My weekend began in Sovietskii, a town where I am conducting research for my project and have also made some great friends. After attending an event at a local school on Saturday, a friend of mine invited me over to her mother's and grandfather's house for tea before I headed back for Simferopol. They were preparing for her grandfather's 86th birthday party, which happens to occur on Victory Day. He himself is a veteran of the war. Like all Crimean Tatars who fought during the war, he was deported to Central Asia despite his service. Ironically, Victory Day comes little more than a week before May 18th, the anniversary of this deportation which is solemnly remembered every year.
He showed me a medal he had been sent this year. It read "65 лет победы!" 65 years of victory! He treated it like a joke and said they gave it to him for his old age. "They gave me a medal after the war, too," he told me. "But I told them I didn't want it, I didn't care about it. My children were young then. I told them to give me a cow so I would have some way to feed my children." The family told me they weren't very interested in Victory Day.
He talked about his time in the army and the places he had been. My friend took my camera and told him, you've been in France, you've been in Germany, now in this picture you'll be in America as well!
As I was leaving Sovietskii, I purchased a phone card from the kiosk by the bus station. The woman asked me where I was from and what I thought of Ukraine. I give the wide-eyed American answer I always give - "It is a beautiful country." (I always give this answer because regardless of where I am, it is always true. At the risk of being corn-ball, this is a beautiful planet we live on.)
"You think it is beautiful?!" she asked?
"Yes," I said, continuing my wide-eyed American role, which is easier than engaging in an in depth conversation through a tiny kiosk window, "It is a very beautiful country and the people are very kind..."
"You mean the people have a lot of patience, and they put up with a lot" she said sadly with a slight smile, giving me the standard Russian wish of happiness as I headed for my bus. Crimea is perhaps one of the few places I've travelled where simply stating that the country is beautiful and the people are nice is not a sure ticket to a smile and a knowing nod. I am beginning to think that Crimeans want visitors to understand and acknowledge what they have seen and lived through. Or perhaps that is true everywhere, and the people I've met were simply unimpressed by my heavily accented platitudes.
I've been thinking about the patience and endured hardships of Ukrainians all week as I've seen the city prepare for the Victory Day celebrations. This morning I attended the Simferopol parade my friend Adrianne, a Peace Corps volunteer based here. Many people I know travelled to Sevastopol to see the parade there with the recent renewal of the Black Sea Fleet, it certainly must have been an interesting atmosphere. Yet I don't regret staying in Simferopol - it was nice to be able to walk around the city streets I'm now comfortable with, and even spot a few friends and acquaintances throughout the day. Feeling the mood of the city, I had that wish to see the celebrations here throughout the years. When the streets were cleaner, the city greener. The first years when those deported were allowed to resettle in Crimea. In the first years of an independent Ukraine.
Before the parade started, I met up with a young friend of mine, let's call him Sergei, who was marching with the Party of Regions, the party of President Yanukovich. Although Sergei didn't vote in the previous elections and is completely disillusioned with politics, he decided to march in the parade because a friend of his works for the party, and was paid for the number of marchers he was able to organize. I found Sergei absorbed in his mp3 player holding one of the giant Party of Regions blue flags by the tank near Parliament, and took some pictures of him. "Don't post these on Facebook, please!" he asked, as I tried to get him to smile. I said goodbye to meet with with a friend, and he waved as he put his headphones back on.
A few months ago I had a Russian language test over the telephone as part of my grant requirements, and it took me awhile to convince the Russian speaker calling from the U.S. that yes, it is indeed possible that I am living in Crimea but yet have never been to Russia. Some other foreigners I know living in Ukraine, but not Crimea, sometimes ask me what Crimea is like. They want to know if it is true that it is really just a "beached" part of Russia, Russian-speaking, leaning and yearning. There is certainly no shortage of graffiti boldly declaring "Крым - это Россия!" Crimea is Russia! This is more of a topic for a dissertation than a blog post, so I'll keep it short. I believe that this pro-Russian identity is one strong influence on the peninsula, but certainly not the only one. That being said, many of those marching in the parade held up signs or repeated chants asserting a Russian or Soviet identity.
This woman was chanting "RUSS-I-A! RUSS-I-A!" Many in the crowd were cheering. Behind her group came were representatives from the Democratic Party of Ukraine. As they passed by, many of the onlookers began to boo.
Here is my Picasa album of pictures from the day. This is one of my favorite pictures:
7 comments:
i love the last pic most of all - such short skirts!!
Ahaha, that's a cute picture of you and the old man. And I love your "wide-eyed American" responses, especially when I'm traveling with you. It's always entertaining.
I also like the last picture very much. ^ ~
It was nice to read your thoughts on Victory Day, especially so close to Memorial Day here in the U.S. The grandfather not interested in the "metals" reminded me of the soldiers returning from the Vietnam war.
Why is it when there are public celebrations MOST of the people have a nervous look on their faces and tend to look over their shoulders?
I guess I'll have to take some pictures on 4th of July and see if the same holds true for events in the U.S.
I just wanted to say that WW II and the Great Patrriotic War is not the same. The 9th of May is the celebrating of ending of the Gr. Patriotic War, (as it is known, WW II ended 4 months later).
But, unfortunately, people here know so little about the WW II in general and GrPat War in particular, that many of them (or even most) confuse these two terms.
Or maybe because of the repercussions that GrPat War left for the USSR, when somebody say WW II we most of times think about the Patriotic War.
Good point, thanks for your comment, Sasha! And for reading :)
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