My Memories of Life in Soviet Times

 Written by Svetlana Koehler

 Translated by Mark Koehler

I cannot say that the times were bad, although when you have nothing for comparison; it is difficult to estimate the comfort of your life. There were many things about our life in soviet times that were good, in my eyes; there were also some things that were not so good. We had only our good experiences to judge other experiences.

What was good about soviet times? Secondary school provided an excellent education, a solid foundation for my future studies. Knowledge that I gained was most helpful to me in college. Higher education was free at colleges and universities; I lived in a youth hostel during my medical college years. I studied to be a nurse at one of the medical colleges. Without the stress of financial responsibility, I was free to focus 100% on my studies. I was a first-rate student. In those days, many young people attended school, college, and university, graduating with qualifications to do their jobs well. There were superior teachers and students hungry for knowledge.

Unfortunately, things are a bit different today. Many young students who are not ready for college or university pay money to get in, and pay money for their grades and sometimes their diploma. The sad part is that these “experts” are not doing an expert job. This is particularly dangerous if they are a doctor. In some cases, the students who do have knowledge but do not have the money are passed by in the selection process.

What was bad about soviet times? You may have seen some stories about soviet people standing in line for bread and other products. I can tell you that it was a fact. Buying food and clothing required us to stand in long lines for many hours, sometimes starting our lines at three or four o’clock in the morning. The government stores, that was all there was, would receive shipments of only a few products at a time. Maybe shoes one day, coats or shirts another day, but milk was available every day. As a young mother, I would go to the store with my milk bottle. This also was a long process. From the milk truck or large canisters, milk would be scooped and poured into the three-liter bottle of each mother. I would wait in line for one hour or longer. I was always worried because my two children were at home alone.

To buy furniture, you had to sign-up in sequence at a shop on a register book. This position could require you to wait for one year. While waiting, it was necessary to come into the shop and confirm that you were still interested in the product. My parents bought some furniture for a long wall in the large room, but received it after waiting for one year.

With regard to housing, problems were not large. Young families could get a room in a hostel for free, paying only the monthly utility service thereafter. Young professionals were also provided with housing. If a person worked at the plant or factory, after eight - fifteen years, they could get an apartment for free. My son and his family now live in the three-room flat on the tenth floor that the government gave to my first husband and me. In Soviet times, many houses and high-rises were built. Now we need to pay money to buy a home, and many young families live with their parents not having the money to purchase an apartment.

I soviet times there was no religious freedom the government promoted atheism. The Russian Orthodox Churches were allowed to remain standing, but were not allowed to function actively. I you were practicing religion and it was revealed, you would lose your job. Bibles were forbidden, and could not be found anywhere for purchase. Things have changed very much in this aspect. Today, there is much religious freedom, but the government and many people who practice Russian Orthodox are very negative toward other branches of Christianity.

Telephones were another luxury. Of course, there were no mobile phones, but there were also few landline phones in the private homes. To have a landline phone in your home, you had to enroll at the telephone exchange and wait for as many as five to ten years to have this service. So, how did we communicate? It was acceptable to visit friends without invitation. Or, if I saw a friend at the market, a daily adventure, I would invite her to visit that evening. Life was very simple in those days.

What About Education – Part 1

 

A result of Soviet un-family concept.

Orphan or from bad family, they are alone.

Many debates have occurred about education over the years, everyone has their opinion, and many people have theories, so I will do my best to write with an interesting new perspective. My article will begin with an overview of the basic needs of education from the perspective of preparing children to become responsible adults.

What is the opposite of a responsible adult? Being more specific than to state the obvious, an irresponsible adult, the answer must be an adult involved in criminal activity. The results of improper or incomplete education often will result in criminal activity. Why? Because people are not completely prepared to function successfully in job and society. We will briefly look at the basic education first.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic are the core of survival in the world, but those alone will not suffice. Science, geography, art, music, history, economics and social studies are some of the additional subjects that add to understanding the life experience, but these are still not enough. The soviet education went to great lengths to expand the understanding of each subject, but, in fact, this was not enough.

Life in the soviet system was a forced lifestyle. Not only were children required to study high-level courses in high school, but also they were require to find work after completing their education. If a person was out of work for more than six months, he/she was sent to prison. Can you believe that?

What is missing? Maybe the answer is about family. A wholesome family is the heartbeat of a healthy community. How does this happen, where does it begin, what is the starting point? I believe that sex education, morality, and family structure, are three of the main starting points.

There has been great debate about sex education over the last 60 years. Can sex education be looked at without religious foundation, without rules and regulations and still have a positive outcome? If morality is taught along side, it can. If the value of family is taught as an outflow of the two, it can.

The point is this. When teaching about sex, the end result must be expanded upon. In the past, pregnancy, abortion, single parent homes, and STDs have been the results focused on for not having sex outside of marriage. Of course, getting married so that you can have sex does not provide a good outcome either.

