Sunday, May 20, 2007
Friday, May 18, 2007
Ukrainian Bulletin #12
May 17, 2007
David and I traveled to the Carpathian mountains in western Ukraine last week. I would like to describe that trip, and to tell you how it made me homesick.
Enough of city life. As exciting as it is, and as much as we love the trams, our hearts are really in the country. So as soon as the snow let up a bit, we went to the mountains and hired guides for four wonderful days of exploration and hiking.
The Carpathians are low mountains (6,000 feet) so we felt right at home. The economy is farming (mostly very small farms of one to five cows), lumbering and tourism (ditto). It is a place which was outside of many major world and national events of the past 100 years (you are talking my language). It also sports many different kinds of people, and at least five languages, which all seem to coexist and even to thrive together. Homesteads are lovely patches of the greenest green, with apple trees just blossoming and bees waking up. Enigmatic and colorful bee hives dot the yard. The family cow grazes next to the patio. The tiled stove holds treasures of pottery and embroidery, some more than 100 years old. The mountains in the near distance – they are just always there. It was, however, walking in pine forests next to streams which brought on a bout of homesickness.
There is a system of “home-stays” in this region, similar to our “B and Bs”. So we stayed in one home-stay for two nights, and another for two nights. This was a wonderful way to meet the local people (mostly, but not all, Hutsuls). Also, they fed us. Wow.
Our peak experiences on this trip, by far, were the three all-day hikes we did. Each was completely different. Each was equally wonderful. We had guides each day, which was well worth the (roughly) $80 per day cost. Guides could answer questions large and small, and also drove us to trailheads, and made sure we were equipped and safe.
The first was a steep climb to high mountain pastures near Verkovyna where 70-year-olds maintain a herd of five cows and probably some sheep. Water is from a well, hauled by hand. Still, this remote hut has electricity, grace a Stalin. I begged for mercy on this climb, but our local guide, Igor, helped us moving along. Great fun, spectacular views.
The second day we drove to a trailhead and climbed on a gradual set of fields and forest to Pip Ivash – a granite rock outcropping atop a mountain. We loved this hike, and we saw many, high elevation, mountain farmsteads. All had Stalin’s electricity. Our guideVasili reminded us of Lenin’s quote: “Communism is Socialism plus electricity”.
The third day we teamed up with friends Lisa and Chris Budzisz (both are Fulbrighters in Chernivitsi) and Vasili for a morning assault on Mt. Hoverla, Ukraine’s highest at just over 6,000 feet. The summit was snow-covered. We climbed 2,700 feet in two kilometers. We were pretty full of ourselves (and a bit winded) when we reached the summit, from which we could see several countries, and school groups (of 11 year olds) popping bottles of champagne to celebrate their climb. Don’t tell our sons, but several of these school groups lapped us on the ascent.
This steep but satisfying climb has become a tradition on August 24, Ukraine Independence Day.
The descent was exciting, as 11-year-olds love to glissade completely out of control, willing to take out any 40- or 50-year old who happens to be in their path (that would be us). We saw evidence of major avalanches and the snow-covered 60 meter waterfalls that make this area a scenic magnet.
Hutsul (mountain) folk have lots of crafts for sale, and I spent spare minutes cruising the booths near the Hoverla trailhead and the Vorokhta ski lift. This is a town where you can walk from your B and B to your ski lift. I did not take the ride in the chairlift, figuring climbing Hoverla was more of a “high” than any chairlift!
A long ride through Kosiv brought us to Vyzhnytsya, a former Jewish shtetl and an inspiration for Jewish folklore. Since the 1970s, Jews have emigrated to Israel en masse from these villages. Still, the former synagogue is recognizable (now a cultural center) and the slow pace of this narrow alley-ed village was a stroll through the past. Across the river is an Armenian village – remnants of an Armenian colony planted there. Different languages, dress, traditions and religions divide these neighboring towns.
Our visit to the city and university of Chernivitsi capped our trip. The university, built as a bishop’s residence, was extraordinary. We stepped inside a chapel which has been unchanged for 300 years, and heard recordings of choral music performed there every day. This bustling destination city for adventurous artsy Germans and Austrians was a delight, with baroque and Austrian influences at every turn.
Our train ride home deserves its own story – suffice it to say that drunken miners from Donetsk keep us awake and alert. We are readjusting to city life, and enjoying our last few weeks together here.
