With Ukrainian Beer, It Feels Good to be Patriot

I recall how a couple of years ago, before a match between Kyiv Dynamo and British Newcastle at our Olympiysky Stadium, one of the fans, who arrived together with the foreign team, drew our attention. At the zero temperature, he was parading in an unbuttoned denim jacket and a T-shirt bearing his club’s emblem. During the conversation it turned out that the Englishman’s frost-resistance was accounted for by Ukrainian hospitality — judging by his somewhat faltering speech, the legends about the backwardness of Europeans compared to our scale of celebration had real foundation. In the course of communication one of us asked how the Englishman liked Ukrainian beer. As we know, the British Isles are famous for beer; Barry (as he was called) hesitated for a long while, and finally said diplomatically: “Your beer is...well... is somewhat different from ours”.

I wish you could have seen the indignation of the Dynamo fans! Suddenly, I realized that patriotism is inherent to our youth. But it should be fostered and developed not so much based on Taras Shevchenko and Bohdan Khmelnytsky as on real present-day achievements (which, incidentally, Dynamo does quite successfully).

No, I am far from defining beer as a factor to inculcate patriotism. However, the beer theme in the context mentioned (and not only there) can sound quite serious. It turns out that for all economic conditions in this country one can not only support but even enhance in our case one specific industry! For instance, last January the enterprises under the Ukrpyvo (Ukrainian Beer) Joint Stock Company (including Rohan, Slavutych, Desna, Yantar, Chernomor, forty companies in all) produced 33 million liters of beer, which is a 22% increase compared to the corresponding period of last year. Even greater progress was achieved by Kyiv’s Obolon, the largest Ukrainian producer which is not member of Ukrpyvo: compared to January 1999, the production grew by 25% to 12 million liters, according to Interfax-Ukraine. For our times, such growth rates are impressing.

However, man lives not by beer alone. Mineral water, which is so indispensable to the vital functions of the modern man, was produced in the last year in the amount of 410 million liters, up over 50% from 1998. And the production of various nonalcoholic tonics has seen a 120% growth. Not being prone to wild optimism, and even more so, without criticizing any other industries — that, for example they suffer only because of their own laziness — it should be noted that this is an example worthy of emulation. Of course, there are some objective realities that encourage growth, specifically, of the food industry — everybody needs to eat regardless of any changes. However, it is remarkable that under the conditions of rather stiff competition with foreign producers, the domestic ones not only withstand but are even squeezing the foreign cola giants off the Ukrainian market. Here we see high quality promotion, and, most important, high quality products, which would be hardly possible to expect in the recent post-perestroika period when domestic beer at any rate was not only unpopular but, bluntly speaking, undrinkable.

Apparently, our ragtag budget (please forgive me another mention of this word so much used by the current press) will be have a reliable, even though not the biggest possible source of income, the people employed in the beverage industry will have jobs, and we will have beer. Contemporary Ukrainians do not have that many small pleasures. Incidentally, I propose to any interested company a name for new sort of beer, for example, Optimistic. And maybe we could suddenly really have it all, as averred in other contexts.