RC#47: The return of Ernestine’s cousins

published in Eastern Economist #432, May 14, 2002

Back in early February [RC#24], I was pleased to report that Ernestine’s Ukrainian cousins, obstructionist local bureaucrats, seemed on their way to retirement. I’ve had to reconsider that assessment.

            On Mar. 20, I got a little e-mail from a friend in Edinburgh whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. After years of talking about it, she had made up her mind to come to Ukraine to visit me.

            I immediately picked the last week in May as the best of the three times she proposed. “The weather should be ideal,” I wrote back, “and it’s Kyiv Days, which is a wonderful feast here. Zillions of concerts, shows, artists, etc etc.”

            March 22: “Great! I looked up a travel site and return flights are £190-585. Ouch! We’re spoiled here with flights to Venice at £30 each way. For a while, flights to Dublin were free – you only had to pay £10 in taxes. I guess Eastern Europe is ripe for Ryanair or Easyjet. Love, Rach”

            March 25: “Have booked our tickets. I will now get on with visas.... Rachel”

            March 30: “You shouldn’t need anything from me for a visa – they dropped the invitation requirement some time ago – but you never know,” I replied.

            April 12: “Because we’re staying with you and because of our nationalities, John only needs a letter confirming he’s staying with you but as a New Zealander I need (quote) “a letter of invitation” plus confirmation that I’m staying with you. We need ‘private’ visas, but the girl on the phone couldn’t tell me what that really meant. Good news is that there’s a consulate in Edinburgh so I won’t have to pay a private courier to London and back. The Embassy won’t send visas in the post; they have to be handed direct to someone with an official receipt! I can only assume old soviet bureaucracy is still rife in all this! Rachel”

            April 13: “Send me all your passport stats and then I’ll be off and running. Also, a fax number where I can send the letters.”

            April 18: “Did you get the faxes I sent this morning?”

            April 26: “The consulate says John’s stuff is OK, but my invitation needs to be stamped by the police in Ukraine. The consulate bloke wrote BBIP/VVIR on top. I guess you know what that means. A faxed copy will be fine (he says). They’re having some sort of a holiday (May Day, I guess) all next week. Rachel”

            April 26: “I thought all those requirements were dropped long time ago. I’ve never gotten such a stamp and I’ve no idea what they’re looking for. Can you somehow find out? We’re still working Apr. 29-30, and so should the consulate.”

            April 26: “The consulate and embassy only take calls between 09:30 and 12:30. I’ll try faxing today but don’t hold out much hope. Rach”

            April 26: “Hurrah! I faxed them and the consul just phoned me. As an NZer, I still need a police stamp. R.”

            April 29: “Am working on it.”

            April 29: “They say it takes three days to process but I don’t trust them. I may get it and then they’ll say I need something else (that’s been my experience of these things). They’re open again the 7th. R.”

            April 29-30, we spent much of the morning on the phone with the Central VVIR in Kyiv. Finally, we went down to talk to them directly. They refused to explain what the procedure was, or its cost, and sent us to the district VVIR where I live.

            The trouble is, I’m not registered with the VVIR. As a foreign journalist, I’m registered with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

            So I called my contact there, but Viktoria had no idea what I was talking about. “Call this guy at the Visa Policy Department,” and she gave me a number and name.

            When we called, XXX knew nothing about it. “We don’t deal with that kind of thing,” he said and suggested we go to the Central VVIR.

            Meanwhile, the district VVIR wasn’t answering its phone. When we there in person, we were informed the stamp would cost Hr 80 or US $15. Of course, as a foreigner, they wouldn’t give me any stamp.

            We were back where we had started from. Nowhere. And six days of holidays were upon us.

            On May 7, we tried the Central VVIR again, with the same results. The District VVIR was closed until Saturday.

            

May 7: “Was wondering how things are progressing? I hear the weather’s good in Kyiv. Here it’s the usual 10-12° (a Scottish heatwave) so I’m looking forward to some sun. Rachel”

            May 7: “No luck with the VVIRs but a friend said he’ll try through someone he knows. I should know by six. The weather really is wonderful.”

            May 7: “That’s good news! Rachel”

            May 8: “No luck. I’m just going to fax you another version of the letter. Give it a try today if you can.”

            May 8: “I phoned a travel company in Manchester who deal with these things all the time. They thought Edinburgh was more switched on than London, so this gives real food for thought. He confirmed that you won’t get a stamp because you’re a foreigner. I guess I’m going to have to opt out. R.”

