Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

The Wrong Phone Number

My contact at the archives isn’t answering the phone. I look their number on the internet.

The first number doesn’t work. The second rings and rings without an answer. An old woman answers the third number.

“Is this the archive?” I ask.

“Oh, no, she replies right away. Their number is 2-6 and you dialed 0-6.”

I’m surprised that she knows this, and glance again at their webpage.

“Do you know that your phone number is on your webpage?”

She says something I don’t understand. Her voice is old. Maybe she doesn’t know what a webpage is.

“They are advertising your phone number. They are saying it’s the phone number of the archive.”

“It doesn’t do any harm,” she says.

Her indifference makes me angry. “Maybe you should call them and tell them to change it so that people stop calling you.”

“Oh, I don’t get that many calls,” she says.

I thank her and hang up.

Be a Smart Traveler!

Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) – A service of the US State Department for U.S. Citizens traveling abroad

The Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) is a free service provided by the U.S. Government to U.S. citizens who are traveling to, or living in, a foreign country. STEP allows you to enter information about your upcoming trip abroad so that the Department of State can better assist you in an emergency.

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• Enter information on your trip or overseas residence
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https://step.state.gov/step/

Anti-fa Hooligans, brought to you by the Donbass Clan

“Unlike administrative resources, thugs and cynical rhetoric, imagination was lacking among those who thought up the 18 May “antifascist demonstration” in Kyiv. It also lacked credibility. It was difficult not to suspect that the police had received prior instructions when they estimated the number of “antifascists” brought out by the ruling Party of the Regions as 10 times higher than the participants in the opposition “Rise, Ukraine!” rally (44,000 vs. 4,000). Another worrying incident occurred when an “antifascist” lout beat up a female journalist and cameraman.

Even if those in power were not actively trying to provoke trouble in Kyiv – as well as at the recent memorial events in Simferopol to mark the 69th anniversary of the deportation of Crimean Tatars – they showed an irresponsible indifference to people’s safety and an inability to use democratic methods when faced with diverging views.

The execution was also extremely poor.

The “antifascist” card has been part of the current administration’s line ever since Yanukovych came to power. But it really took off after the right-wing Svoboda party gained over 10 percent of the votes in the parliamentary elections. The obvious mileage the Party of the Regions has been extracting from that victory, and from Svoboda’s coalition with the opposition Batkivshchyna and UDAR parties, can only fuel suspicions that Svoboda received tacit support. There is a cynical logic to such support since at the very least votes for Svoboda steal votes from other opposition parties, not from those in power. Moreover, with support for the ruling party falling ever lower, Svoboda’s rising popularity at least gives the Party of Regions the chance to cast themselves as the champions of moderate, non-nationalist ideology.

While Svoboda’s ideological consistency does not make its bigoted views any more palatable, the Party of the Regions is still a loser in terms of message. The old Soviet rhetoric being regurgitated was once part of a need to concentrate on the War and “fight against fascism,” because reality had stripped all communist myths of any credibility.

The Party of the Regions does not really have any ideology and even with near total monopoly over the media, the series of “anti-fascist” rallies around the country from May 14 and ending with Saturday’s rally could not convince anybody.”
http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/a-dangerous-antifascist-card-324525.html

L’viv Restaurants Have the Funniest Bathrooms in the World

As part of my ongoing coverage of Ukrainian toilets, I want to share with you how much I enjoy the bathrooms in L’viv’s restaurants.

The “Restaurant on the Ridge” has the door to the bathroom disguised as a big wardrobe.

The “House of Legends” has a television inconspicuously fixed to the inside of the bathroom door. There’s some trigger which causes it to suddenly turn on — usually while you’re doing your business. On the screen, two men slide open a window, laugh drunkenly, and ask you to hurry up because other people are waiting. It was quite startling and funny on my first visit.

Here’s another example:

Lviv Delpesto restaurant bathroom. Window instead of mirror.

In the bathroom of the Italian restaurant Delpesto, there is a window instead of a mirror, and everything is built identically to look like a reflection. They also keep a turtle named “Love.”

Paid toilets — an economic mystery

First of all, please excuse the vulgarity of this post. I’m making a point. I took this picture a couple months ago at a bus station.

I had walked past an empty desk when a babushka came roaring out of some back room, gruffly demanding one hryvnia (12 cents) for the privilege of relieving myself amongst this sanitary beauty:

2013-04-26 14.34.06 2013-04-26 14.33.14

How is this travesty possible? Shouldn’t paid toilets be of better quality than the free toilets which businesses (McDonalds, among many others) make available throughout Ukraine?

Not so. Not at all. You see, the babushka is not a private owner. She’s not the innovative, risk-taking sanitation entrepreneur you might mistake her for. She is a bureaucrat squatting (no pun intended) on dilapidated, neglected Soviet era infra structure. What’s even more pathetic is the possibility that she paid a bribe to rise to her current position.

Oh, the humanity…

1990s Donbass — A Glimmer of Liberty and Prosperity

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, miners in the east homesteaded abandoned mines. Their efforts grew into a complex operation, but sadly, gangsters eventually took over (with considerable help from local bureaucracies which were — and are — indistinguishable from the gangsters).

The title of this article translates as HOW DONBASS BECAME, INSTEAD OF NEW AMERICA, THE INDUSTRIAL MIDDLE AGES.

http://texty.org.ua/pg/article/editorial/read/42483/Shahtarskyj_adat_Jak_Donbas_zamist_novoji_Ameryky

The article references “anarcho-libertarianism”.

