Still pregnant; c-section is, most likely, on Thursday, Dec. 1, in the morning.

On Saturday, several TV channels showed Oleksandr Moroz, leader of the Socialist Party of Ukraine, speaking on the Famine (in Ukrainian, as he usually does) during his trip to Lviv.

I couldn't bear listening to him, not on this subject - and especially after an introduction in which he declared his right to talk about the Famine, if only because half of his native village had perished in it. This sounded so outrageous.

Moroz was born in 1944, so he cannot be blamed for the horror of 1932-33 directly. But he joined the Communist Party in 1972 and made an impressive career through it - which, of course, didn't turn into a burden overnight, the moment the Soviet Union collapsed. Quite the opposite.

In the Nov. 4, 2005, issue of the Socialist Party's Kyiv branch newsletter, Kyyeve miy, Moroz had a column on the 88th anniversary of "the Great October." Here're a few quotes:

[...]

Some people are unfairly calling the revolution a coup carried out by the Bolshevik party. No, it was indeed a people's revolution, and if the party hadn't found the exact answer to the aspirations of the peoples of Russia, nothing would've worked, nothing would've changed.

Yes, many things that the revolutionaries dreamed of and V. Lenin aspired to were not implemented. Today, those who use politics to their own ends are happy to point out the failures, tragedies and defeats, but they forget that the best achievements of the Soviet order (collective values, patriotism, industrial breakthrough, free education and medicine, no unemployment, etc.) were the result of the October Revolution. [...]

Yes, there were repressions, and famine, and unjust wars, and the loss of a mighty state. The reasons for each of these events have been studied, but these studies are of unequal depth and credibility. Still, I dare state that the common cause - and perhaps the main one - of those troubles was the lack of democracy and management mechanisms, which would have placed the government under the control of the society and made it dependent on the people. The government that cannot be controlled can easily escape punishment, and is often criminal; it inevitably turns hostile to its own people. The experience of the past years in Ukraine does confirm this.

[...]

Moroz may not have real blood on his own hands; but he sure has inherited some of the sins of his mentors and predecessors - and the blood they shed.

The blood of half a village of dead people Moroz claims to be speaking on behalf of is but a tiny part of it.

Today is the Holodomor Remembrance Day in Ukraine.

I keep having birth dreams now, sometimes more than one a night. The baby's always different in them, but always perfect.

In one of today's dreams, I could finally see that lower part of my body that's been concealed by the belly for so many months (and still is, in real life). That was pretty exciting.

I can't say I'm really impatient. More often, I just can't believe that the changes ahead will really take place. Also, very often I wish time could stop for a while - I don't feel I'm ready yet. I am pretty nervous about it all right now... On Tuesday, I felt I could take five times as many photos - if only that allowed me to keep the present routine...

(Now that I've written this, I feel it's all untrue: I can't wait for the baby to arrive! Go figure.)

I haven't been there yet, but, according to Gazeta po-Kiyevski (in Russian), they've opened Bankova for pedestrians - thanks to the Pora party activists, it seems.

On Monday, I stumbled on a news item that said Pora was planning to re-establish free access to Bankova by sawing off the shameful iron gates. The show was scheduled for 2 pm, and there was no way for me to make it there in ten minutes, with the slippery hills and all. There seemed to be no follow-up on it in any of the media afterwards, so I assumed that nothing important had taken place.

Yesterday, I found the story in Gazeta po-Kiyevski: on Monday, there were three rows of riot police and one row of regular cops guarding the gates on Bankova, ready to fight Pora activists if the order came. One of the riot police guys told the reporters that he hadn't quite expected to be standing there again, a year after Maidan.

Then Oleg Rybachuk, head of Yushchenko's Secretariat, showed up:

I saw all this police here and decided to see what's happened! [...] We didn't order to put up this fence, Kyivrada [Kyiv City Council] did! The fence is an anti-Yushchenko symbol! [...] I suggested to the president to take it down and he agreed!

Rybachuk ordered to open the gates, and when a hundred or so Pora activists got to Bankova from Maidan, there seemed to be no reason for them to be there anymore.

