Soviet Show on Maidan

♆krainian colors, Soviet choreogra☭hy.



Not that I'm new to ☠ligarch Entertainmen☦, but this one caught me by surprise as I was walking downtown last Saturday.

And you know what they call it? “Майданc” (“Maidan’s”) It’s a carnival-like dance contest that brings together the cities of Ukraine. Last Saturday’s contestants: Odesa, Kirovohrad and Kharkiv.



Looking at all that Soviet memorabilia in motion, I had a couple of flashbacks.

April 1989. I’m one of the top three students to be promoted to the rank of pioneer (Soviet boy scout). In second grade, a whole grade ahead of the curve. We’re rock stars!

The “rite of passage” took place in the Lenin Museum, just a few blocks from here. In just a few years the USSR would be history.

And what about these kids? How old are they? What the hell are they doing?

If you're an oligarch and you want this for your kids, check out these tutorials.

Yanukovych to ‘Snip’ Corrupt Officials’ Pockets

As his sons grab Donetsk land $19/sq m, Ironman waxes sadistic.

Yanukovych: Nobody will be making a business out of the budget in this country, and those pockets that they’ve sewn for themselves — right to their feet — we’ll...✂ chick [snip] them, as the surgeons put it...huh? Right?

Medics: It’s amputate! Amputate!
Yanukovych: Those pockets. Hahaha!

This reminds me of a memorable quote from the Soviet miniseries “The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed.” (It’s a detective drama that achieved cult status in the USSR, starring nonconformist idol Vladimir Vysotsky as Zhyglov.)

WW II has just ended, and two war heroes become cops to wage war on gangs.

In the final episode, Sharapov (the other cop) goes undercover and ends up abducted by the gang he’s been trying to infiltrate.

Not only does he make the gang believe his story, but he also devises a scheme that leads to the gang’s successful stakeout.

Watch the scene, with English subtitles.

Gang leader “Горбатый” (“Hunchback”): “Don't be afraid. It won't hurt when we cut you. Chick, and you're in heaven!” (true-to-original)

6:57-7:03

Just a thought. Nothing personal.

Sources:
http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/178087.html
http://1tv.com.ua
http://durdom.in.ua/uk/main/photo/photo_id/19716.phtml

Kids Praise Yanukovych in Soviet-Style Song (Full Version)

Welcome to another Lost Generation! ☭owered by Cradle-to-Grave Brainwahing $olutions™.

Now that I have the full version, let me take the liberty to translate the refrain, rhyme by rhyme.



Uncle Vitya, strong and powerful
Uncle Vitya, an uncle who can rule
Uncle Vitya, an uncle who's heaven-sent
Uncle Vitya Yanukovych, a smart president

Hey girls, you forgot “Uncle Lyosha, a smart prosecutor.”

I mean Oleksiy Bahanets, the Lviv oblast prosecutor who uses a $100K Lexus CX 470, with a police license plate that the police can’t identify.

Every Friday, according to Express.ua, that Lexus gets loaded with bagfuls of something that travels from Lviv to Kyiv.










Uncle Lyosha calls the story an “invasion of privacy” and wants the reporters disciplined.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he's just an honest man who owes his fortune to “Climbing for Dollars.”



Sources:
http://tabloid.pravda.com.ua/news/4c19c4a598492/
http://www.pravda.com.ua/photo-video/2010/06/17/5150341/
http://www.expres.ua/main/2010/06/10/37753

5-Year Olds Sing Yanukovych Songs, Soviet-Style

Ever heard one of those Soviet kids' songs that idolize the Great Leader?

Well, here’s a fresh one. Welcome Ukraine's not-so-unlikely 2011 Eurovision entry!

Uncle Vitya
Strong and big

Uncle Vitya
There’s no one like him
Uncle Vitya Yanukovych
A smart president

Reporter [asks in Russian]: Who is a president?
Girl [responds with a Ukrainian-inflected и]: Yanukovych.

Reporter [continues in Russian]: What does he do?
Girl [responds in Russian]: He tells...all the people...what to do.

Courtesy of: Barbie Jazz, a children’s ensemble that brings back the good old days of Stalin’s personality cult.

There’s a romantic side to this. It turns out the director of the Luhansk-based ensemble admires Yanukovych’s grandsons and would love to have them marry his girls.

