Note: This article was first published in 2004.
Ukraine is a former Soviet Republic which became independent in 1991. It is only just starting to open up to tourism. Indeed two of the cities we visited, Dnepropetrovsk and Sevastopol, were “closed” during the Soviet era i.e. they were barred to foreign visitors and even people from elsewhere in the Soviet Union had to get special permits in order to go there. A Ukrainian identity is now being asserted and the hyrvni has replaced the rouble. The capital is now officially Kyiv but I have gone on using the Russianised version, Kiev. I might think again when M&S start offering Chicken Kyiv! Besides I am not sure we should always feel obliged to use the local variant of a city’s name. We do not after all talk about going to Firenze, München or Praha. But it is important to remember that the name of the country is simply “Ukraine”: one no more goes to “the Ukraine” than to “the France” or “the Belgium”.
This was our third visit to the former Soviet Union. A few years ago we had a long weekend in Tallinn, which almost felt western. Estonia was, after all an independent country before WW2, so had a shorter experience of Soviet Communism than Russia. It now looks firmly westwards and is on the brink of joining the EU and NATO. Altogether different was St Petersburg. This is certainly one of Europe’s most beautiful cities yet it struck me as a beauty that was preserved in aspic. There was an oppressive feel about the place still. Nor was it very safe. So far this is the only city in which we have been physically threatened for we were nearly mugged – in daylight, on the crowded main street. Admittedly this was some time ago. The Soviet Union had only just collapsed and the city had only just reverted to its pre-Revolutionary name after sixty-odd years of being known as Leningrad.
Ukraine was different yet again. It is certainly not like Estonia. By European standards it is economically backward and EU or NATO membership can only be distant dreams. But I was not reminded either of St Petersburg. Kiev struck me as a very pleasant city, with no feeling of Soviet-era repressiveness. The same goes for Odessa and Sevastopol, though down the Dnieper, in the big industrial cities of Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporizhiye, one could a lot more easily imagine oneself to be “back in the USSR”, as the Beatles would put it. In terms of crime, Kiev is about as safe as London. And the Beatles realised long ago that Ukrainian women do not at all conform to the Soviet tractor-driving stereotype: “the Ukraine girls really knock me out, they leave the West behind”.
Ukraine had a hard time of it in the 20th century. There was a short-lived attempt to create an independent state when the Russian Empire collapsed during WW1. In Russia’s ensuing Civil War it became a battleground between the Whites and the ultimately victorious Reds. It then bore the full brunt of the Stalinist experiment. Ukraine was the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, yet millions starved as the regime inflicted a manmade famine as part of its ruthless campaign against the Kulaks, or wealthier peasants. In WW2 it endured Nazi occupation. At first the invaders were welcomed by many as liberators, but it soon dawned on people that they were worse yet again than the Communists. After the War the country was united for the first time as western Ukraine, previously divided between Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania, was annexed by the Soviet Union. Historically these areas had never been ruled from Moscow – Lvov, for example, had been a Habsburg city. The Ukrainian vote for independence in 1991 was the catalyst that led to the break-up of the Soviet Union. Post-independence Ukraine has many problems, yet there is now freedom and optimism is not lacking. It tends to be overlooked in the west just how big this country is. One day it might actually punch its weight on the European stage.
Our boat was moored in the heart of the city on the Dnieper. Straight away there was the impression of a relaxed, friendly city as couples strolled by, enjoying the evening air – a contrast indeed to our mooring spot on the Neva in St Petersburg (that holiday was also a cruise) where we had a grim view dominated by pylons and the assorted drunks, beggars and teenagers wanting Marlboroughs rather put one off the idea of an evening stroll. Kiev looks after its riverbanks. Across the river was a beach area where the locals flock on summer weekends. We could see western-style advertising where once there might have been Communist slogans. We also looked out onto a McDonald’s. In fact there are several of these in Kiev. One might regret that particular aspect of Westernisation! Our charming Ukrainian guide, Lilia, a lady of advancing years like ourselves, couldn’t understand why so many people want to eat there “when our own Ukrainian cuisine is so tasty”.
The next day was spent on organised trips around Kiev, including a visit to the intriguing Monastery of the Caves, which one explores with the aid of a lighted candle. We set sail late afternoon and the next day was simply spent cruising downstream. It has to be said that the riverside scenery, though generally pleasant, is not spectacular. For the most part, Ukraine is very flat and it was the experience of visiting the country that had brought us there, rather than any expectation of scenic splendour. But, later on, we were to travel through some fine scenery in the mountainous Crimea.
