September 1, 2009: “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” my mother used to say. With all my heart I love to travel but as this trip approaches, my entire body starts to go on strike, including my mind. Everything just starts to shut down.
“But we’re going to Russia! And the Ukraine!” I tell myself. “This is going to be fun.” But to no avail. A dark cloud of dread always starts to follow me around before I travel. I hate airplanes.
My doctor gave me Ativan to take on the flight but the side-effects listed on the insert were so horrendous that I didn’t dare take it. “Watch out for the paradoxical effect,” I was warned by Big Pharma, “wherein the medication enhances the very anxiety it was designed to prevent.” Great. Suppose I take the freaking pills, have an accelerated anxiety attack mid-air and run up and down the aisles of the plane stark naked? No thank you.
But I finally did find something that would help –- Jin Shin Jitsu. “When you get worried, just hold your thumb for three minutes. When you get fearful, hold your index finger for three minutes. Then switch hands. And if that doesn’t work, then just sit on your hands for three minutes.” And it worked.
Then we hit turbulence over the Atlantic so strong that the plane snapped, crackled and popped. And there I was, sitting on both of my hands. And it worked. It looked a little bit weird but it did work.
Then I was in Paris for a whole hour and a half and then I got on a plane for Kiev and it was filled with Hassidic Jews. “I didn’t know so many Jews lived in Ukraine,” I said to the man next to me wearing a yarmulke and peches.
“We don’t,” he replied. “We are going on a pilgrimage to the grave of Rebbe Nachman. For Rosh Hashanah.” Oh. Rebbe Nachman was one of those wonderful Eastern European rabbis during the eighteenth and nineteen centuries who, if I remember correctly, performed miracles. Then the plane landed in Kiev and suddenly I found myself awash in a sea of davening Jews, mostly from Brooklyn, wearing prayer shawls and black hats and gabardine overcoats –approximately 150 of them.
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When I finally made it out of the customs nightmare, there was nobody waiting for me, no one holding up a “Stillwater” sign. I ran into a herd of gun-toting Italians. “Where are you off to?” I asked.
“We
are off to reenact the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the
Crimea.”
September 16, 2009: After sitting forlornly outside the airport for several more hours, I finally found someone who would call my hotel. “Take a cab and we will pay you back,” said my guide. They had forgot about me! So I stumbled to bed around midnight, after once ascertaining that, yes, I had wi-fi in my room. Yay!
“If you get lost,” said my guide, “always ask young women for directions. In Ukraine and Russia, the young men learn math and physics mainly and the young women learn English.” Then she riffed off on the slowness of the mail service. “You will get home before your post cards will.” Wingnuts are always criticizing America’s government postal services –- but it works.
“And tomorrow we will be going to Babi Yar.” Babi Yar is the local equivalent of Auschwitz. There is now a monument there. So. On the one hand we have the happy celebration of Rebbe Nachman’s life and on the other hand we have the sad destruction of hundreds of thousands of Jews. Ukraine apparently used to be the home of many Jews throughout the centuries. I didn’t know that.
“No one calls us ‘The Ukraine’ any more. ‘Ukraine’ means ‘Outlands’ so we used to be Russia’s outlands. But now since we became independent in 1991, we dropped the ‘The’ part. Our country is large, the size of Texas. Kiev has 26 million people.” We are now driving on one of the oldest street in Kiev. Stuck in a traffic jam.
“In 1240, the Mongols wrecked Kiev’s famous Golden Gate. It was re-erected in 1982, our 1500th anniversary.” The Mongols got all pissed off by Kiev’s strong resistance to their invasion and pretty much leveled the city. “Mussorgsky was from Kiev and part of his ’Pictures at an Exhibition’ is about the Golden Gate.”
Wow. We really are in ancient Rus now! Lots of history here. “After the sack of Kiev, Rus was liberated 100 years later. And was also invaded by Poles, Turks, Tartars, etc. The peasants escaped to the Steppes and were called Free men -– or ‘Cossacks’ in Turkish.” Then we passed a statue of a Cossack. Good timing.
Then suddenly we were in front of a huge cathedral, which looked like a four-story-high blue and while birthday cake topped with a golden dome.