Rybachuk then made the following promise:

The gate is open. It will always stay open, except for the days when diplomatic events are being held here!

It happened to us more than once in Istanbul: someone would ask where we were from, we'd say, 'Ukraine' - and they'd reply, 'Oh, Shevchenko,' meaning Sheva, Andriy Shevchenko, the football star playing for Milan.

Even 10-year-old Istanbul boys know what Ukraine is - because of Sheva. Way cool.

Well, right now, within the past hour or so, Sheva has scored four goals in the game against Fenerbahce in Istanbul. It's incredible. Sheva totally rocks.

And I'm very sorry for Fenerbahce - they play very well, except for the moments when Sheva scores...

I also wonder if it's safe for Ukrainians to travel to Istanbul after this game. It probably is: Fenerbahce is just one of Istanbul's teams, not the only one. But then again, who knows...

My 80 photos from Maidan's first anniversary - enjoy!

(As far as I know, TV had the best picture of the evening crowd... Nothing I can match it with, unfortunately...)

***

Some of my favorites:


'Our Ukraine'



'Stop persecuting Tymoshenko, she's had enough in Kuchma's time!'



'Victor Andriyovych, don't listen to your entourage, listen to your heart!'









Putin in orange disguise ;-)))))

Came back home very soon - too slippery; the crowd's incredibly huge; no way to push through closer to the stage, not with my belly, anyway; and - the further you are, the less you can hear, because the sound system isn't as good as a year ago, when they were re-broadcasting it all throughout Khreshchatyk.

On the way to Maidan, I suddenly heard the crowd give out one very powerful cheer - from where I was, it sounded more like a gasp - and then I heard a female voice coming from Maidan, and though I couldn't make out a single word, I knew it was Tymoshenko. Later, I read that she had been carried to the stage, through the crowd, all the way from Instytutska.

Yushchenko showed up on time, at 8 p.m. sharp, and spoke for about an hour. I missed most of his speech. Closer to the end, he attempted to explain the situtation with the memorandum he had signed with Yanukovych: remember how you were taking food and clothes to the folks brought down here from Donbas last year, the poor souls who had nothing but vodka with them?.. remember how you were all chanting 'East and West together!' last year?.. - something along these lines...

***

According to some estimates, there were 100,000 people at Maidan tonight (Gazeta.ru), and according to others - 200,000 (NTV).

When I was near Besarabka, on the way back, there seemed to be a bit too many tipsy guys around - but right now, there seem to be none - not where we are, at least, on the Besarabka side of Khreshchatyk. That's good.

***

Vitaly Klichko was briefly on stage tonight - he's not too eloquent, so it's good that his speech was very short. He had a limp - post-surgery, I guess - and he seemed to be leaning on a walking stick. After Tymoshenko, he probably got the warmest welcome from the crowd. If it's true that he's planning to run for Kyiv's mayor, he probably does have a good chance of winning. I'd vote for him: with his achievements, he's totally worthy of every kind of respect, plus he must be rich enough to abstain from stealing and taking bribes, and he's seen the world, so he'd know the areas that need some fixing in Kyiv, and there are plenty of those right now.

***

There was also an Armenian guy congratulating the crowd tonight - speaker of the Armenian parliament, I guess, but I'll have to check that. His last name is Bagdasarian. That's interesting, because Robert Kocharian, the Armenian president, was among those who, along with Putin, congratulated Yanukovych on his victory last year, prematurely. So I wonder if the guy who made a very friendly and unexpected - if not too inspired (he read from a piece of paper) - speech at Maidan tonight was a dissident or something...

Update: A dear Armenian friend of mine has described Artur Bagdasarian this way: "He is a very bad career-maniac-never-a-reformist-not-even-remotely-a-patriot-snobbish-like-hell-without-any-depth type of guy... None of those bastards deserve any minute of your thinking about them and why they do something."

***

I'll try to post photos later tonight.

I'm still home (on my way out, actually). At Maidan, they're doing speeches right now, all of them. I'd rather have a dance party, I'm afraid, considering they'll have up until the end of March 2006 to promise things and talk beautifully.