            May 8: “Rach! Don’t give up yet. I just talked to my MFA people again. They said to fax you my Ukrainian visa and MFA registration stamp. (Why they couldn’t have said this a week ago, Lord knows.) Anyway, they will try to get a stamp for you Friday morning (tomorrow’s another holiday) if necessary. Saturday is an official Ukrainian workday.”

            May 10: “The MFA girl knows a guy at your consulate personally, Kyrylo. Is that who you’re dealing with? He should be able to do a visa in three days.”

            May 10: “That’s the guy. He first he said three days was enough, then said no, it would take 10 days. He can’t seem to make up his mind. I have no choice but to opt out. Sorry about all this, but if I don’t cancel immediately, I’m £500 out of pocket. Rach”

            We agreed to try again in September.

            Ernestine would have been proud of them all. •

–from the notebooks of Pan O.

RC#45: Spring fever and the Wormwood star

published in Eastern Economist #429, April 23, 2002

In late April, tourist season isn’t quite upon Ukraine, but it’s warm enough now to get out and drive beyond the city. The trouble is, one of the most interesting places is not ready for rolled down windows.
 

            Some 90 km north of Kyiv lies the mouth of a river called the Prypiat. Weaving gently northward, it meanders across southern Belarus, past the town of Mazyr. After giving a bare little kiss to Pinsk, the Prypiat travels back southward into Ukraine again. North of Kovel, it forks off westward and reaches its source not far from the Polish border, at a small town called Zabuzhzhia or beyond the mouth.

            The countryside the Prypiat wanders through is known as Polissia, the great temperate forestland. Here, myriad edible mushrooms grow in all their glory under tall leafy trees. Lush groundcover and sparkling sunbeams made this the Ur-forest. Local farms once boasted healthy dairy cows, grass-munching goats and yards full of clucking chickens.

            Across the region, this was considered the place for picking the best mushrooms, varieties you could never find in a grocery store or even a market. Fresh as the morning dew, tasty as a fairy tale, which is what many Ukrainians likened the Prypiat area to.

            “You could almost imagine a little elf or a pretty fairy skipping out from behind a tree at any moment,” says one elderly Ukrainian woman. “It was that beautiful, that magical.”

            The inviting green landscape still looks like the perfect spot for a picnic. But the trail of mostly deserted villages along the highway is the first sign that it’s not. Then there’s the wired fence and the guards with machine guns standing at the checkpoint.

            Welcome to Chornobyl.

            Today this area, starting where the Prypiat and Uzh rivers meet the Dnipro, is in the restricted area known as the Chornobyl Zone. The 30-kilometer circle drawn around the atomic energy plant that blew up on April 26, 1986.

            “If anyone still has a hankering to see the ‘real’ Soviet Union,” says Johannes Andersen, a Danish writer living in Ukraine, “the Chornobyl Zone offers the perfect encapsulation of that historical and political phenomenon.”

            Clearly many people do. Charter buses, taxis and private cars regularly bring officials, scientists, journalists, and just plain curious folks to the Chornobyl Atomic Energy Station and its surroundings.

            You can get more information about how to do this through your favorite journalist, a local tour agency, or the Emergency Ministry. The cost for a rickety soviet-era bus to take a group up is around US $30, although the ‘tour’ I went on charged US $45 per person – without lunch. It depends somewhat on who organizes it and how much you actually get to see.

            Once we get to the Chornobyl Center, we’re asked to don large cotton coveralls and a white headcover. Our shoes are covered as well with disposable bags. We stash our belongings in lockers for the duration of the tour.

            In contrast to the empty villages as we drove up, here, people walk around as if this were any other normal industrial site. In preparation for an official visit, squads of workers are repairing roads and fixing the landscaping.

            The slogan: SAFETY, EFFICIENCY, SOCIAL PROGRESS greets visitors in the plant’s main entrance hall. In small letters below are listed the 300,000 ‘liquidators’ of the accident. When we look at photos of the destroyed Nº4 reactor, we understand what an impossible task it must have been, containing the radioactive fire and cleaning up the hot debris in the first weeks after the accident.

            Our group trails out onto a rail bridge over a cooling pond. The brownish water is alive with carp spawning, females with fluorescent red pouches of roe on their left sides. They swim almost in place facing our direction, possibly hoping someone will feed them. Some already show the damage of mating frenzy, their sides battered and torn.

