orced Sovietisation. Immigration from Russia and Russian-speaking regions of Eastern Ukraine was encouraged. Despite this, Lviv remained a major center of dissident movement in Ukraine and played a key role in Ukraine's independence in 1991.
Lviv and its population suffered greatly during the two world wars as many of the offensives were fought across the local geography causing significant collateral damage and disruption.
Soviet Union
Expulsion of the Polish population together with migration from Ukrainian-speaking rural areas around the city and from other parts of the Soviet Union altered the ethnic composition of the city which became mostly Ukrainian.
In the 1950s and 1960s the city significantly expanded both in population and size mostly due to the city's rapidly growing industrial base. Due to the fight of SMERSH with the guerrilla formations of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army the city obtained a nickname with a negative connotation of Banderstadt as the City of Stepan Bandera. The word stadt was added instead of the common Slavic grad to imply alienation. Over the years the residents of the city found this so ridiculous that even people not familiar with Bandera accepted it as a sarcasm in reference to the Soviet perception of western Ukraine. By the time of the fall of the Soviet Union the name became a proud mark for the Lviv natives culminating in the creation of a local rock band under the name Khloptsi z Bandershtadtu (Boys from Banderstadt).
In the period of liberalisation from the Soviet system in the 1980s the city became the centre of political movements advocating Ukrainian independence from the USSR.
Independent Ukraine
Citizens of Lviv strongly supported Viktor Yushchenko during the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election and played a key role in the Orange Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of people would gather in freezing temperatures to demonstrate for the Orange camp. Acts of civil