In part two, we will begin to unravel why sex education, morality, and family are the instruments that will cut the chain-link in the cycle of poverty. Illichevsk, Ukraine is a port city, a seaside resort, with a growing economy, yet we have a serious problem of poverty that will not go away. Continue with me as I unravel this problem that is common to many cities.

What About Education - Intro

V. is preparing for her third year of medical college under the MUCH Transportation Scholarship

After ten years of developing the MUCH outreach programs for disadvantaged children and those with disabilities, we have sorted our programs into three categories: health care, education, and clothing. In this article, I will begin to discuss the topic of education.

The schools of Ukraine provide a good educational program, similar to that of the past Soviet educational system. Since the fall of Communism in 1991, Ukraine has been rebuilding itself as a country. One of the many realities during this time was the weakening of the educational system, in a large part, due to the fact that many of the teachers were not being paid.

The teachers, a breed of their own, continued as long as they could, providing the same quality of education as before. After many months of no pay, their personal economy became desperate. They began to take matters into their own hands. They charged the students in different ways. Some for grades, some for diplomas. That was then. Unfortunately, when you corrupt the moral fiber of a people whose government was already corrupt, changing that fiber to the positive, is not so easy.

Having spoken about this problem with some of the teachers that I interact with throughout Ukraine, I asked about the quality of education today. They all agreed that it had taken a turn for the worse two decade ago, but it was getting better. The computer age has helped education, but it has had an equally negative effect on the children. On the plus side, in 2011, the first generation of children born in freedom graduated high school. They, unlike their parents, learned the truth about the world and life in other countries, having access to an overwhelming amount of information. On the negative side, the children prefer the video games and anything that they can learn how to download for free. Becoming flooded with choices has greatly distracted the children from their focus on studies.

About six years ago, after watching the development of the children from difficult homes at the Emmaus Food Program in Illichevsk, I began to understand the bigger need for these children. It was higher education. Without it, their lives would most probably imitate that of their parents, low-income work, alcohol abuse, and no vision for their future. This is bad, but what makes it worse is that Ukraine is on the fast track to change, and change in a big way. You can read in the  http://tinyurl.com/2012jannewsletter about the first university graduate and the second student beginning her third, who participate(d) in the MUCH Transportation Scholarship Program.

I invite you to follow my article series at it unfolds.

Day Trip to Kiev

Just another day in the capital, Kiev.

Russian Orthodox church.

Government buildings, so impressive!

Svetlana and I had to go to Kiev to have a document notarized at the American Embassy's consulate building, and again at the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs office. These two buildings are about twenty-five to thirty minutes apart, if walking. The embassy is about a thirty-minute walk from the train station; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is about forty-five minutes from the train station by foot. We learned all of this via Google Maps before we began our journey.

To our great joy, both services are set up to complete the process in one day. As is normally the case, there is one glitch in the plan. The embassy was set up to complete the notary process within thirty minutes, for which I had a 9 AM appointment. But, the Ministry took applications only between 9 AM and 12 noon, returning them only between 4 and 5 PM of the same day. It looked to me like a very long day, requiring a night of sleep in Kiev. When I shared this information with Sveta, she pleasantly said, "Hurrah, we can arrive in the morning and return the same day!" Once again, I was introduced to how things happen in Ukraine, and the urgency of life here.

So our journey began. Svetlana bought train tickets, two-second class top bunk were all that were available, for Monday evening. Still in Illichevsk on Friday, we would travel by bus to Nikolayev within the hour. We arrived in Nikolayev at 4:30 PM, departed the bus about four or five blocks from the translator’s office, and proceeded to find the office, which would close at 5 PM. We had come to have my documents for the civil wedding ceremony translated into Ukrainian. After going over the details, we paid the man and would return on Monday at noon when they would be ready to be received.

After a couple of days rest, we returned for our documents at noon. After ironing out a few mistakes in what had to be the same as the visa in my passport, we move on with our plan for the day, to visit Svetlana's daughter, Olga. By five o'clock, I was ready to go back to Svetlana's flat and rest. As we walked back, she reminded me that we would go to Kiev by train in two hours. So much for rest.

We took the train to Kiev, arriving at 5:30 AM. I had not slept at all. We had a leisurely breakfast at McDonalds and then headed to the American embassy. Arriving at 8:30 for my 9 o'clock appointment, I was genuinely surprised to see a line of about fifty people waiting outside of the embassy gates.

Svetlana received information from a woman in line who said that we should tell the guard that I had an appointment. The guard looked at my passport and directed me to the next man who checked for my name on the appointment list. I was ushered into the security area where I passed through the metal detector area. They secured my phone and camera until my return. I continued to the American Citizen Services room. I was treated very courteously, helped to go through the process, and was on my way by 9 AM.

            Svetlana and I continued on our journey to the next destination. When we arrived at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, located in the back of this very large building, we entered a room filled with many people, all anxiously trying to figure out how to fill in the particular forms required. Within about thirty minutes, Svetlana had completed the forms and returned them to the appropriate person. Now, we had five hours to wait for the document to be process.

