Villa Gross

Villa Gross, another luxury goods store opened in Kyiv the other day. We are living in times that are forgiving of weak translations .

"Dolls" Exhibit Opens!

Ola's new art exhibit opened successfully last Thursday, 27.09.07, at Suzirya on Jaroslavyj Val 14. The exhibit will remain at Suzirya until October 14th and is open for viewing throughout the day, including weekends. More details here.

Ola's description of the exhibit:

"Dolls, more specifically Ukrainian dolls, are not just representations of human beings but symbolic in various ways. For some, nostalgia for childhood and for others simply toys. They can be cute, awkward, still or alive, but never perfect just like us. Most amazingly they say so much with silence and their simplicity."

Ukraine Advances No. 7 Car Market in Europe

Ukraine continues to climb the charts in terms of automotive markets in Europe. Good for business. Bad for traffic. In August alone over 51,000 new vehicles were registered in Ukraine. (Data Courtesy of Auto-Consulting)

Stagebuilders on Speed

If anyone, other than billboard owners, is making any money on these elections it's the stage builders of this town. Massive stages complete with walls and ceilings are erected for a day of political propaganda and then hastily disassembled. Up and down they go. All over the city. Here is PoR's, on Maidan - almost as big as Elton John's.

Putin's Dacha Neighborly Relations

Similar to my oligarch neighbor, it appears Putin's causing waves in his dacha neighborhood too. interactive map from WSJ

Morning Commute

On Tuesday half my management team was two hours late due to yet anothergrizzly accident on Moscow Bridge. Two dead.

Kyiv Post just published an relevant article: Surge in roadway accidents detected.

...fatalities grew by 22.9 percent from 4,425 deaths in 2006 to 5,596 in 2007 DAI head Alexei Kalinskiy said that accidents are up by 34.8 percent during the first eight months of this year to more than 163,000 compared to 120,000 recorded during the same period in 2006.

Tips for surviving your commute based on my observations: drive a big car with air bags, stay out of the left lane when there is an opposing traffic lane and no guard rail, and don't drive fast.

Political Creatives

Saturday was the last day poll data, regarding the elections, could be released to the public. If I heard correctly on Radio ERA while driving the girls to ballet, at this point the polls look like 34% PoR, 23% BYuT, 11% NUSO, and small stuff, under 3% for socialists, commies, and others. From now on, no ratings.

Kyiv is fully pasted over with political propaganda. Three main types of outdoor advertising is in use. The standard billboard, the rectangular, hanging over the street "Trolley" adverts, and the sort of flags/banners that are affixed to telephone or light poles along the sides of the streets.

The parties in their wisdom and their counseling from professional PR people have taken some different approaches:

Of course we have the braid...


The glasses....



and more glasses...


then the arm...


heck, schemes PoR, Yanukovych's mugshot isn't exactly eye-candy, why not just put up our amazingly cool slogans:


and the commies take a whole wall....

Morning Commute Observations

Traffic. Pollution. People waiting for marshutkas. People following the rules of road. People breaking them. Black smoke clouds billow from an ancient bus that lumbers down the road tilted a little to the right. Fender-benders with drivers squaring off, screaming into mobiles and gesticulating at one another. Major accidents see photos here. I passed this scene en route to work last Tuesday morning -- though after the bodies were removed.

Many interesting customs, bordering on superstitions, pervade Ukrainian society (per my exposure to it). Don't shake hands across a door entrance way. Don't speak about a baby before it's born, etc. One thing that is NOT apparently taboo is showing dead bodies in the media: T.V., in press, and online.

It is very strange seeing dead crash victims during my commutes. I've seen at least a dozen during the last few years. The pedestrian that was crossing a highway, at night, dressed in black (and drunk?). The two teenagers thrown 10 meters from their moped. T-shirts, no helmets, and lots of blood. Corpses trapped in cars with dutiful men from raytivnycha sluzhba using massive hand tools, "jaws of life", to rip sheet metal and get access to them. There's this instant dissociation that occurs in my head. Like I'm on a movie set. It's not real. They're actors. But they are not actors. They are real dead people I pass on my commute.

Svoboda Slova

I learned and interesting tidbit today. There are actually TWO Svoboda Slova's now that Savik Shuster has moved his show from ICTV to INTER (for which he is being sued).
Apparently, there is also one on 5 Kanal, hosted in Ukrainian. So I no longer need to decipher Mr. Shuster's Russian (although it has become a lot easier for me lately). Friday night political T.V.

