Jill Stephenson
Yulia Tymoshenko
From the time of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, education has been a priority in Ukraine, as a former part of the USSR, after its neglect for the mass of the population in tsarist times. The tsars clearly subscribed to Cardinal Richelieu’s view of mass education: ‘A body that had eyes all over it would be monstrous’.
The Bolshevik campaign to ‘liquidate illiteracy’ achieved remarkable results, teaching peasants to read and write and producing a literate population in a generation, compared with a situation before 1917 where less than 30% of the population was literate, and some of these were merely able to write their own names.
The wonderful Bolshevik posters were not merely decorative: with a largely illiterate population in 1917, conveying a message had to be done pictorially, with perhaps one or two words of exhortation below a graphic image. The tradition of emphasising literacy continues in Ukraine’s schools. The primary school that we visited – surely not a Potemkin school? – in the village of Omelnik, near the industrial town of Kremenchug, had deeply-committed teachers, as well as children, wearing Ukrainian costume, who really seemed to enjoy putting on a little concert for us. Then we had a tour of classrooms.
Children begin to learn English at age five, with one hour a week, and more as they grow older. They learn in a way that no doubt our ‘progressive’ educationists would regard as unduly prescriptive and traditional, with boards around the classroom walls showing the correct versions of classes of words in English, for example:
Photograph by author
I bet they would not get away with writing ‘Egg’s Benedict’. This is how it is done in a society that prizes literacy, numeracy and command of a foreign language, and is not afraid that an emphasis on learning – even learning by rote – might be too ‘boring’ for children. It is reminiscent of the notice outside a school in Grenada: ‘Literacy is not only your right – it is your responsibility’. I imagine that those who are nurtured by this system become the ‘confident individuals’ of the ‘Curriculum for Excellence’, primarily because they have acquired a base of knowledge and a set of skills that make them confident in a variety of situations. It is hard for those who have difficulty in reading, writing and counting – of whom there are, sadly, significant numbers in our society – to feel confident when confronted with information or tasks requiring literacy and/or numeracy.
With a parliamentary election at the end of this month, cities had their walls and windows plastered with campaign posters. I noticed the face of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister, on several of them, although she cannot participate because she is in jail. Her party keeps her image before the public. I tried to provoke a response about her unjust – as we in the west see it – imprisonment and allegedly cruel treatment in jail, but the reaction I got more than once was a shrug and the comment that all the leading politicians since independence have been corrupt to some degree, including her.
There was some respect for Leonid Kuchma, president 1994-2005, because of his previous work and good reputation as head of the space institute in Dnepropetrovsk. But his term of office was disfigured by increasing corruption, engendering a continuing cynicism about career politicians that seemed very familiar.
Meanwhile, aspects of the Soviet system persist. The anti-clericalism has gone, as evidenced by the many restored churches and the daytime services attended by a fair number. In one church in Kiev, we noticed a priest and male worshipper bent over a table with their heads under a colourful rug. It occurred to me that this might be a form of confession, and so, on inquiry, it proved. Rituals such as this can be performed openly now, without fear of official harassment, as there was in some periods of the Soviet regime. The restoration has included St Catherine’s Cathedral in Kherson, where one of our number thought to rest her weary self on an elegant chair under an awning. She was shooed away forcefully: this had been the chair on which Catherine the Great had sat when she attended services there.
The remnants of the Soviet system are evident more in process than in form. Our small group of 10 was assigned to three tables for four in the ship’s dining room, with the 30 or so Germans down one side of us and the 30 or so Americans down the other side. On the first evening, my companion and I were the last of our group to arrive, and so we sat together alone. The restaurant manageress informed us that these were the seats we would sit in for the whole 10 days. She was most surprised when I said ‘No’.
