A transformed universe

In a case in the museum room of the Kiev Philharmonia are some relics of Ukraine's 'God of the voice', the magnificent bass Boris Gmirya. It somehow reduces his scale to see his glasses, collar and (pre-made) bow-tie - a reminder that even Gods may have human - or even clay - feet. As I was just about to hear a performance of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony - which I will presently eulogize - I was reminded of an occasion when Gmirya showed he was all too human. In 1962 he was Shostakovich's choice to sing the solo role in his controversial 13th Symphony, 'Babi Yar', with Mravinsky conducting. Under Party pressure, both withdrew. (Kondrashin, who did conduct, received a phone call during the dress rehearsal from the Minister of Culture, 'suggesting' that he might not be well enough to go on stage).

Twenty-five years earlier, the Fourth Symphony had a similarly traumatic transit. It was scheduled for a premiere in Leningrad; but the composer, having been denounced earlier that year in Pravda for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, found it expedient to withdraw it at the last minute, producing a year later the (superficially) more conformist Fifth Symphony. The Fourth was not heard until 1961 (Kondrashin conducting) and its reappearance at the time when 'Babi Yar' was gestating is surely not coincidental.

In tonight's spectacular performance by the Ukraine National Symphony Orchestra under Volodymyr Sirenko, it was clear why Shostakovich might have had his second thoughts in 1936. for this is a profoundly subversive work at the deepest levels. Clearly Mahlerian in its scale, its length, its use of sleazy waltzes and bird song, its shattering climaxes and its episodes of solo woodwind and brass instruments exposed against the orchestra like dissidents in conformist societies, it is also Mahler though a distorting mirror; or maybe Mahler modified by one of Einstein's tensors of relativity that can transform one universe - the Austro-Hungarian Empire - into another, the Soviet Union, both different and the same. These are the sort of ideas - even in an inexplicit art such as music - that no authoritarian state could tolerate.

As with Mahler, however, if this music is not driven, it becomes merely bloated. There was no risk of this with Sirenko and his band. Not only the orchestra, but also the audience, were totally gripped as Shostakovich's long paragraphs unfolded. The loose symphonic structure of the two lengthy outer movments renders them sequences of striking aural tableaux, whose contrasts suggest an alienation and individualism clearly at odds with the political strictures of 'popular culture'. The middle movement evaporates in an inane dance-rhythm; the last movement ends in dark, brooding chords. By the end of the work, we had all been expertly led on a most disturbing voyage. The audience rose as one to give conductor and orchestra - and the spirit of Shostakovich - a standing ovation. This was the fnest performance of this strange work I have ever heard, and indeed was the best Shostakovich performance I have heard in years.

A headless monster

From the distance it looks like a horde of Coca-Cola tents clustered around the foot of Kiev's last statue of Lenin, on the corner of Shevchenko and the Khreshchatyk. But on closer inspection these turn out to be a rare manifestation of the Ukrainian Communist Party, hoping to salvage the memorial to their idol which was damaged by (in their words) 'bourgeois Ukrainian nationalists'. I chatted with the faithful (about a dozen women and one man, all in their seventies) to find out what it was all about.

Apparently at 4 in the morning on the 30th June, a group of young people with a ladder scaled the statue, knocked off its head and damaged one of its hands before running off. According to my informant, the statue was a great masterpiece by a Ukrainian sculptor, and was created from the finest Korean marble, the same sort as used on Lenin's tomb in Moscow. Repairing it is therefore quite a costly enterprise and one to which the city of Kiev and the government of Ukraine is (unsurprisingly) not prepared to give any priority. So the die-hards of the Party have taken the job on themselves. To judge from the pitiful amount of money they had collected at the end of a busy weekend, they have quite a long haul ahead, although they assured me they had received promises of support from Spain and Italy.

'Look here' said my friend, pointing to a display board ,'there are statues of Lenin all over the world, in Cuba, Bulgaria, Mauritius, Finland, Hanoi and Dallas, Texas (sic). We deserve to have one ....'; and then followed a lengthy rant on how in Soviet times there was no unemployment, bread and rent cost only a few kopecks, etc. etc. I was interested to see that the Hanoi statue had a plaque giving the great man's name as 'Le Nin'. But it didn't seem tactful in the circumstances for me to raise questions about, for example, the millions of Ukranians who had died from hunger and oppression organised by the Soviet regime in the 1930s, and I wan't tempted to add to their collection. I recalled the excellent limerick of Robert Conquest:

There was an old monster called Lenin
Who once did a million men in.
But that's not unequalled -
For every one he killed,
The young monster Stalin did ten in.

The world's last remaining statue of Stalin, by the way, which I saw a couple of years ago in his birth-town of Gori, Georgia, is now just a few kilometres on the Georgian side of the Russian cease-fire line of 2008..........

In the Exclusion Zone (3): The Dead City

Pripyat is just a few miles from the reactor site, in an inner zone cut off by yet a further checkpoint.

‘38,000 people lived here’, Iryna told us, ‘it was built as a new town for the workers at the reactor. In the afternoon after the explosion, a thousand coaches came here. People were told to take just a few things they needed, they were being evacuated for only three days, then they would return. They were never returned. Some of them were settled in Kyiv, some in Moscow, some in Minsk, all different towns of the Soviet Union. Now of course these are all different countries, we don’t have records of what happened to them all eventually.