            Among them drifts the occasional 2-meter long som with the flat mouth and whiskers of a bottom-feeder. The bottom, of course, is where all the danger lies in this water.

            Our next stop is the town of Prypiat. It was built in 1970 to house what was considered the Soviet Union’s elite, the workers at the new atomic station at Chornobyl. Today, its 16-story apartment towers stand empty and vandalized. When we go inside we see that they are mostly 4-5 rooms with huge sunny windows and balconies galore. It is eerie to see the detritus of so many lives still there, dusty and still.

            On the town square, a yellow ferris wheel stands, probably just the way it was left in 1986. Weeds have penetrated the concrete walks and roadways and straggly grass grows among the young budding chestnut trees.

            A couple of kilometers beyond Prypiat, a “cemetery” of vehicles greets us: huge floppy-eared helicopters, tanks, trucks, buses and cars. They’re all waiting in tidy rows, like well-behaved children, for owners who will never reclaim them. Their paint jobs are standing up well and no one seems to be touching the tires or windows.

            Once we’re back in the Chornobyl Center, we’re told to wash our hands, strip off the cotton clothes, and collect our belongings. We pass through a radiation detector on the way out and get back on our bus.

            In the land of extremity, eating our late lunch is an almost giddily normal event. •

–from the notebooks of Pan. O

Recommended: The Sky Unwashed, a novel by Chicagoan Irene Zabytko; Raspad, a film about Chornobyl that toured the West in the early 1990s.

RC#46: Rising to the occasion

published in Eastern Economist #430-1, April 30-May 7, 2002

If you’ve never been to Lviv, Easter time is probably the best time to go. Since the Julian calendar often celebrates later than the Gregorian, spring is farther along. With any luck, you’ll have pretty well perfect weather.

            A couple of friends and I left a slightly overcast Kyiv by car on May 1st, the beginning of this year’s holidays. By 15:00, we had rolled into Ivano-Frankivsk, where Mykhailo, our sinfully fast driver left us. Slavko and his five-year-old got off just before 17:00 at the village of Noviy Rozdil. That left me to cruise into L’viv alone, just in time for supper.

            My hostess Olha was in the midst of a cooking frenzy, so the selection was good. Green borshch with a nice dollop of sour cream. Fresh baton and kovbasa. A salad of shredded cabbage, carrots, tomato and onions in horseradish mayonnaise with dill on top.

            For dessert, syrnyky made of farmer’s cheese with cherries, walnuts and raisins mixed in. I smothered mine in sour cream. Olha and her 14-year-old daughter chose home-made black currant jam. We washed it all down with some nice hot tea.

            This was the beginning of the Easter eating pentathlon.

            Olha and Yustina had already made three coffee cakes and were busy on a fourth. One was crisply layered with walnuts, poppyseed and cherries. Another one was spotted like a dairy cow with huge patches of ground poppyseed. A third was filled with cherries. While we yakked, Olha cooked up a chocolate icing.

            The next morning, Holy Thursday, was traditionally a cleaning day. But Olha had some last-minute shopping and I needed a haircut.

            Stariy Rynok, the old market, was doing brisk business in an amazing array of foodstuffs, flowers and Easter goodies. Candles, pastry lambs, pysanky. People had come from the Kosiv region to sell the traditional hand-painted eggs. For 50¢, you could pick from dozens of trays up and down the street. I bought a hollowed egg covered in beadwork for about $2.50.

            Olha began Holy Saturday morning dyeing eggs a rich onion skin color. By afternoon, it was time to prepare two baskets for the Easter blessing. I scraped some horseradish roots while Olha laid out kovbasa, smoked ham, salt, cheese, butter, and two Paskas, Easter breads.

            Her husband brought in decorative barvinok and samshyt – periwinkles and box tree greens – from the garden, as well as six vintage pysanky. We carefully packed each basket and covered it with embroidered cloth.

            It was time to join the thousands headed for L’viv’s main park, Shevchenkivskiy Hai – pronounced “high.” Every family carried baskets to the dale, where the Easter ritual had started in the churchyard at 15:00. By the time we had paid respects to the ploshchanytsia, the glass painting of Christ in his tomb, the fourth round of blessings was just beginning.

            Placing our baskets on the grass in the gathering circle, Yustina lit four candles. The wind kept putting them out.

