Inside Ukraine E-Book

Ukraïner

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 88

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Inside Ukraine is a compelling visual portrait of the real Ukraine, lovingly put together by Ukrainians in the years leading up to the current war.  The product of five years and 100,000km of travel around the country by the volunteers of Ukraïner, an organisation that aims to explain Ukraine to its inhabitants and promote it to the wider world, this unique book is a beautiful celebration of the land and its people. It captures the true variety of this vast country, the second largest in Europe, from picturesque forest villages to large urban housing projects, stunning mountain and estuarine scenery to industrial quarries and medieval fortresses. It introduces the people of Ukraine and their stories, with a huge cast of characters including traditional carol singers, wild honey farmers, potters and railwaymen, artists and sheep-breeders and broom-makers. The natural world is represented too, with its populations of wild pelicans, roaming herds of buffaloes and the charming inhabitants of a bear sanctuary. Also included are a wealth of QR codes that can be scanned to unlock longer articles on the Ukraïner website, along with more images and videos, giving a whole new dimension to the book. With over 350 evocative images accompanied by illuminating text, this book will educate, surprise and enchant you, providing a fascinating insight into the side of Ukraine we don't often see.

Leseprobe

Introduction

Ukraïner started during my travels, when I was trying to express to people what characterized Ukraine. I found myself describing my country and hometown – or at the very least their locations – to children on the remote islands of the Indonesian archipelago, Bedouins in the Arabian desert, seniors at a Polish retirement club, tourist groups, and international festivalgoers. Over the years of travelling through various parts of the world, I realized that my conversations about Ukraine lacked the most crucial thing – an emotion. A feeling that would make a lasting impression on those I spoke with and remain forever associated in their memories with my homeland. After I returned home from my journeys around the world, I wanted to find a description of this modern-day country; a short but eloquent answer to the question ‘Where are you from?’

In June 2016, a group of other like-minded people and I set off on an adventure, or, as we called it, an expedition. We announced on social media that we were going to explore Ukraine and unveil it to the world. Within a few days, we received hundreds of messages and several thousand subscribers. That’s how our multimedia project Ukraïner was launched. At the very beginning of our expedition we realized how little we knew about our own country. We set off for different historical regions, learning the stories and daily lives of active and engaged citizens to highlight their valuable contributions to Ukraine, whether they were in the most remote corners of the country or in its largest cities.

At the beginning of our project we had a few dozen volunteers. Later, the Ukraïner community had a team of several hundred members that helped us create and grow every day. During the expeditions that led up to this book, everyone had their role: writers, editors and transcribers worked on the texts; directors, film editors and producers provided the video material; translators made it possible to publish our stories in several languages; there were also travellers and explorers, diplomats, media and communications experts. Together, we documented and uncovered Ukraine the way it was: real and authentic.

This book is based on over a dozen research and documentary expeditions, 100,000 kilometres on the road and more than 400 settlements that guided us through our search for the answers to the questions of ‘What is Ukraine really about?’ and ‘Who are we?’ The result is hundreds of video stories, texts and photos, many of which you can find in this book.

When Ukraïner was just at the beginning of its path, it seemed like our country had already won the war with Russia. At that time, the Ukrainians managed to stop the active offensive of the Russians and successfully distanced themselves informationally from their propaganda, leaving the deoccupation of Crimea and East of Ukraine for the future. It seemed that resilience on the information front alone would be enough for our final victory. Instead, this book was published during the full-scale Russian invasion. These pages tell stories that became not a reality of Ukraine, but its archive.

This book is only one part of the larger multimedia project available at ukrainer.net. It contains stories collected from each region, full versions of which can be found with the use of the QR codes.

Bogdan Logvynenko

Contents

Introduction

Zakarpattia

Pryazovia

Poltavshchyna

Polissia

Bessarabia

Sivershchyna

Podillia

The Carpathians

Bukovyna

Tavria

Prychornomoria

Podniprovia and Zaporizhzhia

Naddniprianshchyna

Volyn

Slobozhanshchyna

Halychyna

Questions and Answers

A Note from the British Publisher

This book came into my hands as a gift from the Ukrainian family I was hosting in London. It, along with the mother and two girls, had travelled 30 hours to get to us, via a bus, a train journey to the Polish border and then a flight from Krakow. They didn’t know I was a book publisher and my immediate interest was a surprise to them. It was obvious both that they needed to sleep, and that the book needed to be published in the English-speaking world. It was written before the war and it is a wonderful portrait of what it means to be Ukrainian. Thank you for buying this book.

Polly Powell, Batsford

Michel and his Buffaloes

Ecologist Michel Jacobi came to Ukraine from Germany to conserve Ukraine’s ecosystem and traditional stock-breeding practices.

Despite the fact that modern animal husbandry norms favour cows and intensive farming practices, Michel began to breed buffaloes. In the early 20th century, raising buffalo was common in Zakarpattia; there were several thousand buffaloes in the neighbouring villages. When the communists came to power, all the buffaloes were placed in collective farms. But the female buffaloes did not take to their new conditions and stopped producing milk. By the 1990s, the buffalo population had declined from a few thousand to around one hundred.

