Students start to lower the 'BOOM!'

We met yesterday with an energetic group of students from National University in Kharkiv. They want to publish an independent student newspaper.

We met for about two hours in a conference room at the university, discussing the initial steps: a name (a budding designer named Kate suggested "Boom!", and that won by acclamation); a budget of stories for the first issue; deadlines (next week); and a publication schedule (monthly -- with issue No. 1 coming out by mid-March).

We also discussed what language(s) to publish in. The group agreed that reporters could write in whatever language they want, and that we might publish multiple editions (one in Russian, one in Ukrainian, and one in English for the university's sizable foreign-student population). As I've noted before (and as another news story shows), language is a big issue here -- a litmus test (depending on your point of view) for national pride, or Ukrainian nationalism, or affinity toward Russia. Significantly, the students are going to tackle this issue head-on: One student volunteered to write a story on this topic.

Other stories on the budget: The library has been closed for fire-safety and other facility-related reasons; student government leaders have launched a campaign to inform students of their rights; women have formed a football team; Ukraine's minister of education is speaking at the university; student volunteers are engaged in activities ranging from working with orphans to promoting safe sex; and more!

That's an ambitious lineup of stories. The real test, of course, is to see how many students deliver. We're hoping to get some by Monday. One student is doing a story about what the newspaper is and how it came to be; here she is interviewing Selma after the meeting:

From 'Stalin's Wife' to steroid-popping weightlifters

Here's a little insight into the culture in Ukraine and in the U.S.:

When I was on the marshrutka heading to Kremenchuk last week, the television in the front of the van was showing two intriguing films -- both Russian. One was a 2006 movie called "Граффити" (translation: "Graffiti). Here's a description:

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Set against a background of a pastoral Russia is this rhapsodic human drama of three freedom-loving people. Director Igor Apasyan born in Georgia to an Armenian family is a veteran filmmaker of international acclaim.

The chief of a small town asks a traveling Moscow art student to paint a portrait of the town's leaders on a wall. The student during his stay in the town strikes a friendship with a drunken old man and a septic service truck driver.

As the student begins painting a town resident comes and asks him to draw a picture of his relatives now dead on the wall too. The student complies and soon more and more people show up with photos of people they would like painted. The student finally decides to completely redo the picture.

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OK -- I wish I had Googled the movie before I saw it; I would've understood a lot more. Even so, I grasped some of the plot, and the marshrutka passengers seemed to like it.

Then came an equally engaging drama -- two segments from what appeared to be a mini-series called "Stalin's Wife" (in Russian: «Жена Сталина»). The Moscow Times described it this way:

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Till Death Do Us Part

He was a vicious dictator. She was just a teenager when they fell in love. An upcoming television series turns Stalin's marriage into a soap opera. ... Josef Stalin is depicted as a passionate lover who missed the October Revolution because he was in bed with his teenage lover, Nadezhda Alliluyeva ... According to the film's version of history, the reason he was absent during the storming of the Winter Palace was because he was in bed with his lover. "The Bolsheviks have taken power -- or haven't," he tells her, as they hear the sound of shooting outside.

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The drama was produced and co-directed by Mira Todorovskaya. It is based on a novel called "The Only Woman" by Olga Trifonova, which came out in 2001 and presented a semi-factual account of Stalin and his complicated personal life.

If the films shown en route to Kremenchuk were the cultural high points of the trip, the films shown on the return trip were definitely the cultural low points. In fact, I don't think you can get any lower, any worse, than "Twin Sitters," a 1994 stinker featuring two steroid-inflated weightlifters named Peter and David Paul. (Yes, they're twins. In this movie, they were called the Falcone brothers.)

How stupid was this movie? Here's some dialogue:

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Ma Falcone: Well, it's true! Your necks are bigger than your heads.

David Falcone: Ma, that's only because there are no muscles in our heads to exercise.

Ma Falcone: Yeah? Well, what about your brain?

Peter Falcone: Ma, the brain is not a muscle; it's an organ!

David Falcone: And it's a good thing, too. Otherwise, our heads would be so huge, we would fall over!

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It gets worse. It was a blessing, I guess, that the movie was dubbed in Russian (and renamed "The Babysitters" -- maybe the translation of the original title didn't make any more sense than the script). Don't believe me? Here's the trailer.

After assaulting us with "Twin Sitters," the marshrutka driver tried to inflict another Peter and David movie on us -- "Too Big." But the passengers rebelled against the Paul Twins Film Fest. Instead, we watched a French movie that wasn't much better. (It did, however, feature a lot less spaghetti being thrown at people.)

One last cultural note: Our translator, Yulia, and her boyfriend went to a rock concert last night. It was held at the Sports Palace in Kharkiv. The headliner group was the King and the Joker (Korol' i Shut) from St. Petersburg, Russia. From what Yulia described, it sounded like "rage rock," in the vein of Insane Clown Posse or Limp Bizkit.

If there's a lesson here, it's that all over the world, the kids are all right.

Training in Kremenchuk

I can't believe it's been a week since I posted last -- or that I've been in Ukraine for a month now. Time has a way of slipping away, as if we all didn't know that.

Here's how I spent the past week:

Early in the week, we met with a group of journalists who wanted to practice their English -- a good opportunity to talk about news values and the state of journalism in Ukraine. Our "English club" meets again on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, we met with a group of university students who want to start an independent student newspaper. This Wednesday, we'll go to the university for another meeting -- and roll up our sleeves and get started.