Our first shore visit was to Dnepropetrovsk. This is a large European city - a million inhabitants and boasting its own metro – yet people in the west are barely aware of its existence. The very name recalls the Soviet era, combining as it does the river and some communist official. It used to be known as Ekaterinoslav. In Russia the city of Sverdlovsk reverted to its rather similar pre-Revolutionary name, Ekaterinburg. But it is unlikely that Dnepropetrovsk will follow suit. The cities are both named from Catherine the Great – and she wasn’t Ukrainian. Lilia always pointedly referred to her and others as the “Russian” tsars.
At first the city looked a bit grim. Lenin Street runs along the banks of the river; paralleling it a few blocks inland is Karl Marx Street, which runs through the downtown area. But the latter is tree-lined and, if spruced up a bit more, would be an attractive thoroughfare. Outside the Town Hall, a huge statue of Lenin stares down enigmatically at – McDonald’s. We went inside the Cathedral. Like churches across the country, it has been handed back by the post-Soviet regime to its rightful owners. It had been, loathsomely, a museum of atheism. We found the sight of people worshipping, including some young people, rather moving. Dnepropetrovsk, I realised, is changing after all. Our one other stop on this outward part of our voyage down the Dnieper was in the town of Novaya Kakhovka, a new town dating back to the fifties. Here we were entertained to a concert by children from the local dancing school, staged in a building described, with no discernible irony, as “Stalinist Baroque”. There is “Stalinist Gothic” as well, exemplified by the Palace of Culture in Warsaw.
Our next port of call was Odessa, where we moored overnight. Known as the “Pearl of the Black Sea”, this is a handsome city. As yet it is little visited by people from the west, but maybe that will change. An international airport is due to open in the next few years and it is perhaps not fanciful to envisage that, just as tourists flocked, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, to Prague and, more recently, the Baltic capitals, so might they one day head off to Odessa. But I doubt whether western tourists will ever go in their droves to Dnepropetrovsk or Zaporizhiye for their weekend breaks!
Odessa has gone further than other cities in breaking away from the Soviet past. There was a wholesale renaming of streets in 1994 to commemorate the city’s bicentenary. The local council would also like to pull down Lenin’s statue, but presently lacks the funds. Our local guide assured us that, meantime, “He doesn’t do any harm”. Just as St Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great on territory conquered from the Swedes so was Odessa founded by Catherine the Great on territory conquered from the Ottoman Turks. Its name was romantically inspired as it was believed that the ancient Greek city of Odessos was in the vicinity. So it was rather disappointing when it was later established that it was in present-day Bulgaria!
There was a city tour, then we had time to explore by ourselves. We started with Odessa’s best-known landmark, the Potemkin Steps. There are 192 in all, divided by ten landings, which create a curious optical illusion: when standing at the bottom, only the steps are visible yet, at the top, only the landings are. The Steps famously featured in the legendary Russian film of 1925, Battleship Potemkin. This featured a pram, baby inside, bouncing down all 192 steps. It might be supposed that the Steps are named from Grigory Potemkin, the most celebrated of Catherine the Great’s lovers – some historians believe that they secretly married. In fact the name is of revolutionary origin, commemorating as it does the mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin. This took place during the 1905 Revolution. The Tsarist regime survived that one, but only at the cost of ceding a Duma, or Parliament. I had fondly imagined that the Steps cascade right down to the Black Sea but the reality is less romantic as there is a very functional and busy main road at the bottom. The street at the top, on the other hand, is the charmingly old-fashioned Prymorsky Boulevard. Our stroll from here through the city took us as far as the Voksal. This is the Russian or Ukrainian word for railway station, derived from our own Vauxhall. In the evening we went to see Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty in the elegant Opera House.
On the following day we went for an excursion to Bessarabia. I was rather surprised to see a place with this name figure in a modern itinerary. I was aware of it from my history studies – and I thought that history was where it had been consigned. It was the Region between the Prut and Dniester Rivers that was in contention between Tsarist Russia and Ottoman Turkey, and then between Soviet Russia and Romania. It passed from the latter to the former after WW2 and no longer exists in any administrative sense. Most of it now comprises the greater part of another ex-Soviet republic, Moldova, whilst the southernmost part, where we were heading, is simply an area within Ukraine’s Odessa province.
Our drive took us along the Black Sea coast and across the mouth of the Dniester (not to be confused with the Dnieper!) then upstream a bit to the town of Belgorod-Dnestrovskiy. This claims to be one of the oldest and most historic towns in Europe but one wouldn’t guess that from its undistinguished, rather unkempt, appearance. It does though have one big attraction: the huge and magnificent Akkerman (or White) Fortress. Located on the Dniester, it guarded, before WW2, Romania’s frontier with the Soviet Union. On our return to Odessa we set sail for the Crimean Peninsula and its largest city, Sevastopol.