‘Now it is illegal to live here, or anywhere in the exclusion zone. The city is empty. We will drive along what was Lenin Prospekt – you know all towns had Lenin Prospekt as their main street in those days - to the central square. You will get out to look around. Do not go into any of the buildings, they are unsafe. Do not walk on the grass, it is unsafe, keep to the pavements and the roadways. Do not go far from the coach. You will have only fifteen minutes.’

We drove down the Prospekt, which was slowly turning into a temperate jungle,shrubs, trees and grass invading the roadway, the pavements, the blocks of flats. On some of the roofs were still to be seen hammer-and-sickle signs, the last left in Ukraine, too dangerous to demount.

‘So there is really no-one here?’ came the question.

Iryna paused. ‘It is against the law for anyone to live here. Still, some people came back. They were born here, they didn’t want to live anywhere else. They came in illegally. They lived off the berries and the mushrooms in the woods. Although it was forbidden. Now eventually the government decided they were here anyway, they allow in some supplies for them, food, medical supplies, some social help. They are all elderly now, pensioners. But actually it is forbidden.’

When we reached the square we found another small bus there, with its tourist passengers huddled around it taking photos. ‘Actually it is not allowed to have more than one bus in one place, so we will take you to another part of the town.’ Thus we were fortunate to visit a far less frequented corner of the dead city, ulitsa Kosygin.

There followed a dreamlike and profoundly disturbing few minutes as we wandered up and down the road, venturing into some of the side streets – taking photographs of –what? Absences? Empty windows, children’s toys still lying in the undergrowth, a lush greenery we knew to be contaminated by radioactivity……

This was the catastrophe I had grown up through the ‘50s to the ‘80s fearing, along with all my contemporaries, the world when the Cold War had grown hot, human constructs without any humans after an atomic holocaust. Now here was a snapshot, secretly cordoned away in the Ukrainian countryside, that preserved that horrid, familiar nightmare……….

In the Exclusion Zone (2): Dining Out at the Chernobyl Reactor Site

In fact we very nearly didn’t get to eat at the Chernobyl plant, having spent so long dawdling at the Shelter Object and then at the newest building in the complex, presented by the European Union, the function of which is (or, to be more accurate, will be, as it won’t start actual operation until next year [maybe]), the processing of contaminated materials from the site. But it was formally opened in April so we were amongst its first visitors. We all immediately commented on the striking signing on the building, which was perhaps not entirely diplomatic in its effect. Inside was a nightmare of winding corridors and staircases taking us to the upper levels where people will be working. The materials – both elements of the closed reactors and other contaminated objects – are to be brought into the plant using systems which minimise human handling. They will then be placed by robots into concrete cylinders, which will themselves then be filled with concrete and stored in underground pits on the site which will then be topped up with further levels of concrete. By the time the 500-year half-life is over I imagine the European Union will no longer be around so that if the solution turns out to have brought with it more problems – as many of the ‘solutions’ to the Chernobyl disaster have done to date – there will be no one around to blame.

At least this facility has one useful button (pictured) which seems to have been lacking at reactor no. 4.

Our erratic progress brought about a crisis in logistics, and we were sternly informed by Iryna that we had time for lunch, or to see the Dead City, but not both. Emergency negotiations brought about the compromise that we could eat as long as we took no more than 25 minutes.

I must say that in many ways the Chernobyl Site Staff Canteen can be commended to the passing wayfarer, save that the reservation of tables by outsiders is exceedingly hard to obtain unless you have Iryna onside. Of course there is the drawback that, as elsewhere on the site, radiation levels are substantially higher than outside the exclusion zone; I don't know to exactly what extent, as the radiation control necklaces issued to us by Iryna when we arrived at the site were collected from us at the end of the visit without our being told how many roentgens we had absorbed.

But anyway, the taste of the food served up did not seem adversely affected. Indeed the meal – fresh salad accompanied by roulade of cream cheese and red pepper, borscht, chicken and roast potatoes, followed by a sort of sticky bun - was all extremely fresh, and was accompanied superbly by the only beverage on offer, bottled mineral water. The premises seem spotless. I read with interest the detailed sports fixtures of the Chernobyl site teams - for volleyball, soccer, swimming and chess – this necessitated me going down to the far end of the hall, away from the eating area; I couldn’t help noticing that Iryna got up to follow me to the noticeboard, in case I got lost, I suppose – very thoughtful of her. Service was very brisk – as my grandmother used to say, ‘like a yiddisher wedding’, with your plate swept up as you lifted the last forkful to your mouth. And the waitresses were remarkably good looking – a nice bonus for the regulars. An attractive feature of the canteen is the walk-in radiation monitor you can step into on your way out – when I tried it out (to Iryna's evident disapproval) the light flashed up 'chisto' (clean) which was reassuring.

