Black Square by Sophie Pinkham

Author:Sophie Pinkham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

THE UKRAINIAN PASSENGERS on my flight were bubbling with a patriotic enthusiasm I’d never seen before. About half of them were dressed in soccer jerseys; some were obviously members of the Ukrainian diaspora, returning to celebrate Ukraine’s moment in the international limelight. As we approached Kiev, flying low over the green fields, a young man shouted, in Russian, “What a land we have!”

I stayed in my old apartment on Bohdan Khmelnytsky Street. After I’d moved out, my elderly landlords had rented it to another foreign student, but my abandoned souvenirs and even my half-used shampoo bottles were in the same places I’d left them. The cold-water tap still didn’t work, the babushka next door was still insane, and the shop downstairs was still selling the same hideous, overpriced porcelain statues of muscle-bound Cossacks and Ukrainian maidens in folk costume. The only difference was that a few chunks of plaster had fallen from the ceiling.

But when I walked down to Khreshchatyk Street, Kiev’s main strip, I found a semipermanent carnival. One of Yanukovych’s first projects as president had been the prosecution of the golden-braided ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who’d been convicted of embezzlement and thrown in prison. She was probably guilty of a number of crimes, but so was nearly every other Ukrainian politician; it was clear that Yanukovych had prosecuted her in order to eliminate a rival. At the intersection of Khreshchatyk and Bohdan Khmelnytsky stood a “Free Yulia” encampment, with pictures of Yanukovych defaced with colored spray paint:

SADIST!

DIE, BASTARD!

DOWN WITH THE CRIMINAL BAND!

THE COUNTRY WILL BE RESURRECTED!

A fairground-style board showed Yanukovych being knocked out in a boxing match; you could look through the hole where his opponent’s face should have been and have your picture taken. A sculpted pile of shit had the flag of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions planted in it, and a pig Yanukovych was ready to be cooked on a spit. A grotesque papier-mâché puppet of Oleg Kalashnikov, a Party of Regions official, wore a sign announcing his betrayal of his country and his people. (Kalashnikov would be assassinated in Kiev three years later.) Alongside this ugliness shone images of the martyred Yulia Tymoshenko. She beamed as she stroked a white tiger cub; she kissed the hands of a weeping old woman in a flowered headscarf; she stared sadly out from behind prison bars. One image showed her as a Slavic Joan of Arc, dressed in armor, with birds perched on her fingertips. The people running the encampment were giving out free T-shirts, which meant that half the bums in the city were dressed as Yulia supporters.

On Khreshchatyk Street, each national group had its own booth serving its national specialties, and the visiting fans moved in national packs. In the Swedish Corner, strapping men of all ages sat on long wooden benches and drank beer, wearing Swedish blue and gold, served by Swedish bartenders and cooks and even policemen; apparently the Swedes didn’t trust the Ukrainian police to protect them, which was reasonable. My friend Julia Y.

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