My Neighbor the Oligarch

I have yet to see the oligarch but I know he exists. His home construction, eight houses down the street from us, is not yet finished. I do know he visits periodically. On my way home I sometimes see his black and grey Rolls Royce parked in front of the site looking incredibly clean on the yellow dirt and construction trash. The Oligarch's Rolls is never alone. Oligarch cars travel in packs. The supporting collection of Sport Utility Vehicles, a Mercedes, a Lexus and a Toyota Prado, also park in front of the construction site. The malnourished looking drivers stand in a little circle of Pryluky tobacco smoke nervously gesturing to one another and glancing at the site entrance lest one of the bosses exit. What are these extra vehicles for I wonder. Security personnel? Friends? Part of the his entourage?

We have some big houses in our neighborhood, but generally people keep to themselves, park their cars inside their two meter walls and mind their own business. The road we live on was peaceful until Rolls Royce Oligarch started visiting. The road is lined with houses on one side and a national park forest zapovidnyk on the other side. In the evenings people stroll on the road. When I turn the corner I typically see a pair of mothers each pushing a baby carriage with one hand and holding a plastic liter bottle of Chernihivske in the other. I see men walking dogs and old women, in their year-around snow boots, walking cows home from the pasture. If I'm returning from work late in the evening less people are walking and more are congregating in small groups at the intersections which have at least a single light post working. Teenagers laugh and play music on their mobile phones and old ladies with their hair covered in scarves gossip.

A few weeks back everything changed on our street. Actually, the street itself changed. In the span of five days the Rolls Royce Oligarch built a second road, 10 meters to the left of our current road and parallel to it. He cut out a piece of the Zapovidnyk and laid a road down in five days flat. I am sure all the permits for cutting into the National Park were secured legally and transparently. Not. Witnessing the daily progress led me to conclude that things can get built insanely quickly here in Kyiv. The mohorytch's (sp?) that he (or his people) organized almost nightly during the construction, right there outside, by his new road, must have been part of the permitting process. All this construction of course begs the question: why did he build this second road immediately parallel to the first road? My question was answered in the next few days when workers started building a wall from the existing front wall of the Oligarch's house, across the old road and turning a corner at the border with the new road. The Oligarch was unhappy with the size of his front yard and decided to expand it to encompass the area of the street that passes in front of his current fence. To accomplish this he needed the second road so that others could still get by. So now all the neighbors have two roads in front of their houses. One that stretches across the front of all the houses on the street (the new one), and the old one that also stretches in front of all the houses on the street EXCEPT one Rolls Royce Oligarch house.

Yulia Addresses Western Investors

Yulia Timoshenko - BYuT's Contract with Investors was a carefully managed meeting between Yulia and EBA and AMCHAM members in the recently opened Hyatt St. Sophia. The room was packed. Simultaneous translation was provided for those that required it and press kits included english and ukrainian version of a three page policy summary entitled "Contract With Investors". At the end of her impressive speech, she made a point of signing two copies, handing one to the head of EBA and one to the head of AMCHAM. I really dug the results oriented approach in everything she spoke about. Tangible project steps were outlined and timelines were stated. Like all good politicians she outlined broadsweeping reforms in a wide variety of sectors. Her answers to questions from the audience were concrete, thorough and intelligent. She seemed on top of the issues.


In a bizarre twist near the end of the meeting, an elderly man in the back of the room stood up and introduced himself as a Congressman from the USA. He then proceeded to quote the bible and lectured Yulia not to succumb to pride as a result of all the media attention. Again quoting the bible, he recommended that she not allow herself to be isolated from the counsel of many wise people in the citizenry that may seek access to her. Yulia, listening through the simultaneous translation, had a quizzical look on her face. Not sure where this was going. Finally, the self-proclaimed Congressman concluded with: "I was recently back in Washington for a visit and I was asked by various high-level officials about what it was like in Ukraine. They were particularly interested in what 'this Yulia Timoshenko' was like. I answered that Yulia is a visually a pretty woman, conducts herself always as a lady, thinks like a man(?), and works like a horse." what?

If I had to pick between BYuT, PoR, and Nasha Ukraina, (which i don't) it's a no brainer to pick BYut. Like my journalist friend commented at the meeting. "She takes a lot of criticism but she is definitely a strong force in Ukrainian politics. She will be around for a long, long time."

As an aside, in conclusion, she announced the launch of her english-language website www.ibyut.com today and encouraged the meeting participants to visit it.

An Eight Month Break

Time flies. I decided to take little break from the blog and little very quickly mushroomed to 9 months. Wow. Well, I'm still here and Ukraine is still here. Time to blog again.