Many of them are saying that the criminals of the previous regime belong in jail - so why aren't they there yet?

The number of people at Maidan is amazing. So wonderful.

Just returned from Maidan, for a snack and some hot tea: the weather's evil.

But - the atmosphere is lovely: everything's orange, lots of people there, and a lot more are coming. I was afraid it'd all be more like a Soviet November 7 celebration, when the guys up there order us to show up at the demonstration, so we do, and then pretend we're happy and are thinking of nothing but 1917... Thank God, today is different: there's lots of joy - and most of it is for real.

It's sad, of course, to watch the documentary about last year's events, to be reminded that it's been a year, and so many things have been fucked up. There is some bitterness. But overall, it's wonderful, despite the snow.

I've got many pictures, but I'm planning to go back to Maidan a little later, and I'll try to post all I have and probably write something later tonight!



P.S. Speaking of politics, Tymoshenko has prepared wonderfully for this day: her party's flags are everywhere.

Walked to Maidan and back, got somewhat too tired - I'm not who I was last year, obviously, and the weather's pretty lousy, too - 31 photos...

***

At Maidan, there was a Natalya Vitrenko/Progressive Socialist Party freak show.



Lots of people, not only from Kyiv but from other places as well, with various flags, posters and banners, including a couple Russian flags. Vitrenko's speech was full of hatred, her rhetoric so familiar, so similar to the one most popular in Russia at many levels now: paranoia, everyone's out to get us, the poor little Orthodox Christians, especially those evil Americans, and those evil orange ones.





Vitrenko's such a liar, too - claimed to have nearly been killed by the orange crowd last year, but the brave coal miners rescued her; okay, but now, of course, she didn't give Yushchenko any credit for letting her hold this circus at the country's main square, where anyone was free to join her if they felt like it. Back in 1999, when Vitrenko ran for president herself, she promised to shut down all international airports if she won.

The crowd didn't look anything special: a fair number of men looking and smelling like they drank too much last night and smoke too much in general; a fair number of middle-aged, not too friendly-looking women; some young people with red stars on their jackets and the word 'Breakthrough' (proryv) typed on their scarves. Despite their lack of charm, though, most weren't as hysterically hostile as their leader - as long as you avoided talking politics with them, I guess.

One woman told her friend to strike a pose when she noticed I was photographing them, and they both sort of smiled back at me when I sort of smiled at them. A man with Vitrenko's party flag asked me to take a picture of him - 'for history.' He gave me his address then, in Dnipropetrovsk, and asked me to mail him the print.



It reminded me of this guy at the May 9 freak show in Moscow:



He was from Omsk, staying with his friends outside Moscow; that day, he was in such a hurry to catch his commuter train that he left his camera at his friends' place; he was the only person at that gathering I grew to have any feelings for, even though he didn't conceal he was a Communist; 'I'm a decent person [poryadochnyi chelovek],' he told me, and part of me knew he wasn't lying; he also said he was an offspring of Ivan Annenkov, a Decembrist; I still feel very guilty for losing the piece of paper with his address and never sending him the picture.

Today's guy said he was a former marine, and I thought it must've been a long, long time ago, for he was so skinny now; I told him I could only promise to try sending him the picture - but I couldn't promise I'd actually send it, because of my pregnancy; he wished me to have a very healthy baby, and I thanked him; he then tried to talk to me about some esoteric shit, hypnosis or something, and I escaped, telling him I could no longer stand his cigarette next to my face.

***

One of today's slogans on Vitrenko's side was 'The fascist won't get through!' (Fashist ne proidyot!'] - and I found it so silly at first, so irrelevant.

But then I crossed the street to the other side of Maidan, where there was a bunch of UNA-UNSO guys. They were singing some military songs, and on finishing one of them, they shot their right arms up and forward, unbent, several times - a gesture resembling the notorious Nazi one just way too much...

A good thing about this UNA-UNSO group was that, unlike Vitrenko's crowd, they weren't numerous at all.

Mama and I spent part of the evening looking at the few remaining family photos - my mama when she was little, her parents, my mama as a student in Nizhyn, and later, when she was already working in Sevastopol.

