ESTABLISHMENT OF NEW MILITARY CEMETERIES IN THE HISTORICAL TOWNS OF GALICIA
Authors:   Architecture and Conservation Department, Lviv Polytechnic National University, STASYUK Olena 
Published: June 2023

Cemeteries are an integral part of the cultural landscape of every city or town, evidence of the ideology and spiritual life of their time. Military cemeteries may not be in every settlement, but they very clearly record their time, history, ideology. Today we have just such an important and historical moment and we have a war again in our country. Which means dead heroes. And this in turn means new military cemeteries. Galicia has a rich history of military cemetery formation. The first military cemeteries appeared in Galicia, and thus in Lviv during the First World War. That is, in the early twentieth century. The twentieth century was further marked by a series of events which replenished the number of military cemeteries.. These are the Second World War and the struggle for the Ukrainian state. Regardless of the status and the age of the cemetery, from an architectural point of view, the cemetery is a very vulnerable object that requires continuous care and ordering. Military cemeteries are additionally overlaid with an ideological component that complicates their existence. Let's take a look at how thedead warriors were treated in the past. In ancient Greece, mounds were heap up on the battlefields, which were both graves of the dead and symbols of victory. On the tops of mounds, stone lions were installed as a symbol of invincibility and courage. And during the Enlightenment, when burial was restricted in churches and churchyard cemeteries, new cemeteries were built outside the city walls. The changes also concerned the approach to the dead in general and the dead heroes in particular. The attitude towards soldiers' anonymity has changed.The first soldiers to be honored with a memorial tombstone were soldiers killed during the domestic wars of the French Revolution. Until the First World War, no military cemeteries were created in Europe. It was the First World War that provoked the need for the establishment of military cemeteries in our latitude. The Departments of Military Graves were engaged in construction of military cemeteries In Galicia with headquarters in Krakow, Przemysl and Lviv. Lychakiv Cemetery became the place of the first military burials of the First World War in Lviv. After the First World War the Polish state in Lviv builds a pantheon on the Lychakiv Cemetery in the so-called "Lviv Eagles" for Polish soldiers who died for Poland's independence in the Polish-Ukrainian war. The Second World War is breaking out in Europe very quickly. The front passes through the Galicia several times. . After the war Galicia was split between the Soviet Union and Socialist Poland. . In 1951, the Eagle Memorial in Lviv was destroyed. In 1971, the graves and the colonnade were destroyed by tanks and construction equipment. Military burials of World War I in Lviv were also located at the Yaniv Cemetery. In particular, a military memorial to UGA shooters, which was destroyed by the Soviet authorities in 1971 by bulldozers. After Ukraine gained independence in 1991, events began to reverse. In 1998 a construction of the memorial for the soldiers of the Ukrainian Galician Army was started at the Lychakiv Cemetery, and in 2005 it was solemnly opened. In 1997-1999, a memorial to the UGA shooters was restored at Yaniv Cemetery in Lviv. In 1990, the restoration of the Memorial of the Lviv Eagles at Lychakiv Cemetery began. In 2014, in the independent Ukraine, the execution of the celestial hundred took place. The fallen heroes returned to their homes. In Lviv, they are buried at the Memorial to the soldiers of the Ukrainian Galician Army at the Lychakiv Cemetery. Other cities also hold memorials to the victims. Very soon, after the shooting of the celestial hundred, the war began. It is still going on. And the expense of the losses we incur in this war does not stop. The question of the military cemetery to the heroes of the modern war remains open.