When I speak of the civil society coming into existence in Ukraine, this is what I mean:
Gosh, I grew up around these village bus stops, and they were always the saddest, most depressing places that made you feel like you were surrounded by people who hated being alive. They stank of piss and excrement, the walls were covered with peeling paint that looked like it had been applied back in the 1950s.
But more and more often, the village bus stops are beginning to look like this:
And it isn’t just bus stops. I’ve seen photos of those ugly Soviet residential areas buildings that stood ugly and drab for decades until last year people decided to paint beautiful, colorful images on them. And now the entrances look like sunflower fields or cherry orchards* instead of concrete gray blocks.
* Chekhov was from Ukraine, of course, and his famous cherry orchard was based on traditional Ukrainian imagery.
Clarissa's Blog 
Serbia is also getting tidier.
“The Serbian government asked people on Tuesday not to dispose of hand grenades and other munitions in the garbage, hoping to minimize accidents as it imposes tighter controls over privately held weapons.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/17/serbia-hand-grenades_n_6888102.html
We have green bins and blue bins to separate the garbage. Do they have black bins?
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The murals are beautiful. Amusingly, there’s a similar program in Philadelphia which has produced some amazing results.
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The reason why it’s so valuable in Ukraine is that this is not a program. People are doing these things because they want to. And in our FSU countries, there is not a greater achievement than people actually doing something on their own initiative.
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I hope they don’t begin to be prosecuted for graffiti.
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Ukrainians are also learning to resist the hugely corrupt police and especially the road police. Recently, a policeman hit a citizen. The inhabitants of the village came out and beat up the policeman. In the context of Ukraine, this is a welcome achievement.
I never thought I would actually live to see a civil society.
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It’s the same in Philly. There are groups of artists who are doing murals on the sides of 3-4 story buildings. These are done with the blessing of the city but are not a government project. I think a lot of this work is supported by the Philadelphia Horticulture Society.
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Chekhov was from Ukraine, of course, and his famous cherry orchard was based on traditional Ukrainian imagery.
That’s right. Chekhov was born in Taganrog, which was part of Ukraine till 1954, when the Soviet government gave it to the Russian Federation “in exchange” for the Crime, which they made part of Ukraine so that Ukrainians would revive it after Hitler’s occupation.
The idea of the cherry orchard as a symbol of Ukraine belongs to the greatest Ukrainian’s writer, Taras Shevchenko. Destroying the cherry orchard by the new generation of Russian ‘developers’, described by Chekhov, is, in fact, a symbol of destroying Ukraine by the Russian empire. Sometimes, authors don’t mean what they say, but what they say is much more important than what they mean.
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Reblogged this on careabouteducation and commented:
Nice share and Nice paint. Thanks
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Too good photo to miss regarding Крым:
http://marko19511.livejournal.com/1365810.html
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Be very happy for this …
Meanwhile, Cardiff Central railway station still has horrid puke-filled “gerbil chute” bus shelters that not even a bad post-Corbusier brutalist architect could love. I’ll see if I can find some photos for you if you’re curious how they’ve managed to survive this long.
“TEAR … THEM … DOWN!”
Oh, wait, that was at Pruitt-Igoe in St Louis, something that used to be in your backyard, so to speak …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe
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