“The golden Gate of Kiev was also the Golden Gate of Constantinople.” I didn’t know that. “Christianity originally came here from Constantinople.” I surprised myself by actually being coherent and listening. Don’t appear to have any jet lag. That Jin Shin Jujitsu really works. I’m a fan for life now. Too bad I didn’t hear about it decades ago when I was a baby with colic.
Inside the birthday-cake cathedral it was very Old School and very peaceful -– despite all the tour groups rushing around. Rather medieval-looking. No place to sit down. The name of the cathedral was Saint Sofia. And actually now that I think about it, the insides really did look very Byzantine –- and also like some of the mosques that I saw in Iran. Except for the gold-leaf iconography, not Muslim at all. I liked this place. It combined my Byzantine Catholic heritage with my Islamic heritage. Good job.
“The inner sanctuary is made of linden wood and then gilded. The icons were painted in the 18th century. Saint Sofia is represented in that icon showing the Virgin Mary and the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Services are not allowed here now because the acoustics here are so powerful that singing causes the mosaics to be endangered. This is a UNESCO World Heritage site and must be preserved.” I can see why. Highlight of the trip so far –- but this is only Day One!
Then I dropped my camera in the dirt. Didn’t break! Whew.
The tour continued. “Here you can see how Kiev was built on a cliff overlooking the Dnieper River. And here is the obelisque honoring the dead from when the Nazis captured the city during World War II. The city had a population of 800,000 before the Nazis and only 200,000 were left afterwards.” Wasn’t Stefan Bandera a happy participant in that grim Nazi operation? Or just a cheerleader for Babi Yar?
There was also a statue of an actor who died in a car crash, sort of the Ukrainian James Dean. Next we saw a giant statue of the founders of the city – and a whole bunch of empty champagne bottles. Brides always come here to get their photos taken after their weddings. It’s considered good luck. There were two brides there now. Who the freak ever gets married on a Wednesday? Apparently these two did. One bride had on a white wedding gown that barely covered her bottom and white knee-high boots with stiletto heels.
“Here’s a professor of Ukrainian history,” said our guide. I want to hear more about the nine million people who starved to death on Stalin’s watch.
“There are three facts that have had an impact on modern Ukrainians. First, Ukraine is very old, having appeared in the seventh century. It was then called Ki-Rus, and was the birthplace of modern Russia as well. In 988 AD, Christianity was introduced as a political decision because it would serve to unite the tribes.”
Then the Mongolians arrived in the 13th century. “Ki-Rus was the last country they conquered on their way to Europe. Everything was devastated and it all had to be rebuilt.” Then Lithuanians and Poles took over one-third of Ukraine.
“Cossacks were the men of the borderlands, with an ancient democratic tradition from fighting against the Polish empire. So the second factor is that the western part was controlled by Poland –- and the east was controlled by Russia. Westerners are Catholic. In the central and eastern parts, the Ukrainian language was heavily persecuted by Russians.”
The third big factor was the political aspect. “Ukraine was split between pro-European alliances and pro-Russian affinities. In 1917, the nationalists came to power and declared the Ukrainian Peoples’ Republic, the first time ‘Ukraine’ was used. Even though the Republic only lasted a year, it was a beginning. In 1991, Ukraine actually became independent after a national referendum.” Good to know. I guess.
“After 1991, nothing was working properly, inflation was rampant and many people committed suicide in the face of such uncertainty. We only got our currency and constitution in 1996. But in 18 years we have done a lot.”
Economic, political and social issues? “Politicians decide everything here. From being under only one party, the Communist Party, we now have five parties. But while these new Ukraine leaders now call themselves democrats, they are the same people who used to be Communists.” Or Fascists or whatever.
“Also as long as you are a member of Parliament, no one can put you in prison. This sometimes comes in quite handy. And also you don’t elect members, you only elect parties.” And apparently how you get on the ballot is by buying your slot. Just like in America -- only in America, it’s called Citizens United.
“We elect the Parliament for four years and the President for five years. The Orange Revolution involved a presidential election. It had three outcomes. After two months of protest, our mass media also protested. Before 2004, all media channels were the same. Now they are more diverse. Protests were not natural in Ukraine because protesters were sent to Siberia. Ten million people protested in Kiev in 2004. The old corrupt mindset was above the rule of law. We thought the new government would be different. It wasn’t. The Orange Revolution was more interesting than the old Russian life. It was almost like the circus had come to town.” Or the CIA.