Next week we travel to Kiev (where we hope to see Ella Rezhnikova and her husband Bill, Ella was my student at Vermont College and now works at Karma Choling). Then we will go to Khmelnetsky (where I am the featured speaker – three times ---at an all day conference) and thence to Odessa. In Odessa, we will meet up with Bob and Mary Belenky, neighbors and friends from Marshfield. We are enjoying every minute, and think of you all often.
LBG
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Ukraine Bulletin # 11
May 14, 2007
So, is the Orange Revolution fading to some kind of pale peach?
Ukraine seems to be at some kind of juncture between a tragedy of rising expectations and a stolid retrenchment in the good old days.
One of the problems for President Victor Yushchenko is that the Orange Revolution brought in taxes. The business community is taxed. This gets in the way of doing business! Another problem is that he talked in abstractions – voters wanted their pensions to go up. Soviet believers are severely disillusioned by modernism in its Ukrainian form. There is no guaranteed housing (as there was under the USSR). Pensions don’t cover rentals (400 hryvnias a month, including utilities – about $80).
The suicide rate is high among pensioners. They are prone to depression—which generally remains untreated—and alcoholism. The benefits they were promised, and worked for all their lives, have not been delivered. The evils they struggled against (say, capitalism) have brought a mixed bag of sex, drugs and rock ’n roll along with multinational corporations and a widening income gap. The very rich, in the former USSR, are very rich--a sad contrast to the old women who are hired to sweep (yes) the yards after winter, to collect bits of garbage, to sweep the sidewalks in front of a business of the winter’s dust and cigarette butts.
The just-under-60 set (our, ahem, contemporaries) is collecting money in trams, while they can still balance themselves in the lurching and sideways motion of these effective, efficient relics of the 60s.
The less literate are selling eggs or herbs, salads or underwear at the market. Cold, sometimes despondent, they stand for hours for a dollar or two in daily sales. There is a persistent rumor that the women begging with cups near the market are controlled by the Mafia. That they are not really poor. They are organized. They give half of what they collect to their “bosses”. When I suggested that the Mafia has no interest in small enterprises, and that they need a higher profit, here is the argument: “Those women can take in up to 15 hryvnias a day!” That’s about $3. I put this rumor in the category of an urban legend, a holdover from Soviet days when poverty had to be explained away by things like dissolute character, or underhanded deeds, or lassitude. There is no poverty in the Communist system.
Even during the first of three major famines, in 1921 (others were the deliberate starvation of Ukrainians in 1931-1933 by Stalin, and the post-WWII starvation in 1947), starving people did not complain, and bureaucrats would not have listened to complaints. People starved to death for about 18 months before international aid was received “from the United States, and others, which did help some.” To notice that the system wasn’t working must have been dangerous. Hungry residents in some towns did, however, riot, while they still had the energy to do so.
Modern scarcities, therefore, evoke deep fears. There was nothing on the shelves to buy for several years in the 1990s. Independence in 1991, and “wild capitalism”, and “democracy” were to blame. Those who could afford to do so, went to Poland or Moscow to get simple foods, necessities, and brought them back here by train. A few years ago, armed struggles between the Russian Mafia, the Dnipro Mafia and the Kiev Mafia erupted into a rash of brutal killings and an attempt to take over this city’s enormous central market with a private militia of enforcers, who stormed the place with guns – and there were deaths in that raid.
The city does not pretend to control this situation, in fact, someone in the local government is having his/her pockets lined for the hard work of looking away. Of all things to “privatize” – the market where the babushkas sell a few cups of peanuts? This means that entrepreneurship has a natural brake (protection money). When a person tries to begin a business, he or she pays protection money (which, in the end, did not really protect them). In fact, many of the vendors are paid to sit in a stall all day. These vendors don’t really care whether you buy from their stall or not – they may not even look up when you begin looking at their wares. In this period, bankers were shot point blank through their car windows. Contracted murders were common in the streets.
The oligarchs (wealthy, powerful, and manipulative) are the saviors of the desperate economic situation of the 1990s. In the view of people here, uncontrolled capitalism was an enormous failure. That is what led to empty shelves. In the absence of government regulation, oversight or control, the oligarchs “had to” step in, and now there is a generalized and centralized (and sub-legal) organization to the economy.
When I ask what brought on the Orange Revolution, economic disaster and an adherence to Soviet power politics are the conditions people here mention.