Hey girls, looks like you have your gender work cut out for you, in a couple of five-year plans!

Could one of these blasts from the past do an album with you, feat. Uncle Vitya?



Debut single suggestion: “Woman, Step Aside Please” (feat. Azarov)



Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/161058.html
Original source: http://tsn.ua
Collage: http://durdom.in.ua/uk/main/photo/photo_id/16482/person_id/1.phtml

Scenes from Chernobyl Drama ‘Распад’ (1990) Filmed in Kyiv

Do you know any films about Chernobyl other than non-fiction? I know only one.

Most of what I know about Chernobyl comes from non-fiction. It comes from the people on the ground. The people who risked and sacrificed their lives. The people who will be remembered.

I know only one movie that does Chernobyl justice. It’s called Распад (Rah-spah-d).

This irony-packed perestroika-era drama offers an X-ray of Soviet crisis mismanagement. In scenes of heart-wrenching innocence and poignance, it recreates the chain of events: from the comfort zone to the danger zone.

From quiet to chaos. From communism to collapse.


Filmed here.

It bursts the bubble of a blissful and unsuspecting populace that, in the middle of spring, goes about its business the day after. Grown-ups get married. Kids play soccer. (I too played soccer, just 70 miles south of Chernobyl, in Kyiv.)

In its starkest scenes, the film captures the misery of the evacuees.


Filmed here and here.

The evacuation of Prypyat (the town where the nuclear power plant workers lived) took a back seat to regimentation. With radiation at peak levels, authorities waited for orders from Moscow and delayed evacuation efforts in an air of secrecy.

It wasn’t until 36 hours after the accident that the evacuation began (a temporary evacuation, as the announcement said). Thousands of families boarded buses and left their homes, never to return again.


Filmed here.

The “lost boy” scene relies on hyperbole to drive the point home emotionally: A latchkey kid doesn’t get on the bus. Instead, he stays and waits for his mom to come home from work. The main character, a reporter, spots the boy during a flyover of Prypyat (now a ghost town) as he writes this: “Mom! I’ve come home. Come. I [interrupted].”

Распад can be translated as decay, disintegration or breakup. It’s the main theme of the film. Chernobyl delivered a shock to the Soviet system and, as it soon turned out, became a catalyst in its breakup.

Somehow, I only discovered Распад last year, almost two decades after its filming by the Dovzhenko Film Studios in 1990. I was 10 at the time.

I find this movie very special because it takes me back to my childhood. It takes me back to my home city of Kyiv, my home district of Obolon, my neighborhood.

That’s where they filmed all these scenes. And that’s where I live.

Unity Day 20 Years Ago: Kyiv-Lviv Human Chain

On January 22, 1990, Ukrainians took to the highway to make a human chain that united Kyiv and Lviv.



With Ukraine still part of the USSR, the move symbolized the Ukrainian resurgence (or rather its early perestroika-driven signs) after centuries of foreign domination.

Today, Yushchenko finally awarded Stepan Bandera with the honorary title of the Hero of Ukraine.

Video embedded from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7JfYDP698E

An Ethnic Russian UPA Vet Tells His Story

In this Channel 1+1 report, Volodymyr Chermoshentsev, an ethnic Russian, recalls his past: He fought in the UPA.



After the Bolsheviks killed his father, amid the man-made famine in his native Povolzhye village in 1933, he and his mother and aunt found the situation even worse in Ukraine, settling in Crimea.

Captured by the Germans in 1942, he escaped captivity only to be captured again and then freed by the UPA, which he joined.

Because, naturally, he spoke Russian, the UPA initially treated him with suspicion but finally appointed him an aide to a UPA commanding officer.

The UPA mainly fought the NKVD, not the Red Army, Chermoshentsev says.
Captured and tortured by the NKVD, he managed to escape to the Crimea, to his mother, and later got 10 years for stealing grapes and dodging the draft. Had the Soviet authorities learned about his UPA involvement, they would have probably executed him.

After Ukraine became independent, Chermoshentsev’s story became the plot of a UPA book of memoirs.

Volodymyr Chermoshentsev: I took an oath to love Ukraine, the Ukrainian people. I’m even proud of being called a Banderite — yes I am — a Banderite, not a nobody, not a somebody-for-somebody, but for Ukraine.

Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/135954.html
Original source: http://tsn.ua

UPA Marks 67th Anniversary

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) that fought both Hitler and Stalin during WW II turned 67 yesterday.