“Salaries have dropped 40% now. Less than 1.5% are extremely rich. 12% are middle class. Over 80% are below the poverty level. Don’t judge Ukraine by the high standards of Kiev. Not all of Ukraine looks like this.” At this point however, I sort of started falling asleep.
“Not everyone adheres to the rule of law here. For instance, a city council member got drunk and killed people. The newspapers just keep telling us that ‘the investigation goes on….’ Which means that nothing will happen to the corrupt ones. Some people feel that they are un-punishable.”
Ukraine has a central bank. It’s supposed to have a free market economy but there is regulation. Income tax is 15%. “We also import more than we export and buy more than we sell.” People here also go into debt. The interest rate is 13%. Metallurgy, chemistry and agriculture are the main industries here now.
Social issues? “We have great education facilities but not the jobs after you graduate. And sometimes the knowledge we gain is not relevant, didn’t give us the job know-how we needed.” Ivory tower problems.
“Education and healthcare are the two excellent services that we inherited from the Soviet Union but they exist now only according to the budget. Doctors and teachers are two of the lowest-paying jobs in Ukraine. And every five years doctors have to prove their qualifications.” But doctors make house-calls! Hospitals are free but you may be asked to buy your medical supplies -– and the hospital food is terrible.
Unemployment is low, 5% approximately. Crime? “Non-Ukrainians tend to be victims more than others.” End of lecture.
Then I went out to dinner and other diners offered me lots of vodka. I heroically declined. With all my jet lag, I’d be dancing on the table top after the second shot and wearing a lampshade in no time. Also it’s Rosh Hashanah and Ramadan too. But dinner was hilarious anyway even without any drunken antics from me.
There was one American guy at the next table who was a complete egocentric loudmouth. But even he was delightful anyway. And another woman who had recently lost her husband in a car accident started crying when the gypsy violinist started playing at her table. I held her hand but she only said, “It’s okay. I needed a good cry.”
The
food was crappy but both the ambiance and the company were five-star. I really had a fun time.
September 17, 2009: I got four hours of sleep last night. Jet lag apparently has set in to stay. I’m a hot mess. But I’m faking it because today is such an important day. I go to both the Chernobyl Museum and Babi Yar.
“There is a strong history of Judaism in Ukraine,” said our guide, “because the Poles imported them to manage and work on their estates. For instance, Golda Meier was born in Kiev.” And most of them are gone now. How sad.
This visit to Ukraine has caused me to re-think my antagonism to Israel a little bit (but not, of course, to Zionists -- who are still evil brats). Seeing all those Hasidim made me realize that if it weren’t for Israel, many of them would not exist (although most of these Hasidim did come from Brooklyn). And I am glad that these Hasidim exist. What I am not glad about is that Israel’s safety is built on the sad ruins of others’ lives. Should we save one group at the expense of other groups’ death? “Why can’t we all just get along?”
Here I am, looking at the deep universal questions of life and death. Must be jet lag.
“Many new apartment houses have been built in Kiev,” continued our guide. Then she began talking about yet another group that had attacked Kiev in the past. This time it was the Swedes. Apparently, over the centuries everyone has wanted a piece of Kiev.
“Now we will go to the Cave Monastery, built in the eleventh century, where we will see several entombed saints.” Mummified monks. “Next to the monastery is a monument to the over 50,000 Ukrainian soldiers who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Bragging rights? I must have seen at least half of them when I was a war correspondent there. They manned a bunch of the check-points.
Sitting in the peaceful courtyard of the Cave Monastery, surrounded by beautiful onion-domed chapels and chestnut trees, I people-watched long enough to come to the conclusion that Ukrainian women love to wear high heels.
“Here is the main church of the monastery.” Beautiful. Onion domes and frescoes. Each building includes religious paintings as part of the architecture. Lots of gilt. My camera’s memory card is filling up but this building is worth at least ten photos. Then I spent ten minutes trying to take a photo of a pigeon to send to my granddaughter. Hold still, you stupid pigeon.
“That building was constructed nine years ago.” Shut my mouth! The Germans had blown up the original cathedral in 1941 -– and now Germany is paying for its re-creation. I think that’s what our guide said. My mind is wandering. Jet lag. Pigeons. I miss my baby granddaughter.