Today, the exigencies the majority felt in 2004 cannot be easily articulated. The Ukrainian constitution is on paper, but it is not widely available, it has not been read by many, and it is even less well understood. Most voters I talk with believe it has become a political football, and therefore, it will be revised to suit the political party with the loudest voice and the deepest pockets. The political horizons of the country are unclear. Ukrainian people, Ukrainian nation. Sovereignty and borders. Beyond that, the discussion gets fuzzy. Is nationhood simply a matter of borders and an army to maintain them? Is there more to it? Stay tuned.
LBG
Ukraine Bulletin #10
May 12, 2007
I have begun to be able to recognize some of the areas outside cities which were killing grounds in World War II. The university complex I teach in on Tuesdays and Thursdays is located on one of these. The sites I have seen look unusually flattened, and often, have no trees growing on them. Nearby trees are not more than 50 years old. There is a steep gully near or below these sites – people were shot at the top of the hill, and fell to the bottom. Often, they are on a major road out of the city, or near a rail line. Sometimes, they are near or in a trash heap or dump. But these spots are oddly vacant – in a booming city where real estate is valuable. It is this loneliness, or the “left-alone-ness” that is the first clue about these sites.
There are a few monuments at the university about this site – one in Hebrew, and several in Russian. The flattened area is now a soccer field. Owners of small farms graze their goats on the hillside of the gully.
Wartime crimes are easily blamed on the Nazis here, although the Red Army, the Nazis, and local guerrilla groups all performed executions and mass murders. What is difficult to comprehend is that these persecutions of one group or another, but persistently, of Jews, had been carried out for at least two hundred years before WWI. This displacement, starvation, persecution or murder of groups of individuals (celebrated famously for Americans in “Fiddler on the Roof”) was an early-modern form of social engineering. It was carried out transparently, efficiently and ruthlessly.
I have thought often about “Fiddler on the Roof”. It presents in a jaunty, spirited way, historic decades of immense complexity, not “events” but cultural trends of wide scope, bolstered by deep-seated philosophy.
Ukrainians cannot think of groups of individuals who have been persecuted here. After prompting, they mention the elders, veterans, and perhaps, handicapped children. What about the Jews? “There is no persecution against the Jews. They are wealthy! Wealthier than our families! They do very well! So you see, there is no discrimination.” And if we think back about sixty years ago – what was the life of a Jewish family then? “Then, in Stalin’s time, it was not so good. But it was bad for all religions then. Any religious practice was forbidden. So you see, it was not specifically against the Jews.
Some Jewish Ukrainians have done very well indeed in above-board and not so transparent businesses in Ukraine. The third richest person in Ukraine is a Jewish bazillionaire turned benefactor of the arts, Victor Pinchuk (who, at 45, also rates as 12th richest person in Eastern Europe and the 645th richest person in the world, with $1.2+ billion).
Ukrainian history in the twentieth century is particularly tortured, with neighbor killing neighbor in certain regions. The only political stability in this century has been under the Soviets. Compromise is not a skill politicians have learned. The standoff of the president and prime minister (April 2007) is astonishing for the absence of creative thinking or proposals of compromise.
It is beyond hardball politics – hardball (as we know it) doesn’t even begin to describe the methods used. Extortions, bribes, murder, silencing, payoffs, “baksheesh”, are all considered “fair” play. As a result, politics here looks more like war. The casualties of poisonings and assassinations are considered not extraordinary in this setting.
Viewed in this light, blood in the street is the next logical step. It would be a very dangerous one – not just for the demonstrators, but for the country. One side (the president) could declare martial law and call in the military. The other (the Rada – Parliament -- and prime minister) control the national and local and special police. The scenario could quickly explode. Such violence would distract handily from the war-like tactics of national leaders.
And, most people are quite calm and dismissive about those dire possibilities. In the past few weeks since the initial constitutional crisis, we have become the same. Legally, the country is in a precarious state. Many important things hinge on the outcome. But the apple blossoms came (and went), the peonies are budding, and school is almost over. The weather is fantastic. Everyone has just had a marvelous long holiday. Why worry?
As I update this and get ready to put it on the blog, I have just taught my last history class for this academic year. It was an open question-and-answer session. Students do not know how to ask questions, so I posed a few and asked if they wanted to know about these things. They said yes. So, says I, then you will have to ask me.