            Young couples held their babies while grandparents snapped pictures. Girls in pinafores and boys in new suits chased around the grass. Behind us, voices sang Easter verses. Dressed in a black hat and short cape with a dramatic green and yellow checked chasuble underneath, the black-bearded abbot finally began his round. Sprinkling holy water on baskets and owners alike, he intoned the Easter blessing.

            As soon as we got back to the house, Yustina wailed, “I haven’t eaten since last night.” That was all the excuse we needed to break out the blessed food right then and there. Late that evening, Olha stuffed some sconces with mocha cream. Dessert Nº5.

            Easter Day was the most glorious food moment of all. Everything that had been so painstakingly prepared the previous three days was now hauled out, laid out on good china, and set on the dining room table. There was a tray of freshly cut Paska bread; a platter of sliced smoked pork shank and olives; a plate of egg halves sprinkled with fresh horseradish; a platter of cod-liver salad on lettuce; a plate of sliced kovbasa and ham; a bowl of apple and egg salad; another with shredded cabbage, greens, tomatoes, and peas in mayonnaise dressing; a plate of garnished carp slices; chicken in aspic; a small bowl of egg and horseradish spread; another of beet and horseradish.

            We toasted with home-made wine and Carpathian cognac while the sun rose and the day grew warmer. By dessert-and-coffee time, I was feeling somewhat incapacitated.

            “Time to work off those calories,” said Roman. We headed back to Shevchenkivskiy Hai to join in the spring rituals known as haïvky.

            It seemed half of L’viv had come out. Particularly the half under 20. A cluster of nuns and postulants in embroidered blouses and black tunics sang songs as we queued at the gate.

            We toured the preserved houses, barns, bee keeps, stables, churches and schools. Near us, a dozen young recruits in camouflage did likewise, guided by an elderly nun. In every open area, people were playing and singing.

            In the main meadow, young people and children had formed circles and were performing rounds. Oy vesno, vesno, Podolianochka, Viyu vinets. Teams of girls challenged teams of boys. Tugs-o-war. Maypoles. I couldn’t remember when I’d last seen a crowd of teenagers playing around like kids.

            Many girls wore embroidered blouses over top ordinary jeans and mini-skirts. So many shapes, colors and designs. There were no two alike in the entire crowd. Tiny little Halychanky wandered around proudly decked out in headband, blouse, vest, waistband and long reddish-brown skirt. But not many boys or men had gone native.

            There was one down side this beautiful afternoon.

            If you wanted a taste of Ukraine – some Dobra voda or Zhyvchyk to quench your thirst or a slice of makivnyk or yabluneviy pyrih to stave off dinner – there was nothing. Not even a bag of chips. Just a pump of well-water where you could fill your own bottle – if you had one.

            If you wanted a souvenir of Lviv, a memento of the Hai, an embroidered towel or shirt to take away, there was nothing.

            At Shevchenkivskiy Hai, Christ may have risen, but commerce is very much dead. •

–from the notebooks of Pan O.

RC#44: Getting Potty

published in Eastern Economist #428, April 16, 2002
The invitation came to me in a plain white envelope with a swirling script that said “Pan O.” When I opened it up, there was a card that twinkled a little around the edges.

            “You are invited to meet with Master Harry Potter at exactly 23:59 and 3/4 on April the 13th. You may bring one very nice friend along.”

            I’d read the first of the Books, so the significance of 9 and 3/4 did not escape me. We would meet at the crossroads between normal time and place and the world of Hogwarts.

            I called around to see who else I knew had been invited.

            Sure enough, a lot of people had never heard of it.

            “Harry who?” they asked indifferently. And promptly began explaining that they were too busy on the weekend to meet new people.

            “What’s a Hogwarts?” they muttered suspiciously. And cautioned me about going to strange places by myself on a Saturday night.

            “Why 59 and 3/4?” they queried irritably. And started in about what a terrible week they’d had, counting the bunions on their feet.

            I could only cheer when I got off the phone that they would immediately forget about our conversation as if sprinkled by Dismemorious powder.

            Of course, all the most interesting people knew.

            My friend the curly-haired witch who runs a small shop selling curios. “My dear Pan O, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I’m going to bring my three spotted cats and orange-faced dog along with me. And my mother-in-law. It will do her good.”

            My neighbor the wizard who can fix anything that rolls. “You’re darn tootin’, I’ll be there! I’m going in my ZAP 2001 with purple handles and double-inflated tires.”

