The Borderland Chronicles

I spent nearly two hours this afternoon going through the incredible multimedia project created by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to commemorate the fall of the Soviet Union.

“The Fall – Twenty Years After the Collapse of the U.S.S.R.,” looks back on the momentous event and the developments leading up to it with video interviews, photographs and an interactive timeline and map.

Each of the stories told by the people who lived under Communism – the miner who was arrested by the KGB for predicting a mining accident; the villagers who lived through the 1932-33 Holodomor under Stalin’s rule; the men who escaped to Finland only to be arrested, sent back and put in a mental hospital – are fascinating glimpses into an oppressive society.

If you have any interest whatsoever in this part of the world, I highly recommend checking this out.

Here it is: http://ussrfall.com/

Posted in Chernobyl, Culture, Donetsk, Food, History, Journalism, Kiev, Life, Media, Politics, Protests, Recent reads, Russia, Russian, Soviet Union, Ukraine |

Today is World AIDS Day. And while I didn’t spend the afternoon teaching lessons to students about HIV/AIDS in Ukraine like I did last year, I did have some conversations about the situation here with some friends and colleagues.

In case you’re unaware, at 1.3%, Ukraine has the worst HIV infection rate in all of Europe. About half of those infected in Ukraine are drug addicts.

Despite this, the government does little in the way of prevention programs and anti-retroviral treatment.

Trawling my daily online sites, I came across this story in The Economist which does a good job of highlighting the HIV/AIDS problem in Ukraine.

From the story:

Ukraine and Russia account for 90% of all HIV cases in the region. Fewer than one-fifth of Ukrainian HIV patients receive anti-retroviral treatment. Botswana and Rwanda manage more than 80%.

In both Russia and Ukraine the epidemic is driven by intravenous drug use, with addicts accounting for around half of all cases. Yet the Ukrainian government seems uninterested in prevention programmes. “There’s a line in the national AIDS programme budget for prevention,” says Andriy Klepikov, head of AIDS Alliance Ukraine, “but its value is set at zero”.

Some believe corruption in Ukraine to be a reason for the lack of prevention programs:

Ukraine’s government has recently agreed a co-funding deal with the Global Fund, an international organisation, worth $85m over the next two years, but AIDS Alliance says that the government’s bit will be spent almost entirely on medical treatment rather than prevention. “They usually procure medicines at a higher price than they need to,” says Mr Klepikov. His (widely shared, if unproven) suspicion is that kickbacks are at work.

Among the Ukrainians I’ve spoken with about prevention programs, there seems to be a clear split. Some acknowledge that something needs to be done to put an end to rising infection rates, and prevention programs and education are it. On the other hand, fearful perhaps of admitting there’s a problem, succumbing to the stigma of HIV/AIDS that exists here, some believe that the situation in Ukraine is being blown out of proportion. One woman told me it was only morally bankrupt drug fiends that had HIV, and that no truly decent person could contract the virus.

Contrary to that woman’s belief, I happen to have known a truly decent woman who recently died from complications with AIDS. And I’d be willing to bet that her son, a hard-working young student now living with his grandmother, would agree.

On the HIV/AIDS front, it’s great that in parts of the world – Africa, for instance – we’re making big strides toward ending the AIDS epidemic. But there are still some places, even places that are in many ways more developed than, say, Africa, that have a long way to go. I hope a year from now we’ll be reporting a decreased infection rate in Ukraine.

Posted in Culture, Kiev, Life, Media, Peace Corps, Recent reads, School, Teaching, Ukraine |

A recent story in The New York Times (“For Russia’s Poor, Blonde Hair Is Snippet of Gold,” Nov. 21) shines a light on the growing hair industry, specifically the global demand for blonde hair, for use of extensions, wigs and toupees, and what it means for Russia and Ukraine.

About the hair market:

The largest market is the United States, where tens of thousands of beauty salons offer hair extensions. African-American women have long worn hair extensions, but the trend among women with lighter hair has been popularized by celebrity endorsements from the likes of Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton.

Great Lengths, an Italian company and major supplier to the United States, has estimated the American retail market for hair extensions at $250 million annually, or about 3 percent of the entire hair care products market.

About why Ukrainian women in particular might sell their hair:

“It’s not hard to understand why people in Ukraine sell their hair a hundred times more often than people in Sweden,” David Elman, a co-owner of Raw Virgin Hair Company, an importer based in Kiev, Ukraine, said in a telephone interview. “They are not doing it for fun. Usually, only people who have temporary financial difficulties in depressed regions sell their hair.”

One man’s take on the industry, and the reason people might want to purchase hair for the use of extensions, wigs or toupees:

“This is capitalism,” he said. “The people with money want to distinguish themselves from the people with no money. Why does one woman sell her hair to another? The person with money wants to look better than the person without money.”

Perhaps the most intriguing part of this story comes midway through page two. The scouting for blonde hair in rural, poverty-stricken areas of Russia, it reports, has become so competitive that hair buyers are shooting one another.

Russian factory towns in the Ural Mountains, about 900 miles east of Mosalsk, became such contested territory among hair buyers that in 2006 one was shot in a dispute with another, suggesting Russian organized crime involvement, the newspaper Kommersant reported.

Crazy. Read the full story here.

Posted in Media, Recent reads, Russia, Ukraine |

During my daily scanning of The New York Times I came across a highly fascinating story about the Russian justice system (“In Russia, Jury Is Something to Work Around,” Nov. 15). In an attempt to shift power from the state to the people, in 1993, Russia introduced juries into its courtrooms.

Juries introduced real competition into Russia’s courts, granting acquittals in 15 to 20 percent of cases, compared with less than 1 percent in cases decided by judges.

But the state has never been happy about leaving the fate of high-profile prosecutions in the hands of ordinary people.

So what does the state do? It tampers with jurors, of course.

This story is part of The Times’ Above the law series, in which it explores corruption and abuse of power in Russia after the fall of Communism.

Of particular interest to me are the pieces on Russian journalists. But all the stories in the Above the law series are worth reading. If you have some time and an interest in eastern Europe, I suggest you read one or two. In this part of the world corruption is as much cultural as borsch. Enjoy.

Posted in Media, Recent reads |

America: Land of Loners?

Americans, plugged in and on the move, are confiding in their pets, their computers, and their spouses. What they need is to rediscover the value of friendship.

Reclaiming the Imagination

Imagine being a slave in ancient Rome. Now remember being one. The second task, unlike the first, is crazy. If, as I’m guessing, you never were a slave in ancient Rome, it follows that you can’t remember being one — but you can still let your imagination rip. With a bit of effort one can even imagine the impossible, such as discovering that Dick Cheney and Madonna are really the same person. It sounds like a platitude that fiction is the realm of imagination, fact the realm of knowledge.

Why did humans evolve the capacity to imagine alternatives to reality? Was story-telling in prehistoric times like the peacock’s tail, of no direct practical use but a good way of attracting a mate? It kept Scheherazade alive through those one thousand and one nights — in the story.

Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain

GLEN CANYON NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, Utah — Todd Braver emerges from a tent nestled against the canyon wall. He has a slight tan, except for a slim pale band around his wrist.

For the first time in three days in the wilderness, Mr. Braver is not wearing his watch. “I forgot,” he says.

It is a small thing, the kind of change many vacationers notice in themselves as they unwind and lose track of time. But for Mr. Braver and his companions, these moments lead to a question: What is happening to our brains?

Posted in Culture, Recent reads |