(Next: The Dead City)

In the Exclusion Zone (1): The Shelter Object

Iryna, the lady from the Chernobyl International Relations Department piped out,’Please, I remind you, it is strrrrictly forbidden to take photographs of the Shelter Object from the windows of this room’. A number of my colleagues sheepishly turned their cameras towards the Chief Engineer at the site, to whom we were being introduced. ‘At about 01.23 Moscow time’ he told us, ‘on 26th April 1986, a meltdown in reactor no. 4 caused a huge explosion, lifting the roof of the pile, which weighed 3,000 tons, some tens of metres into the air and releasing into the atmosphere massive doses of radiation. At that time forty people were in or near building no. 4. Of one of them, no trace was ever found; it is assumed he was instantly incinerated. Of the others, 38 died in the next days and weeks of radiation poisoning. One alone survived 17 years, dying in 2003’.

‘And what did he die of?’ asked a Syrian journalist. ‘Delayed shock’ suggested the Israeli cameraman on my right, under his breath.

A less fatal delayed shock – plus some unavoidable interim travelling before I have found myself once more in London - leads me to write about my visit to the Chernobyl exclusion zone some five days after I left it.

Two hours drive out of Kyiv takes you to the outer checkpoint of the exclusion zone. Up to there the countryside seems perfectly green and bounteous by Ukrainian standards; as it does on the further side, with the qualification that there, there are no people. A further thirty minutes or so takes you to a broad canal with a perspective of industrial buildings in various states of deconstruction and a few more recent edifices. These are what is left of the four reactors of Chernobyl power plant, plus the buildings being constructed by international programmes to deal with aspects of the long aftermath of the explosion. Most striking is a large block of hunchback appearance with a tall chimney surrounded by scaffolding. This is the Shelter Object.

About the middle of May 1986 work began to enclose building no. 4 in an attempt to contain the radiation which it was still emitting in vast quantities. This enclosure, the result of which is now known as the Shelter Object, or more colloquially the Sarcophagus, took until November 1986. About 90,000 ‘volunteers’ took part in this phase, being exposed, especially in the first weeks, to exceptional doses of radiation, with the consequences which you would expect. It remains unclear exactly what they were told about the risks they were running. In the succeeding months, many hundreds of thousand of people worked at the site either in remedial work or simply in running the other three reactors, which (because Ukraine depended on them for its electricity) were not shut down until 1991 (nos. 1 and 2) and December 2000 (no. 3).

The west wall of no. 4, through which most radiation was coming, was hemmed in by massive blocks of reinforced concrete, which give the Object its lop-sided profile. Other parts of the building were also filled in or closed off by concrete. The design of the Object operations made no allowance for monitoring or fire systems. The consequence is that today almost half of the Object is inaccessible and no-one has any idea what is going on, in detail, inside it. A cutaway model in the exhibition room, where we were meeting the Engineer, gives a best estimate of the present state of affairs. It is known that water is rusting the steel of much of the reinforced concrete, so the building itself may be highly unstable and is at the risk of collapse. The Object remains full of radioactive and contaminated materials, so there is further risk of fire and/or a chain reaction. And it is estimated that the Object contains about four tons of radioactive dust which can leak through remaining air-conditioning structures, necessitating complex dust control procedures.
Now the only staff working at Chernobyl are associated with the international programme to contain and clean up the site. In this process dealing the Shelter Object itself is a major objective. It is to be enclosed yet again in a massive arch structure which should be completed by 2012 at a cost of $1.2bn. ‘Of course’, the Chief Engineer told us, ‘this cost and date are only indicative, since we have no way of finding the exact situation until we begin work.....’ The Arch is designed to have a life of 100 years – the half-life of much of the radioactive materials it will enclose is over 500 years. So we hope over the next century someone will come up with some good ideas.

(Next: Dining out at the Chernobyl site)

The tradition of woe

I am taking a trip tomorrow to Chernobyl, in the company (for reasons too complex and tedious to explain) of a group of journalists from Israel, Palestine, Syria and Egypt. Of course I will report back on this excursion - I am really not sure what to expect (of the place, that is - I have already met my travelling companions and they seem a great bunch).

But the prospect recalls a visit I paid a few years ago to the Chernobyl Museum here in Kyiv. It extensively set out the terrible damage that had occurred - loss of life, mass evacuation, children's illnesses, devastation of the environment though radiation, and so forth - but there was not the slightest attempt at analysis or explanation - why and how did the disaster happen? why was the reactor built at Pripyat (actually about 10 miles from Chernobyl, and now an extensive ghost town), what implications might the disaster have for the nuclear policy of Ukraine and its neighbours (which still rely extensively on atomic power for electricity generation)? It simply slotted nicely into the Russo-Ukrainian tradition of passively recounting woes loudly and at great length (and to some extent revelling in them). This sometimes seems to me something embedded in the Slav soul. When I first visited Russia in 1992 I was astonished to find in the precincts of monasteries and holy places old women begging for alms and wailing elaborately in the tradition which I had learnt of in 19th-century Russian novels. This practice of wailing had obviously been suppressed throughout the Communist era - but now it had sprung back, perfectly formed, having somehow survived underground. Misery must run in the blood.

