І десь лунав погребний дзвін…or "The rising tide lifts all boats"

Володимир Сосюра

МАЗЕПА
Поем :

Volodymyr Sosiura (Ukrainian: Володимир Сосюра; born January 6, 1898 in Debaltseve, Yekaterinoslav Governorate(today Donbas region) of the Russian Empire - died January 8, 1965 in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union) was a Ukrainian lyric poet, writer, veteran of the Russian Civil War (1918–20

Був довго Йван у сні неначе, 

І серце стомлене козаче 

То відпускав, то тиснув жах, 

Що жить йому лишилось мало… 

Він бачив: смерть в його ногах 

З косою грізною стояла, 

Щоб голову одтять йому 

І повести у вічну тьму. 

Він чув: над ним музика грала, 

І десь лунав погребний дзвін…

***************

Yvan was a long dream like,

And my heart is tired Cossack

So let go, then shook horror,

What is left to him live a little ...

He saw death in his legs

With a menacing scythe standing,

To head it odtyat

And take into eternal darkness.

He heard music played on it,

And somewhere Pogrebna bell rang ...

His works include numerous poems that vary from the patriotic genre to love poems such as Love Ukraine, The Late Summer (Babyne Lito), To Maria, Stalin, and many others.

Love Ukraine

Love Ukraine, like sun that you love
Like wind, like grass, and like water,
Whenever you're happy, in moments of gladness,
At times of trouble, do love.

Love Ukraine when asleep or awake
The glamorous your Ukraine
The beauty of it, always alive and new
And language of hers full of charm.

Amongst the brother-made nations, like garden in dew
She shines through the ages again
Love Ukraine with all of your heart
And all of the deeds that you make...

*****************

I gauged the mood on the Metro Yesterday to be one of stoic determination on most faces, they are entering their second year of unbelievable strife and conflict, yet they go to work and try to act as if everything is Okay...... Watching the news, 1+1 and so forth, it's clear the media in Ukraine has upped it's game, it's actually pretty interesting to watch, what and how they feature stories of what's going on.

The war in the Donbas , occupied Crimea, the variant subjects of business, entertainment, and let's not ignore the lead story, weeding out corruption , inefficiency, and greater accountability.

One truly needs to understand the backdrop of all this conflict, and in some ways, this man's life is perhaps a microcosm of a lot of the issues of the current crisis with Ukraine and Russian Federation :

In the 1920s-30s Sosiura became very popular, but his ideological loyalties were torn between patriotic feelings for Ukraineand those for the Soviet Union and its often-changing ideologies. Even though he had long been a member of the CPU(b), he was frequently in conflict with it, and was twice expelled for “nationalistic undertones,” he was even forced to undergo a “reeducation” at a factory in 1930-1931. Many of Sosiura's poems were not published.

In 1948 he was awarded the highest honors of the Stalin Prize, but then he came under harsh criticism for his poem entitled Love Ukraine (Любіть Україну), which was deemed too nationalistic in its tone by several Soviet news-media including Pravda. Afterwards his wife was arrested and spent six years in NKVD prisons.

I was back- checking some stuff about Klim Voroshilov, the famous Stalin co-equal who had thrown a suckling pig down on a banquet table to express his anger at Stalin's management style (trashing some good military commanders) . Both Sosiura and Voroshilov were natives of the town Lysychansk (Ukrainian: Лисича́нськ ) , a once nice, perhaps idyllic town in Luhansk region with a pretty river running through it. A "refugee" I know from the East recently referenced ETERNAL OPTIMISM

yet a lot of the time people from the center and West of Ukraine seem to focus on skepticism, especially when I query them on Politics.

these folks have seen more than their share of wars, changes of government hardship and enough absurd stuff for several centuries of normal time travel. They had been aspiring for improvements and essentially a Great Leap Forward at the onset of this signing an agreement to join the EU 2 years ago, and instead they've seen setbacks, war, economic contraction, and seen a lot of good people get killed, wounded maimed and even tortured, in a fabricated conflict.

it's all pretty well spelled out in this interesting paper, a lot of people in the USA have no idea the total scenario inflicted on Ukraine by the Kremlin :

http://advanced.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/GOV1501_WhitePaper_Bartkowski.pdf

