ONE YEAR AFTER: Residents of Yevpatoria, in Crimea, reflect on Orange Revolution
by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau
"One Year After" is a four-part series examining the lives of Ukrainians a year after the Orange Revolution. The second part features Arkadii Sharapov, 49, and Kateryna Sharapova, 47, residents of Yevpatoria in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the parents of three sons.
PART II
YEVPATORIA, Ukraine - During the Orange Revolution, just showing up for work was a daily battle for Kateryna Sharapova, a teacher of Ukrainian language and literature at School No. 15 in Yevpatoria, Crimea.
The Yevpatoria newspaper outed her as a supporter of Viktor Yushchenko by printing a list of all local polling stations and the names of Yushchenko and Yanukovych staff members in the third round of the presidential election.
Shocked that one of her own co-workers was supporting Mr. Yushchenko's candidacy, the school librarian underlined Mrs. Sharapova's name along with the other Yushchenko staff and placed the newspaper on the desk of Ivan Semko, the school's director, who tried talking Mrs. Sharapova out of supporting the candidate.
"Do you know that Yushchenko wants to give Crimea to the Tatars?" he asked her. "Why do you think they support him so much?"
Weeks later, Mrs. Sharapova wore a thin orange band around her neck, prompting him to ask half-jokingly, "Aren't you afraid that somebody will hang you by those bands?"
Although the streets of Kyiv were the front lines of the Orange Revolution's physical struggle, the spiritual, moral and cultural front was fought in cities and towns across the nation.
Among the regions in Ukraine most hostile to the revolution's ideals and values was the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which has its own emblem and flag, and a Russian-language anthem.
Though Ukrainian is the official language there, the Crimean Constitution grants the Russian language special status, allowing its use in all spheres of life, including government, the judiciary and schools.
With the support of her husband, Arkadii Sharapov, Mrs. Sharapova was faced with the heavy burden of defending the revolution not only at its height, but long after the last tent left the Khreschatyk, Kyiv's main boulevard.
The Orange Revolution was only the beginning of a long, trying struggle for Yushchenko supporters in pro-Russian regions of Ukraine. Discrimination and even persecution for their political views continues, they said, and among their biggest concerns is the revenge factor.
They fear what their political opponents will do to them should the Party of the Regions gain control of Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada and elect Viktor Yanukovych as prime minister.
"We are the Ukrainian diaspora in Crimea"
Although now a self-described Ukrainian nationalist, Mrs. Sharapova admitted that she was a member of the Communist Party during Soviet times.
She grew up in the Kherson Oblast of southern Ukraine, where people have a stronger Ukrainian identity compared to the neighboring Zaporizhia and Mykolaiv oblasts. (Mr. Yushchenko only narrowly lost in the Kherson Oblast, earning about 48 percent of the vote.)
"My mother had told me [that] if not for western Ukraine, Ukraine would not exist," Mrs. Sharapova said. "She said, 'They were driven by songs, while we were driven by 'kolbasa' " [Russian for "kovbasa," or sausage].
In 1979, Mrs. Sharapova married Arkadii, a Yevpatoria native who worked various factory jobs before becoming a teacher of Russian language and literature.
Whenever eastern and southern Ukrainians discuss the Orange Revolution, the conversation somehow refers back to what many consider the real one - the Bolshevik Revolution.
Despite being born and bred in a Communist stronghold, Mr. Sharapov said he never believed in it. When asked why, he simply replied, "I read. I thought."
That's a bit of an understatement.
Though modestly furnished, the Sharapovs' apartment consists of seemingly endless walls of bookshelves that contain hundreds of books, including the works of Alexander Pushkin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Anton Chekhov and even a Russian-language version of George Orwell's "1984."
His hippie looks, replete with long blond hair and thick beard, didn't help his chances of joining the Communist Party either.
He recalled an incident during his teaching days when the school's party organizer approached him. "What kind of a haircut is that? You're a teacher! You're supposed to have your hair cut."
"And just who are you?" Mr. Sharapov asked.
"I am the party organizer," was the answer.
"Then go to your party and boss them around!" Mr. Sharapov shot back.
It wasn't until after joining the party that Mrs. Sharapova became disillusioned with Soviet Communism.