A propos, having mentioned Ilf and Petrov's 'Golden Calf' in my last post, I should add that it features a band of con-men who form a 'League of Nephews of Lieutenant Schmidt' (a hero of the Revolution after whom a bridge in St. Peterburg is named), and divide up the territory of the Soviet Union so that only one in each area can claim alms on the basis of having this notable uncle. This tradition still lives on; apparently a number of people have made or still make a living claiming to have been one of the 'liquidators' who cleared the Pripyat reactor site. In fact around 750,000 people from the present Ukraine, Russia and Belarus were employed to carry out this task; of these genuine liquidators, maybe 30% or more are now dead or disabled.

Khyorst

Having an idle hour to pass, I looked in at the Pinchuk Art Centre in the heart of town. This institution, set up by one of Ukraine's richest oligarchs (he is in the steel business and is married to the daughter of the discredited ex-President Leonid Kuchma), specialises in bringing fashionable culture to the capital, and to this end currently hosts a large display of the work of the British art publicist Damien Hirst, his name mysteriously trancribed into Ukrainian as 'Khyorst' although there would be a perfectly good way of representing it as it sounds in English. Perhaps it was avoided because it might suggest the word khiret' (to grow sickly).

Of the items exhibited I will write nothing because, in the wise words of Wittgenstein, 'About that which cannot be spoken of, one must remain silent'. My interest was more in the centre itself and the people visiting it. I note that the hype begins on the pavement outside; although there is plenty of space within,the doorkeepers are carful only to let in a few people at a time so as to keep a small queue in the street. In this queue I noted that I was at least twice as old as other visitors and this remained the case thoughout my visit. Entry is free by the way.

The items on display, set out over four levels (and continuing in a temporary display in the courtyeard of an adjacent shopping mall), attracted no detailed attention from the viewers - almost entirely male/female couples with a few pairs of female friends - who strolled through to complete the course and then left. Only a few studied the information on the computers in the gallery's reception, including heavyweight essays by English and German pundits and an interview with Hirst by Will Self. This includes Hirst's finely-wrought perception on Tony Blair: 'The lying c---. I hated all that spin. I just looked at him and thought, you're a fraud'. Takes one to know one, perhaps.

I was irresistably reminded of the Russian interpreter I used on my first visits to Moscow in 1992/93. A Gucci concession had just opened in the old GUM store alongside Red Square and Katya couldn't wait to see it. 'Look at these T-shirts' she squealed - perfectly anodyne items, but retailing at $100. Using my distant experience as a clothing manufacturer, I turned one inside out - the ragged hem was not even properly finished, and there were loose threads everywhere. 'Katya, this is utter rubbish. If you want a good T-shirt, I will buy you one at Marks and Spencer in England'.'Oh no, that won't do, this is Gucci!!'. The name and the fame was - and still is, it appears - the thing for wannabes in the new democracies.

But maybe I am being unfair. Not far away from the Pinchuk Centre, near the corner of Prorizna and the Khreschchatyk, is a statue to a well-known character in Russian fiction, the con-artist Panikovsky from Ilf and Petrov's 'The Golden Calf'. In the book Panikovsky stands on just this street corner posing as a blind man (as in the statue) and asking people to help him cross the road. Whilst they are assisting him he picks their pockets. Perhaps it is the native admiration for sheer chutzpah that makes the Kyivlans indulgent to Mr. Khyorst.

From Here to LA

I have just discovered that the Karaite Kenesa in Kyiv (now the House of Actors, see June 21st post) was in fact designed by one of the city's greatest architects, Vladislav Gorodetsky, born to a Polish-Ukrainian family in 1863, who also built the wildly eccentric ''House of Chimeras'' here, which will be food for a future posting.

As you can see from the picture (courtesy of WikiCommons) the Kenesa originally had a dome - this was lost or destroyed presumably during WWII, but indicates that the design of the building was almost certainly inspired by the Gur-e Amir mausoleum of Tamerlaine in Samarkand.

I have come across the Karaites twice before: once in the Crimea, whence they originate, and which still has a few traces of them, notably some sombre cemeteries. Some say they are descendants of the Khazars, the only state ever known to have converted to Judaism (about a thousand years ago). My second encounter was at the other end of Europe in Lithuania - at one stage the Lithuanian empire stretched all the way to the Black Sea and the King ordered a number of Karaites to come to his castle at Trakai and form his personal bodyguard. The kenesa at Trakai exists and still functions as such. I attended a Friday night service there and noted its close correspondence to an orthodox Jewish service. The main religious difference between Karaites and Jews is the fundamentalist approach of the former to the Bible, denying any authority to the Talmud or later Rabbinic interpretations. When I told the guy leading the service that I was Jewish he replied 'Oh yes, you guys are a bit like us'. He also informed me that these days the world centre for Karaites is Los Angeles, which I suppose is a step up from Trakai, Bakhchisaray or even Kyiv.

I asked how the Karaites were able to survive the Nazi occupation of the country in WWII. I was told the following remarkable tale:

The Germans weren't sure whether the Karaites qualified as Semites or not. The local Jews however pointed out centuries of Rabbinical decisions which stated that the Karaites were not acceptable in Jewish law for marriage to Jews, as they came of a different race. The Nazis accepted this - if the Jews would have nothing to do with them on racial grounds, then the Karaites could not be Jewish. In this way, although the Jews of Lithuania realised they themselves were doomed, they were able to save their distant 'cousins'.

