I got a surprise visiting my dentist yesterday. The whole front of the building is blocked off. There is a building crane in place to do repairs to a gaping hole in the side of it on the 17th and 18th floors.
Before getting on with cleaning my teeth, the dentist, whose office is on the third floor, matter-of-factly confirmed that it had been hit by a rocket. An Internet search after I returned home revealed that it had been on 26 February, the third day of the war.
The article correctly condemned this as an act of terror in violation of the Geneva Convention. There aren’t any military targets in the area. This is simply one of the nicer residential buildings. The Russians seem to take a special pleasure in spoiling nice things. Bear in mind that they did this when they still thought that the war would be a cakewalk. When the Ukrainians had not put up enough resistance to realistically get them mad. This is simply how Russia has fought since the days of the Mongols eight centuries ago.
Brutality is both their strength and their weakness. It reminded me of a passage from Alexander Zinoviev’s 1970s samizdat classic, officially published in 1981. Here it is, from page 126 of Homo Sovieticus
Even though the West seem chaotic, frivolous, and defenses bus, all the same Moscow will never achieve worldwide supremacy. Moscow can defend itself against any opponent. Moscow can deliver a knockout blow on the west. Moscow has the wherewithal to mess up the whole planet. But it has no chance of becoming the ruler of the world. To rule the world one must have at one's disposal is sufficiently great nation. That nation must feel itself to be a nation of rulers. And when it comes to it, one that can rule in reality. In the Soviet Union the Russians are the only people who might be suited to that role. They are are the foundation in the bulwark of the Empire. But they don't possess the qualities of a ruling nation. And in the Soviet empire their situation is more like that of being a colony for all the other peoples in it.
Until the Russian people become the best educated, most cultured, most prosperous and the most privileged within the country, there can be no thought of world hegemony. More than that, once the Russian people have really become the most privileged and dominant nation in the country, they will still have to outclass the other peoples in all the most important nonmilitary spheres of life. And for this decades will be needed, if not centuries. Whereas the actual position of the Russians in the Soviet Union is that they are not even allowed equality with the other peoples, let alone preeminence. Incidentally, those Russians who have somehow raised themselves above their fellow nationals will not permit the regeneration of Russia as a nation. In short, so I summed up my reflections, one can construct supremely felicitous plans, but one can't implement them because of a trifle that seemed hardly worthy of attention. Even before the war, my father told me the story. In some institution a routine meeting was in progress. There were two points on the agenda.: 1) the construction of a barn; 2) the creation of an abundance of consumer goods under communism. As they didn't have enough planks to build the barn, they moved out once to the second question. Moscow would be able to build a grandiose world Empire. But last but alas, doesn't have the planks to do it with.
Zinoviev does not mention which Republics of the Soviet Union might have been the best educated, most prosperous, and most cultured. Ukraine and the Baltics would probably top that list. Though Moscow does have, as Zinoviev says, the power to mess up the whole planet. Which they are doing here.
But they do not command respect. People in their Eastern European satellites never looked up to them. All that they had going for them was strength and cruelty. That is why after the collapse there was none of the lingering sense of brotherhood that one sees in the British Commonwealth or even among the former French colonies. There is nothing except the relief that it is over. Russian civilization had nothing to give to the captive peoples within its empire.
Returning home, I rode the bus for 25 minutes along four-lane Lobanovskyi Avenue, formerly Red Star Prospect. I passed row upon row of 15-story Soviet era apartments and saw no damage whatsoever. That confirmed a couple of points. First, it takes a lot of explosives to level a city. Mariupol took the Russians three months, and it is one tenth the size of Kyiv and right next door to Russia which could provide unopposed bombing missions and artillery. Second, the Russians chose upscale targets to be spiteful, like the Retroville Mall in Northwest Kyiv, the Amstor shopping center in Kremenchuk and the Obolon district of Kyiv the first days of the war.
I heard first-hand accounts of Russian barbarism on a visit to Berlin in 1974. The East Germans had decided to allow pension age people to visit relatives in the West. It was not out of the goodness of their hearts. The GDR hoped that they would not come back and that their pensions would be a West German problem.
As the train was rolling through Potsdam, just after leaving Berlin, one of the old ladies sharing my compartment commented to the other what a shame it was that the American bombers had leveled Potsdam. The war was almost over – they didn’t need to do that. I said nothing.
A few minutes later we got to talking. As it was immediately obvious that I was an American the story changed. It was now tales of how generous the American GIs had been, and how delicious the Hershey bars were after seven years of war. And tales of the Russian occupants who had taken over their houses. They stole everything that was not nailed down. The Russians were primitive. Not knowing what it was, they washed their potatoes in the toilet and were amazed to watch them disappear when they pushed the handle.
These old ladies didn’t mention rapes and other savagery, but you can find hundreds of accounts online. The same kind of butchery that took place in Bucha, Irpin and Mariupol. A couple of commentators have posited that Russia will be loath to retreat from any of the Ukrainian territory that they occupy because they do not want stories of their atrocities to get out. We in Kyiv have heard quite a bit about what went on from 2014 until this year from relatives in the People’s Republics and Crimea. There was no war, but the Russians did quite characteristically steal everything valuable and ship it back to mother Russia. They certainly do not want people to know how they have behaved themselves in the time of war.
Returning to the topic of dentistry, the woman who cleaned my teeth is a dentist rather than just an assistant. Her female assistant kept the suction in my mouth and handed her stuff as she needed it. It was expensive for Kyiv – $60 for the cleaning – but it is top-flight work. I think the protocols pretty much the same worldwide. The use ultrasound/water to clear the calculus off your teeth, then they cover your face to protect you and clean the teeth with jets of soda, and lastly the use a rotary polisher. My teeth feel clean and I am pleased that they didn’t find any cavities. Whatever was bothering me last week is gone away.
The official hryvnya exchange rate remains at 36.56. The moneychangers were offering about 39.50 last week, but they are all closed now. I expect that the government doesn’t want to be undercut and they want to control cash outflow. I got another indication when I called my longtime bank to make an appointment to withdraw dollars. Only one of their seven branches is open, and that one by appointment only. There is a limit of 100,000 hryvnya equivalent, or $2,700. I am certainly going to be on time for that appointment to withdraw green dollars while I can. I’ve been through this movie often enough to appreciate the wisdom of expecting the worst.
That’s the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the good-looking woman took Zoriana to swim lessons yesterday afternoon while grandmother Nadia took care of Marianna. Interesting how it works. Grandma yells ineffectively at everybody all the time, and even Marianna has learned to ignore her. But we know that it is out of affection and a sense of duty. Oksana, who grew up with it, has a harder time dealing with her mother’s criticism than anybody. As Nancy Friday wrote long ago in “My Mother, Myself,” the mother-daughter bond is the deepest and most complex in any family. I count myself lucky to be older, of a different language and culture, and mainly male. I get left out of a lot of stuff I would just as soon avoid.
Excellent thoughts upon the observed and remembered.
Family stories about WW2 Russian brutality along with their technological lag seems to persist. Apparently still happening. Poison tarts are an answer but I suspect some soldiers are wiser.
My UK dentist also cleaned my teeth for a similar charge; follow-up inspections were included and no charge if all was OK. Perhaps US hygienists always do the work because of cost and the dentist's time is freed to see a bunch of people awaiting final inspection. Still the charge was $100.
Would have been lower at the insurance rate in this perverse world of cash price higher than insurance price. I could qualify for the insurance rate (discount) with my cash by buying a insurance plan where insurance pays nothing. Strange world.