Eventually, they asked about what Americans know and think about Ukraine. I went through the normal litany (Yalta, Chernobyl, Ukrainian “girls”, soccer players) and then mentioned the Orange Revolution. They laughed. Undaunted, I told them that most American believe Victor Yushchenko was poisoned in 2004. They snickered and laughed. I explained that Americans believe the doctors’ reports from Switzerland about the poisoning, and, given all the evidence, they believe that someone associated with Yushchenko or with Putin was behind the poisoning, and that the methods used were KGB methods. They could hardly contain their mirth. I mentioned a few journalists who had been found dead, and a critic famously poisoned in London.
Well, just think how gullible these Americans must be!!
We moved on to one other thing Americans know about Ukraine. American Jews know a lot of detailed information about the villages and towns their families came from. More laughter and rolling of eyes. My friends, when they learned I was going to Ukraine, told me that their grandparents came from Ukraine, and told me exactly where, and what their family remembered about Ukraine. Some American synagogues sponsor synagogues in Ukraine. Social services are provided by synagogues here for poor Ukrainian Jews. Yes, Jews can be poor.
So, the idea that Jews are rich (and don’t need help) is a pervasive one. The idea that nothing extraordinary happened here about persecution of minorities, is also pervasive. In this setting, it is hard to “teach” history.
LBG
Monday, May 7, 2007
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Ukraine Bulletin #9
April 17, 2007
Our weather here is quite different from that on the East Coast. Trees are leafing out, peonies are six inches high, and violets are blooming. We even saw some grass that needs mowing (we assume it is over a broken sewer).
We have a long university holiday coming up – two early May holidays combine to “the May holidays” – I have no classes to teach from April 27 to May 14. We also have two conferences (near Donetsk in Horlivka, and in Yalta) on either side of the longer holiday, and one during it (Kiev).
So our schedule is becoming quite exciting. David is returning to the U.S. for a meeting in New York State, so he will be home from April 26 to May 2. He can be reached at his work phone, 802 229 1879. Right now it looks like this: April 20 to Horlivka, April 22 to Kharkhiv, April 23 return home to Dnipropetrovsk. David to Kiev then Frankfurt then NY April 25. Linda to have fun with day trips over the weekend. Philharmonic concert here on April 30. May 1 or 2 to Odessa, return home May 4, May 9 to western Ukraine (Chernivitsi) – perhaps some hiking. Return home May 14. May 25 to Yalta, return home May 30. Early June, we go to L’viv again. This all is subject to change…
Two sets of friends, Ella Rezhnivkova and Bill, and Mary and Bob Belenky, are traveling around Ukraine in May and June – we hope to connect with them if schedules permit.
Fifteen men with jackhammers and wheelbarrows are digging a deep trench in front of our building for thick electric wires (and perhaps other cables??). The trench uncovers old bricks probably placed in the fill around this building 60-70 years ago. Those are being removed and placed to the side. We think this may be to deliver more electricity to the six-story building being constructed up one block from us, but we hope that it is better Internet access for the entire neighborhood. Time will tell.
We have passed the half-way mark of our time here in Ukraine. It is hard to believe, as we feel we are just “getting started”. We now have a busy round of talks and presentations (and more to come), and a growing group of trusted friends and acquaintances. David is being tapped by engineers and planners here.
We finally have the work set up that we want – two desks and two computers, a printer/Xerox, and fairly reliable medium-speed Internet access. We also have “basic” cable TV, which has BBC World (24 hours news and features in English) and Deutsch television, which runs a couple of hours of English programming per day. We also get local and national television stations, in Russian and Ukrainian. These include Animal Planet and National Geographic nature shows, along with the usual drek – even “Ukrainian Idol”. Our lack of language doesn’t distract too much from an enjoyment of the visuals in these shows! We are still taking language lessons, and are at the beginning conversation stage.
My students here are mostly young women – about three or four women per one man in the classroom. They are very curious about life in the United States, what U.S. teenagers and college students do, and what our cities are like. They asked about elevated highways and skyscrapers. They asked why we have God on our currency if we have separation of church and state. They ask about our families, our pets and our houses.
Their professors have one overriding question: Are our students as well prepared as the students you teach in the United States? The answer is a modified yes and a modified no. There is really no comparison between the two systems. And there is almost no way for students in Ukraine to “learn” about Western culture and scholarship as they grow up (except through movies, music, fashion etc.). So students here miss out on what in the United States would be called “general knowledge” – being aware of the (wider) world around them. Ukrainian students are, of course, aware of the world around them (and in that respect, I have a lot to learn from them) but that world is a different world.
