A Different Country

By Walter Kish

I first visited Ukraine some 17 years ago and have had the opportunity to watch the country change as it overcame the corrosive effects of some fourscore years of Communism and began entering the wider European and global community of nations.  Although there is no doubt that in such areas as political, economic and cultural freedom, Ukraine has a long way to go before it enjoys the kind of transparency, justice and opportunity that we are used to in Canada and the United States. Nonetheless, Ukraine is a far different country now than it was 15 years ago when it finally broke free from Soviet rule.

This is particularly evident in the larger cities where there is little that we enjoy in the West that cannot be found in comparable stores, malls, restaurants, clubs and other purveyors of modern consumer goods and services.  Traffic is now as much of a problem in Kyiv as it is in Toronto.  The small but growing Ukrainian middle class now struggle over decisions such as whether they should take their summer vacations at a Turkish seaside resort or a Tunisian one.  They ponder the pros and cons of whether to buy a Toyota or a Chevrolet.  They compare the technical specs of Nokia cell phones over Samsungs.  I was stunned to find out recently that in a country with a population of 47 million, there are some 37 million cell phones in use in Ukraine today. 

All this is not to say that such dilemmas are common to all Ukrainians.  In truth, the rich elite form perhaps five per cent of the population, and what we would term the middle class, amount to probably not more than 10 to 20 per cent, leaving more than three-quarters of the population in the ranks of what I would call the poor.  These are vast masses, both urban and rural, for whom it is an ongoing struggle to earn enough to pay for a roof over one’s head and buy the basic necessities – food, clothing and medicines.  The average monthly salary in Ukraine is just over the equivalent of $150 a month.  Most people live in cramped, poorly maintained concrete apartment blocks that in North America would be termed slums.

The economic gap is particularly evident in the villages or selos, where approximately a third of all Ukrainians still live.  Although all villages now have electricity, a large proportion still does not have natural gas.  Most heating is still provided by wood stoves.  Very few houses have indoor plumbing, with outhouses being the norm.  Water is mostly drawn manually from wells.  Horsepower is commonly provided by real horses rather than tractors or mechanized equipment and most labour is still manual.  My relatives in the village still work their small plots of land using the same methods and the same hand tools that their ancestors used centuries ago.  Milk and dairy products come from the family cow, meat from the chickens and pigs raised personally, and the vast majority of the food is cultivated on the few hectares of land that each villager received when the collective farms were disbanded.

Yet, things are not quite the same as they were 15 years ago when I first had to sneak into my family’s ancestral villages, since doing so was still forbidden, even though Gorbachov was trumpeting his progressive Glasnost and Perestroika propaganda.  Nowadays, when I plan to visit the village, I have no trouble contacting my relatives as in days gone by, since almost every one of them has a cell phone if not a land line.  Almost every house has a colour television and satellite dishes are not uncommon.  Although wood stoves are still the norm for heating and cooking, almost everyone has a fridge, and probably more than half of my relatives have a washing machine of some sort.  In even the smallest village there is now some sort of a store with supplies of groceries and goods that were totally unavailable a decade ago.  And, of course, where 15 years ago, the town livewires used to gather behind some barn to drink moonshine, now every village has at least a bar or two with decent beer on tap and cheap alcohol of all kinds.

One other big change, at least in Western Ukraine, is the many households that have at least one member of the family working abroad – not only in nearby countries such as Russia, Poland, or the Czech Republic, but also in places as far away as Spain, Portugal and Ireland.  That too would have been unthinkable in the early 90s.

It is hard to predict what all this will lead to eventually, but it is certain that such changes can only accelerate, and I want to be around to see what happens next.