Solidarity with the Soldatenkos

We were working on training materials at the office of the Journalists' Initiative Association shortly after noon today when there was a rap at the door. The visitor: Abram Soldatenko, the 96-year-old father of JIA founder Angelina Soldatenko.

Mr. Soldatenko had come to the neighborhood to get a haircut; a barber shop nearby gives free cuts to senior citizens -- and he certainly qualified. For him, the statue of Lenin in the plaza near my apartment isn't just a historical monument. Mr. Soldatenko may well have seen Lenin when the communist revolutionary came to Kharkiv, said his grandson, Aleksey Soldatenko.

Aleksey and Angelina are the driving forces behind the JIA and other efforts to improve journalism in Ukraine. The entire family is filled with journalists: Angelina's husband is a former radio reporter; and Abram Soldatenko wrote for a newspaper serving a center for deaf Ukrainians. (Mr. Soldatenko himself is deaf.)

Moreover, Aleksey's sister is a journalist. In fact, from a newspaper where she worked, she took a photo of Mikhail Gorbachev -- and it is displayed in the JIA office:



Aleksey said Gorbachev was a controversial figure: While Aleksey supported Gorbachev's democratic reforms, many Soviet citizens at the time saw him as a weak leader. Incidentally, Selma met Gorbachev when he was lecturing in the U.S.