“This monastery is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.” And it belongs to the government and the just rent it to the monks.
Then I fell on my face. Again. I got so excited by the cute little triptychs I had just bought for $1.20 apiece that I wasn’t watching where I was going. And I also bought some candles to light in hopes of world peace.
On to the caves and the mummies. It wasn’t cave-like at all. And the mummies were covered with brocade and under glass. What was I expecting? Caverns and skulls and Tutankhamen? Yeah. But it felt holy enough And it was dark, unnecessarily dark. Electric lights were everywhere but they didn’t turn them on. I walked behind a whole group of priests, dressed in black and wearing high-crowned black hats.
Then I went to lunch at a very cutesy tourist restaurant kitted out to look very peasant-ish but the food was lousy and I got stuck in traffic on the way there for so long that my stomach rumbled.
Then I went back to the tourist gig –- at the Chernobyl museum. Yes, there is such a thing. “In 1986,” said my guide as we drove there, “Sweden and Finland started registering excess radioactivity and finally Gorbachev confessed about the nuclear disaster. But before then he didn’t evacuate anyone or warn anyone. It was handled very clumsily.”
Chernobyl is only 68 miles away from Kiev.
In the 19th century, Chernobyl was a center of Hasidic culture. In 1919 there were pogroms but still 10,000 Jews lived there. After 1929 there were purges by Stalin and millions of Ukrainians were killed. In 1936, Poles were given one hour to get ready and then were packed into box cars and sent to Kazakhstan. No Poles were left in Ukraine.
“The 1930s were the times of famine and Ukraine’s food was forcibly taken to feed Russians in the big cities and also the Russian army. Chernobyl was affected by this too.” So the nuclear reactor disaster was not Chernobyl’s first.
“They tried to turn off the reactor at 1:00 am on April 26, 1986, for a test. Three minutes later there was an explosion due to inexperienced management. Too much carelessness.”
Soldiers, firemen, engineers and young men were conscripted to go put the fire out. “Thousands of people were sent to the scene and many of them died while constructing the concrete sarcophagus over the nuclear block. Thousands died. And to this day the nuclear reaction is still going on. 5,000 helicopters dropped mud on the reactor before they built the shell.”
The explosion was as strong as 500 Hiroshima-grade bombs. “A lot of firemen died. And they tried to hide the number of victims who died later. The communists tried to cover up those deaths.”
The taste of metal in your mouth is the first symptom of radiation poisoning. And then pins and needles on your skin. Hmmm. My mouth feels metallic just listening to this guy. “Radioactive fallout reached as far as Canada. Only 55 died immediately. 18,000 died in the first few weeks and 150,000 were evacuated. Now only elderly people are left in the area –- they went back because they wanted to die on their own land. People were told to leave everything because they would be returning there in three days. Chernobyl is now a ghost town.”
All this information came from my guide -– and we still hadn’t even reached the museum. Why? Kiev has the worst traffic jams I’ve seen this side of Tehran. It took us an hour to go five miles from the restaurant to my hotel and then another hour more to travel the five miles to the museum. Let me out of this car!
Then we finally got to the museum. “70 villages were evacuated,” said my museum guide. “It will be at least 500 years until they can be inhabited again. The first firefighters who arrived had no protection in an area as radiated as if a nuclear bomb had gone off. Many of them died within three weeks. People of the villages were also not given any protection. Geiger counters were helpless to measure the extreme radiation. Their counters quickly went off the scale.” Obviously both the local and national Soviets had handled this whole disaster badly.
The local villages were evacuated but also the city that held the workers. Photos of dead firemen line several walls of the museum. I saw videos of the doomed cleanup crews. 5,000 soldiers were exposed. Tragic.
“Chernobyl was the biggest power plant in Europe. And after it blew, the management of its radioactive waste became a problem. It will be a problem for years to come. Villages had to be buried -– even the buses and trucks used to evacuate had to be buried. Animals started to be born with deformed bones. 18,000 children have been treated for leukemia in Cuba. Newborn babies do not have the strength to survive.”
By April 29, 1986, the radioactive cloud covered much of Europe. Within three weeks, Chernobyl radiation was found in the United States and in the milk of nursing mothers in Japan. 150,000 Ukrainian children were affected.
23 years later, wild vegetation has forced itself through cracks in the deserted city.
