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Author Archives: RomanInUkraine
Ukraine weather forecaster taken off air for anti-government rant
From telegraph.co.uk:
Throwing caution to the wind, Ludmila Savchenko turned her forecast on Ukrainian National Radio last Thursday into an impromptu political statement, suggesting that the glorious weather the country was enjoying was compensation for “lawlessness and injustice.”
“One cannot remain indifferent to this beauty which is amplified by the tender scent of lilac and lily of the valley and the melodious trilling of the birds,” she waxed lyrical, describing the fine spring weather.
“(But) at times it seems that such wonderful days are a gift from nature to compensate us for the chaos, lawlessness and injustice which reigns in our country,” she added, shifting topic without warning.
“It is simply incomprehensible that anyone can dislike this paradise on earth, this country, and the Ukrainian people so much that they treat it so badly.”
Ukrainian National Radio, which is supervised by the government, swiftly retaliated by halting all live weather forecasts, demanding that they be pre-recorded in future to make sure that the embarrassing incident could not be repeated.
Ukrainian Politics
The guy applying the chokehold, by the way, is the first deputy
speaker of Parliament, Adam Martnyniuk of the Communist Party.
Violence has become so common in the Parliament that such
scenes don’t raise so much as an eyebrow much anymore.
Donetsk
Five lectures in two days at Donetsk University of Economics and Law. Stay tuned.
Edit: 35 degrees Celsius on the train. Glad to be back.
My Birthday
Ternopil
Music School Recital in Lviv
Eastern Cities
There’s a tendency for visitors to Ukraine to never venture further east than Borispol airport. There’s also a tendency to break this tendency, as my friend Katia did with a whirlwind tour:
Statue of Bandera
In L’viv, a statue of Stephan Bandera is guarded 24/7. In other parts of Ukraine statues of Lenin are guarded 24/7. The state should not be the arbiter of history.
L’viv’s historically approved vacant lot
I took this photo near L’viv’s city center. On the right is a bank, a center of commerce, and on the left is a vacant, fenced-off lot.
I’m told that after the bank was built, a big legal battle ensued in which some city officials wanted the structure torn town because it didn’t match their vision of “historical.” On a completely, 100%, totally, positively unrelated note, no one can figure out why no entrepreneurs are willing to build in the lot on the left side of the photo.
The attempts at having the bank torn down could easily be another typical Ukrainian shakedown of business by government officials, but let’s take it at face value.
This is historically NOT approved:
This is historically approved:
Any questions?
Many people say that the level of petty corruption in L’viv is the worst in all Ukraine. On the other hand, however, there are many more small entrepreneurs here than in Kyiv or eastern cities.
Berejany and my Dad’s Village
Lviv City Day
I was going to say that all this worry about a Soviet flag waving procession passing through L’viv and provocateurs was a non-event, and it does seem that way, totally overshadowed by L’viv’s four-day-long celebration of city day.
I walked through the center every chance I got today, and saw only festivities. I did, however, find this headline: Russian diplomats attacked, insulted in Lviv
So I’d say that it was mostly a non-event.
Here’s what I did see:
War is the Health of the State
Back in U.S. President Obama’s approval rating is set to soar after the announcement that “Osama bin Laden, the terror mastermind killed by Navy SEALs in an intense firefight, was hunted down based on information first gleaned years ago from detainees at secret CIA prison sites in Eastern Europe.”
Here, President Yanukovych is also enjoying a bump in his rating after vowing to sign a law that allows flying the red Soviet Flag along side the Ukrainian flag on government buildings as a symbol of victory over Nazism (nevermind the years of cooperation from 1939 to 1941).
Both have been criticized as distractions from economic problems.
***
I attended a press conference yesterday about a provocation planned for May 9th. A Soviet flag waving procession is planning to walk through L’viv, the heart of Western Ukraine where insurgent forces, without help and without hope, resisted the Soviet Union into the mid fifties.
The press conference briefly discussed the political goals of the move, and even invoked a written plan by Aleksandr Dugin to split up Ukraine and absorb it into Russia.
I personally think this is unlikely. The incompetence of governments will prevail.
Most of press conference discussed provocateurs. They took for granted that people would be bussed into L’viv whose job it will be to physically fight the protesters with the goal of portraying Western Ukraine as radical and intolerant, and speculated about how to deal with this, and talked about the marginalization of Western Ukraine.
We’ll see what happens.
Two Little Stories from Easter
1) Lost Bells
She knew it was St. Mykola’s Church whose bell-ringing reached us faintly in the wind because it was just a bell. The Church of Blahovishchennia (how would I translate that?) and Saint Sofia’s both had several bells.
The three bells of St. Mykola’s were buried during the war when the Germans began taking church bells for the metal. No one remembers where they are buried.