Exhaustion

I have just been showing my parents round Kyiv. They gamely came out here for a long weekend after celebrating my father's 84th birthday. They wanted to see everything and they have left me quite exhausted.

Clearly they were fearing the worst - but they ended their trip absolutely delighted. It wan't just the sights - the Sophia Cathedral, the Andriyivsky Descent, the streets of Podil - though these of course went down well. Nor was it just the excellence of the concert at the Philharmonia or the opera (L'Elisir d'Amore with a world-class young local tenor, Dmitro Popov, as Nemorino). It was the overall atmosphere; compared, they said, to Krakow or St. Petersburg, the people were warm and friendly, the youngsters looked happy, they saw no signs of anti-social behaviour and the city, if in places a bit dilapidated, was generally clean. Above all they loved the architecture - the streets of late 19th century buildings with elaborate details, the amazing procession of Stalinist Gothic along the Khreshchatyk, the extraordinary creations of the architect Gorodetsky, the ensemble of (and the views from) the Pecherskaya Lavra. And whilst the weather was hot throughout, we also caught a spectacular thunderstorm,areal Kyiv special. Now if they could only improve the restaurants, and instal a few decent mid-price hotels, this could become one of the great destinations....despite the ongoing political and economic crises.

Culture shock

Following Jonathan's very succesful recital on Wednesday (see post below - one member of the audience sweetly e-mailed me 'it was nice and wonderful. I got a lot of positive emotions') Friday's got off to a challenging start, with the enormous 'Concord' Sonata of Charles Ives and the terrifying Concerto for solo piano no.4 of Michael Finnissy. Introducing the concert I tried to prepare the audience for what to expect, telling them to look out for the hymns, rag-time and Beethoven in the Ives, and comparing the Finnissy to 'extreme sport' and commending its exhilaration (Russian word 'voozdushevlyayushchii', quite exhilarating in itself).

The Ives went like a dream -the roller-coaster of the Finnissy was not too much inhibited by my failure to turn page 12 in time (a moment of high drama which I hope has been captured in Yuriy's video of the event). It really is a shocking - in the sense of electrifying - piece - like the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor on speed. The audience more than rose to the occasion and gave Jonathan rapturous applause, (though there were a few quitters at the interval, including T. who gave the diplomatic excuse that she had to relieve her baby-sitter).

Those who stayed on, including the great Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov (on the right in the picture above, with Jonathan after the recital), were treated to a magnificent second half which included music by Silvestrov himself (two serenades for solo violin beautifully performed by Sonia Suldina and a piece for violin and piano in memory of Tchaikovsky), and the heroic Symphony for solo piano of Alkan, one of the peaks of 19th-century romantic pianism. The audience left only after demanding two encores (Scriabin and Revutsky) with standing ovations.

An amazing and memorable evening which was subsequently celebrated, to the accompaniment of a good deal of vodka, at the highly commended 'Bundesbar' in Lysenko Street, including toasts to the British Alkan Society, who helped with sponsorship for this mini-tour.

Incidentally the location of the recital, the House of Actors (left), is itself a remarkable building - formerly the Kenesa (synagogue) of the Kyiv Karaites (a Jewish sect originating from the Crimea, none of whom alas seem to be left in the capital).

After 100 years.....

In 1910 the young English composer Arnold Bax was in Russia when he encountered a beautiful Ukrainian girl, Natalia Karginska. Infatuated, he pursued her to Kyiv. The affair ended unhappily, but it did inspire him to write his first piano sonata. On Wednesday, after nearly a hundred years, this piece of British/Ukrainian music got its first performance in the city where it was composed. The idea was that of my friend, the gifted pianist Jonathan Powell, who when he heard I was coming out here asked whether it might be possible to arrange a recital. With the aid of local musical maven Yuriy Suldin we actually fixed up two concerts - the first one on Wednesday, when, apart from the Bax, (which turns out to be truly passionate and ends with the bells of Kiev pealing in all registers of the piano), Jonathan also played Rachmaninoff, Schubert, the Ukrainian composer (and teacher of Horowitz) Felix Blumenfeld, and works by the contemporary British composer John White and by Powell himself. The audience response on Wednesday was highly enthusiastic if slightly stunned!

Tomorrow's concert is even more challenging, including music by Ives, Alkan, Finissy and Konstantin Silvestrov. The Ives 'Concord Sonata' and the Alkan 'Symphony for solo piano' are two of the peaks of the romantic repertoire, enormously demanding in technique and interpretation. For the Silvestrov, Jonathan will be joined by members of the Ukrainian string quartet PostScriptum. Michael Finnissy's 'Concerto for solo piano no.4', which has been claimed as the most difficult piece ever written for the instrument, is the musical equivalent of 'extreme sport' ....It will be a test to see whether the audience and/or the piano survive. Or whether I do, as I wil be turning the pages.....