However, it is Russia which seems to have made the most extensive use of collective nonviolent actions
in support of its geopolitical and military objectives. As we shall see, this occurred in the course of its so- called “hybrid conflict” against Ukraine in 2014. However, the Russian state also appears to have used this tactic in lesser-known campaigns to preserve, for example, its energy dominance (and with it its political influence) over Central Europe. Specifically, the sudden but well-organized civilian-led, anti-fracking protests in Romania were linked with Russian Gazprom’s efforts to mobilize a domestic grassroots campaign against exploratory drillings for gas in the north-east part of the country.5 In an ironic way,
all these developments reconfirm the significance of nonviolent techniques of civic mobilization though used by a state rather than authentically by ordinary people. 

It'd be interesting to see the Russian Federation think tanks exposition of the alleged CIA led coup in Ukraine: what interests the USA actually has in Ukraine strategically or economically?. Ukraine competes with USA's agricultural and steel producing sectors, and now it's grown a hefty IT sector, although that sector often feeds into the needs of the programming market in US. There is a lot of paranoia going around these days, suspicions of intricate conspiracy that are most likely attributable to gross ineptness.

As to the rumor that Russia will try to install Victor Yanukovych once more as "Governor" in Donetsk, to rule the so called Donetsk People's Republic, and force him to spend out what he stashed in his stolen fortune that was  socked away in Russian banks, create in effect, a second government in Ukraine and prepare a blitzkrieg to grab Mariupol, Berdyansk and all the shore  of the Azov sea: that Syria is simply a dry run, a practice session: well for the moment , that is a Science Fiction scenario, and scary too. But these people don't know what shoe will drop next week, two weeks from today, two months from now, or two years from now.... Maybe Putin wants to take Dnipropetrovsk and personally sit at Igor Kolomoisky's desk and press that button that drops a crayfish into the shark tank as a personal affront ? A lot of Russians do own property in that city: perhaps it's a sufficient excuse. It certainly would look bad to take via a blood soaked  military force, the largest Jewish Temple in Europe, but does he care ? Could they or would they do that ? We don't know. Even with some increases in defense spending, when all this started a year or so ago, it was still 85$ in Russian military spending to each 1 $ Ukraine spent, even if they tripled that, it's not much to fight on...

People often referenced that it was more cheap to buy clothes at high end stores in London that to buy them in Dnipropetrovsk, I could never discern if those places weren't just fronts for laundering cash or something like that, and Kiev has some high end clothing stores too, I don't know where they get the customers ...

American Triumphalism is still so tawdry and prevalent : I overheard (out of context)  at a cocktail party last week in Kiev "Our American military is enormously powerful and strong" well that's true enough, but what are you actually saying ??  Is this like the LAW OF CLUB AND FANG ala Jack London style, maybe that worked in the Klondike or some remote Islands in the Aleutian chain in Alaska ( 120 years ago, as a rule of thumb) . I often hear the British and Americans here talking about how to pack and organize for their taxes, benefits and retirement : when to deploy the Golden Parachute AS IT WERE.

As to the economic in Ukraine: I have 2 alternate impressions

1. it's that Ukraine will be suffering from a loss of the 20-30 crowd, filtering off to opportunity in Europe and the USA, elsewhere (a lot of them still do work in Russia, although that's probably getting more difficult for them) Without that base contributing income taxes, how will the government pay for the education system and the retirement system, and build up a modernized economic platform. Just the raw numbers have to be tricky for Ukraine, they'll find a way, I am sure, but they need better wages.

2. Between seeing the manager at MacDOnalds work her team at 6:15 a.m. , she was picky and her workers were listening and getting after their stuff right away, the place is clean and spotless.

and a line up at 6:30 P.M. of a Nova Posta  mail service center, I started to sense the laser-like intensity these people have for business, they can transform their society if they can get around the corner of this moment : these people are capable, smart and ready to get to work if they have a bit of organizing and good management. At the Nova Posta there were about 10-11 people some in pairs waiting and like 6 people working, getting their packages, no time was wasted, and there was quick service on every matter.

What will these girls think of Russia 10 years from today ? Or what they will think of the USA ?? They all seemed to disagree on how to arrange for the group photo ))