2) The Fishy Discount
During Easter, I was told by my 2n’d cousin’s husband Vitalik and his friend that they took the marshutka to L’viv to buy fish.
The price was 23 hryvnias per kilogram. The weight of the fish selected was 950 grams.
The lady told them the price was 22.50, but she’d discount it to 22.00.
During the marshutka ride on the way back, they did the arithmetic.
I asked whether they couldn’t get fish in Horodok, wondering if this wasn’t another business opportunity. They said yes, but in L’viv it was cheaper and better. His mother-in-law, by contract, told me they just wanted an excuse to travel to L’viv.
My Fed Ex Experience
I had the idea to send a cell phone back to the United States to ease the upcoming visit of a friend. Using their website’s store locator, I couldn’t find a Fed Ex in L’viv, so I wrote an email to the Kyiv office.
They promptly replied with a contact here in L’viv, whom I just called. She answered the phone with “hello?”
After a huge amount of frustration and confusion — she shouted “HELLO!?” every time I paused to think for more than half a second — I learned that to send a cell phone, I’m going to need a receipt and a photocopy of my passport.
I could not figure out how I would pay, or anything else, and I got sick of the woman, so I hung up.
Maybe I’ll try Meest.
Photos from Easter
Bicycle Tour of Horodok
From the last photo: A tall smokestack once stood here. In 1989, a Ukrainian flag appeared one morning fixed to the top of the smoke stack. Bewildered police and KGB agents milled about. No one wanted to climb the old structure. Eventually, they got a sniper to shoot the flag down.
Property Rights and Ukrainian Identity
I gave this lecture on April 19th, 2011.
Property Rights and Ukrainian Identity:
http://romaninukraine.com/Stuff/RomanSkaskiw_PropertyRightsNUkrainianIdentity.mp3
– In the lecture I make the case against coercive means to support the Ukrainian culture and language. I made two points afterwards which strengthened and elaborated on my case. Firstly, that coercive institution can easily be turned against Ukrainian culture and language. This is already happened through the policies of Ukraine’s Russophile education minister. Secondly, that people interested in supporting the Ukrainian culture and language should do as I do, and voluntarily donate money to cultural organizations. Even more importantly, people should vote with their wallets, and buy embroideries, museum and theater tickets, they should patronize nightclubs which play the type of music they like, and so on — your patronage supports exactly the aspects of Ukrainian culture which you find important.
– I also made a reference to two forces likely supporting the hryvnias peg to the U.S. dollar, but I only mentioned one, the IMF. The second is the power and influence of the country’s biggest oligarchs, who are all exporters. Exporters benefit in the short run from a weakening currency, as I discuss in this essay.
– I misspoke. On the wall hung Taras Shevchenko’s portrait, not photo.
Q & A:
http://romaninukraine.com/Stuff/RomanSkaskiw_PropertyRightsNUkrainianIdentity-QnA.mp3
– If my goal was to convince conference attendees that a more libertarian respect for property rights ensures a better future for all, then perhaps I committed a tactical mistake. I should have stuck to the more conventional position of advocating more regional autonomy and local self-governance, but I was asked what system I support. I mentioned privatizing security and with that, we all jumped head first into the deep end of the anarcho-capitalist swimming pool. I did the best I could, working from memory.
– I misspoke at one point, saying Iowa instead of Hawaii. The political scientist who calculated that over 100 million people (172 million, actually) were killed by their own governments during peace time, was the University of Hawaii’s Rudolph Rummel. There is also the KGB admission during Glasnost that 43 million Soviet citizens were killed, another estimate that 60 million Soviet citizens were killed, and Little Black Book of Communism which calculates that over 100 million people were killed by Socialist governments.
Fulbright Conference in Odesa
You can read my friend Katia’s impression of Odessa here.
***
Odesa is one of the annoying words, like Kyiv, that forces you to announce your Russian vs. Ukainian allegiance, even if you’re writing in English.
The Ukrainian-English spellings are Odesa and Kyiv. The Russian-English spellings are Odessa and Kiev.
Did you know that Odessa was founded as a free city with no taxes and very little government for the first fifty years of its existence?
As I understand it, the tsar wanted a buffer between the Turks and . . . . I guess . . . Ukrainians, whom he considered “Little Russians.” Don’t get me started on that. So he built a harbor and invited people from all over Europe to settle Odesa, especially Greeks, as many Greeks hated Turks.
Odesa was a tax-free boom town settled by voluntary immigrants, much like many cities in the American West. When Mark Twain visited, he said it reminded him of an American city. I agree. It’s a very unique place.
The tsar didn’t begin taxing Odessa until the Crimean War, which called his attention to this more remote part of his empire.
Here are a whole bunch of pictures, mostly with captions:
:)
:)
