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