The problem was that it suited the staff to know who was where because they could then serve the correct main course at lunch and dinner. The choices had to be made on the preceding day. Since there was only ever a choice of two dishes, this did not seem (to me) to be a major problem. We discussed within our group and arrived at an agreement with the manageress that we would have a table for six and a table for four, and that we would arrange ourselves between them as we saw fit at each meal. There was some sighing over the 10 days when the manageress had to ascertain who was having which main course (some of us did not have one at lunch, anyway), but it made it much more sociable for us.
What we would here call ‘producer interest’ applies in other areas. Dealing with money was at times tiresome. The Ukrainian hryvnia is not convertible and we were told that we could obtain local currency only after arrival in the country. There were, however, a couple of anomalies. One of our number had obtained hryvnia on request from her local post office. She had rather overbought, and became the Bank of Jackie for the rest of us, for a few days. Another had obtained hryvnia from her local Sainsbury’s Bank because a contingent of the Salvation Army had been allowed to order some and had, frugally, not used all of its allowance.
The really tiresome bit was that the ship’s bill had to be paid on the morning before the day of departure, between 7.30 and 8am. It was to be paid in hryvnia (credit cards accepted), and the separate bill for laundry was to be paid in cash (hryvnia). The gift shop bill was also separate and could be paid in euros. Tips for the ship’s staff were to be paid in euros, in cash. Any purchases – including bottled water at extortionate prices – on the ship on the day following settlement of the bill had to be paid in cash (hryvnia). A litre of water on the ship cost 28 hryvnia (a little over £2). At kiosks in the towns, the same brand cost anything between 4 and 7.5 hryvnia. We tended to load up on the way back from an outing.
On that last day, I reckoned that I would need some more hryvnia, for water and for a gin and tonic before dinner. I spied a couple of banks across the road (and construction works) from the ship, and my companion and I set out for them. At the first, in spacious, airy and well-furnished premises, I was told that I could not change pounds sterling. Dollars and euros were fine, but it was ‘illegal’ to change sterling. I told the teller that that was odd because I had changed sterling in Kyiv 10 days earlier. He then very kindly did a lot of work on his computer, and sent his assistant with an inquiry to the bank next door, to try to find out where I would be able to change a £10 note.
The answer was the Sperrbank Rossiya, and he gave us directions to the nearest branch. This was a rather dingy, spare place with two office windows. Behind each was a teller, but one had a notice that I deduced said ‘position closed’. The other had a queue of two persons. The first, it turned out, was either withdrawing or paying in his entire life savings – or something equally time-consuming. As his transaction became ever more protracted, a lengthening queue formed behind us.
One woman, apparently a local, marched up to the ‘position closed’ window. It remained resolutely closed. Our teller then rose and put up a ‘position closed’ notice, and went round the corner to do more business with the gentleman who had been absorbing all her time at the window. The man in front of us rolled his eyes. Eventually, it was my turn, and she looked suspiciously at my £10 note. She scrutinised it three times under a blue light and showed it twice to her ‘position closed’ colleague. Then she printed out four forms for me to sign. And I got my money.
The entire visit was fascinating, from the space museum at Dnepropetrovsk to the accomplished male voice choir that performed Ukrainian songs for us to the splendid spread of local foods provided in Omelnik to the mummies in the caves at Lavra, a particularly venerable monastery; from the Cossacks riding their horses acrobatically in Zaporizhzhya to the fishermen on the pier there who clearly habitually provided tiddlers for a very handsome cat to the firework show by the Dnieper on our last night.
Our guide, Regina, is a history graduate and a journalist, and her command of English is near-native standard. This means that it was significantly better than that of some of our natives. She was endlessly informative, but her view of Ukrainian politics was somewhat pessimistic. This was summed-up by her tale of the satirical programme on TV that used to mock the political leadership. The programme is still on air, but it now avoids the subject of politics. It remains to be seen whether the imminent election will make any difference to that, either way.
Click here for part I of Jill Stephenson’s journey
Jill Stephenson is former professor of modern German history at the University of Edinburgh
