Dinner with Olga

We really enjoyed having borsch with Olga, the 75-year-old woman who is the director of the Leavitt Institute in Ukraine.  She told us stories from her youth under the Soviet Union.  She stuffed us full of delicious red borsch and green borsch.  We said we were full.  Then she gave us each a big plate of chicken and rice.  We kept eating because we did not want to be rude, and she had already put it in front of us.  She asked if we would eat some watermelon.  We told her that we were too full.  She gave us some anyway and told us to eat.  She had met us for the first time that evening, but treated us like she was our own grandmother.  She also told us that she always tells the young professionals (our tour guides/support staff while we are here) that the number one rule is that they “treat the Americans like five-year-olds.”  She told us some great stories about another American who kept getting lost and losing things in Ukraine.  We failed to mention that that person sounds a lot like me! We have really enjoyed getting to know our young professionals (Anna in Kharkiv, and Tatiana and Maria in Kiev). They come to our door, take us to the universities where we teach, buy all of our train tickets, and stay with us all day. They take us to good restaurants and help us find good places to shop and site-see. They also located the luggage we lost during our flight here (it somehow got stuck in Moscow) and had it delivered to Olga.

Olga also explained that when she was in college, members of the KGB were everywhere.  They had representatives at every university, in every study group.  She said that two women from her university were sent to prison camps in Siberia just because they had copies of Animal Farm.  They were never heard from again.  She later worked as a translator for the Soviet Union in Egypt.  There she enjoyed more freedom and read many books that were forbidden in Ukraine, including Animal Farm.  On her way home, she hid Animal Farm in the middle of a box filled with other books.  But the Soviet Union found and confiscated her copy of Animal Farm. They reprimand her, but she was not sent to Siberia.  She was excited to tell us that now, half a century later, her grandson just bought her another copy.

She told us that during Soviet times nobody was allowed to have foreigners in their homes, and that if we were to have gone to her home for dinner, all of us would have been arrested.  Communism was put in place in 1917, and it was not until 1991 that the iron curtain fell.  The students we have talked to feel that they can speak freely and openly in the streets about their opinions now.  It is the justice and education systems though, that are still lacking.  Many students say that in Ukraine, people just have to survive.  I hope that they will someday thrive.

As a side note about something interesting....interest rates here are 26%.  One young professional told us that the typical down-payment requirement is 30-40%.  The average salary is around $250/month.  Yet the average rent for a flat is over $250.  People are only able to make it because they either work multiple jobs or they have dual-income households.  The law professors typically make about $300/month.