            My other friend the spellbinding singer who has a band that’s out of this world. “My name ain’t Skrypka if the boys and I don’t make it with our bayan, sopilka and boubny.” (Violin, accordion, flute and drums to those of you who don’t know the Slavian language.)

            I invited one little friend who hadn’t got an invitation. She’s named after an ancient Slavian princess and has a long golden braid down her back. Olya squealed with delight when I told her.

            “Mama, can I go, please?” she shouted at the other end of the phone.

            I could hear her braid twitching and her face crinkling in a huge smile when the answer came back.

            “I did all my homework, so Ma says I can go!”

            There was a pause. I could hear her blushing over the phone.

            “Will… Ron be there?”

            “Sure! Maybe he’ll even let you hold his pet rat Scabbers for a bit.”

            At 21:00, I came by her house in my blue ESP 1998 with bead seatcovers and broken side mirror. We were so keen to get a good spot that we only watched half of a scary movie before heading out the door.

            “Make sure you bring Olya back by 01:00,” said her mother sternly.

            We flew down the streets of Kyiv, bumping along the cobbles. There were lots of Muggles wandering around in the dark. Many of them full of beer, many more full of boredom on a Saturday night.

            “Do you think they know?”

            “I doubt it. Harry wouldn’t broadcast this to just anyone, especially a drunken Muggle.”

            It was a little early when we parked my ESP. We wandered down to The Crossing and stopped in front of a dowdy shop called “Mystetstvo.”

            “Ooh,” said Olya. “Look! There are baloons tied to the doorway and windows!”

            Sure enough, in the dark, you could see rows and rows of huge colored baloons. There was a tiny platform hidden in the shadows, with curtains and a poster of Harry chasing a Snitch on his Nimbus 2000. If we squinted just right, we could even see its tiny wings glittering in the dark.

            There was a small crowd gathered, but the Master of Ceremonies, Vasyl the Wolf, said, “Go on inside so you don’t freeze.”

            The store proved much bigger than it looked and thousands of pictures of Harry Potter on his broom gleaming at us from every shelf. “Just for tonight,” explained a tiny woman with a crooked hat, “you can buy Harry’s book for 3/4 of the regular price.”

            The minutes ticked by quickly and before we knew it, the clock said 23:58. We dashed outside to find a huge crowd of people, young and old, big and small, Slavian and otherish. Olya squiggled through to the stage area.

            At exactly 23:59 and 3/4, a stream of odd-shaped lights began playing on the walls around the shop entrance and mysterious music boomed.

            A huge, bearded man in a robe, with hair out to there, wandered onto the stage with a baby bundled in his arms. It’s Hagrid!

            “Harry,” said the giant, slowly unwrapping the cloths around his bundle. “I have brought you here so that you can be taken care of by your friends.” We all held our breaths. Suddenly Hagrid pulled out a huge book with Harry Potter on the cover.

            The crowd roared and cheered.

            “It’s the Sorcerer’s Stone!”

            Before we could blink, Harry himself appeared on the stage, his lightning scar visible to all. “I so happy to be here! I sorry my Slavian not so good! But I learning.”

            The evening went by in a whirl. Ivan Malkovych the publisher of ABABAGALAMAGA, Prof. Dumbledore, Viktor Morozov the translator, Ron, Ihor Slisarenko the television star, Prof. McGonagall, the little Harry Potter look-alike from Ivano-Frankivsk, and Hermione. We couldn’t catch our breaths for gasping and cheering.

            When it was over, we stood there with three Ukrainian copies of The Sorcerer’s Stone in our hands. Signed by Harry himself. It was magic! •

from the star-dusted notebooks of Pan O.

RC#43: The incredible shrinking nation

published in Eastern Economist #427, April 9, 2002

I came across the most curious bits of information about demographic changes in Ukraine since the introduction of the catastrophic political movement known as Bolshevism in 1917.

            One of these was an exerpt from something published in the Kyiv Times/Chas, nearly a year ago. Written by Anatoliy Mokrenko, the director of the National Opera theater in Kyiv, it was hardly a scholarly endeavor. But it was intriguing nevertheless.

            Mr. Mokrenko had got his hands the results of a 1926 soviet census, a process whose results are apparently still a state secret of Russia. He quoted in Russian from “Towards the Great Construction: a workbook for the third grade studies in village schools.” The text was published in 1931 by the State Educational Publishing House in Leningrad.