Her rejection of it came amidst fierce peer pressure, considering that more than 58 percent of Crimea's population is ethnic Russian and support for pro-Russian politics is robust. Ethnic Ukrainians make up only about 24 percent of its population, while Tatars represent 12 percent.
Mr. Yushchenko only won about 18 percent of the votes in Crimea during the third round of the presidential election.
Pressured by her school's director to join the party while a young teacher, Mrs. Sharapova said she reluctantly conceded only because she thought Mikhail Gorbachev was introducing reforms and more freedom.
However, after going through months of courses in Leninism Marxism, she was unconvinced.
Also contributing to her antipathy for Soviet Communism were the stories her grandparents began telling her, which they were afraid to reveal earlier.
One grandmother told of how Communists threw her out of her home with five children. One grandfather fled a collective farm, while another was hauled off to Siberia, never to be seen again.
Eventually, her grandfather Hryhorii Havrylko provided a first-hand account of the Holodomor that appeared in the 583-page commemorative book, "Holod '33," published in Kyiv in 1991 by Radianskyi Pysmenyk.
"The bony hand of famine began choking body and soul in the spring of 1933," said her grandfather, who was from the city of Hola Prystan in the Kherson Oblast.
"During my childhood and the Leningrad blockade, I always had a particular dream: a table covered with food to eat. Then I'd wake up, and hunger was gnawing at my stomach and I didn't want to live," he recalled in the book.
Mrs. Sharapova waited until Ukraine declared its independence to quit the party.
Her father had done so earlier and was attacked in Communist newspapers for acting immorally. He advised her not to put her family through that hardship.
Eventually, at a party function, "I silently took out my party membership card and put it in the pocket of the party organizer," Mrs. Sharapova said.
Because of their patriotic convictions, the Sharapovs are the exception to the rule in Yevpatoria.
For a while, the city's 300 or so nationalists banded together under the Ukrainian People's Party, once chaired by Mr. Sharapov in Yevpatoria and currently led by Yurii Kostenko nationally.
However, disenchanted with what they allege as corruption in the Crimean leadership of the Ukrainian People's Party, most of Yevpatoria's nationalists migrated to Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine People's Union (OUPU) in recent weeks.
Mr. Sharapov himself began working for the OUPU staff on December 5.
Despite the political instability, their Ukrainian patriots' ghetto remains tight. They meet regularly in a dilapidated building near the city center which houses a computer lab for students and several couches.
"We are the Ukrainian diaspora in Crimea," Mrs. Sharapova said of the community.
Throughout the day, they also drop by to talk about daily events.
On the afternoon of November 11, a local elementary school teacher, Olena Tkachenko, 39, came seeking support from her colleagues because she said she was criticized by her fellow teachers for being a nationalist. She had offended them because she asked her own students in her Ukrainian class to speak Ukrainian.
"Psychologically, Crimea is worse..."
Offering her support was Halyna Leonova, a Cherkasy native who runs the computer lab. Her son, 31-year-old Eduard Leonov, is Crimea's most known, and often reviled, political activist.
Recently, he successfully led a campaign pushing for the lab's neighboring elementary school to teach all its classes in the Ukrainian language. As a result, it's one of only two government schools in all of Crimea that instructs students in Ukrainian.
And, despite the fact that virtually no one uses the Ukrainian language in Yevpatoria, Mrs. Leonov speaks Ukrainian to everyone who visits the lab. "Yevpatoria knows the Leonov family because 'they're the ones who speak Ukrainian,'" Mrs. Leonov said, gently laughing.
Apparently, it's having some effect.
"When children walk in here, instead of saying 'zdravstvuite,' they say, 'Dobroho dnia,' " Mrs. Leonova said with pride.
She taught Ukrainian language and literature to Yevpatoria's students for 30 years and belonged to the Communist Party before joining Rukh in the early 1990s, she said.
Her political activism influenced Eduard, who was one of the key leaders of Pora during the Orange Revolution.
In fact, Yevpatoria's core of Ukrainian nationalists played very active roles in the Orange Revolution from its very start in the Mukachiv mayoral elections, now known as the revolution's training grounds.
They were also among the first on Bankova Street when the Orange Revolution began, breaking the Presidential Secretariat builiding's gate and standing face to face with Special Service officers.