As always, the UPA vets who gathered in downtown Kyiv drew catcalls from the Communists protesting nearby.



In this Channel 1+1 footage, the first UPA vet decries being a “second-class citizen,” under-recognized and under-compensated by the state of Ukraine, for which he fought. The second one, a bit more cheerful, touts a German-made MP-40 submachine gun, also widely used by Soviet partisans.

On the other side of the barricade, the first Communist lady refuses to calls them humans and the second one calls them “up to elbows in blood.” A Red Army vet emphasizes that it was he, not the UPA, who defended and liberated Ukraine.

Toward the end of the first footage, a Ukrainian Navy officer calls for reconciliation between Red Army vets and UPA vets, citing civil war-ravaged Spain as an example: “They fought for Ukraine, and it’s important.”

The footage ends with the rallying call of Ukrainian nationalists: “Glory to the nation! Death to the enemies!”

Turbulent, violent and divisive, history doesn’t heal easily. Elderly people cannot be reconciled against their will. But they certainly do deserve recognition and respect from current and future generations.

The thousands of UPA Ukrainians who fought for their native land deserve it no less than the millions of Red Army Ukrainians who fought for theirs.

Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/135952.html
Original source: http://tsn.ua

Russian Pop Diva Helps Tymoshenko’s ‘Friend of Russia’ Image

Tymoshenko recalls dancing to Pugacheva’s songs. Pugacheva calls Tymoshenko a good politician, a smarty and a beauty.

In a smart public relations move, they’ve made good friends.

Alla Pugacheva is the Soviet pop legend of the ‘80s who recently celebrated her 60th anniversary. Yulia Tymoshenko is Ukraine’s PM who courts pro-Russian voters in this year’s presidential election.

Last Wednesday, Pugacheva threw a concert in Kyiv. Tymoshenko mounted the stage as a prominent guest, along with Russian Ambassador Viktor Chernomyrdin, the foot-in-mouth man who routinely meddles in Ukraine’s internal affairs.

The song Pugacheva did with Tymoshenko was some sort of East-West balancing act.

Tymoshenko: I wanted to do “Million alyh roz,” (“A Million Scarlet Roses”) but then I thought that a million Ukrainian hearts that sincerely love Alla Pugacheva would be better. And I think that every time a family celebrates a birthday — they have a birthday cake, candles — and then, after all this beauty is rolled out, everyone in the family cordially sings “Happy Birthday.” And I want us now to cordially sing to Alla Borisovna, on a count of three: one, two, three! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday, dear Alla! Happy Birthday to you!

Pugacheva: Now, in Russian! S Dnem Rozhedeniya menya! [Happy Birthday to me!]
Audience: S Dnem Rozhedeniya tebya! S Dnem Rozhdeniya, nasha Alla. S Dnem Rozhdeniya, tebya! [Happy birthday, our Alla! Happy Birthday to you!]

Pugacheva: It’s an ode to happiness, an ode for a-l-l t-i-m-e-s! The ode of all odes! [giggles] I missed you. [kisses Chernomyrdin] How happy it is when goodness dwells with people and among people. You know, I have this boy — this smart boy, he’s 9 years old — and when asked about what makes a good politician (what can a 9-year-old kid say? who are they?), he responds: “Those are the big boys and girls who are doing everything to…keep people from q-u-a-r-r-e-l-i-n-g.
Tymoshenko: Hahaha!

Pugacheva: From the lips of a child, the t-r-u-t-h s-p-e-a-k-e-t-h! Thank you for the love!

I have no quarrel with Pugacheva’s ‘80s songs. I actually like them. I even recall this famous perestroika joke: “Q: Who are the three most popular women in the country? A: Katya Lycheva, Alla Pugacheva and Raya Gorbacheva.”

However, when it comes to the “good politician” issue, Ambassador Chernomyrdin and his friends in Tymoshenko’s BYuT give that title a bad name.

When a big group of people tries to control a smaller group of people — using the help of a big girl within that smaller group — all you get is quarreling.

Sources:
http://tabloid.pravda.com.ua/focus/49f03ce7b25a8/
http://tabloid.pravda.com.ua/news/49b0219336198/
http://tabloid.pravda.com.ua/focus/49cc997be120e/
http://tabloid.pravda.com.ua/images/doc/1-88301.jpg

Remember the Holodomor, Don’t Let History Repeat Itself!

