LVIV, Ukraine -- Students here sent e-mails to friends, prodding them to get to Kiev. Workers traveled back and forth from the Ukrainian capital in shifts. Factory owners were lenient with absences. Entire families sometimes went together.
For 15 days, this town near the border with Poland was consumed by what has come to be known as the "Orange Revolution," the movement in distant Kiev that rose up against election fraud in the presidential runoff Nov. 21. It was hard to walk a few feet in Kiev without running into someone from Lviv.
A Ukrainian priest blessed an opposition flag during a rally last month in Lviv, near the Polish border. Many residents flooded into Kiev and played a prominent role in the country's "Orange Revolution."
(Alexander Baran -- AP)
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Now that the Supreme Court has thrown out the election results and ordered a new vote on Dec. 26, Lviv is luxuriating in the afterglow of victory. But for residents, the issue was more than just getting their preferred candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, into the presidency instead of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, his electoral rival.
Rather, their role in the protests validated Lviv's perceptions of itself as a town closely allied with the democracies of the European Union. Many people here wanted to overturn not just an election, but also an impression.
"When I traveled around and talked to Europeans, they used to say that Ukraine doesn't really want democracy and is not really part of Europe," said Stepan Chop, a political science student who went to Kiev for the rallies. "Now, no one can say that. We're no different from the Poles, or the Hungarians, or the others who stood up. We think the world has heard."
Lviv prides itself in being a kind of storehouse of Ukraine's Western culture. It has an opera house modeled on one in Vienna, and it is full of marble from Italy and Poland and Renaissance-style frescoes and Venetian mirrors. The city's medieval walls, with their pointy watchtowers, resemble the sort found all over central Europe. There are few czarist-era buildings, with their typical Russian pastel greens or pink walls and white trim.
Townsfolk talk about a Lviv liberal tradition dating from a period under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. "Our history is Western and we are Western, Western, Western," Chop said.
Such attitudes contrast sharply with feelings in the far eastern part of the country, in the south and around the Crimean Peninsula. In those places, attachment to Russia is a cornerstone of identity. Language is Russian, cultural references are Russian and there is a feeling that Ukraine's relations with Russia should be tight. The divide gives Ukraine a Janus complex: Half the country faces west and half east.
Which direction will triumph depends partly on whether Yushchenko wins on Dec. 26 -- he is considered the overwhelming favorite -- and whether and how he fulfills his promise to shepherd Ukraine toward membership in the European Union. Yanukovych favors political and economic orientation toward Russia.
For most in Lviv, only 40 miles from Poland, joining the E.U. is an imperative. Attitudes heard in conversations over two days last week were remarkably uniform, whether expressed by students, workers or civic activists.
In the runoff, Lviv went overwhelmingly for Yushchenko. After Yanukovych was declared the winner, the Lviv City Council was one of four city governments that recognized Yushchenko as president.
For Chop and his friends, going to Kiev was an individual, impromptu decision. Once in the capital, they found the core organizers at protest headquarters set up inside the former Lenin Museum. A deputy city councilman from Lviv who was also a veteran dissident and political activist ran it.
Chop slept on the apartment floor of an acquaintance and then later in a public building commandeered by protesters. "My soul said I had to do this," Chop said. "Maybe this can spread to other places in the old Soviet Union. Maybe even Russia itself."
Nazar Voyko was working for the Ukrainian Voters Committee, a nongovernmental organization that trained poll watchers and monitored the elections, when the demonstrations broke out. The entire regional office of the organization moved to Kiev. His job was to hand out water to demonstrators. "There was a lot of adrenaline running. I was sad when it was over. I think we became a real country," he said.
