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WEEKLY ROUNDUP 

16 February, 00:00

On February 5, 1944, Moscow greeted the liberation of Lutsk from the Nazis with an artillery gun salute. More than fifty years have elapsed since then, yet the populace shows different reaction to the date commemorating the return of the Soviets. The fact remains that tens of thousands of residents of Volyn were sent to Gulag death camps on charges of "bourgeois nationalism" and simply because they refused to live by the Soviet standard, let alone join collective farms. However, the date remains an official holiday in Lutsk and there are hardly several dozen veterans who liberated the city still alive.

In commemoration of the tenth anniversary of Soviet troops' withdrawal from Afghanistan a Memorial Room has been opened at the oblast office of the Ukrainian Union of Afghan Veterans. The opening ceremony began with mothers weeping over their sons who fell in pitched and senseless battles. There was nothing left for these women except memories.

Two years ago a convent started being built in Mykhnivka, a small village in Polissia. At the time the cloistered community numbered only several sisters. Several days ago the newly built Convent of Candlemas was ceremoniously opened by Archbishop Nifont of Lutsk and Volyn. There are 20 nuns aged 25 on the average. The secular world with its cruelty and chaos makes young people seek refuge in monastic cells, denying themselves the present and future.

In contrast, those in power enjoy the present day, doing their utmost to make their current prosperity last into the future. So-called public meetings were held in all oblast centers, setting up local organizations of the all-Ukrainian Zlahoda Association. Their purpose is emphatically stated as "working out correct approaches to the elections of the President of Ukraine." Of course, the right approach, from the nomenklatura's standpoint, is in voting for the present one. "The people of Volyn have always been considerate," stressed Governor Borys Klymchuk when setting up the Lutsk district Zlahoda. Fortunately, he proved wrong; not all are considerate the way he and his like want them to be.

Lutsk Mayor Anton Kryvytsky sharply criticized the central government. "The chief is unconcerned about the Indians' fate," he said, adding that official Kyiv is launching an unprecedented offensive on the municipal authorities, remaining deaf to the fact that the housing-municipal sector and city transport are shifting from red to black, leaning increasingly heavily on local budgets where such expenses are not envisaged.

While sanctioning countless preferential terms, top-level bureaucrats do not bother their heads about how to secure them. Determined to curry favor with the electorate, they try to solve specific problems using ridiculous Soviet methods: electricity cutoff? Out goes the Power Industry Minister (as though he were generating it). We all watched Jordanians weeping and shouting, "Our king cannot be dead!" We Ukrainians should also weep because our king somehow cannot stay alive; those in high offices seem unable to keep track of what is actually happening in this country.

By Oleh POTURAI, The Day,
Lutsk

Newspaper output №:

№6, (1999)

Section

Day After Day