Given his inside track on Ukrainian politics, Mr. Leonov said he wasn't as disappointed with the revolution's results as others because he wasn't so infatuated with its leaders and knew that crises would emerge.
Looking at it from the political technology angle, the split between President Yushchenko and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko could have been very effective, he said.
In theory, the two leaders could have forged a political pact in which Ms. Tymoshenko's departure could have attracted votes from pro-Russian parties, thereby weakening Mr. Yushchenko's true enemies.
"Unfortunately, it's obvious that this was an ordinary argument between a boy, Yushchenko, and a girl, Tymoshenko," Mr. Leonov said.
Mr. Yushchenko squandered many opportunities during his first months in office, Mr. Leonov said. Crimeans had overwhelmingly voted for Mr. Yanukovych because he created an image of himself as a leader who was going to improve their lives, he said.
There were few positive expectations of Mr. Yushchenko among Crimeans, Mr. Leonov said, and any minimal improvement in their lives would have significantly boosted the president's popularity in the autonomous republic.
"Psychologically, Crimea feels worse. And economically also," Mr. Leonov said of the Orange Revolution. "People tied their hopes to Yanukovych or even Yushchenko. It was hoped that things would get better. With Yushchenko, they have seen that things haven't gotten better and they won't get better."
Mr. Leonov said he's quite concerned about the future sanctity of the Orange Revolution that his generation of political activists helped to bring about.
In Crimea, he said he's already witnessed the old guard of corrupt businessmen and politicians exchange their former party colors for the Orange-allied parties in order to retain their grip on power.
As a member of the Ukrainian People's Party, Mr. Leonov said he confronted Mr. Kostenko in October and told him the Crimean leadership was selling its Verkhovna Rada seats to people with ties to corrupt businessmen such as Ihor Franchuk, the first husband of Leonid Kuchma's daughter, Elena.
According to Mr. Leonov, Mr. Kostenko ignored his concerns and the Crimean leadership subsequently threw him out of the party.
Mr. Leonov said he expects a similar scenario will occur in the national parliamentary elections, with corrupt, wealthy businessmen being able to buy seats within the ranks of the Orange-allied parties.
When trying to reinstate his party membership on October 27, Mr. Leonov alleges he was severely beaten and choked by two party leaders.
"There aren't any bright expectations of the upcoming parliamentary elections in Ukraine," Mr. Leonov said. "The configuration of forces will shift a bit. But, in essence, the same old people will enter into new [political] factions and gain parliamentary power."
"Shut your mouth, Banderivka!"
Though never physically attacked, Mrs. Sharapova says she has had to deal with her own fair share of abuse from local Crimeans.
When working at the polling station during the second round of voting, someone had hung orange Yushchenko banners nearby the night before.
A Yanukovych worker took them down, entered the station and flung them in Mrs. Sharapova's face.
"Why the aggression?" she said. "By the way, all the leaves on the trees are orange. Maybe you should go and take those down."
On another occasion, she told the Yanukovych staffer that a ballot was not legitimate.
"Shut your month, Banderivka!" he spat back at her.
She said she'll never forget walking in an underpass wearing orange bands during the revolution when suddenly two women began following her.
"You fool! Yushchenko will cut your tongue if you speak the Russian language," they yelled at her.
"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Sharapova replied.
"You American bitch!" they shot back.
Harassment even extended to her ninth-floor apartment, literally. One night, someone covered her door with signs that read, "Yushchenko 'is a liar' - Tak!" ("Tak," or yes, was a Yushchenko campaign slogan.)
Even at school, the political pressure was fierce.
The school's director, Mr. Semko, distributed to students anti-Yushchenko political booklets slandering him as a fascist, complete with doctored pictures of the candidate in a fascist uniform.
Mrs. Sharapova collected the propaganda and threw it out.
Her fellow teachers accused her of selling out to the Americans and taking their money to vote for Mr. Yushchenko. She said it was impossible for them to comprehend that she was supporting Mr. Yushchenko's candidacy simply because she believed in the ideas that his campaign stood for.
"They look at us as if we're mammoths, or some spectacle," Mrs. Sharapova said. "They can't understand us doing something for a better Ukraine. All they understand is getting money in return for something."
Moreover, attitudes ranging from skepticism to outright antagonism toward Americans is more common in Crimea than perhaps any other Ukrainian oblast, largely because of its significant ethnic Russian and military population.