            “Before my eyes in this textbook are anything-but-secret ‘figures for diagrams,’” Mr. Mokrenko wrote. In particular, there was a table of figures for “How many residents of key ethnic groups live in the USSR.” It looked like this:

Russians              77,791,124

Ukrainians            81,194,976

Belarussians           4,738,923

Uzbeks                 3,904,622 etc.

            Mind you, Mr. Mokrenko points out, this is without counting Western Ukraine, Bukovyna and Zakarpattia, which only joined the USSR in 1939 and 1945.

            Now, it’s well known that Josef Stalin fought an ongoing battle with soviet census-takers. Their figures made the effects of his atrocities all too evident. He even offed the first folks who did a census in 1937 and then simply doctored the (similar) numbers the next lot came up with.

            But 1926 was before Stalin had secured his hegemony. It was the early, “idealistic” years of the Bolshevik Revolution. Still, I couldn’t believe that the number for Ukrainians could have have been 81 million. Maybe 31, or at the most 51, but not 81.

            So I called Mr. Mokrenko and asked him if I could take a look at this textbook he referred to.

            “I didn’t really see the original book,” he said. “It was a facsimile a friend in Sumy sent me.”

            “Any way I can get hold of this friend directly?”

            “No. But I’ve already written him myself to see the original book.”

            When I looked up the same figure in other sources, sure enough, it was given as 31 million. If I ever see that Grade 3 textbook myself, I’ll let you know.

            Mr. Mokrennko went on to compare numbers to the 1979 census, just over half a century later. It was published in a booklet entitled “Population of the USSR,” put out by Politizdat in 1983. Here the ethnic figures looked like this, along with my comparative percentages:

ethnicity            population            % of 1926

Russians            137,397,000            177

Ukrainians*          34,000,000            109**

Belarussians          8,604,000            181

Uzbeks                9,200,400            235

* excluding over 7 million western Ukrainians and taking into account their growth for the period 1945-1979

** standard 31mn figure used for 1926.

            Now, even assuming the 1926 figures was doctored – or simply typset incorrectly – the trend still requires explanation. Russia and Uzbekistan, despite war and repressions, managed to grow by 77% and 135%, while Ukraine grew at best 9%.

            Mr. Mokrenko wrote: “Where did Ukrainians go to during those 50 years? Were they destroyed or just ‘re-labeled’? Almost everybody else’s numbers doubled, while Ukrainians halved [he was using the 81 million figure]. Surely Ukrainians were breeding like any other ethnic group. But it turns out they were disappearing in catastrophic numbers in repressions, wars, artificial famines, assimilation, passportization, and russification.”

            Since Mr. Mokrenko’s speculations were not professionally grounded, I looked at a couple of other studies. The most current was presented last June at the European Population Conference in Helsinki. The author is Alexandre Avdeev from the Center for Population Studies at the Faculty of Economics of the Moscow State University.

            While progress in healthcare accelerated population growth everywhere in 20th century Europe, Avdeev writes, Ukraine seems a roadmap of the dramatic crises of the past. “Among all USSR republics, this country was one of the most severely hit by awful crises.”

Civil war            1917-20

Famine*            1921-23

Holodomor**       1931-33

World War II†      1939-45

Famine              1946-47

* especially Southern Ukraine

** artificial famine during collectivization; affected central and eastern regions the most.

† including Nazi occupation 1941-1944

And, of course, waves of repression and mass deportations in the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s and 60’s.

            In fact, Avdeev writes, from 1931, when Stalin had total control of the Soviet Union, to 1954, when Khrushchev established himself, no vital statistics were published. So Avdeev’s team took it upon themselves to study demographic changes in Ukraine for the period 1926-1965. To determine births, deaths and migrations, they used official records, studies on under-registration, historical works on spontaneous or forced migrations, gulag and deportation camp statistics, and so on.

            They projected, using the base figures available and normal population trends, where the population should have grown to, and the implication of those changes for mortality rates, among others. What they came up with is horrifying.

            For the great famine or Holodomor of the early 1930’s, life expectancy for a Ukrainian male fell to 7.3 years, and female expectancy to 10.8 years.

            During the height of WWII, mortality did not reach quite such a trough, but it lasted much longer. These same indicators fell to 14 for males and 21 for females.

            This certainly supports the idea that Ukraine may have lost more people in the 20th century than any other nation in Europe. But these are numbers no one should have to sleep on. •

–from the notebooks of Pan. O

RC#42: The ballot that cannot be stolen

published in Eastern Economist #426, April 2, 2002

Oh irony of ironies! In China, the rich have taken to the streets in protest. Ukraine doesn’t even have a golf course, and Chinese nouveau righteous are upset that their golf clubs are at risk.

