Forty defiant pensioners from Levky
This is a true story about elderly people, who have seen and experienced a lot in their lives, and could not agree to let things slide. They assumed responsibility for their lives and the life of their village. This may seem trivial, but after visiting Levky these words mean a lot to me.
PREFACE: KYIV, OBOLON
…Every day our office receives hundreds or even thousands of letters and phone calls — people share their problems, worries, ideas and suggestions. Den writes on its last page that it doesn’t answer correspondence. However, our unwritten rule is to react to letters when possible. Our readers are unique, which is why their letters are particularly interesting. At the beginning of March we received a letter from the village of Levky in Pryluky raion of Chernihiv oblast. The local community entrusted Mykola Valko to write a letter about their idea to turn the neglected center of the village into a landscape park (Den, March 11, 2011). The initiators of this action have optimistically called it “The native village revival,” as apart from the creation of the park local pensioners also planned to restore their club (which will turn 100 next year) and to put the four village ponds in order. In their letter the inhabitants of the village asked Den’s readers for help. “When the forests and parks are being cut down, the public gardens are neglected, in a small village where trees once grew so high as to hide the houses, the people want to plant a park. The community said YES, even if nobody helps us THERE WILL BE A PARK! God will help us!” wrote Valko.
However, not everybody was optimistic. Our loyal and respected author Volodymyr Liesnoi, who is inclined to criticism, wrote his comments to the villagers the next day after their letter had been published. “Firstly, who needs a large park with a modern design in a village of 41 people and all of them are elderly? Who will look after the park when they get older? I doubt that young people will come to the village because of the park; they will need good work. Will the villagers maintain the park at their own expense or will they need a sponsor’s money? How much money will the villagers donate?” asked Liesnoi in his letter, referring to his own experience of cooperation with similar activists. We sent this letter to Levky. The reply was: “Come. We’ll persuade you with the facts.”
One more piece of news from Obolon. The charity account for the park received 200 hryvnias from Anatolii Koval, a pensioner who lives in Kyiv, not far for The Day’s office…
ON THE WAY TO LEVKY
According to local history experts — the mail carrier Halyna and the abovementioned public figure Mykola Valko — their village is first mentioned in 1657. However, it’s thought that the settlement was started there in 1638. Those territories belonged to the Hustynsky Convent of the Holy Trinity, situated in the Pryluky suburbs. In 1648, during the violent Khmelnytsky Uprising, the convent was destroyed by the rebels. However, Bohdan Khmelnytsky took this convent under his “protection” and provided it with land, a decision later approved by the hetman’s wife Hanna Zolotarenko in her decree. The Levky inhabitants are rightfully proud of their village history.
Now Levky is part of the Kolisnyky village council. The two villages have 270 people, 41 of whom live in Levky. The two villages are separated by the enormous garden of a former kolkhoz. It’s neglected, but the locals say that in the summer it still gives fruit. “In autumn we don’t know what to do with all the apples,” says Valko, “Cars that would buy the fruit don’t come to our village.” Ironic, given that Ukrainian shops abound in Spanish and Turkish fruit.
To get to the village of Kolisnyky and then to Levky, one should turn form the Kyiv-Sumy highway. However, the sign on the road is absent as it was formerly hit by a car and never replaced by a new one. “It’s not a problem,” says Valko. The villagers’ grandiose plans include this, too. And they want to make it stylish, so as to represent their village.
When we came, both villages were working. Kolisnyky’s inhabitants have an important thing to do, they finally found the time to put in order the local cemetery that hasn’t been cleaned for many years. The new chairperson of the village Natalia Zuieva has pushed the villagers to start this important work. “I’ve been thinking since November that we should put the cemetery in order when it gets warmer. However, our village is poor, so we have to do everything on our own,” says Zuieva. “When the spring came I put up notices that on Friday we would clean the cemetery together. I wasn’t sure that people would come, but I thought that if they wouldn’t I would do it on my own. When I came to the cemetery in the morning there was nobody there. Then I saw some people carrying a rake and others carrying a gasoline-powered saw. Half of the village came.”
The inhabitants of Kolisnyky know about the idea of their neighbors and support it. “Levky inhabitants did well! They are so enthusiastic,” says Zuieva. “They came to us with their idea to create the park. We suggested planting birches and oak trees. They refused, saying that they wanted a special park.”
Natalia’s husband, the local businessman Viktor Zuiev also has an important social mission. He’s writing a letter on behalf of the Kolisnyky and Levky inhabitants asking telecom companies to put a tower near the villages as there’s no mobile communication there. Viktor Zuiev has already contributed to the future park in Levky: he provided the machinery to grub up the trees and to plow the barren field in the village center. “How could I not have supported this wonderful idea? We initiated this and we’re going to realize it. Ukrainian villages have deplorable prospects, which is why we have to use any opportunity to improve them, even a bit. Public initiative is sometimes more important than any investments,” says the businessman.
