17 Postcard Images of Lviv, USSR 1974

In the 70s Lviv was an industrial, administrative and cultural centre in the Ukrainian SSR popular with tourists due to its historic city centre.

Utterly devastated during the war the population had fallen to 150,000 in 1945, but by the time these photos were taken, 1974, it had grown to around 780,000. The population has since declined somewhat.

The photographs include streetscapes, monuments, significant buildings like the Palace of Sports and railway station, architectural landmarks, and pictures of the university and the ballet and opera theatre named for Ivan Franko, the famed Ukrainian socialist, radical writer and thinker of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The cards here were meant for an international as well as domestic audience and were in English, French, Ukrainian and Russian. We have provided the English language descriptions.

Hill of Glory

I. Franko State University

Market Square

Palace of Sports

I. Franko Opera and Ballet Theatre

Reunion Square

Monument to Adam Mitskevich

Adam Mickiewicz was an early 19th century poet, writer and political activist.

Ethnographic Museum

Branch of the Lenin Central Museum

Railway Station

Fountain on Mitskevich Square

Ivan Franko Monument

Powder Tower. An architectural landmark of the 16th Century

Boims Chapel. An architectural landmark of the 17th Century

Lenin Avenue

Part of the Monument of Glory to the Soviet Army

Lenin Monument