In terms of scholarship outside the former Soviet Union, they have almost no way to access those books and journals. There are almost no computers in universities (the schedule is written out by hand, weekly, for a university of 30,000 students, for instance). The libraries are closed stacks, and “recent” books are from the 1930s. Budgets do not allow for many acquisitions of new materials. Textbooks are unknown --- only the professors have these. Each department has only a few books or textbooks, and the professors have to share them with each other. There is no “LEXUS/NEXUS” or any similar service – and if it did exist, there would be virtually no way to access it on campus. The one “computer lab” I have seen has about 25 computers – not enough for thousands of students.
Many students have computers at home, only a few of these have Internet access at home. So research is limited to official sources, old books, and brief expensive forays into Google. It is not unusual to see a business student reading a text book on “Finances” written in the 1920s.
It is also not unusual to see a market vendor reading an old book which has probably gone through 100 hands or more. Even current magazines, at 8 hryvnia (about $1.50), are luxuries which are out of range for many readers. A woman who sold me a wonderful jacket in the huge Azerka market here is a graduate of the International Economics department at the National University. She is about my age.
Given these limitations, the students are doing very well. This lack of information is not something they can take a workshop for and get “up to speed”. They have sharp, quick minds, and excellent critical thinking skills in areas of thought where they are allowed to question. However, if a topic is touchy or dangerous, they display no interest or no capability. This is a mask, well engrained in the adult population as well.
More limiting, perhaps, is the fact that they really have no idea what information could be available or is available. Things we might consider to be widely available (the federal budget, the proceedings of the legislature, literature, news, annual reports of organizations) are unknown here. I brought four or five such resources (US Govt. Statistics for 2006 – a thick tome, annual report of the ACLU, annual report of Human Rights Watch, annual report of Amnesty International). The last two contain country by country comparisons. Of course, the students flip quickly to Ukraine to see what is said, barely recognizing that the comments on every country are available to them.
An epistemological problem is that “Ukraine” is not a way to search for information about this country 1700-1991. At best, Ukraine is treated as a region of Russia. So any academic search, or any index, contains very few references to “Ukraine” per se. Websites with information about Ukraine are being developed now, but none can match a thorough finding aid to scholarly sources. Few people I meet are aware of the Ukrainian Studies programs in the United States (which have compiled resources and archives) or of how to trace a topic through decades of (non-Russian language) scholarly journals.
Still, the vibrancy in the classrooms of good professors is, as always, inspiring. Our friend Lyudmyla is extraordinary in this regard. Her students adore her, and with good reason.
David and I just returned from the National Mining University’s English Department’s Spring theatrical production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” (both in somewhat shortened form). Enthusiastic young people, costumes, humor, grace. We were the honored guests, and the jury of an essay contest – swept up in the fun.
The news this week from Virginia is very sad. It is perhaps difficult, at time like this, to realize that in classrooms all over the country and all over the world, wonderful things are happening, and people are learning.
Linda
Our weather here is quite different from that on the East Coast. Trees are leafing out, peonies are six inches high, and violets are blooming. We even saw some grass that needs mowing (we assume it is over a broken sewer).
We have a long university holiday coming up – two early May holidays combine to “the May holidays” – I have no classes to teach from April 27 to May 14. We also have two conferences (near Donetsk in Horlivka, and in Yalta) on either side of the longer holiday, and one during it (Kiev).
So our schedule is becoming quite exciting. David is returning to the U.S. for a meeting in New York State, so he will be home from April 26 to May 2. He can be reached at his work phone, 802 229 1879. Right now it looks like this: April 20 to Horlivka, April 22 to Kharkhiv, April 23 return home to Dnipropetrovsk. David to Kiev then Frankfurt then NY April 25. Linda to have fun with day trips over the weekend. Philharmonic concert here on April 30. May 1 or 2 to Odessa, return home May 4, May 9 to western Ukraine (Chernivitsi) – perhaps some hiking. Return home May 14. May 25 to Yalta, return home May 30. Early June, we go to L’viv again. This all is subject to change…
Two sets of friends, Ella Rezhnivkova and Bill, and Mary and Bob Belenky, are traveling around Ukraine in May and June – we hope to connect with them if schedules permit.
Fifteen men with jackhammers and wheelbarrows are digging a deep trench in front of our building for thick electric wires (and perhaps other cables??). The trench uncovers old bricks probably placed in the fill around this building 60-70 years ago. Those are being removed and placed to the side. We think this may be to deliver more electricity to the six-story building being constructed up one block from us, but we hope that it is better Internet access for the entire neighborhood. Time will tell.