Kolisnyky inhabitants talk about the neighboring village of Levky with a warm smile. The people from Kolisnyky believe that the Levky inhabitants will succeed, and they are ready to support them. Thus, we became even more intrigued and headed to Levky.
“WE’LL LIVE UNTIL THE PARK GROWS UP!”
Since Valko’s letter was published in Den a lot of events happened in Levky. They started receiving letters from all over Ukraine supporting the local inhabitants. They have become TV stars — the television channel STB made a four-minute report about the action “The native village revival” (thank you, colleagues!). The General Manager of Pryluky Bakery Plant public corporation Liudmyla Suprunenko supported the idea and made a contribution of 2,000 hryvnias. The Levky inhabitants raised over 400 hryvnias from their small pensions. During the general meeting they decided to give all the money to Valko as he deals with the main organizational issues. One of the “vacationers” (this is how the locals refer to people who have summer house in Levky or return there for the summer), Volodymyr Kanavets, the winner of the photo competition The Day 2009, suggested to cooperate with the director of the Pryluky Agrotechnology College Pavlo Chernikov to send his students to Levky for practical training in order to make a geodesic map of the area. Chernikov gladly agreed, so the Levky inhabitants are expecting students and teachers from Pryluky in a couple of days. Besides, the locals have new plans: to put in order the bus stop (they’ve already bought paints and necessary instruments) and to restore two sources. One of them is next to the future park and the other is a bit further and has a historical value: according to the legends, it was dug back in 18th century by the Hustynsky Convent nuns. So the forty pensioners from Levky are full of life, enthusiasm and ideas.
However, when we met them, we were amazed with the pragmatism of the authors of such a romantic, at first glance, idea.
“Our village has great ponds. If we put them in order it may interest the investors,” thinks Hanna Kolosha. “What can be better than planting trees? I worked in Lviv for a long time, so I planted lindens there to leave memories of myself.”
“I’m from Kolisnyky and I moved to Levky when I got married. The soil here is great, much better than in Kolisnyky, but it needs investors,” says former milker Anastasia Luk (now there’s only one cow in Levky, the locals explain that “we don’t need more”). The villagers hope that the result of the land reform will be profitable. However, regardless of this they have to care about the village’s attractive look. “Investors won’t come here to revive the village. Why would they need it? They will come to earn money,” believes Sophia Kaika. “We need a revived village, our children and grandchildren will come here. If there’s life, there will be investments and green tourism.” This is proof that Levky chose the right tactics to attract investors. Valko says that after the letter’s publication and the report on STB he received a couple of calls to buy a house in the village. By the way, The Day’s photojournalist Kostiantyn Hryshyn took interest in a lot in Levky and after Halyna Trykoz treated us to the delicious borshch from the stove, the desire to settle in Levky became irresistible…
One more pragmatic aim of the Levky pensioners was expressed by a decisive voice from the crowd: “We’ll live until the trees grow up!”
RETHINKING
Perhaps, in another country with other problems the initiative wouldn’t be that strange. Liesnoi wrote a lot of reasonable comments in his letter; the Levky pensioners also have their faults.
“Who pilfered the kolkhoz? At the beginning of 1990s the kolkhoz head was sitting in his office when everything was being ruined. His fellow-villagers came to him and asked: ‘Can we remove the slate?’ ‘Go ahead!’ Nobody thought about future,” recalls Valko. The Levky inhabitants don’t deny that they became a part of the ruin just as the whole country did. “I remember that President Kuchma even banned using the word kolkhoz. It was a big mistake. They shouldn’t have reformed the country this way. Can it be called a reform?” rhetorically asks the village skeptic Mykhailo.
Kolkhozes and collective responsibility almost destroyed initiative. The ruined villages are not reviving. Some are waiting for the government’s favors and the mythic land reform; some are degrading with the whole state system. In such conditions rethinking personal experience, the admission of personal errors and, finally, specific actions are an exploit.
The Levky inhabitants have seen all the stages of the devastation of Ukrainian villages, from the loss of identity to the destruction of the whole infrastructure. Today they have defied the ruin. Judging from their ardor, ruin has a serious enemy.
Below is the charity account to send your donations for the revival of Levky:
The State Savings Bank of Ukraine 0221/0000
MFO 343154
EDRPOU1 code 02767378
Transit account No. 290999001
Demand deposit
Account No. 163773
Valko Mykola Hryhorovych
1 Unified State Register of Enterprises and Organizations of Ukraine
