page_title: Lviv
section_title: Interbellum period
hierarchical_section_title: Lviv / History / Interbellum period
caption_attribution_description: Українська: Вхід на територію Східних торгів у Львові.English: The Eastern Trade Fair. Lviv, Second Polish RepublicPolski: Targi Wschodnie. Lwów, Rzeczpospolita Polska.
context_page_description: Lviv is the largest city in western Ukraine and the seventh-largest city in the country overall, with a population of 755 800 as of 2020. Lviv is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine.
  Named in honour of Leo, the eldest son of Daniel, King of Ruthenia, it was the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia from 1272 to 1349, when it was conquered by King Casimir III the Great of Poland. From 1434, it was the regional capital of the Ruthenian Voivodeship in the Kingdom of Poland. In 1772, after the First Partition of Poland, the city became the capital of the Habsburg Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. In 1918, for a short time, it was the capital of the West Ukrainian People's Republic. Between the wars, the city was the centre of the Lwów Voivodeship in the Second Polish Republic.
  After the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, Lviv became part of the Soviet Union, and in 1944–46 there was a population exchange between Poland and Soviet Ukraine. In 1991, it became part of the independent nation of Ukraine.
  Administratively, Lviv serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and has the status of city of oblast significance.
context_section_description: During the interwar period, Lwów held the rank of the Second Polish Republic's third most populous city (following Warsaw and Łódź), and it became the seat of the Lwów Voivodeship. Following Warsaw, Lwów was the second most important cultural and academic centre of interwar Poland. For example, in 1920 professor Rudolf Weigl of the Lwów University developed a vaccine against typhus fever. Furthermore, the geographic location of Lwów gave it an important role in stimulating international trade and fostering the city's and Poland's economic development. A major trade fair called Targi Wschodnie was established in 1921. In the academic year 1937–1938, there were 9,100 students attending five institutions of higher education, including the Lwów University as well as the Polytechnic.
  While about two-thirds of the city's inhabitants were Poles, some of whom spoke the characteristic Lwów dialect, the eastern part of the Lwów Voivodeship had a relative Ukrainian majority in most of its rural areas. Although Polish authorities obliged themselves internationally to provide Eastern Galicia with an autonomy (including a creation of a separate Ukrainian university in Lwów) and even though in September 1922 adequate Polish Sejm's Bill was enacted, it was not fulfilled. The Polish government discontinued many Ukrainian schools which functioned during the Austrian rule, and closed down Ukrainian departments at the University of Lwów with the exception of one. Prewar Lwów also had a large and thriving Jewish community, which constituted about a quarter of the population.
  Unlike in Austrian times, when the size and number of public parades or other cultural expressions corresponded to each cultural group's relative population, the Polish government emphasised the Polish nature of the city and limited public displays of Jewish and Ukrainian culture. Military parades and commemorations of battles at particular streets within the city, all celebrating the Polish forces who fought against the Ukrainians in 1918, became frequent, and in the 1930s a vast memorial monument and burial ground of Polish soldiers from that conflict was built in the city's Lychakiv Cemetery.
caption: Eastern Trade Fair (Targi Wschodnie), main entrance.[53]
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