Crossing the bar

Now for the next instalment of the enthralling saga of my attempts to cross the Slovak/Ukrainain border on foot (see this blog, March 22nd). Yes, I did say attempts, as I have tried again, in May, since I last reported to this blog. On this occassion I first took a look at the border at Cerny nad Tisou but this apparently can only be accessed via rail, and most of the time they seem to cancel the trains (which even when they are running go at unearthly hours such as 05.32 or 23.17). So back to the Uzhorod crossing where, once again blocked by the EU side as a pedestrian, I hitched a lift and crossed as a passenger of a very friendly Ukrainian who not only also gave me a brief guided tour of the town's historic sights, but refused to accept any payment. Many thanks, Ihor!

Today however I received astounding news. My excellent Euro MP (just reelected with a huge vote) Charles Tannock, took up my cause at the European Parliament and received the following response:

According to the information notified by Slovakia, there is no limitation on the use of the border crossing point at Vyšné Nemecké-Užhorod.

As far as local border traffic is concerned, Slovakia and the Ukraine have concluded a bilateral agreement on local border traffic in order to ease trade, social and cultural interchange and regional cooperation. The agreement is applicable to persons lawfully resident in the defined Slovak and Ukrainian border areas.

The Commission will address the Slovak authorities in order to receive clarifications concerning the reported restriction of use by pedestrians of the above-mentioned border crossing point.


That'll teach them all a lesson......

to the faithful......

As I now seem to have four (or is it three) followers, I suppose I must do my duty by them - but first, an explanation (or excuse) for my absence.

I have been transfixed by the slo-mo gory unfolding of British politics. Having in my time played a bit-part in this long running soap opera, I have not been at all suprprised by the expenses, the briefings, the backstabbings, etc. Been there and done that (and had it done to me), albeit at a local, not a national, level. But what has astonished me has been the utter incompetence of the various plotters involved in the Labour Party. Getting rid of a man at the top is hard work, particuallry when s/he holds so many of the necessary strings. In my day we spent weeks in advance canvassing, blackmailing, making promises etc. and staged the moment when we could bring it all into play. These tossers seem to have thought that all they had to do was come out in a tizzy, strike a pose and tell a sob-story to the press, and that everything would then simply fall into place. They just don't have a clue - once again King Log triumphs over King Stork.

The Spirit of Ukraine

 

Seen at Borispyl airport

How it is done in Kyiv

More or less in her own words, this is what my very attractive and stylish friend T. told me today.

'Ektually I'm still feeling really pissed off over the f----ing police yesterday. I was driving down Khreshchatik and I pulled up at a pedestrian crossing [Editor's note: A few nice Ukrainian drivers, like T., actually do this from time to time]. Then I heard sirens and saw lights flashing, it was one of the presidential police escort cars with some chicken-shit minister. So I couldn't move out the way without killing a few pedestrians, so they had to wait until they had crossed. Then at the next traffic lights they pulled alongside of me, made me stop, and said 'We're confiscating your car [Editor's note: a large luxury 4x4] and your licence, you're not fit to drive'.

'So I said to them ,'What is this, you wanted me to run over people to let you through? OK you have a choice. I have a $120,000 car here, the sort you'd like and will never have in a million years, and that's why you stop me. OK so you can take my car and licence and within two days you will all be fired. I know all the right people - believe me, if I have car like this I can spare $5,000 to get you all fixed. Or, you can give me back my documents and f--- off'.

'So they thought they would play tough, they were making phone calls and they wouldn't give way and I wouldn't give way. After an hour the local police chief comes up, I know him very well. He says 'Look, T., the presidential police are bastards, I don't have authority over them'. I told him how I had threatened these assholes, I gave him $100 and said, look, tell them I mean what I say, and get me my documents back. So he did - two f----ing hours it wasted of my time.

'So this morning I was talking to [and she named a very influential person] and he was laughing and saying 'But T., why didn't you just phone me?' And I told him 'Look, I'm a big girl now, if I can't fix stupid things like this myself, I might as well give up on everything'. Ektually it made me even angrier than those f---ing police.'

Fantastic

Simply the greatest live performance I have ever heard of Berlioz's 'Symphonie Fantastique' at the Kiev Philharmonia this evening. Not only that, but it was preceded by a lip-smacking version of his 'Harold in Italy', with the Israeli violist, Avri Levitan. The National Academic Symphony Orchestra under Mikola Dyadyura gave superb accounts of these masterworks, greatly assisted by the acoustics of the hall. The neo-classic Philharmonia building was originally a gentleman's club. The auditorium seats maybe four or five hundred (it was packed), and its sound is particularly clean and pure. So when you get a large orchestra giving its all, you are in the thick of it. These were lurid performances, but deliberately so - Berlioz would have loved them, I am sure - the almost over-ripe romanticism risked conjuring up some of the more bizarre canvasses of Antoine Wiertz, but at the same time Dyadyura had calculated every sound and gear-change and his players responded superbly. I liked the touch of having the harps either side of the orchestra up front (see picture), which swept us into the ballroom scene - an effect mirrored in the Witches' Sabbath when we had two sets of tubular bells up in the gallery, taking the 'Dies Irae' alternately. Cunningly, a virtue was thus even made of the limited size of the Philharmonia stage. 10+ out of 10.