Additionally, most Crimeans have had little exposure to Americans other than what they see on Russian television networks or the political propaganda spread during the last elections.
When considering that an American journalist from The Weekly would visit her class, Mrs. Sharapova was nervous about seeking Mr. Semko's permission. She didn't know how he'd react.
Mr. Semko decided to allow the American reporter to sit in on Mrs. Sharapova's class, but only under his supervision.
On the morning of November 11, students were abuzz in conversation in their native Russian before the start of Mrs. Sharapova's Ukrainian language and literature class.
Mr. Semko entered the class accompanied by the school's two assistant directors. The entire class stood in respect and hushed their conversations.
Portraits of Taras Shevchenko and Ivan Franko hovered above the class as Mrs. Sharapova discussed another author, Ivan Karpenko-Karyi.
During the class, she corrected numerous students in their Ukrainian language: "Roku, ne rotsi."
Despite the fact she was teaching 10th grade students in their next-to-final year of high school, "this is the first year we are learning the letter 'g,' " Mrs. Sharapova said, explaining the difference between the Ukrainian "g" and 'h," and the Russian "g."
She then later explained one of Karpenko-Karyi's plays, "Khaziayin" (Landlord), reflecting her own personal concern about contemporary Ukrainian society and the country's nouveau riche oligarchs.
"Karyi worries about Ukrainians who don't have values or culture," Mrs. Sharapova said. "They have no dignity and disgrace their people."
* * *
Mr. Semko declined to be interviewed by The Weekly.
Alla Shypilova, an assistant to the director, said that, up until recently, the school of 1,100 students had a single computer which was bought with parents' money and was used by a secretary.
It's unclear whether it was as a result of the Orange Revolution, but teachers' salaries increased 40 percent in the past year, acknowledged Ludmila Dorovskikh, the other assistant to the director. But a 40 percent increase just doesn't cut it, she said.
"If they raised our wages and nothing is done for the school ... then it's the same as it was during Soviet times when teachers bought literature with their own money," Ms. Dorovskikh said. "We can't afford to live like that. However, we buy these things ourselves and limit our family budget as a result."
Political biases can shade how government politics are viewed.
Mrs. Sharapova was much more enthusiastic when describing the reforms she felt since Mr. Yushchenko became president. That same 40 percent pay hike, in her view, was "significantly felt."
The average teacher's base salary now is $100 a month, without the added bonuses the Ukrainian government offers for such tasks as reviewing notebooks, which boosts her salary to about $153 a month.
Teachers also received bonuses for Teacher's Day and New Year's Day for the first time. The Yushchenko government has also started to pay "accumulated service bonuses," which have been owed to teachers for several years.
Additionally, the new government has begun serving children cookies and compote as mid-day snacks.
Still, School No. 15 has the problems that most other Ukrainian schools face - an inadequate library, lack of technology, a leaking roof ...
"Integration or emigration"
And it's not just Yevpatoria's schools that suffer from a crumbling infrastructure.
Chunks of the exterior walls on many Soviet-era bleached apartment blocks are falling off.
Indoors, the Sharapovs have running water only between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 a.m., and 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. daily. And it's only cold water. To cope, the Sharapovs' bathroom contains at least half a dozen tubs of water as their supply during the day.
Hot water, and only hot water, is available once a week - on Sundays.
The Sharapovs' demand for water has lessened ever since their twin sons, Oleksander and Oleh, began studying cybernetics at one of Ukraine's top universities, Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv.
They gained admission because of the exceptional grades they earned at their Kyiv lyceum, or elite high school, where they studied under full scholarships earned via their strong performances during a regional mathematics competition in the eighth grade.
Otherwise, it's unlikely the Sharapovs could have afforded the tuition.
Life may be rough in Yevpatoria, Mr. Sharapov said, but its residents are surviving and a few are even thriving.
He refuses to listen to people who complain that there's no work, vividly recalling working three jobs in the mid-1990s when the government failed to deliver teachers' paychecks for six- or even nine-month stretches. At that time, he quit his teaching job and has worked as a security guard at his wife's school ever since.
Opening up a newspaper, he started reading aloud job announcements, "Head accountant, office manager, designer, bricklayer."