            The Economist just had a little piece about people who bought pricey properties in an exclusive development in Beijing. The developers tried to screw them. They were going to replace the planned recreational land and facilities with more residential buildings. That way, they could sell even more apartments and make even more money. In other words, they were going to increase the density and remove the frills that made people want to pay $60-120,000 per flat in the first place. Call it dilution of estateholder value.

            The scam is not the point – happens every day. The protest is. Those people got out there with placards and bats and started causing mayhem!

            And they got their way.

            Of course, they also established an owners’ committee and hired a good lawyer to take the case to court.

            And they got their way.

            “As long as protesters focus their attention narrowly on the issues that concern them, the government has been willing to listen,” Dali L. Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago was quoted in The Economist as saying. “Such day-to-day demands by ordinary folk will continue to make China a better place.”

            Of course, China is the land of Tienanmen Square and the persecuted Falun Gong. Protest and the risk of person for the sake of a cause are hardly something new. Standing up for what you believe is a tradition, whether you were a communist in 1941 or a democrat in 1991. The Chinese have always done a lot of voting with their feet, whatever the cause, good, bad or ugly.

            The Poles and Hungarians, two of Ukraine’s nearest neighbors, also have a modest and sometimes effective history of public protest. In the last 10-12 years, even downtrodden Romanians and hard-core Serbs said enough is enough and removed their murderous leaders.

            Here in Ukraine, however, decade after decade goes by, abuse after abuse, and the people are mum. Yes, the kvetch factor is very high, but no one raises their head in public protest.

            The fact is, Ukraine has no history of public protest. The closest it ever got was during the kozak era. The kozaks who voted a hetman in could also put on trial and pike the guy if he didn’t satisfy them. Which they did in 1630 with Hrytsko Chorniy.

            But the average Ukrainian was usually at the bottom of the social totem pole, whether under the Poles or under the Russians. There were no Peasants’ Revolts or Glorious Revolutions, no Black Sea Tea Parties or General Strikes. When Ukrainian farmers and peasants refused to collectivize in 1930, they forgot to organize. So they were starved to death by the millions on their tiny bits of devastated land.

            In other words, organized protest has not been a part of the vocabulary of Ukrainians for a very long time.

            Yet public protest is important – what Americans like to call, voting with your feet. Using the strength of numbers and risking somebody’s wrath in order to get something changed. It works with supermarket chains. It works with landlords and developers. It works with government agencies. Sometimes it’s the only way to effect change.

            This is what made last year’s tape scandal such a big deal.

            Suddenly, Ukrainians were mobilized. Or, at least some of them were and the rest took notice. The protest was eventually squelched. For one thing, it wasn’t narrowly focused, as Mr. Yang recommends.

            Still, I think there was change as a result.

            The guys at the top, all of them, are worried.

            Not scared – that would be an exaggeration – but definitely worried.

            Why else would they agree to a better election law? Regardless of how flawed it was, the first time round, it’s been implemented.

            Why else would the television channels be buzzing with debate? The most obscure candidates have managed to get themselves air time and column inches.

            If it was really a done deal, would various tycoon-class politicos try so hard to improve their images? Would the president need to set up a bloc that is obviously “his” political party? In the past, it was good enough to have a “party of power” – regardless of its name.

            A lot of people think that today, more than ever, Ukraine is on its way down in a handbasket.

            I disagree. Politically, Ukrainians are struggling uphill, not down. They’re going against a very, very long grain. But they are slowly going against it.

            Maybe sometime soon, people here will vote again with their feet, as well as with their ballots.

            They could protest the squandering of millions on cheesy sculptures and arches. Or they could get a neighborhood protest going over parklands being destroyed for private construction.

            It’s the day-to-day ordinary issues that can sometimes set bigger change in motion.

            Besides, wen you vote with your feet, there’s no mistaking what you voted for.

            It’s a ballot no one can steal. •

–from the notebooks of Pan O.

RC#41: Po' Polls

published in Eastern Economist #425, March 26, 2002

“Poll reveals links between Ukrainians, bribery and civil servants,” the Deutsche Presse Agentur reported in mid-March. I grabbed the report, thinking it might tell us how people coded telephone messages, which bars they hung out in to cut their deals, and where the drops were.