Bandura Evening

In the U.S. for the holidays, we were nonetheless treated to a fascinating piece of Ukrainian culture at a friend's holiday party. Two of the top Bandurists from Ukraine, Taras Lazurkevych and Oleh Sozansky performed a few Christmas carols to raise funds for their project described on a leaflet as:

"...the renaissance and development of the Kharkiv (Poltavska) bandura which has been almost forgotten in Ukraine. With the help of you kind koliada donation, it will be possible to complete a much needed bandura workshop in Lviv, Ukraine."

The brief performance was organized by Oleh Mahlay, artistic director and conductor, of the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus (www.bandura.org). From his introductory words I learned that the bandura is an instrument unique to Ukraine. I was also interested to learn about a little-known Kobzar (Bandurist player) convention in 1934 where Kobzars assembled from all over Ukraine only to be arrested and murdered. The facts are only starting to surface about this horrible tragedy. Wikipedia mentions the event:

"In recent years significant evidence has come to light that an ethnographic conference for bandurists, specifically for blind kobzars and lirnyks, was organised in Kharkiv in December of 1934 which was attended by approximately 300 blind musicians who were subsequently arrested and murdered."

If anyone has any leads regarding this conference I'd like to explore it further. If anyone would like to help build the bandura workship in Lviv, please contact Oleh Mahlay at (www.bandura.org).

Seventh-Kilometer Market (Odesa)

During a recent visit to Odesa we visited the famous “Seventh-Kilometer” open-air market. Located on the outskirts of town, apparently on the seventh kilometer of the Odesa ring road, the rynok encompasses 70 hectares that stretch as far as the eye can see. A crowded one and two-story tall city of improvised sales booths (numbering 16,000 according to Wikipidea) lies beyond an expansive set of surprising well organized parking lots, bus stops, and marshutka depots. In the distance, a hillside is covered with steel ocean shipping containers converted to retail sales booths creating a visual tapestry of maroon, dark green, and blue squares lined up like children’s blocks against the grey sky on the horizon. The booths are arranged in long rows separate by tiny aisles crawling with bargain seeking shoppers. Under the pretext of looking for a leather winter coat, we walked down an aisle of winter coat booths that was probably a kilometer long, only to turn and see yet another winter coat aisle of the same length, and another, and so on. We walked almost continuously for four hours within what seemed like one small section of the market. Our guide Masha, the Odesyt, estimated that we had explored maybe 5% of the whole market.

The booths vary in architectural approach from the garden variety steel frame covered with cheap canvas to actual mini, two-story buildings with floors, roofs complete with rain gutters, and lighting. On the hillside, the old ocean containers are opened at one end, a table is setup at the entrance, and voila one has a ready made store complete with inventory storage facilities. I am amazed at the display of ingenuity and resourcefulness evident in the way the booths are engineered. The way the inventory is stored in tiny spaces yet instantly accessible could be a lesson for any logistics warehouse manager. Standing in front of a booth with hundreds of buttons and other sewing accessories, for example, we ask for one of the belt buckles and the woman behind the table finds it instantly in her lattice of shelves, containers and labeling methods. Walking through the noisy, crowded aisles past the endless booths is almost akin to an athletic event. Periodically we make room for vendors pushing their home made carts aggressively down the aisle yelling out their ala carte menus. Hot tea, coffee, roasted peanuts, varenyky, hachipuri, lavash, lula kebab, and many other items are offered for a reasonable sum during your shopping process. The storekeepers fend off the December chill by smoking and sipping cognac from small white plastic cups. The glaring lack of garbage cans in the entire complex leads to collections of empty cognac bottles on the ground in small piles at the end of each aisle. The subsequently happy sales people often converge with each other along booth boundaries to pass the time as shoppers steadily stream past. The mechanics of the sales process, that have probably evolved very little in thousands of years, are in full swing. We pretend we don’t really need the item we're negotiating for and the store keeper pretends that he doesn’t really need to sell it. Then each side argues mightily to advance their position of disinterest while, in parallel, the price point is adjusted almost as an afterthought. I admired the inventiveness of a few of the store keepers who replaced the standard, plain awnings (typical for each booth) with colorfully patterned ones to help the shopper, and potential customer, remember the booth and possible return.

The cash based, unregulated free-market principles at play gave the market an certain energy attracting 150,000 customers daily. Products range from genuine (in my opinion), to third-shift products (unsanctioned product runs by official manufacturer subcontractors in the far east -- generally with cheaper raw materials), to out-right knock-offs. We passed through the sewing supplies section where fake Dolce and Gabana, Armani, Brioni, Louis Vuitton, Adidas, and Nike labels were on sale by the roll. When I took a picture the storekeeper smiled and asked why. We I replied that it was just out of curiosity he said "Takoho ne buvaye".