On November 22, 2008, Ukraine commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor, the manmade famine that killed at least 3 million Ukrainians in 1932-33.

The Holodomor, which means death inflicted by hunger, can be considered one of the most successful genocidal policies pursued by Stalin and the Soviet leadership. In just a year, Ukraine went from breadbasket of Europe to mass grave. Soviet grain requisition squads raided Ukrainian villages, depriving the villagers of the very last food supplies they needed to survive.

The period between fall 1932 and spring 1933 saw entire rayons (counties) littered with dead or dying people whom local authorities piled up on carts and buried Auschwitz-style.



This happened in Kyiv, too...





...and in Kharkiv.




Starvation drove people to insanity and cannibalism. To ensure that no one would escape, the Soviets surrounded famine-stricken rural areas with NKVD troops, similar to the blocking troops they later used during WW II.

Scores of elderly survivors bear testimony to this heinous crime against humanity, which killed thousands of Russians, Jews, Greeks and other minorities living in Ukraine, but targeted primarily Ukrainians.

The death certificate below states it clearly: "Причина смерті — зазначити докладно: Українець." ("Cause of death — provide details: Ukrainian.")



Sergio Gradenigo, the Italian Consul in Soviet Ukraine, sheds more light on the story. In a dispatch from Kharkiv, then-capital of Soviet Ukraine, Gradenigo wrote this:

The current disaster will lead to the colonization of Ukraine, mostly by the Russian population. This will change its ethnographic nature. In all probability, we will not have to speak about Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in the very near future and, consequently, there will be no Ukrainian problem because Ukraine will in fact become part of Russia.

Gradenigo saw it coming. The Holodomor did just that: It broke the will of the largest non-Russian ethnic group in the USSR, altered Ukraine’s ethnic makeup, and destroyed a potential stronghold of resistance to the Soviet regime. In line with Stalin’s thesis about intensified class struggle, the Holodomor wiped the kurkuli (well-to-do farmers, kulaks in Rus.) off the face of the earth, along with much of the selyanstvo (peasantry), thus finalizing collectivization.

The exact number of the dead will never be known. Moscow archives remain off limits to Ukrainian scholars. Decades of Soviet secrecy add up to more than a decade of unwillingness by post-Soviet Russia’s to cooperate on the matter.

Death toll estimates vary from 3 to 7 million. Some stats speak for themselves.

In 1933, the average life expectancy in Ukraine dropped to 10.8 years for females and 7.3 years for males. The 1926 Soviet Census put the number of Ukrainians at 31,194,976. By 1937, that number had shrunk to 26,421,212. In contrast, over the same period, the number of Russians rose from 77,791,124 to 93,933,065.

The only ethnic group that shows a comparable net population decline is Kazakhs, sliding from 3,968,289 in 1926 to 2,862,458 in 1937. The steep decline resulted from collectivization and its local policy of forced sedentarization, which starved more than a million Kazakhs, a nomadic people, to death.

These numbers set the manmade famines in Ukraine and Kazakhstan apart from the deadly natural famines that raged on in Russia at the time and were caused by crop failure rather than collectivization.

Aside from achieving Stalin’s genocidal goals, the Holodomor also helped achieve some of his modernization ambitions. The requisitioned grain contributed to Soviet grain exports to the West, allowing the Soviet government to import the equipment and know-how for industrialization.

The Western public totally missed the Holodomor. Much of the credit goes to influential reporter Walter Duranty of the The New York Times. Being a Stalin apologist, Duranty, painted rosy pictures of the “communist experiment,” but privately admitted that 10 million might have perished from food shortages.

Western correspondents Malcolm Muggeridge and Gareth Jones tried to get the message through — only to be ignored or dismissed. In 1933, the United States established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union — as thousands of Ukrainians were dying every day. The West got the grain, Stalin got the glory.

Today, the United States and many other countries recognize the Holodomor as genocide. British and American scholars Robert Conquest and James Mace made a great effort at raising Western awareness of the Holodomor.

Meanwhile, Russia leads the way in Holodomor denial.

Russia’s strategy: deny the artificial nature of the Holodomor; lump the Holodomor together with the natural famines of the era; use its leverage with the UN, EU, international organizations, foreign governments and Western media to thwart Ukraine’s Holodomor recognition efforts.