We walked six blocks to a different McDonalds, had some lunch, and made our plans with new directions back to the train station. Heading back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs early, we were not the only ones waiting outside in the cold. Invited in to the building at 3:15, the population and the tension grew, until finally at 4:15, the woman arrived with all of the papers to hand out. From that point on, all rules of behavior disappeared and chaos flourished. We quickly received our document, stashed it in our folder, and left the building.

Beginning the last leg of our foot trek at 4:30, our task was now to arrive at the train station as soon as possible and see if any tickets were available for the 7:30 train to Nikolayev. It was very fortunate that the longest part of our travel was on one street without a name change. The rest was close to where we had walked from the train station early in the morning.

We secured second-class tickets by 5:20, one up, one down, and made our way to McDonalds where we had eaten breakfast, to eat supper and rest until the train was ready for us. As we ate, our poor feet began to talk to us. Exhausted, we dragged ourselves to the train at 7 PM and slept until our arrival in Nikolayev at 5:30 AM. This ended our thirty-four hour day trip to Kiev.

Looking into 2012

I have started over in life many times; there were times when I had no money and had to begin a new economy and lifestyle; other times, I had to learn a new way of life in a new culture, but each time I took what I had learned with me; experience is what I call it. Now, I begin again, this time as a husband, father of two, and grandfather of three. It is a big adventure for me.

By age 56, I have lived variety, what some may call the spice of life. This has filled my years with encounters of various people in a mixture of economic lifestyles. Coming up on my tenth year as a missionary in Ukraine, and having been married a little more than a month, I am settling into family life, as I have never experienced before.

My life in Ukraine is about children. I am hopeful that I will be able to influence my grandchildren through the years. I have a big opportunity to influence children and young adults in my mission and my leisure activities. As my future visits to the Dobromel Orphanage with Sveta will open new doors of communication with the children, it will be interesting to learn what my influence will be for our 119 children who I will only see only one week, twice a year.

In Marganets, Sveta and I will chat with children in two orphanages and one transition home. It will be quite interesting to see how we interact with the children as a couple, as a parental figure for the children. What kind of example will we set? As Sveta’s English improves, we will have more freedom to visit with the children without my need for a translator.

Froonza presents a very big opportunity for us to interact with the families of the children receiving massage. I think that the timing is perfect, after a year plus of massage results. With Sveta by my side, we will be able to interact with the community of the village, and even visit nearby villages that have children in need of massage.

January 2012 will begin a great adventure in Sveta’s and my life. We will be writing more about our adventures with the children, with our own children and grandchildren, and our life together as missionaries in Ukraine. Stay tuned …

Visiting the Children

Looking down on Dobromel

The beautiful Carpathian Mountains

Nine years ago I began visiting the internat, (orphanage), in Marganets. Three years ago, I was introduced to the children of the internat in Dobromel about five hundred miles from Marganets. With no one in Dobromel to translate, I was very limited as to what I could do, or how I could interact with the children. This October 2011 would be different.

My organization approved a massage demonstration program for twenty days in October. Sveta, my fiancé, would be the demonstrating masseuse. Because she spoke enough English to help me with any of my needs, I had the opportunity to visit the children for two weeks and experience what life in the internat system as really like.

Upon my return from America on October 10, I called Sveta every evening. She was living in the internat, in a room located beside the exercise and massage rooms. During our calls, I would here a "knock, knock, knock", but she would continue to talk with me. She explained the children would knock on her door and run away. She was somewhat amused, but it did not remain as much fun for her as it was for the children.

I arrive on October 17th, almost ready to embrace the unknown. Dobromel is a small community, nestled in the Carpathian Mountains, seven kilometers from the boarder of Poland. The fall of the Soviet system left Dobromel very poor and somewhat helpless. I am seeing some improvements, but the horse and cart are still being used by some farmers or transporters. I see tractors in the fields, but they are from soviet times. People still farm the land with manual tools.

Two weeks in Dobromel has opened my eyes to many things. Of course, the lifestyles of the children are the most obvious; it can only be seen by living at the internat. A second matter of interest is the lifestyles of the people who work here. The cooks, for example, prepare food all day, from early morning until clean up is complete at 8 PM. They work every other day.

The living conditions have improve over the past three years, mostly bathroom, shower, and laundry facilities. It is great to see that institutional care has moved forward, but I believe that it is due to church donations and manual labor of visiting short-term missionaries. All of the beds, made in bunk-bed style,

were donated by the Pentecostal church of a local community.

Of the 119 children living at this orphanage, only 11 are true orphans. The rest of the children come from difficult homes where parents are not equipped to raise their own children who have special need. Many fathers reject their own children at birth because they were not born in a healthy state. This causes many single parent families to occur.

This gives you a bird’s eye view of life in Dobromel, Ukraine, but there is more to come. Sveta and I will share our individual stories of our adventures with the children in future articles.