Posted on 11/24/2010 2:25:09 PM PST by franksolich
It was in late November 1994 that I knocked on the door in one of the ubiquitous Khrushchev-era four-story "workers' flats" in a remote neighborhood of Kiev. It was late afternoon and dark as midnight, both outdoors and in the hallway.
Such flats consisted of one large room for a single family, and a communal kitchen and bathroom used by four or five families. At times, there was more than one family in a room, however, and some sort of portable folding screen used to separate the real-estate.
Such flats were inevitably filthy, the notion of "sharing" being that one person (or family) would make a mess, and someone else would have to deal with it. Because of this, most simply installed a hot-plate somewhere in the large room so as to avoid having to use the kitchen, and a personal chamber-pot so as to avoid having to use the other communal room. Some of the wealthier residents kept chickens in a cage on the balcony outside, or in rare instances actually let chickens roam the room.
I was there, as invited and expected, to spend Thanksgiving with the only American--other than the cowardly staff of the U.S. Embassy--I was ever to meet in Ukraine, a bubbly, effervescent woman in her late twenties, about ten years younger than myself, from Long Island, New York.
I had met her at the U.S. Embassy the morning I had been "found," my sixth day in Ukraine.
(Excerpt) Read more at conservativecave.com ...
ping for the list; if anyone wishes on or off, please holler at me
Interestingly as an aside, the favored buildings to live in are either the very old ones (Tsarist era) or "Stalinka" meaning built during Stalins era due to the better quality of construction.
Kruchev era buildings are generally looked down upon as inferior overall.
bflr
I've been three times. Absolutely love the place!
It's not nearly as dismal these days as was described in the story --though it still demands something of a hearty soul.
It's changed considerably. I'm not sure in what ways, as I haven't ever been back, but from correspondence, it's sort of different now.
But I was there immediately following the break-up of the socialist empire, when all was in disarray.
You, sir, are perhaps familiar with Lvov (Lviv), in western Ukraine. I was there a few times 1995-1996, but only for short times, as it was more "western" than the rest of Ukraine (and hence more expensive).
On one street, workmen were carefully tearing up the medieval cobblestones, the antique rocks.
I inquired as to what was going on, and was told the then-vice-mayor of Lvov was building a new house, and wanted this for it.
Such blatant theft would have shocked me a year earlier, but by then, I was, uh, enured to it.
Without revealing too much detail--this is after all the open-wide internet--what took you to Ukraine?
Business, pleasure, curiosity?
Please keep me on your list, I truly enjoy your stories and your writing.
It should still be "Lwów"!
My wife is from the Donbas region of Ukraine, we were married over there and have returned to visit her family a couple of times since.
Thanks interesting... Thank God I was born in America..
There's always a problem with these names of cities, especially when they're being changed all the time.
I believe there's about eight different ways of spelling "Kiev," for example.
People in the socialist paradises used to spend a great deal of time and energy and patience trying to explain the differences, but myself being deaf, I can't hear any subtle nuances in a word.
So I just spell the cities the way I'm used to seeing them spelled; in the case of Ukrainian place-names, the Russian and not the Ukrainian version. "Kharkov" looks eminently reasonable to me; "Kharkiv" looks a little odd.
A quirk however is that while I call most cities in the socialist paradises by their pre-socialist names, for some odd reason the brain is still stuck on "Voroshilovograd" rather than "Lugansk." The other pre-socialist names don't give any problems, just that one.
Thanks much. Good reading.
Thanks much. Good reading.
It was quite a scandal at the time but died down later.
Still, a gorgeous country. It is quite something to stand by the window in your rail compartment looking over the fields of grain and losing sight of them over the curve of the earth.
One thing that stood out among the new houses being built by the bosses of Ukraine was that they seemed, for the most part, to prefer Norman-castle architecture, the round towers, the crenelations, the gates. I always thought western European architecture a little, uh, out of place where the Byzantine style dominated.
Still, a gorgeous country. It is quite something to stand by the window in your rail compartment looking over the fields of grain and losing sight of them over the curve of the earth.
The further one went west towards Poland, the more one felt as if one had returned to Europe, to a more orderly, neat, solid civilized world.
But as it was expensive there, all these westerners throwing around money as if leaves falling off trees in autumn, while I went that direction many times, I stayed only very short times.
My heart was pulled more towards the workers and peasants in the eastern half of Ukraine; the grey dreary dull monotonous metallic Soviet "new world for the new man."
Once when in Lvov, I met a man who told me that although he had been born and raised in Lvov, he wanted most of all to move to the capital, Kiev, in eastern Ukraine.
He said life was "better" in Kiev.
I was dumbfounded. The difference between the two cities was enormous; it was as if Lvov was Oslo, and Kiev Calcutta.
I could never figure that out.
It is fun to sit in a cafe on Kreschatik Street in summer and girl watch.
Not all Ukrainian girls are pretty of course, but the ones that are are striking.
I grew up in small-town west Texas and am quite used to flat lands with lots of agriculture. Apparently my hosts had not had any guests who were used to this, and they seemed to be surprised that I did not react to the landscape around Khmelnitsky with wonder. I kept saying it just looked like home to me.
Now, the things I *did* react to also seemed to surprise them. We drove past a big gated entrance to something and I caught site of two aircraft flying low on the horizon, as if they had just taken off. I asked if there was an Air Force base nearby. A little while later, at a checkpoint, I asked my host (a military vet) if the guns carried by the local police were AKs. He said something to my interpreter that she obviously did not want to translate. Eventually, she said, “You ask about guns and military. He wants to know if you are CIA?”
I'm still not sure whether he was serious or not.
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