Break for the border

For the past week or so I have been in my hideout in Slovakia, which I reached from Kyiv by a tiresome combination of very slow overnight train (to Uzhorod), bus , and more (slow) trains. To mitigate this gruelling sequence on my return, Mrs. S. drove me to the Slovak/Ukrainian border. Uzhorod (whose church is pictured left), and my train, were five minutes drive from the actual crossing. However, had we crossed in the car, whilst the Slovak/Ukraine process is fairly prompt, Mrs. S. would have had to wait five hours or more on the way out again, due to the studied sloth of the Ukrainian customs officers.

I thus resolved, as I had only light hand-luggage, to walk across the border, counting on finding a taxi or thumbing a lift at the other side.

It was not to be. As I approached the Slovak passport control, a lady official approached with a horrified look. No-one was allowed to cross the border on foot. Why? The lady couldn't say - it used to be possible but was no longer so; and that was all we could get out of her. Another officer suggested, off the record, that I seek a lift with a vehicle in transit. First to appear was a Czech van, full to the gills with assorted junk, and thus with no room for me. Next appeared a black Ukrainian Volga whose driver and passenger beckoned me in almost before I had stuck out my thumb. Soon were presenting ourselves before the scandalised lady official who however could scarcely deny the validity of my British passport.

The passport however aroused more interest at the Ukrainian check-point. Presumbably they don't get many Brits coming through. My Ukrainian hosts kindly waited around twidding their thumbs whilst my passport was scrutinised with fluorescent lights and magnifying glasses, and prompted a long telephone call to HQ. Then inevitably I was summoned to an inner lair for close questioning. What was I doing in in Ukraine? Why had I been in Slovakia? How come I spoke Russian? Were did I live in London? How many children did I have? Why did my passport have stamps for Georgia (the republic, not the state)? I jovially gave lengthy and tedious answers, including showing photos of my three grandchildren, till they became bored and sent me back to the car. I rewarded my driver at the station with a 100 hrivnia (£8) note, and the remainder of my journey was uneventful.

But I will write to one of my Euro MPs (the very nice Charles Tannock) to ask why I can't walk out of the EU.

Rejected

The office where I work is located in a block owned by a State-allied gas corporation. Yet whilst two such organisations have been raided by State Security over the past few days, no-one has even waved a toy pistol in our foyer. I feel vaguely affronted - surely our lads were at least as innovative and enterprising as those in Naftogaz?

Some local inhabitants

 

Seen above the entrance to a courtyard in Yaroslaviv Val.

Shopping

An inevitable consequence of the arrival of Mrs. S. is my realization of how incompetent I am at organising a household, even if I am the only inhabitant of same. Thus the weekend saw several swoops on the Kyiv TSUM ('Central Universal Store') as a consequence of which I now know the Ukrainian for 'clingfilm','adhesive hooks', 'cushion covers', etc. A lot of money went into the pockets of the ladies running stalls in the amazing Bessarabsky Market, who obviously treble their prices as soon as they see anyone from Western Europe approaching. But the smoked fish, raisin cheesecake, aubergine salad and sheep's cheese were all absolutely top quality, albeit a British Tradings Standards Officer might quail to see the conditions in which they are sold.

The stallholders of Kyiv are by the way up in arms against the City Mayor, who, in an attempt to get control of all the city's kiosks, has torn up existing lease agreements and attempted to raise rents tenfold. The excuse - one of the weakest I have ever heard from a politician (and I have heard many) - is that he wants the town cleaned up before the Football Championships of 2012. The reality is probably that this is a desperate attempt to beef up the City budget. Following stormy demonstrations, he appears to have backed down for the present.

One step beyond....

Malcolm Bradbury, in his all-too accurate spoof guidebook to the Warsaw pact countries of the 1980s,'Why Come to Slaka?' was perhaps the first to elaborate on the toxic potential of the national operas of Central and Eastern Europe. I have been caught before by these - notably by Paliashvili's 'Absalom and Eteri' in Tbilisi, some hours of excruciating tedium - but ever eager to explore repertoire unknown to me, and hoping that I might stumble on the exception to the rule, I went to Kyiv's excellent opera house to hear 'Zaporozhets za Dunayem' by Semyon Gulak-Artyemovsky (don't ask 'who he?' - I had never heard of him before and won't bother if I never do again). Problems start with the title, which means 'The Zaporozhye Cossack beyond the Danube' - the plot, such as it is, dealing with a Cossack settlement in the the late 18th century Ottoman Empire (i.e. on the 'wrong side' of the Danube), whence they had been driven by.....well, the opera doesn't explain what they were doing there. That's partly because its problems began when it was written in the 1860s, when the Tsar's censors didn't want any references to historic disputes with Turkey....you see, you're bored already, and I haven't even started on the opera itself. The only slightly interesting bit was a set of Cossack dances in Act II, and even those were not original I suspect but had been inserted in a desperate bid to keep the audience awake. Needless to say the locals loved it all. I hope I don't get deported for dissing it like this.

Fortunately the musical balance was redeemed by a performance the next day at the Philharmonia by a young Ukrainian string quartet, who go under the unusual name of 'Post Scriptum'. They have a wonderfully sweet tone, and gave the best live performance of Tchaikovsky's 1st Quartet I have ever heard, together with a passionate rendition of Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' and an engaging account of Schumann's 3rd. I am hoping we may be able to get them to perform at the 2010 Levoca music festival.

