Apparently, this blog has caused quite the sensation:
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?