Next morning saw our arrival in Sevastopol, the largest city in the Crimean Peninsula and our base for the next two nights. The harbour is one of the finest anywhere. It used to house the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and because of this it was a closed city. As western tourists we simply couldn’t have gone there during the Soviet era, and for a few years thereafter. Even people from elsewhere in the Soviet Union needed a permit if they wanted to go there, say to visit relatives. Complicating the picture still further, the adjoining, and far smaller, port of Balaclava was a closed city in its own right, on the grounds of it being a submarine base. Its inhabitants were free to go to Sevastopol but the reverse didn’t apply. The locals, by the way, say Se-va-STOP-ol whereas we tend to call it Se-VAST-o-pol.
After Ukraine became independent, the future of the Fleet was a matter of some contention with Russia. It was eventually agreed that the two countries would share the facility for 20 years so today one still sees Russian ships in the harbour, some of them rusting rather badly. An inducement for the Ukrainians was cheap supply of Russian energy, access to which could of course be taken for granted when both countries were in a single state, the Soviet Union.
Politically the Crimea is interesting as it enjoys a considerable degree of autonomy within the Ukrainian state. It only in fact became part of Ukraine in 1954, a gift from the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, himself a Ukrainian, to mark the tercentenary of the union of Russia and Ukraine. The majority of its inhabitants are Russians and not all were overjoyed suddenly to find themselves in an independent Ukraine. The granting of autonomous status seems however to have reconciled people to their future as part of that country. Complicating the scene still further is that the Tatars, ruthlessly expelled from the Crimea by Stalin, are steadily returning.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have heard a lot about what has gone wrong, above all in Chechnya. But quite a lot has gone right. One might instance the accommodation between Ukraine and Russia over the Black Sea Fleet and the peaceful resolution of the potentially explosive situation in The Crimea. Russians predominate as well in much of eastern Ukraine and in Odessa too yet there is no ethnic conflict. It might have been different had rabid nationalists seized the helm in either country, something that did alas happen in much of Yugoslavia, with disastrous consequences. Ukraine should also be given credit for voluntarily renouncing its share of the nuclear weaponry inherited from the Soviet Union.
Sevastopol has twice had to be virtually rebuilt from scratch, firstly after the Crimean War, then after the Nazi occupation during WW2. I had rather expected grim Soviet architecture but it is in fact an attractive city with a relaxed, almost Mediterranean, atmosphere. Lonely Planet alludes to its “surprisingly cheerful streets and squares”. A brass band serenaded us as we berthed. Then we had a city tour. The impressive Cathedral stands cheek-by-jowl with a huge statue of Lenin, looking imperiously across the harbour. (Yes, Lenin enters this narrative yet again. I don’t like the chap – but he kept being there to greet us!)
The Crimean War – the only ‘hot war’ between Britain and Russia – was a recurrent theme during our stay in Sevastopol. We were taken during our tour to Molokoi Hill, the scene of fierce fighting. A subsequent trip took us to the magnificent Painted Panorama, back in the city centre. Set inside a dome-like structure this forms a complete circle and is partly 3-D. It dramatically depicts the scene from the Hill with the battle waging all around. We also had an excursion to Balaclava. This is located in a scenic harbour and, with the former submarine base now being turned into a museum, has the makings of a tourist destination. Inkerman, on the other hand, is a rather dreary town, a few miles inland from Sevastopol. We stopped as well to see the site of the Charge of the Light Brigade, though all there is to see is an ordinary field.
Highlight of our stay was a day trip to Yalta, the Crimea’s premier resort, much favoured by the ruling classes in Tsarist and Communist days alike. There was splendid scenery as we made our way along the coastal road. As already noted, Ukraine is mostly a rather flat country, but there are mountains, here in the Crimea as well as the Carpathians in the far west. At one point we could see the dacha where Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev were holidaying during the abortive hardline communist coup in 1991. At another point we paused to view, in the distance, what is perhaps the Crimea’s most celebrated landmark, the Swallow’s Nest, a picturesque castle perched on a sheer cliff high above the sea.