I knew all these photos by heart when I was a kid. I had stories attached to them, the stories I'd invented, in addition to the real ones.

Then we kept losing them, with all the repairs and moving around. At some point not long ago, I realized I craved to see them again, and today mama has found them, at last.

These photos reveal so much - but they keep silent about even more things. It's overwhelming.

I wish I could be more specific, but it doesn't seem right to talk about my grandparents, for example, now - right after I've spent a few hours looking into their eyes. It'd be like talking behind their backs. And some of it is too personal, way too personal.

I wish I had a scanner nearby so that I could at least post a couple of these pictures now...

***

Our family is like an iceberg - and there's no way to see what's not on the surface. Most of the things I can only guess - and it's an amazing feeling, so much freedom and so very few allegiances to keep. Even the obviously wrong guesses are worth thinking about and are totally enjoyable - and what if... no, definitely not... but it would've been so cool if...

And to my family now adds Mishah's - with all their stories. And they do know and remember a lot more than we do.

All in all, it feels like I've just discovered a treasure I'd been sitting on for the past few decades, without realizing it. And that's not the first time I feel this way.

***

I've also found two notes written by my mama to my papa in January 1974, from roddom, right after I was born.

They are terribly moving. Masterpieces.

They also say so much about that period. Here're just a couple lines:

I don't need any food. Well, just lemons, maybe. Perhaps Vasya's mother could find some. Take as many as possible.

Lemons were hard to get then, defitsit. Hard to believe now.

***

The two roddom notes were written with a pencil, not a pen.

In one, I'm referred to as Nika (Neeka) at the beginning and as Stasya at the end. On Jan. 10, when I was 4 days old, my parents were still undecided on whether to call me Veronica or Stanislava...

I'm back home from the hospital. Inshaallah, if all goes well and according to the plan, I'll return there on Nov. 28 and will have a c-section at the very beginning of December.

***

Nothing to write about except for the cab driver who took me home today: a relatively young father of four, a physicist, got really offended when I called him a cab driver, because that's a part-time job for him, something he's forced to do to feed the family. I explained I wasn't being arrogant: I myself would've loved to be a cab driver, only I'm too timid for that. And I'm grateful I don't have to, of course.

Even though their situations have nothing in common, he reminded me of all those "Russian" cabbies in Brooklyn, half of whom seemed to hold Soviet Ph.D.'s in something very complex, but were too old to study the language and then look for a proper job. Their kids and grandkids, though, have a lot more chances than this guy's kids. Then again, who knows, maybe everything will change here by the time they grow up...

Here's my translation of a little item from Maidan.org.ua (in Ukrainian).

I wouldn't have noticed it if it hadn't been about the neighborhood I've spent the past five days in (not right where I am, but very close - even closer when you think in Moscow distances, not Kyiv...):

Potemkin village on 1 Komarova St.

A user of the Education and Science forum reports:

Today our President, Victor Andriyovych Yushchenko, will visit the National [Aviation] University - one of the most interesting universities of our country.

We know in advance what our President will be shown. We also know in advance what will remain invisible.

The President will be taken through the repaired Building #1, and perhaps he'll glance into the newly repaired Building #11, where the real pride of our university is located: the aviation hangar.

He won't be shown Buildings #3 and #5, where the windows haven't been washed in years, where the elevators do not work, where it's cold in winter and no air to breathe in summer. He won't be shown the conditions in the lecture rooms in the highrise Building #8.

The President will be happily greeted by the students dressed in uniforms for which they were forced to pay 550 hryvnias [$110], and by the professors who paid from 850 [$170] to 1200 [$240] hryvnias, after being threatened that they'd be fired and have the following scary note inserted in their records if they didn't comply: "[Fired] for disregard for the behavioral norms and for violating the university's internal regulations." (It has to be noted that the quality of the fabfric the uniforms are made of is so low, it's shameful to wear them in front of others after just one year.)

Perhaps the President will look from afar at the wonderful Aviation University dorms, where, in horrible conditions, five people live in rooms meant for two or three students. Only the lucky ones live there, though, for there isn't enough space in the dorms for all students, and many have to look for shelter around and outside Kyiv.