Naturally, Russia fears the legal responsibility that would arise from admitting guilt while being the sole legal successor to the Soviet Union. What Russia does not seem to fear is Stalinism repeating itself.

At a time when Germany is doing everything to shake off Hitler’s legacy, Russia is doing everything to make Stalin’s legacy shine.

Putin-era history textbooks rationalize Stalin’s repressions as a managerial expediency. In fact, the new edition of textbooks for Russian school children describe Stalin as a “successful manager.” So how long before the Stalin school of management makes a successful comeback?

Can Russia be at peace with itself and its neighbors without recognizing and repenting the wrongs committed by its regimes?

Sources:
http://www.augb.co.uk/holodomor-1932-33-the-campaign-for-recognition.php http://i.i.ua/photo/images/pic/7/2/1812227_c71ce613.jpg http://www.ilsegnalibro.com/weblog2/labels/IIC_Kiev.html
http://www.kreschatic.kiev.ua/ru/3342/art/1216324849.html
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2008/11/18/84706.htm
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Walter-Duranty http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=983236
http://www.vremya.ru/2008/154/51/211168.html
http://www.wumag.kiev.ua/index2.php?param=pgs20074/50 http://www.golodomor.kharkov.ua/video.php
http://www.golodomor.kharkov.ua/gallery.php
http://www.president.gov.ua/content/famine_photodocs_11.html
http://www.president.gov.ua/content/famine_photodocs_1.html
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/11/23/67315.htm

Slicing and Dicing Kovbasa: Before Glasnost, Beyond Stabilnist

This storm of consciousness was inspired by the recent post and comments at my friend’s Pawlina’s blog Nash Holos. Pawlina, producer and host of Nash Holos — British Columbia’s longest-running and only bilingual Ukrainian radio program — has discovered an on-again, off-again blog called Cool Kovbasa (Ukr. for sausage). At the sight and smell of the lively gastronomical discussion, the shark in me came alive and decided to spice it up with politics.

Home-made, bucolic kovbasa indeed conjures up mouth-watering images. But not the sort that sells in Ukrainian supermarkets. Very often, that sort of kovbasa is anything but cool.

In Ukraine’s political kitchen, the No. 1 kovbasa, or kolbasa (Rus), connotation is kolbasa po 2.20, a synonym for the Soviet social contract. This refers to the oft-crappy “made in USSR” sausage sold under the brand of Lyubitelskaya or Doktorskaya and priced at 2.20 roubles.

You can think of kolbasa po 2.20 as the “holy grail” of the Soviet way of life. For millions of underprivileged Ukrainians — and most Ukrainians are underprivileged — it stands out vividly as the nostalgic centerpiece of the Brezhnev era. The appeal of Yanukovych’s stabilnist can be traced to the “consumer paradise” that Brezhnev had ushered in via petrodollars in the mid 70s to early 80s. In those pre-glasnost days, people would spend an hour or two standing in lines, but the system did cover their bare necessities.

Which is not always the case today, now that crony capitalism has prevailed. Today, we no longer have lines the length of the Great China Wall. Still, kovbasa tastes even crappier. It holds a mirror to Ukraine’s crappy capitalism, and its properties nearly encompass the periodic table of elements. That’s the diet you get in an oligarch and obsolete economy riveted to metaldollars.

Every other day, Ukrainians digest reports of yet another kovbasa sweatshop being exposed. Black market meat-processing facilities have mushroomed across the country. A virtual tour of a kovbasa sweatshop will tell you everything you wanted to know about the product, but were afraid to ask.

Here, in the sleaziest of conditions, meat of unknown origin and expiry date is treated with harmful chemicals, mixed with soybean flour, and “bootlegged” for sale to retail outlets. Ironically, aside from often being user-unfriendly, Ukrainian-made kovbasa often sells at EU price points. Better quality kovbasa has occupied a prominent place in local pork-barrel handouts. A remake of Pavlov’s experiment — in the form of a pre-election food loyalty program — triumphed in the Kyiv mayor election of 2006.

Sorry for eating the joy out of kovbasa. I guess kovbasa became some sort of codename that fired up my appetite for writing about the unpleasant side of living in Ukraine. After all, we are what we eat, and, as former Ukrainian president Kravchuk put it, “We have what we have.”