We spent some time in Livadia Palace, just to the west of Yalta. For the historian, this is a fascinating place on two counts. Firstly this was the summer residence of the last tsar, Nicholas III, and his family. They did not have long to enjoy it for it was completed only in 1912, replacing an earlier palace. After the first, or democratic, Revolution in 1917, the royal family were removed from the then capital, St Petersburg. Nicholas naturally hoped that they would be allowed to live in Livadia but instead they were packed off to Siberia. Following the second, or Bolshevik, Revolution in that year they ended up in Ekaterinburg, where they were murdered. On the other hand Nicholas’ mother, the Dowager Empress, was able to make it to the Crimea from where, just ahead of the advancing Red Army, she was able to flee. She spent her last ten years in her native Denmark. For many years she had been domiciled in Kiev, despairing of the weak rule of her son and the malign influence of Rasputin over him and his wife.
The second reason why Livadia is so historic is that it was the site of the celebrated Yalta Conference towards the end of WW2, after the Nazis had been pushed out of Ukraine. Today an exhibition commemorates this event. Stalin had been very keen to have the Conference on Soviet territory and he may have derived a certain psychological advantage. At any rate he ended up with a rather larger slice of Europe than military might alone would have earned him.
We lunched in the nearby Oreanda Hotel, a rather smart establishment which is clearly interested in catering for western visitors, who are just starting to rediscover the Crimea. There was then time to wander along the beachfront in Yalta. Again I was struck by the relaxed atmosphere, albeit the promenade is still named after Lenin and inevitably there is a statue of him. At a couple of points there was the option, not taken up by us, of being photographed with a huge python around one’s neck. A piece of Yalta trivia is that the world’s longest trolleybus route starts here. It goes inland for some fifty miles, across a mountain pass, to the Crimean capital, Simferopol.
Other excursions in Sevastopol were inland to the picturesque palace in Bakhchysaray, erstwhile stronghold of the Tatars which reminded me, oddly enough, of buildings we had seen in Bhutan. And to the ancient Greek city of Kherson, located on the harbour a few miles out of the city. The weather looked distinctly ominous as we approached. The good news is that the rain held off long enough for us to complete our guided tour of this interesting and extensive site. The bad news is that it started the moment we finished our tour, when we were at the furthest possible point from the entrance – and shelter. The rain was torrential and we got the soaking of our lives.
On the boat, we had been lucky with the dining companions who had been randomly assigned to us. They were a pleasant couple, a headmistress and her retired husband, who are avid walkers and have been on some most unusual walking holidays e.g. in Albania during the isolationist communist regime of Enver Hoxha. Even they said they had never experienced such a soaking! They had not originally planned to visit Ukraine. Their experience of booking this holiday underlines the obstacles that can confront the present day traveller. They had actually booked a holiday in China, but the SARS epidemic meant abandoning this. So they tried again, the choice this time being Kenya. That trip also failed to materialize, due to flights to that country being grounded as a result of a terrorist alert. Ukraine – about as safe a destination as any in today’s world – was their third choice and they were relieved finally to have made it to somewhere.
From Sevastopol we made our way back to the mouth of the Dnieper. As we sailed out of the Harbour, we looked across at Kherson, now bathed in sunshine. I rather felt that, on the lower reaches of the River, our tour company was scraping the barrel to find an excursion for us to do. We moored at Fisherman’s Island, located opposite the large-ish city of Kherson, which we did not get to visit (and which is not to be confused with its ruined Greek namesake in Sevastopol). This was the start of what was appealingly described in our literature as a trip, using a smaller vessel, through the canals in this area. As we made our way through fairly ordinary countryside, the realization dawned on me that this is not Eastern Europe’s answer to the Bangkok Klongs. What’s more, heavy rain made its return, and rendered much of the top deck unusable. Not the highlight of our holiday!
Our one other stop on the way back to Kiev was far more interesting. This was in Zaporizhiye. Like Dnepropetrovsk, a bit further upstream, this is a major industrial centre. It is a European city with a population approaching a million yet I’d hazard a guess that few in Britain have heard of it. On the way down we had not disembarked here though we had paused in order to go through the huge hydroelectric dam; friendly crowds had waved to us as we sailed though the lock gates. The dam was regarded as one of Stalin’s big achievements, of vital importance in his grandiose plans for industrialization, opening up as it did the Dnieper for navigation. It was built during the five years from 1927 under – irony! – American supervision.
Lonely Planet is rather schizoid about Zaporizhiye. On the one hand we are told that “it is a place to be avoided...choked by smoke and fumes”. But at the start of the chapter on Eastern Ukraine one of the listed highlights is “discovering Socialist Realism: riding a trolleybus down the length of Zaporizhiye’s Prospekt Lenina”. For this second reason, I found our visit quite fascinating, albeit it was on a coach, not a trolleybus, that we did the journey.