Then one of the original firefighters delivered a talk. “I was the head of a team who worked at the plant for twelve years after the disaster.” He officially received a 100 REM radiation dose. “I’m now 60 years old and am still dealing with the consequences. I only survived with the help of God and strong ancestors. All my uncles and grandfathers lived up to age 90. One-third of my friends from that time have already died.”
It was impossible to protect oneself from this invisible radiation danger. “Conscripted soldiers who were not properly prepared were the most affected. Why were they so poorly prepared? Because the Soviet Union was afraid to spread panic. It was a result of propaganda so that people would not get a true picture of what was actually happening. Wrong statistics were used. Records were covered up.” Sounds like the Bush-Cheney approach to the war on Iraq.
“The reactor had a history. We had used smaller reactors of this type for producing plutonium. In 1975, at the St. Petersburg power plant, the same situation happened and it only a miracle that St. Petersburg didn’t explode.”
And then the same thing happened at Chernobyl in 1982. “The control system was not appropriate for this type of reactor but in a dictatorship, people were afraid to take responsibility for taking appropriate action. Chernobyl melted because the system of control and system of reaction did not adjust to overheating. It was a mistake of the construction that the turn-off button didn’t work. It was as if you stepped on the brake and the vehicle didn’t stop.”
Will they be building more reactors? “Even after the Chernobyl disaster, mankind has not created a more effective source of energy. There are plans to raise the safety levels. You would expect me to be against this but I am not.”
Many more people died because they didn’t get proper medical treatment. Some still get ten dollars a month in compensation pay. “I have problems with my heart and I need at least $100 for medication so I can live. I can buy the medicine myself but those who cannot are doomed. The state needs to take more care of them.”
People also die because of low immune systems or social maladjustment due to their sickness and impotence. “It is hard to estimate how many victims still survive. 186,000? Some were evacuated after the disaster. 650,000 from Russia and 191,000 from Ukraine. And those still living in endangered regions? Millions.”
My guide worked three shifts, trying to stabilize and stop the reactor and then twelve years more after the disaster. “Vodka helps to eliminate the stress.”
How much money did this whole mess end up costing? “Eleven billion rubles. 18 billion dollars. That’s what they say but I think it’s much more. The cost of the Chernobyl disaster was a heavy blow to the Soviet economy and might have been responsible for the collapse of the USSR. Russia no longer sends money to support the project.” Hmmm. Perhaps that’s why Yeltsen dropped the Ukraine like a hot (radioactive?) potato.
My guide may have appeared to be beating around the bush but, really, there are no statistics -– intentionally. “Some of the soldiers neglected their uniforms because they were radioactive, for instance, and statistics were changed so the government doesn’t have to pay money.”
Next: The Babi Yar monument. “Before the Second World War, 25 to 40 percent of the population was Jewish. In 1941 the Nazis conquered Kiev. In September, Nazis took all Jews who were not fighting on the front lines for the USSR, mostly women, to Babi Yar. They were told they were being given special privileges but when they arrived, their clothes were taken and they were brought in groups of ten to the edge of a 150-foot-deep ravine and were shot, machine-gunned, from the other side. 33,771 people died that day and the next, from the elderly to the babies. It took two days to kill them. One girl survived by jumping into the ravine and so not getting shot. She wrote a book. Later the bodies were burned.” And apparently Ukrainian hero Stepan Bandera helped to organize this slaughter.
For centuries, Babi Yar had originally been a Jewish cemetery. Gays, gypsies and insane people were also murdered at this site. And communists too. Over 100,000 people were killed there eventually. The Soviets didn’t want a memorial put up so they destroyed the ravine and built a factory. But the factory was flooded one winter and later, in 1991, a memorial was built.
Babi Yar was well-known all over the world and people came to honor the dead. Soviets ignored the fact. But eventually Israel and Ukraine built the memorial.
And then I drove off for dinner. I hope that it’s better than lunch.
September 18, 2009: A travel day. I flew off to Russia in the most rickety jet I’ve ever been in. It looked like a C-130 troop transport plane. I sat between two students, two teenage boys. “Are you Ukrainian or Russian,” I asked the one who was not asleep with his iPod on.
“I’m Russian.”
“Do you like living in Russia?” I asked.
“Of course. It’s the Motherland!” I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
