 The Heart of Ukraine: A Village Talk By Volodymyr SENCHENKO |
The heart of any country is a region located far from cities - political centers, industrial areas, places where various cultural events happen. My own "small" Fatherland is Podillya - it combines Vinnitska and Khmelnitska Oblasts and a part of Ternopilska Oblast. Podillya is actually the heart of the area since it is located almost at the same distances away from a "triangle" of the three largest cities of Ukraine: Kyiv, Odessa, and L'viv.
Before the Great Patriotic War my native village - Ladyzhyn - looked as it did many centuries before: houses made of clay and straw roofs; there one could see peasants riding slowly in carts driven by oxen, beautiful small gardens near houses and other scenes reminiscent of timeless rural life. All this was in the past. Now it seems one can only see such scenes of old Ukraine in touristy Open-air Museum of Architecture in the village of Pyrohovo near Kyiv.
After the war the village was rebuilt twice. Today one can say that it undergoes its third "rebuilding": nice houses of almost European standard are now being built in my native village of Ladyzhyn.
The architecture of the village is not the only thing that changed. The people are different. This is evidenced by their level of education as well as their knowledge of the world and its activities beyond the village surrounds. And many former village residents, including people from my native village, have moved to the cities.
This is why most residents in Ukrainian cities are either originally from the countryside or feel closely connected to it. It's easy to recognize them from other people born to the cities. People from villages speak a mixture of the Ukrainian and Russian languages - that mixture is called "surzhyk". Also it's easy to recognize those people by the way they dress.
All the city residents who originally grew up in the countryside feel a longing for their native villages. And those among them who have cars or who can arrange or afford transport ride to their native places quite often. This is especially true now that more and more people are buying new and used cars. And since the collapse of the Soviet Union many used cars are now being brought into Ukraine. Traveling by car has become more convenient in Ukraine because many new and better roads have appeared in the last decades.
For example, for me going by car to my native village is just wonderful. I take the road from Kyiv to the city of Uman to get to my native village. The road reconstruction is almost complete (the whole reconstruction project is to widen the road), and one can cover the distance of about 300 kilometers in just three hours. Of course, this may involve paying two or three fines for speeding.
One recent time I went to see my mother in my native village. It was at the harvest time in the summer of 2003. The grain harvest this year was poor in general in Ukraine, but in the area of Podillya it was better than in the South of Ukraine. Anyway, sad thoughts about the poor harvest were balanced by the fact that the corn and sugar beets harvests were good. After several months of hot weather there had been enough rain to give such a good harvest of corn and sugar beets. Moreover, last summer the corn and sugar beets were planted in plenty.
While driving my car to my native village, I was also a little bit worried about meeting some of my inquisitive friends. For decades my friends and I have had one tradition: during my every visit to Ladyzhyn we all get together and run an "evening of questions and answers". The impetus to have such a tradition was one television program that I used to run for about seven years on Ukrainian TV. The program was called "Professor Senchenko answers TV viewers' questions".
So, every time I come now to my native village of Ladyzhyn it's impossible to evade such an evening of questions and answers. Otherwise, my friends would say: "What kind of a professor you are, if you aren't able to answer our tricky questions." And it would be a real embarrassment if I really couldn't answer their questions.
But every time I find myself getting interested: what kind of questions will they ask me? What will be of interest to them this time? The thing is that in spite of their hard life in the countryside and their lack of information they always ask questions that evidence their understanding of current issues. At the least, they are raising issues the same way our people's deputies do in the parliament. Also my friends have a very clear understanding of the present situation and what the future might be. So for many years now I have been checking my own conclusions on various issues with their understanding of what is happening. Maybe that's why I so rarely make false evaluations, conclusions and forecasts.
So, when I came to visit my mother and to see my friends this time, we started talking about the problems related to the poor grain harvest of the last summer. Some time before the prime minister of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, said the truth that price increases for bread products and the panic around this problem had been caused by the actions of companies-the grain traders. And my friends were furious when they found out that oligarchs (that is, grain traders) had sold grain from state reserves. My friends think that state grain reserves are "sacred", that they must be "untouchable". Selling grain reserves - this could only have been done by villains, by people who don't have any consciences, who are .... Then words that can't be published follow.
Of course, my friends also blame the President for this problem. He who, in their opinion, failed to keep a close eye on the grain reserves. I recall that during Joseph Stalin's time, and then Mykyta Khrushchev time, the head of state reserves was the only official among the highest people of the Soviet Union whose office in the Kremlin was located right across the office from Stalin, and later, from Khrushchev.
My friends also were interested which direction Ukraine would go in the future - whether it would lean more towards the East (Russia) or the West (Europe). I didn't have a clear answer to that question. One can provide pros for both ways: for a European direction and for a Russian direction of develop-ment. Likewise, one can provide many cons against both ways. Europe won't keep ignoring the fact that a country with such huge potential like Ukraine remains outside of the sphere of the European Union.
Still Europeans themselves somewhat obnoxiously regard Ukraine as a country with an undeveloped economy. European interest in Ukraine will not be sparked until the moment when Ukraine's economy becomes stronger and it becomes stronger in the world political arena. Thus, everything needs to be done so that Ukraine can achieve such goals. Ukraine has no other way to go.
At the same time, Ukraine should cooperate with the East, and not only Russia, but Asia too. Therefore, Ukraine's participation in Eastern free trade economic zones is vitally important for the country. Because Ukraine can also find markets for its products outside Europe, it would be more than simply unintelligent to lose a chance to find them now and then later on to try to win them again. However, my native village people think that Ukraine has sufficient economic and intellectual, as well as human resources potential to go its own way. My friends think that one needs to convince both Western and Eastern politicians that this is the way things are.
Unfortunately, my friends don't know that in politics "oral persuasions" count very little, and the only real force is power. And as of today, Ukraine is currently and will be in the near term without the power, in economic and political terms and even military required.
In terms of the economy, since its Independence, the Ukrainian economy has gone downhill and the country has lost its seventh ranking among the top developed countries of the world - Ukraine had that rank before Independence. And Ukraine voluntarily rid of itself of its nuclear arsenal and ceased to be the third most powerful country in terms of nuclear arms power. Even further, Ukraine has become a country with an unstable political situation.
Basically there is no clear answer yet as to the issue of which way Ukraine will go. And the future of Ukraine lies in the hands of the Ukrainian political elite.
With this indefinite conclusion of opinion about the future of Ukraine we ended our evening of questions and answers.
And we agreed that next time when we see each other again, we would talk about whether Ukraine has the capabilities to really become a rich and powerful country.
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More in the section:
Ukraine's greatest Cossack
Ukraine's Diaspora
Read also previous issue' articles:
THE EAR: Time to Stop Traffic Terror
The USSR: What was it?
Socialist Realism From One Collector's Viewpoint
Weak Laws Make Ukraine Europe's Dumping Ground
Social Entrepreneurship Expands in Ukraine
Lenin and Ukraine
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