Even on the way down, Zaporizhiye had struck me as very Soviet, not a description I’d apply to Kiev, Odessa or Sevastopol. As well as the Dam, we saw the huge statue of Lenin – his very last mention – which dominates the quayside. This marks the start of the eponymous Prospekt, the main thoroughfare, which runs inland some half dozen miles or so. Classic Soviet architecture, rather impressive in its own way, lines its entire length – though McDonalds has found its way even here. This felt like a trip through time as well as distance. At one point, we could see through a gap in the buildings a nearby factory, a dinosaur of a place that was absolutely massive with belching chimneys and flares. There was a still clearer view later in the day, as we recommenced our cruise. Lilia, our guide, noticed us looking at it with fascination. “Sometimes,” she sighed, “I don’t point things out, in the hope people won’t notice them.”
As part of our city tour, we visited the local hydroelectric plant, a rather Soviet thing to do, I felt. It was adorned with huge portraits of the Ukrainian President, Leonid Kuchma, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, who had recently paid a visit. The current President is not the only Leonid to have made his mark on Ukraine in recent times. Leonid Kravchuk was the first President of independent Ukraine, having previously run the country in his capacity as Chairman of the local Communist Party. And the former Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, was a Dnepropetrovsk lad. Ukraine has some way to go before it is truly a Westminster-style democracy; and corruption is a problem. Yet, setting aside the Baltic States, which, with their particular histories might be regarded as special cases, Ukraine is almost certainly the freest of the former Soviet Republics. From having had only one political party, Ukraine has flipped over to the other extreme of having far too many. In Sevastopol we had gone for an evening stroll with two other couples and ended up in a bar – friendly staff but lousy wine. We discussed in a lively manner the recent history of Ukraine. Suddenly one of our number said, “Just think, we are having this conversation in Sevastopol and no-one minds, not the police, not anyone”. Next door Belarus, by contrast, has a very repressive regime; it might be ex-communist, but it is not all that ‘ex’.
Zaporizhiye is hardly an obvious tourist destination but if wants to attract visitors it does have one string to its bow i.e. its Cossack heritage. (‘Soviet chic’ could be another bow!) The Zaporizhian Cossacks for a while ran their own state in this vicinity and independent Ukraine sees this as its forerunner. Our city tour included a visit to the Cossack Museum in a nearby wooded island. A separate trip in the afternoon took us to a Cossack horseshow though I’m sorry to say we found this a bit naff, not at all like the marvellous horseshow we’d been to a few years earlier in the Hungarian Puszta or Plain.
There was a day of sailing up the Dnieper before finally getting back to Kiev, where we berthed for our last two nights. There was thus one full day to explore the capital. The morning was taken up with a tour to the open air museum in Pirogovo, right at the very edge of the city. This is the Museum of Folk Architecture and Everyday Life in Ukraine. It covers a vast area with sections devoted to the various regions of the country. There was nowhere near enough time to see everything. We made do with just the section covering the area around Kiev. This was an interesting visit and we would have gladly spent longer here, had time permitted.
The afternoon was our own. We greatly enjoyed wondering round this beautiful city. First we got the funicular from near the quayside to Podil, the most historic part of the city, located atop a cliff overlooking the river and a fascinating district to explore. There is plenty to interest the visitor to Kiev, but there are two “must sees”, the Monastery of the Caves and the St Sophia Cathedral Complex. We had been to both on our first day. The Monastery was too far out to go back to but we did spend some more time exploring the strikingly beautiful Cathedral and its surrounds. From there we made our way into the main centre, where we strolled along Vulitsya Khreshchatyk, the pedestrianized main shopping street. This is a fairly easy city in which to orientate oneself and we felt very relaxed as we wandered around.
We flew home the next day. The airport is still fairly small, despite serving the capital of one of the largest European countries, and there is not an enormous amount to do. Main attraction is an Irish Pub! Our wait was rather spoilt, unintentionally, by one of our travelling companions, a lady. Before we left home, there had been a heatwave, which we had got fed up with. We had consoled ourselves that such hot weather couldn’t possibly last in England. Ukraine had provided a respite: only once, during our trip to Bessarabia, had we experienced really hot weather. At the other extreme we had had a couple of downpours but generally the weather had been pleasant. This lady took a call on her mobile from her daughter back home. The temperature in England, she announced, was in the nineties. Not at all what we wanted to hear. And the heatwave was to go on and on and on.
First published in VISA issues 56A-57 (Jun-Sep 2004)
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