In the end, we found the perfect winter coat (factoring in our suspicions that it may be a knockoff), conducted the requisite negotiation, bought some parsley and dill from a passing vendor and left the Seventh Kilometer as satisfied customers.

ICTV - Freedom of Speech Show

ICTV 22.12.06 Svoboda Slova

lutsenko standing at the podium being questioned by Kinakh, Symonenko, Chornovil, Lytvyn, Shufrych etc:

"...as soon as we returned deputy immunity we returned large scale corruption
the level of corruption now is unprecedented.

the divisions in Ukraine are false.
the current government is using false divisions to rob the country.

i don't want to lead a party, and i have been offered to run one..as everyone knows (alluding to Nasha Ukraina)

i am going to the people
i will circle Ukraine
we don't need colors.
we need blue and yellow.

ukraine is united by laws and by fairness. it is time to start talking about these things no?

i want to go to the people. it may work, it may not. but this corruption has to stop. i want Ukraine to be a country where one can walk around without security and not fear for their safety.

to Taras Chornovil: Tarase you and i did stand at the barricade against Kuchma, with your father as well. I remain there, against any kuchma, and you Taras went over to the same forces you fought earlier.

i can guarantee you that the majority of socialists think the way i do.

re: yulia timoshenko, you call her an opportunist, but she gave a budget that helped people. that doubled their salaries. yours only increases it 7%. 7% with tariffs up 350% percent. you have declared war on the people in each household.

you continue to say the country is divided
a divided country is easier to steal from.

you continue to say that you are defending us from NATO. you think NATO will be ok without us?

today all actions are in motion to make the Ministry of Internal Affairs an administrative resource again.

Kuchmism is back. It's all back. The same words, the same criminal schemes...but it won't work because Ukraine is not the same. Ukraine is different after the events of 2 years ago. If we Ukrainians have to go back to the streets we will go back to the streets. If we need drums we will have drums again.

Thank You iTunes

Since I live in Kyiv my means of keeping up with music is most commonly Apple's iTunes (online) Music Store. The occasional visit to scan the new releases makes me feel somehow youthful again. Not anymore. Now that Apple has so generously decided to keep track of my preferences and my purchases in their databases, I have earned the distinction of being offered "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round - by Barney" upon arrival at the site. Please. Is there no escaping that androgynous purple monster?

Parmesan Trattoria

This new restaurant serves mainly Italian fare as the name suggests. Located at the top of Andriyvskiy Uzviz, across from St. Andrew's Cathedral, Parmesan provides a small, cozy yet modern atmosphere. It has a good selection of wines and an interesting menu. I've only tasted the Tortellini with Raw Ham Prosciutto (77 uah) and I have to say it's the lightest, most delicate and tasty Tortellini I've ever had. With business guests from Germany we arrived at 10:30 pm on a Tuesday evening. The restaurant was still fully staffed and cheerful. The service was exquisite and the kitchen remained open as long as we liked without so much as a comment from the wait staff. Certainly worth a try. I'll be back. Parmesan Trattoria, 34B Andriyivsky Uzviz, +380 44 278 54 45, cpkorsar@svitonline.com

"Orange Chronicles" (Screening in New York)

The "Orange Circle" will be screening Damian Kolodiy and Peter Zielyk's documentary film "Orange Chronicles: A personal journey through Ukraine's Orange Revolution" on Tuesday, December 12th, in New York at the Anthology of Film Archives (32 2nd Ave at 2nd St.) at 7pm. Tickets are $10 (no advance tickets). From the flyer:

"Damian Kolodiy arrived in Kyiv on November 16th, 2004 and remained in Ukraine for all of the nation's historic Orange Revolution. From Kyiv to Donetsk to Odesa to Lviv, Kolodiy's documentary 'The Orange Chronicles' examines the watershed event through the poignant observations and personal interaction with Ukrainians on all sides of the debate."

For more information email: OrangeDoc@gmail.com or visit www.orangechronicles.com

Holodomor: An Act of Genocide

Yesterday, 28.11.06, the Verkhovna Rada historically passed a law declaring the Holodomor as an act of genocide. This is a remarkable step for Ukraine and significant win for President Yushchenko who went out on a limb by "demanding", not "requesting" that the VR vote as such.