The numbers game

I have been fascinated by the comments of 'Bishop' Richard Williamson, reportedly that that historical evidence was "hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler ... I believe there were no gas chambers."

This needs taking apart and analyzing; by not analyzing it, the media are in danger of tacitly supporting vicious prejudice. In fact the only person I know of who has made the allegation that the 'Bishop' contradicts - and perhaps he has a lot to answer for in this respect - is Bob Dylan in his song 'God on Our Side' ('though they murdered 6 million, in the ovens they fried'). But not a single historian claims - or has ever claimed - that ''six million [were] deliberately gassed in gas chambers''. All the evidence is however that many millions of Jews (and others) died as a consequence of Nazi policies, in concentration camps by disease and execution as well as by gassing, and by mass-murders and executions in invaded territories (about 100,000 of them in Babi Yar, not far from where I am presently writing). (It is interesting to note, by the way, that, as Mark Mazower points out at the start of his excellent 'Hitler's Empire' , about six million Germans, military and civilian, died from the war and the two years of turmoil following it, and therefore were also casualties of this murderous regime - perhaps the 'Bishop' would be wiling to agree with this statistic).

It is a standard tactic of holocaust deniers to put up the nonsense 'argument' that 6 million were gassed, which is easily demolished. Then you can allege, as the 'bishop' does, that '200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in the Nazi concentration camps but none of them in gas chambers'. Now we are dealing with 'only' "200,000-300,000 people" - which apparently mitigates the matter - and the argument has been forced to turn on whether or not there were any gas chambers, i.e on the means of murder, rather than the murders themselves.

Arguing about the numbers and the methods only distracts from understanding of Europe in 1933-45. (Or if we include - as we should - the homicidal Russian regime in our assessments, the period 1920-1945). We have not been helped by 'Holocaust education', which with its dismal concentration on gruesome events and statistics may have indeed impeded understanding of the moral and political background to this appalling story, and helps to characterise Jews in student minds merely as victims of a historic tragedy (who, in turn, according to some pundits, 'should know better' as a consequence when it comes to dealing with Palestinians).

This is what happened in the second quarter of the 20th century; untold millions of people died throughout Europe as a consequence of political totalitarianism. 'Punch and Judy' games such as 'it was only 200,000' are just contemptible in this context; and when they are played by a 'Bishop' they become beneath contempt. But when the media just report them in passing and then move gaily on, they become poisonous.

Touching

US dollar now quoted 9.10-9.60 hrivnia in the streets, although the official rate remains 8.35 - something wicked this way comes.....

However, here is a fine courtesy which we miss in England. My office is in a 1990s block run by a Government agency. Every morning when the lift is crowded, everyone in the cabin (whether known to each other or not) shakes hands with every occupant and says 'Good morning'; that is, to be accurate, all the men do so - there is clearly some subtle sexism underlying this. If you tried to do this in a lift in England, you would probably be carted off for assault.

Almost at home

This is the first long-term job abroad I have undertaken for seven or eight years, having spent most of the intervening period hanging around at home and pretending to be a student. Mrs. Smerus having had enough of this has sent me out to earn a living, pay for my daughter's wedding etc. - and quite right too I suppose. The first time I undertook such a mission was about 15 years ago, when I was posted to a curious place called Kaliningrad - in fact, I was the first Englishman to live there since the RAF had bomber it to smithereens in 1943, in the days when it was still called Koenigsberg. In those antique times, the internet was still a novelty - I had to explain to everyone carefully about e-mail. Now of course one has broadband almost wherever one goes. The immediate consequence I recognise is the absence of any feeling of isolation, which regularly attacked me in my Kaliningrad days. I can for example skype Mrs. S. and chat face-to-face for as long as we like, free of charge, or have BBC Radio 3 or Radio 4 playing in the background as I work or read. There is also the miracle (which in the present economic and eco-fascist climate may not be long-lasting) of cheap air-fares - one can even fly Luton-Kyiv return (no visa needed) for around £100 - so Mrs. S. can come out to sample the shampanskoye and the opera with me whenever she wishes. It's not much more stressful, in fact, (and a good deal more pleasant), than being posted to Birmingham.

By the way, the hryvnia is now 9 to the dollar and still falling........

An Eventful Walk

The Khreshchatyk, Kyiv's central thoroughfare, is about a mile and a half in length. You can judge the state of the Ukrainian economy by the fact that, when I walked along it last night, the offered exchange rate in the booths at the start was 8.30 hrivnia/dollar, while by the time I had reached the other end the booths were offering 8.75. If I had been nimble enough, there might even have been opportunities for backwardation, as we used to call it on the London Stock Exchange in my distant youth - i.e. buying dollars at one booth and selling them for an instant profit at another. The pound sterling of course is not as fragile....yet.

Arrival

This is the first post on this blog.....which, before you ask me, is named in tribute to the piano study of the same name by Charles-Valentin Alkan, in his op. 35. However, it will have little, if anything, to do with him, so if you want to know more about him look here or listen here.