Finally, Kyiv's downtown reconstruction project is completed. Khreshchatyk looks shiny as a new penny, yet the residents' moods are understandable only to those who have experienced repairs in a Soviet communal flat. Dirt, chaos, muttered or shouted expletives, then finally everything is over. The happy host produces a couple of bottles, along with the fee, while his wife walks through the rooms scrutinizing fresh wallpaper, caressing snow-white tiles in the bathroom, telling herself, Oh my, life's just beginning.
President Kuchma seemed to join in the overall euphoria, saying that for every Ukrainian Khreshchatyk will be graphic evidence of Ukraine's cultural rebirth and subsequent prosperity.
The Derzhkomstat National Statistics Committee is perhaps the only one to have struck a discordant note in this happy choir, stating that Ukraine's industrial output was down compared to last year.
Our neighbors, the Russians, are also busy with repairs, expanding the currency corridor, although the way it is going about it is more like installing a fire escape while the building is already on fire. Here in Ukraine we still live in our communal apartments, everyone for himself, independently. And when the neighbor's kitchen catch fire, we carefully look through the smoke and gaze delightedly at the government-NBU statement on the hryvnia's stability.
However, political life is much more multihued than everyday life The Premier Pustovoitenko says there is no opposition in Ukraine. Great. Well, sit down and consider, perhaps those at the top long ago did come to terms with each other, what we have been watching just a political show called "The Opposition's Struggle for the People's Welfare," and those who staged it deserve Oscars.
And what about Europe? We ought to be ashamed of ourselves, because every civilized country has an opposition. But not Ukraine. Of course, if we had the Reds back in power this would be only natural, for in the Soviet Union there was no opposition, no meat, no butter. Everything was always in short supply.
But maybe Mr. Pustovoitenko knows better after establishing some extraterrestrial contacts and receiving enigmatic messages in a code only he knows? Maybe his words about the absence of opposition should interpreted metaphysically? Meaning that every Ukrainian citizen, after watching Yuliya Tymoshenko or Parteigenosse Symonenko on television, should spit three times over his left shoulder, make the sign of the cross, and simply say it does not exist?
In a word, last week was politically neither black nor white but some kind of blurry gray.
The darkest side was the miners' death. Now what can one say? Perhaps a few four-letter words after downing a glass of vodka, then remembering oneself and saying God rest their souls. Consolation? What consolation? Something like every cloud having a silver lining? Then pray to God we will see the white to make up for something so black.






