the authenticity of Chernivtsi landscape. Lack of proper documentation and sketches of the old monument make this task almost impossible. Nonetheless, the present initiator, the Greek-Catholic CARITAS, hopes that the restoration of the Pietà monument in Chernivtsi will clearly represent the Ukrainian national vision of Chernivtsi’s past. To this end, local newspapers and the information board placed in front of the cross put forth a distinctly Ukrainian story of the Habsburg Pietà, presenting the nineteenth-century monument as evidence of the Ukrainian community’s significance in the city and Ukrainians’ resistance to authorities. According to this vision, the Austrian Pietà was a monument erected by Ukrainians, even though other sources suggest it was supported by other Catholic communities, such as the Poles and Germans. All historic regimes governing Bukovina are defined as foreign and oppressive to the local Catholic (implicitly Greek Catholic) community.

For many Chernovitzers, the new memorial site is important because it gives respect to people killed during the recent revolution and ongoing war. Spontaneously established in many cities across the country, memorials to the Heavenly Hundred became new sacred spaces to which inhabitants brought flowers and where they mourned the passing of others. Similarly, for many in Chernivtsi, the memorial became an extremely emotional space that shows the highest sacrifice of many people but also expresses the psychological pain felt by many who witnessed the recent bloody developments in the country. From the perspective of the initiators, the linkage of the Heavenly Hundred memorial site to the old Austrian monument strengthens, then, the sense of continuity of Ukrainian nationality and its resistance to foreign regimes.

Conclusion

Since the fall of the Soviet bloc, many cities in Central and Eastern Europe have faced rapid changes and transformations. On the symbolic level, one of the biggest challenges was the handling of Soviet signage, which needed to be replaced by a new system of meanings. In their search for a new urban identity, societies in Western Ukraine through the persistence of the Habsburg nostalgia turned to both pre-communist and anti-communist narratives. The former functioned as a proof of longevity and the continuity of national traditions and the connections to Western culture in new hybrid nationalist narratives. The examples of emotional and intimate Jewish return to Central and East European cities, the politics of urban revitalizations, and local politics of monuments - as traced through the case of Chernivtsi - show that Habsburg nostalgia is not a homogenous and static form of place attachement but rather as a set of cultural practices manifests itself differently depending on the position of “nostalgic agents” in a given political context.

The multiple forms of Habsburg nostalgia in Chernivtsi—whether transmitted through personal and intimate diasporic attachments; embraced by the aspirations of local elites; embodied in the official politics of the municipality to transform Chernivtsi into a tourist-friendly European capital; and, finally, used as a tool to help local nationalist elites strengthen the position of their groups—have in common, their pro-European aspirations and anti-communist character. In the times of the present instability, these various nostalgic narratives simultaneously foster attachments to European values but also strengthen the position of local Ukrainian rhetoric.

Nonetheless, the new synagogue is still actively working, quite recently the first kosher restaurant was opened in the city, and the Jewish cemetery is marked as a new space for further revitalization. Although the contemporary Jewish community in Chernivtsi is not as strong as it was in past, many other groups are working toward bringing their history and heritage to the contemporary symbolic cityscape. Moreover, Chernivtsi became an important place on the cultural map of Ukraine through various music, and literary festivals bringing international group of artists devoted to the heriatge of Bucovina. The revitalized spaces of the city center, numerous parks, squares, architectural gems, and Austrian-inspired coffee houses have made the city a desired tourists’ destination. Various forms of Habsburg nostalgia are then not mutually exclusive but continue to coexist with each other, contributing to the very hybrid and diverse ways in which people experience the space.