RC#9: Voodoo 1, 2, 3 & 4

published in Eastern Economist #385, June 18, 2001
Only the ouija knows

It’s been a long time since they offered alphabet soup in the dineteria, but this week, the ladies were really stirring it up. I picked up my bowl, placed it next to the oseledets, took a hunk of bread and paid the lofty sum of Hr 1.76 for my subsidized meal. But it was the contents of my soup that interested me the most as I sat down at my favorite spot by the window overlooking Mariyinskiy Palats. I like using alpha soup like a ouija board, although I prefer to play with the quick than with the dead.

            Sure enough, up at the top, the quickest letters of all, U and S, were swimming around confidently. Ho hum, I thought as I took up my spoon. When I scooped the US up, the letters G, U and M started to float up. That’s no news, either. American chewing gum is already giving Dirol and Stimorol a run for their money on the Ukrainian market. Sure enough, fast behind them, another U and an A floated up.

            I slurped the lot up and the letters C, A and T came to the surface. Rats, I forgot (again) to get a new bag of kitty litter. That meant another sidetrip and agonizing with the fat, heavy bag on the Metro tonight. Feeling a little annoyed, I scooped the letters up. What a way to spend a Friday night! When I looked down again, the letters R and C were swimming up. Sure, the Pope’s coming to town and nobody knows what to do with him. The city seems to be closing down main arteries as fast as you can slice ’em – perhaps in the hopes that he will give up and do his thing in Fastiv instead. But just then an A and an E joined them. That’s the ticket, I thought. Get that kitty litter on Saturday instead, after checking out the Formula-1 drag-racing on Khreshchatyk. With any luck, I could use my fake press pass and go for a spin with the lucky Finn.

            But then I started putting two and three together. Wasn’t the US really tickled about the upstart alliance of Ukraine and four of its weakest neighbors? That made more sense than Stimorol. Sometimes these ouijas take a little figuring out before you understand the real message. In your face, Mother Russia, I thought as I gobbled the whole mess down.

Trading places

For a guy that’s mostly boring and inarticulate, Leonid Kuchma manages to come up with some pretty wild stuff when he hangs around with his foreign buddies. When he launched the Illichevsk freight terminal near Odesa with Turkmen President Niyazov, it was: “If you go far enough West, you ultimately reach the East.” On a quick trip to Slovakia this week, our President joined his counterpart, Rudolf Schuster, in a home-visit to the Slovak’s native village of Medziev. There, under a spreading oak tree, the local smithy invited the Ukrainian to “forge his dream” in steel. So adept was Mr. K, that the blacksmiths’ union certified him a professional koval in the Repubic of Slovakia. What dream had he forged? That only came out in an interview with the Slovak paper Pravda the next day. “I dream of resignation,” said Kuchma. “But this dream is only in my head. I can’t really get up and resign. If I were premier, I could. But I’m the President. I owe it to the 16mn people that voted for me.” Millions of Ukrainian hearts cried out on hearing this, Try us, Mr. K.

Quick bucksy

Journalists take note: a new form of “on-the-spot” blackmail has joined the list of despicable activities media occasionally engage in. The other day, Russia’s new Ambassador Victor Chernomyrdin put up a posh reception to celebrate Russia Day June 12 at the National Philharmonia in Kyiv. The spread was impressive, of course, as befits a sable-rattling imperial power: over 500 representatives of the Ukrainian and Russian beau monde had the opportunity to snort as much black beluga and red salmon caviar as they could handle in the course of two hours. Alas, several Ukrainian politicians proved to be not so very “beau” as they apparently tried to smuggle out bottles of cognac and horilka inside their jackets. One deputy was caught in flagrante on video, sneaking a bottle of Hennessy into his breast pocket. When he saw that he was on candid camera, the gentleman dashed after the operator and – so the rumor goes – bought the tape from him for US $100. That’s a good sight better pay than most of these sods probably get from their TV studios…

Match made in heaven

Dubbed Ukraine’s Zhirinovsky, Yabluko faction bad boy Oleksandr Charodeyev, the same guy who spilled compote on another deputy in the VR cafeteria not long ago, has always stood out from among deputies for his extravagant behavior. His most notorious performance was a rant against UNA-UNSO nationalists, wherein he called on Ukraine’s special Berkut forces to “come up with a solution.” To the credit of the country’s lawmakers, the uncharming Charmer was barred from the legislature for five days. In another incident, Charodeyev called Rukh-U deputy Yaroslav Kendzior a homosexual in front of the entire parliament, right from the podium – adding in Russian, for good measure, “Kakoye shchastie, chto pederasty ne razmnozhayutsia” or “What luck that faggots don’t reproduce.” Mind you, the handsome and well-built Kendzior himself is no small shakes at being a bad boy, having punched out a fellow deputy over some political sore point back in 1995. Could this be a case of like attracting like, Mr. Charodeyev? •

–from the notebooks of Pan O