Translation: here

***

Again and again and again: Half Ukraine’s problems would vanish overnight if everybody owned a gun.

Americans who favor restrictions on guns are the spoiled inheritors of a private law culture that evolved with the frontier where people owned guns and found private solutions to the problems of security and justice.

On Tuesday, I’ll be giving a lecture about Bitcoin in Ternopil

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Bitcoins — the future of money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

In 2008, a mysterious Japanese mathematician described what he called “peer to peer electronic cash.” In 2010, a bitcoin network had been established. One early bitcoin transaction was a pizza for 10,000 BTC.

Today, those 10,000 Bitcoins would be worth over a million dollars.

In New York City and Berlin, bars have begun accepting bitcoins. Cars have been sold for bitcoins. A Forbes journalist in San Francisco has lived only on bitcoins for a week.

In the last several days, California venture capitalists invested 5 million dollars in one of many emerging bitcoin businesses.

This is the future of money. It will change everything. Bitcoins will do to banking what email did to the postal service.

The speaker: Roman Skaskiw is an American of Ukrainian descent who recently moved to Ukraine and gained residency. He has a bachelors degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. He accepts bitcoins.
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Taxes & Tyranny In Ukraine’s foundational Narrative

I have a new perspective on the stories I learned as a child in the Ukrainian Saturday school run by New York City’s St. George Church.

I see tax stories!

The first king of the Rurik dynasty was named Oleg. (He displaced two local kings, Askold & Dyr, about whom we know little.) Oleg’s son Ihor was killed whilst collecting taxes by the Dereviany (people of the woods) tribe.

The chronicles which were commissioned by Ihor’s grandson then tell the story of Ihor’s wife, Olha herocially conquering the Dereviany to shore up the integrity of the Kyiv Rus empire.

Tax story #2:

There’s a church whose foundation still exists as a tourist site in Ukraine. It’s called the Desiatynna Church (10% Church) build by Ihor’s grandson Volodymyr. There was 10% taxation, apparently to build the church. Think about it — 10% taxation to build one measly church. It seems the mass corruption which surrounded the building of stadiums for Ukraine’s co-hosting of Eurocup 2012 has a deep and profound tradition.

:)

Spring Pics

Beautiful L’viv

Lviv Fashion Show:

Me vs. a Cat (I never thought this would work. I am the hunter!)

A Brief visit to Kyiv:

Some guys playing with matches:

Mankurt Blog — by a descendant of the L’viv’s Russian KGB community

Apparently, this blog has caused quite the sensation:

http://www.mankurty.com/blog/

I don’t read Russian, but here’s what I’ve been told about this blog:

* Its author writes about his father who was a high level figure in L’viv’s KGB since 1946.

* When his mother arrived to join the family, they met her at the train station. There were no lights in the streets, and all the way home, his father fired a pistol shot into the air at every intersection.

* His mother was amazed at L’viv’s modernity.

* Once, someone asked his father, in Polish, what time it was. When his father replied in Russian, his questioner shot him.

* The author of the blog is in his sixties.

* He feels sorry for communist oppression, but thinks Russians are unduly demonized.

* He resents negative stories about the Russian officials from 1946. (One such story that I’m aware of involves the wife of a Russian official mistaking a woman’s undergarment in the apartment they claimed for an evening dress, and wearing it out in public.)

* After independence, many speeches were made by local figures asking the Russians to go home. They were called “Mankurts” — people without memories, because they had no local roots and didn’t talk about their past.

* The word “Mankurt” comes from what is probably mythological Khazak (from Khazakstan) practice for erasing a person’s memories. It involves shaving their head and using a camel skin to painfully restrict the re-growth of hair.

* Upon arrival, his family chose a one-room apartment because it was winter and the small apartment would be easier to heat. Most of the neighborhood was vacant either abandoned or deported and they planned to move in the spring, but so many Russian administrators arrived, that all better apartments were quickly occupied.

* He spend his career in the bureau of propaganda.

* He actually lived in my neighborhood — where most of the Russian administrators lived. After independence, Ukrainians purposely named all the streets in that area after Partisan leaders: Stephana Bandery, Sushkevycha, Chyprynky, Heroiiv UPA.

* The author thinks Ukraine has no future with the EU and should form some sort of union with Russia, because it is important to have a strong government.

* He’s a big fan of Russian president Putin and hates the Untied States.

* He think Ukrainians owe Russia a debt of gratitude for kicking the Poles out of L’viv.

* His older son became a local gangster and died of a drug overdose in 2004. His younger son has a family.

* L’viv publishers all rejected his memoir because they were offended by the content.

* One of his recent blog posts was a creepy collection of pictures of womens’ legs taken in public, seemingly without their knowing.

That’s all I remember. Anything else, Adnriy?

Websites Hacked

New experience for me today. I discovered today that three of the ten (yes, ten) websites I manage have been hacked by what seems to be a fairly common attack (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/a-new-hack-including-wordpressorg).

This one was not touched.

The hack essentially uses your website for spam. The draw back is that it poisons your Google ranking. I actually had fun searching for the contaminated files.

Their dates were changed — 22 March — which makes me think it wasn’t a very sophisticated attack.

And that’s how I spent my Wednesday evening.