Along the same lines, below is my reply to the email from Peter Dickinson, What's On magazine. I am indebted greatly to Marko R., Sev O., Dr. Jurij B. for quickly and concisely educating me about the Holodomor. In the end, I have come away with an abundant understanding of how little I know about the Holodomor and Ukrainian History in general. I look forward to expanding that knowledge. Several books about Holodomor, Stalin, etc. have been recommended to me. I plan to explore these and welcome any historical reading suggestions. Thank you.

Dear Mr. Dickinson,

Thank you for your reply and the clarification of your position.

Regarding your response, I believe that your characterization of the issue as a dichotomy “At core the issue is whether these people were murdered because they were Ukrainians, or because they were peasants” only confuses the issue. The people were targeted because they were Ukrainian and they were peasants.

Although the communist authorities decided that famine was not a practical tool for repression of Ukrainian nationalism in urban areas, repression in cities was well underway in the form of discrimination, repression of Ukrainian language schools, books, Ukrainian churches, mass imprisonment, executions, and deportation to Gulags (cf. released NKVD/KGB archives). Is being tortured to death in the city, for political reasons, somehow less horrifying than being starved to death in the countryside?

Historians can argue whether or not the primary aim of the Holodomor was political repression of Ukrainians, clearly there were other elements and objectives in play as in any war, genocide, or jihad. However, the fact that other elements were in play does not negate the genocidal component of a specific nationality being destroyed.

If applying your suggestion of a dichotomy to WWII would you argue that there was no genocide against Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, etc.. because WWII was motivated by other objectives (economic for one)? WWII happened for many reasons but these factors do not negate the fact that Jews and others were specifically targeted because of who they were.

Stalin’s targeting of nationalistic peasants in Ukraine more severely than nationalistic city-dwellers doesn’t lessen the fact that they were targeted for their nationalism. The fact that this nationalism coincided with a revolt against communists and collectivization doesn’t lessen the genocidal aspects of the man-made famine.

Israel Charny “Century of Genocide” has said that it is easier to prove doubt and win than it is to prove what really took place. Those that exclude the Ukrainian Holodomor from discussion limit the discourse on genocide and risk succumbing to a “selective perception of evil”. The VR in its historic decision yesterday decided not to be among the deniers, minimizers and obfuscators of genocide that assault survivors one more time. By legally declaring the famine a genocide they have truly taken a pro-Ukraine step. My congratulations.

Best regards,

Petro

Answer from Editor of What's On Regarding Holodomor

The following is an answer to my letter to the editor (see earlier post).

Dear [Petro],

Thank you for writing in and sharing your thoughts on last week's editorial. As you may have ascertained I try to use the weekly editorial spot to encourage discussion of issues which I consider to be of importance to today's Ukraine, and judging from the response I have received in the past few days that has certainly been the case this week. As a long-time writer on Ukrainian issues and qualified historian I am well aware of your arguments, much as I am familiar with the tactics employed by the Yanukovich administration when dealing with such core issues, but neither suggests that my position on the Holodomor is not the correct middle ground.

I agree with your statement that Stalin clearly targeted Ukrainian villages, much as the regime targeted villages in Russia, the Caucasian region and elsewhere during the collectivization period. That is accepted historical fact. However, the debate here is essentially one of semantics. If, as you seem to believe, it was a racial genocide specifically targeted against ethnic Ukrainians, this begs the question of why ethnic Ukrainians in the cities did not suffer widespread starvation and why the famine was limited to the rural population. At core the issue is whether these people were murdered because they were Ukrainians, or because they were peasants. It is an admittedly ghastly question, but one which the nature of these genocide declarations forces us to address. The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that they died because they were part of a peasantry which the Bolsheviks had earmarked for destruction. In my opinion this also constitutes an act of genocide but given the body of evidence which has now come to light it is intellectually dishonest to argue that this genocide was racial in nature or targeted the Ukrainian people as a whole.

I appreciate that this is an extremely emotive issue and would not seek to offend anyone's sensibilities or sense of grief and desire for historical justice, but do believe that the best way to achieve closure and build a better Ukraine is through an honest and open appraisal of the facts. Please feel free to share this response with your email circle. I would welcome further comment on the Holodomor issue and may even consider publishing a selection on the subject.

Best regards,

Peter Dickinson

This puts me in research mode. Since, essentially I'm a business guy selling widgets, I've delved off into uncharted waters. I clearly need to answer the following issues for myself if not for anyone else.

"...this begs the question of why ethnic Ukrainians in the cities did not suffer widespread starvation and why the famine was limited to the rural population. At core the issue is whether these people were murdered because they were Ukrainians, or because they were peasants..."