The president will be told about the university's library, which has a few thousand volumes. And he'd probably be surprised if someone told him that to check out one book, a student has to pay 1 hryvnya ($0.2). Oh come on, this isn't money! And the librarians are poor, their salaries are tiny but they need to eat, too!

And, I wonder, what will they do with that huge pack of stray dogs who live near the university's dining hall and run around Harmatna St. in the evening, scaring the passer-by?

[...]

And of course, the President will never go down to the undreground pass by the Harmatna tram station (sorry - the National Aviation University station) - if he does, he'll never believe that he's two steps away from the National [Aviation] University and not in some remote Gorlivka [town near Donetsk] neighborhood full of drug addicts and dealers.

The university faces lots of problems, but there've been many achievements, too. It'd be unfair to stain the memory of these great scientists and teachers: Bashta, Kukhtenko, Malynovsky, Mkhitaryan, Lozytsky and others.

Just one question: does Ukraine need modern universities or Potemkin villages?

This was posted in the morning. From the evening news I understood that Yushchenko never showed up at the Aviation University. Minister of Education did, though (I think his last name is Nikolaenko, but I don't know anything about him).

There was some silly concert dedicated to the Students' Day (today), and then the minister went on stage and, surrounded by the young men in uniforms and with stupid smiles on their faces, told a student joke: how Baba Yaga and Koshchey Bessmertnyi (scary Russian fairy-tale characters) caught a few students, and Baba Yaga decided to make a soup out of them, but Koshchey told her not to - because last time he did, those guys were so hungry they spoiled the soup by eating all the potatoes out of it! And everyone in the audience laughed, though it was hard to tell if they laughed obediently, or for real, or both.

***

This anonymous post reminded me of a story I've been telling everyone since 2001. Somehow, this is the first time I'm writing about it here.

A friend who used to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ternopil recalled how Yushchenko, then still the prime minister under Kuchma, came to visit his alma mater, the Ternopil Finance and Economics Institute. Prior to his arrival, all the professors who had computers at home were ordered to bring them to the institute, and a makeshift computer lab was created. They showed it off to unsuspecting Yushchenko when he came over. As soon as he left, the professors were allowed to take their computers back home - and the computer lab disappeared.

I always tell this story when I want to explain to someone foreign what pokazukha is - something so typical of the Soviet and post-Soviet societies, the contemporary Potemkin villages...

In Paris yesterday, Yushchenko put flowers to Symon Petlyura's grave (three photos at Maidan.org.ua - here).

In Paris today, at the age of 86, died Marina Denikin-Grey, daughter of General Anton Denikin (two recent photos of her in the Kommersant - here).

***

Petlyura's Wikipedia bio is here; Denikin's here.

***

I don't have any particular feelings for either of these men, and I have to admit I know very little about them - but I do find it amazing that their life and afterlife stories seem to cross at some really significant points:

- before and during WWI, both served in the Russian Tsarist army, with Denikin based first in Kyiv, then in Galicia;
- during the civil war, Petlyura fought against Denikin, among others;
- after the Communists came to power, Petlyura and Denikin both eventually ended up in France;
- during the Soviet times, they were never mentioned in a positive context, let alone praised, not officially anyway;
- now they've both reclaimed their 'national hero' status in their respective motherlands, with Denikin's body re-buried in Moscow in a lavish ceremony a month or so ago.

If nothing else, this means that at some well-hidden level Russia has changed as much and in the same direction as Ukraine.

***

I don't care about Denikin or Petlyura, but I did fall in love with Denikin's daughter, who has died today.

At 86, she had the energy of a beautiful, young woman, she was shining all the time in this really contagious way, and she looked both fragile and resilient, both very kind and very tough - at least, this was how she appeared to me on TV.

In one interview with her, I read that she'd spent 40 years with her third husband; they both loved tennis, but she also loved football (soccer), while he hated it; when she gave him a second TV set as a present, he was extremely happy, because that meant he'd be able to watch whatever he liked while she was watching her football!..

Rest in peace, Marina Antonovna.