We have passed the half-way mark of our time here in Ukraine. It is hard to believe, as we feel we are just “getting started”. We now have a busy round of talks and presentations (and more to come), and a growing group of trusted friends and acquaintances. David is being tapped by engineers and planners here.
We finally have the work set up that we want – two desks and two computers, a printer/Xerox, and fairly reliable medium-speed Internet access. We also have “basic” cable TV, which has BBC World (24 hours news and features in English) and Deutsch television, which runs a couple of hours of English programming per day. We also get local and national television stations, in Russian and Ukrainian. These include Animal Planet and National Geographic nature shows, along with the usual drek – even “Ukrainian Idol”. Our lack of language doesn’t distract too much from an enjoyment of the visuals in these shows! We are still taking language lessons, and are at the beginning conversation stage.
My students here are mostly young women – about three or four women per one man in the classroom. They are very curious about life in the United States, what U.S. teenagers and college students do, and what our cities are like. They asked about elevated highways and skyscrapers. They asked why we have God on our currency if we have separation of church and state. They ask about our families, our pets and our houses.
Their professors have one overriding question: Are our students as well prepared as the students you teach in the United States? The answer is a modified yes and a modified no. There is really no comparison between the two systems. And there is almost no way for students in Ukraine to “learn” about Western culture and scholarship as they grow up (except through movies, music, fashion etc.). So students here miss out on what in the United States would be called “general knowledge” – being aware of the (wider) world around them. Ukrainian students are, of course, aware of the world around them (and in that respect, I have a lot to learn from them) but that world is a different world.
In terms of scholarship outside the former Soviet Union, they have almost no way to access those books and journals. There are almost no computers in universities (the schedule is written out by hand, weekly, for a university of 30,000 students, for instance). The libraries are closed stacks, and “recent” books are from the 1930s. Budgets do not allow for many acquisitions of new materials. Textbooks are unknown --- only the professors have these. Each department has only a few books or textbooks, and the professors have to share them with each other. There is no “LEXUS/NEXUS” or any similar service – and if it did exist, there would be virtually no way to access it on campus. The one “computer lab” I have seen has about 25 computers – not enough for thousands of students.
Many students have computers at home, only a few of these have Internet access at home. So research is limited to official sources, old books, and brief expensive forays into Google. It is not unusual to see a business student reading a text book on “Finances” written in the 1920s.
It is also not unusual to see a market vendor reading an old book which has probably gone through 100 hands or more. Even current magazines, at 8 hryvnia (about $1.50), are luxuries which are out of range for many readers. A woman who sold me a wonderful jacket in the huge Azerka market here is a graduate of the International Economics department at the National University. She is about my age.
Given these limitations, the students are doing very well. This lack of information is not something they can take a workshop for and get “up to speed”. They have sharp, quick minds, and excellent critical thinking skills in areas of thought where they are allowed to question. However, if a topic is touchy or dangerous, they display no interest or no capability. This is a mask, well engrained in the adult population as well.
More limiting, perhaps, is the fact that they really have no idea what information could be available or is available. Things we might consider to be widely available (the federal budget, the proceedings of the legislature, literature, news, annual reports of organizations) are unknown here. I brought four or five such resources (US Govt. Statistics for 2006 – a thick tome, annual report of the ACLU, annual report of Human Rights Watch, annual report of Amnesty International). The last two contain country by country comparisons. Of course, the students flip quickly to Ukraine to see what is said, barely recognizing that the comments on every country are available to them.
An epistemological problem is that “Ukraine” is not a way to search for information about this country 1700-1991. At best, Ukraine is treated as a region of Russia. So any academic search, or any index, contains very few references to “Ukraine” per se. Websites with information about Ukraine are being developed now, but none can match a thorough finding aid to scholarly sources. Few people I meet are aware of the Ukrainian Studies programs in the United States (which have compiled resources and archives) or of how to trace a topic through decades of (non-Russian language) scholarly journals.
Still, the vibrancy in the classrooms of good professors is, as always, inspiring. Our friend Lyudmyla is extraordinary in this regard. Her students adore her, and with good reason.
David and I just returned from the National Mining University’s English Department’s Spring theatrical production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” (both in somewhat shortened form). Enthusiastic young people, costumes, humor, grace. We were the honored guests, and the jury of an essay contest – swept up in the fun.
The news this week from Virginia is very sad. It is perhaps difficult, at time like this, to realize that in classrooms all over the country and all over the world, wonderful things are happening, and people are learning.
Linda
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