            But I was sorely disappointed. In fact, I was quite annoyed.

            “Nine out of every 10 Ukrainians has paid a bribe to a government official or knows someone who has,” was the headline-grabbing first sentence.

            Let me say up front that I don’t want to disparage the Ukrainian Center of Economic and Political Research. I have no doubt that they do honest, professional research. I’m sure they do all their screening, polling and compiling using the most modernized, standardized and errorized methodology.

            What’s more, I don’t doubt at all that their numbers are more-or-less right.

            I just don’t like how they reported on them.

            Take the sensationalistic first sentence. If there is a family of 5-6 people and the one who’s the driver paid off a traffic cop, the remaining 4-5 would definitely know about it.

            I just don’t remember when “knowing someone who said they did something” constituted serious evidence of that something. In court, this is called hearsay. And hearsay is usually discounted as evidence.

            The report then admitted that “a whopping 49% of Ukrainians” – leaving out the critical term “polled” – “had personally paid cash to state employees.” The remaining 40% (polled) were “personally familiar with an incident, usually concerning a family member, where a civil servant had accepted cash in exchange for violating the law.”

            Further on, it turns out that “Ukrainians widely consider traffic cops” (and the boys who handle the payment of street-side parking fees, if you ask me) the most common kind of “bribester.” Suddenly, the findings lose much of their punch.

            Before I go any further, I have a confession to make.

            I know a lot of Ukrainians who have paid cash under the table. To get their kids into a particular school. To get their cars past the annual inspection. To get specialized or speedy medical treatment. To get an advertising agency to work with them. To get a decent bed in a hospital. To pay less than the full traffic fine. To get a visa to the US. To get out of going before a judge to pay a fine. And so on.

            Sometimes there is little choice. Others offer cash themselves. Lots of it has to do with jumping queues, getting around official rates, or speeding up procedures.

            Some of these payments are direct. Some are in the form of “contributions” of one kind or another.

            I even know some foreigners who have done the same. To get a project approval or a license. To get out of paying a discriminatory rate that is more than twice what locals pay for the same service. To avoid going before a judge. And so on.

            But let’s get back to what this poll admits is the most common situation where blood money exchanges hands in Ukraine: with traffic cops. Personally, in nearly five years of driving around this country, I’ve never been asked to pay a bribe or to settle “unofficially.” Whenever I’ve been fined on the spot (this practice was dropped in May 2001), I’ve always been given a receipt for the full amount – a whopping UAH 17 ($3.20 at the time).

            An American friend of mine, who did a lot more driving than most people I know, told me once, back in the States: “If I can engage a cop in a conversation, he’ll never fine me.”

            I took his advice to heart here in Ukraine. Most of the time, I’ve argued, kidded, wheedled, pled, or smiled my way out of fines. Including one that would have cost me about US $100 because I failed to recognize on a dark rainy night that a big bus following me down the road and cutting me off was a cop trying to ticket me! In the end, this guy fined me a more reasonable Hr 20 for a minor violation. I gladly paid it and got my receipt.

            No cop has ever asked me for a kopek on the side. They’ve been unbearably rude at times, but no baksheesh.

            Of course, my lone experience doesn’t constitute proof of anything much, either.

            But if the perception is correct, that Ukraine is Europe’s “most corrupt country,” below even Russia and Albania, as Transparency International says, this UCEPR poll is hardly a good example of hard evidence.

            For instance, which 2,033 Ukrainians were polled? Judging by the main suspects – traffic cops, judges, college profs – no rural Ukrainians were polled. In fact, I’m willing to bet most polls don’t touch many parts of the population. People without phones, people out in the countryside, people in hospitals or sanatoria, housebound pensioners. This survey, like most, was based largely on working age, urban Ukrainians.

            What you end up with is this: “Nearly one in two urbanites aged 18-60, representing 30% of all adult Ukrainians, have paid a cash bribe to a government official, usually a traffic cop.”

            It’s the truth. But it sounds a lot less impressive.

            There was a reason for this. The UCEPR seems to have had an agenda. “The poll’s results contradicted claims by members of the government running for re-election to parliament that reports of corruption were exaggerated.”

            Unfortunately, the way this poll was presented only confirmed the claims of these politicians – that reports about corruption are exaggerated. I agree. •

– from the notebooks of Pan O.

Note: 12 Ukrainians in Kyiv ranging in age from 19 to 38 were polled for this piece. The margin of errror depends on how many of them fibbed.