‘I thought that in Ukraine I could find the same natural environment and lifestyle of our ancestors since they don’t exist in Germany anymore. People need to live in harmony with nature. I want to show this by my own example.’

With the support of a few charity foundations and village leaders who gave him some land that previously belonged to the collective farms, Michel began assembling his buffalo herd from the surrounding areas.

Michel watches over his herd at farms in Chumaliovo and Steblivka and works on a breed registry. Michel also has buffaloes living along the semi-wild shores of the Danube.

Mount Yavirnyk, Yanko Derevlianyi

Artist, sculptor and architect Yanko Derevlianyi, looking for a place to live in harmony with nature, chose Yavirnyk, a mountain near the town of Velykyi Bereznyi, to set up his workshop. Yanko first came to Yavirnyk in 1974 when he was working as an interior designer at a Soviet-era tourist complex. Since then he has been very active in the area designing and building huts and fire-pits for travellers.

‘Even cats run wild on the mountain, and it’s a rare soul that can spend much time here.’

Synevyr is the largest mountain lake in Ukraine, located at 989 metres above sea level in the Vnutrishni (Inner) Gorgany mountain range in the Carpathians.

The Borzhava Narrow-gauge Railway

Locals call the Borzhava narrow-gauge railway, built at the beginning of the 20th century, ‘Antsia’. The train is drawn by an old diesel locomotive TU-2, produced in the 1950s. Vynohradiv train station is one of the favourite meeting points for the locals and it also hosts a market.

Antsia is only one of a few active narrow-gauge railways in Ukraine, with a rail width of 750 millimetres. Its route, from Vynohradiv through Khmilnyk to Irshava, is 123 kilometres long. The main rail goes along the Borzhava River, from which the name of the railway is derived. The two carriages and the old locomotive cross the market in Vynohradiv carrying the passengers through Zakarpattia.

In the 1930s, the village of Kolochava was mentioned in the novel Nikola the Outlaw, by Czech author Ivan Olbracht, who had lived there for several years. The book made Kolochava village a popular destination for Czech tourists. Nowadays, Kolochava is home to many museums and an unforgettably picturesque road along the river leading to the village.

The Vlachs

Vlachs are an ethnic group found all over Central and South-east Europe. The majority of the Vlachs in Ukraine live in villages throughout Zakarpattia and Bessarabia. Living in relatively closed communities, they are primarily woodworkers and shepherds. One of their shepherds’ huts is near Mount Pidpula, part of the Svydovets massif in the Carpathians. For a few months every year, the Vlachs graze their flocks here and cook traditional meals using fresh ingredients provided by their sheep.

Carolling in Dovhe

Traditional koliada-singing (carolling) is performed on the 7 and 8 January in Dovhe, Zakarpattia.

Older boys dress up as shepherds and one is given the role of an old man. The youngest boys, dressed as angels, have the hardest mission: carrying the wooden ‘vertep’ (portable puppet theatre) called a ‘betlehem’ in the local dialect. It is very heavy, and with each house the children pass they become increasingly tired. The boys are supposed to alternate who carries the vertep every five houses, but they often lose count.

The older boys don’t have it easy, either. The costumes are uncomfortable, the text is easy to forget, and they need to make it through the younger children’s constant arguing. But they are at least treated to some homemade alcohol after they carol at a house. As the ‘responsible one’, the ‘old man’ can’t drink. The ‘shepherds’, on the other hand, don’t mind indulging themselves from time to time!

The Roma of Korolevo

One-third of the Roma in Ukraine live in densely populated settlements in Zakarpattia. Ukraine is home to some 40,000 Roma, according to data from NGOs working with the Roma population. The compact Roma settlements in Zakarpattia are designed as residential areas with separate streets, quarters or neighbourhoods.

The population of the Korolevo settlement in the Vynohradiv district is home to over 3,700 people. This is one of the best-planned Roma settlements in Zakarpattia. The houses here are made of bricks and sometimes even have more than one storey. The roads are gravelled, children run happily around on the streets, and the girls wear traditional Roma dresses.

Clothing is a very important status symbol for the women. Skirts are embroidered with gold and silver, and clothes are decorated with glass jewellery. Family jewellery is often very valuable and usually custom-made. These family jewels will serve as the a dowry for a bride, a symbol of her family’s prosperity.

Men from Korolevo work in teams consisting of close relatives and neighbours. Together they make the parts for tin roofs and rain gutters. Craftsmen here have a long-established reputation and their own style of decoration.

A dried-up football field in the village of Hryhorivka.

Askania-Nova

Askania-Nova is the biggest steppe biosphere reserve in Europe and the oldest in the world. It has featured on the list of the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves since 1984.

In 1898, a German, Friedrich-Jacob Eduardovych Falz-Fein, gave the first 600 hectares of land to the reserve. As a researcher, he wanted to observe how nature would develop without human interference. He had been spending a significant part of his income on development of a zoo and preservation of the steppe reserve.