It's a matter of having the will to work and struggle, he said. "If you want something, you look for possibilities. If you don't want something, you look for excuses."
He personally knows of success stories in his own neighborhood, such as the woman who began sewing stuffed animals with her own hands when the Soviet Union fell, who now runs a profitable business.
Certainly, entering the European Union would open up more opportunities, particularly for their oldest son, Yevhen Sharapov, 24, an international chess master.
Having trained and competed with Ukraine's top chess players, including Ruslan Ponomariov, Yevhen currently travels to Poland to earn prize money.
He wants to visit and compete in more countries like his Polish counterparts, who are able to travel throughout Europe without a visa. "We want a visa-free regime," Yevhen said of his chess master colleagues. "Why can't Ukraine do the same [as Poland by] making international agreements? Let our politicians seek agreements" [with other countries].
Pavlo Sevostianov, a self-described ethnic Cossack who grew up in Chechnya, agreed. His family fled when the war broke out because Muslims were killing Slavs, he said.
The Orange Revolution was Ukraine's do or die moment, he said, but in order for it to materialize, its leaders must help Ukraine join the European Union. "It's integration or emigration," he said.
Just as the U.S. rebuilt West Germany with its Marshall Plan after World War II, it should help Ukraine out of its post-Soviet devastation, he added.
"There are many disappointments because many promises are unfulfilled, and the West is also guilty because it fails to help," he said.
"... waiting for the old generation ... to die out."
The beach is dear to Yevpatoria residents, and also to the Sharapovs.
When she feels she's on the brink of losing her sanity, Mrs. Sharapova said the Black Sea soothes her soul.
However, even the beach has fallen pray to Ukraine's version of unrestricted capitalism. Local businessmen are now charging people to enter certain beaches, which incensed Mrs. Sharapova this past summer.
"How can you charge money for me to enter this beach?" Mrs. Sharapova told a man requesting 40 cents for entry. "God gave us this beach."
As he strolled the Yevpatoria coastline on an unusually mild day in mid-November, the skin on Mr. Sharapov's face drew tight in frustration over what's happened. He said local businessmen have hired tractors to dig the sand and sell it to foreign buyers.
"Forty years ago, there were 50 kilometers of beach," Mr. Sharapov said, referring to how wide it was. "Five years ago, there were between 25 and 30 kilometers. There's not even five meters of beach nowadays."
It will take a whole new generation of Ukrainians for the culture to change, he said, from being oriented around selfish and immediate needs to one in which people act on behalf of the needs of the nation.
"It's a matter of waiting for the old generation, my generation, to die out," Mr. Sharapov said. "An incredible number of people here haven't accepted the fact that they're living in Ukraine. They still think they're in Russia."
As for more immediate needs, Mrs. Sharapova is concerned about the March elections.
At one moment in our conversations, she said the Orange Revolution ensured freedom of speech, even declaring, "We're not afraid anymore." Yet, the next day, she revealed deep concern over the near future.
"People are afraid to express their thoughts in school," she said. "I'm afraid should all these people return to power. They won't give us freedom of speech."
She recalled how revenge was already on the minds of Yevpatoria's pro-Russian forces immediately after President Yushchenko's inauguration. In Soviet fashion, pro-Russian leaders and professionals gathered in the city center to read a list of 30 or 40 Yushchenko supporters, referring to them as "enemies of the city."
These "enemies" had protested the city government's decision to keep its education director, Marina Vidmedska, who had illegally distributed pro-Yanukovych propaganda to schools.
While things changed in Kyiv, there was no change in Yevpatoria's government and, as a result, "we have become victims of the revolution," said Ms. Tkachenko, the Ukrainian-language teacher.
Just this week, Yevpatoria officials cut the electricity to Mrs. Leonova's computer lab. The Ukrainian patriots' headquarters might have to move.
Their fears and uphill battles reflect how they are sacrificing their immediate happiness or well-being for something greater.
"We can't change those who were already in the Soviet system," Mrs. Tkachenko said. "But the children are the future."
And through it all, Mrs. Sharapova said she has no regrets and would not have done anything differently. "My kids are growing, and they need a future," Mrs. Sharapova said. "I don't want them to live in a nation of bandits."
PART II
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 18, 2005, No. 51, Vol. LXXIII
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