On Thursday, we returned to Boiko School to work with teenagers who want to launch a school paper. We settled on a name (Boiko's Eyes -- which sounds even better in Russian); a logo; and a format (bilingual -- Russian and English). We also assigned several stories, which we hope the students will deliver this week.

After the meeting at Boiko, Selma and I dashed to the train station and caught a van (called a marshrutka) to Kremenchuk, a pleasant city (pop. 230,000) between Kharkiv and Kyiv. We checked into a nice little hotel and then, on Friday and Saturday, conducted a workshop on civic journalism for a group of reporters and editors. [Here's a photo-of-the-day Web site for Kremenchuk, which features a three-minute video about the town.]

I'll post more about the workshop later. For the time being, here are a few photos:

Language wars: Another round in Kharkiv

Here's an AP story from the Kyiv Post about giving Russian equal standing with Ukrainian as the official languages of Kharkiv:

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Local court restores special status for Russian language in Ukrainian eastern city

KYIV (AP) - A local appeals court has restored a special status for the Russian language in an eastern city in Ukraine, officials said Wednesday.

The city council in Kharkiv voted in March to make Russian a regional language, allowing it to be used together with Ukrainian in state and public institutions as well as at universities and cultural institutions.

Local prosecutors filed a lawsuit against the decision and won the case in court. But the city council challenged the decision at the local appeals court.

The Constitution adopted by Ukraine following the 1991 Soviet collapse declared Ukrainian as the sole state language, but many Ukrainians, particularly in the east and on the southern Crimean Peninsula, consider Russian to be their native tongue.

Six regional governments and nine city councils in the east and south last year granted Russian special status – decisions that were heavily criticized by President Viktor Yushchenko.

The Party of the Regions, whose leader, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, enjoys strong support in the east and south, campaigned in elections last year on a promise to make Russian a second state language.

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The story echoes an observation I made in a previous posting -- that language is a point of controversy in Ukraine. We have the same thing in the U.S., of course; witness the "English Only / Official English" backlash against the use of Spanish.

Starting a student newspaper at Boiko School

Selma and I spent most of yesterday at the Boiko School, where we are helping students start a student newspaper.

Aleksey Soldatenko at JIA helped us hook up with the school, which (in U.S. terms) serves pre-K through high school. It's a private school based on the pedagogy of Sergei Boiko, who co-founded the school and teaches there (along with his wife, Anna). Aleksander, an assistant principal and teacher, gave us an extensive tour of the school, which has a Montessori-like feel -- a lot of student activities and free expression. We heard and saw kids singing, baking cookies, learning math, geography, law ...

Boiko is big on languages. All of the students learn English (to a level of competency that puts American schools to shame). The school also offers other languages, including Chinese.

After the tour, some cookies (made by the first-graders) and a hearty lunch in the cafeteria, we met with students interested in creating a newspaper. The turnout was standing-room-only (but we suspect that some students were there just to check out the visitors).



Selma led a discussion of why newspapers are important and what the students could do with a paper. Then we brainstormed possible names ("Boiko Eyes" seemed to float to the top) and story ideas.



A half-dozen students volunteered to do stories for the first issue. Our goal is for the students to write the stories and us to edit them by next week; do the layout the following week; and distribute the paper the week after that. We're going to do a bilingual paper -- English and Russian.

When we met Sergei, he told a joke:

Q: What do you call somebody who speaks two languages?
A: Bilingual.

Q: What do you call somebody who speaks many languages?
A: Polyglot.

Q: What do you call somebody who speaks just one language?
A: American! ;-)

A hotel in Kyiv for the budget-minded traveler

Kyiv is an expensive city: Almost every hotel room is at least $100 a night, and many are $180-200 -- if you want to stay downtown. However, I found a low-cost alternative: the Kooperator Hotel.

It's a three-star hotel a short walk from the opera house and St. Sophia Cathedral. It has hot water, cable TV, a restaurant (and supposedly a workout room and swimming pool, but I never saw those facilities). The cost, including a breakfast buffet: $65 a night.

The hotel is operated by the Union of Consumers Societies of Ukraine. (The union includes regional consumer groups as well as universities, trade schools and some business enterprises.)

The hotel's brochure says (and I quote!):

"The Union's primary goal is to take care of people, whereas the hotel's and its stuff's main objective is to professionally do their job. Therefore, at Kooperator Hotel the highest level of service and homely comfort meet the requirements of the most exacting traveller."

Breakfast was great, in a German kind of way: cold cuts, cheese, hardboiled eggs ... cereal ... a plate of Italian-looking gnocchi or Texas-like chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes. Local radio was playing in the background -- sprightly tunes interspersed with Fred Flintstone's yabba-dabba-doo! (Morning radio must be the same the world over.)

Here's what breakfast sounded like in the dining hall.

As long as I'm posting audio, here's another clip -- of a military march that was booming over the loudspeakers at the train station as we waited to board the ride home to Kharkiv.

Back from Kiev with photos & audio

I had a great time touring the city and meeting with journalists to learn more about the media environment. I'll post details later, but here are a few pictures. (You can find more on my Web album.)

This is the St. Sophia Cathedral, built in the 11th Century. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site.



Kyiv is a city of monuments to writers, poets and other cultural figures:



Down the street from St. Sophia is Mykhailivska Square -- the reconstruction of St. Michael's Golden Domed Cathedral. (The original was destroyed during the atheism campaigns of the 1930s.) The walls of St. Michael's feature vivid pictures:



Also on Mykhailivska Square is a memorial to millions of Ukrainians who were "victims of the famine-genocide of 1932-33."

Off to Kiev (or Kyiv), Ukraine's capital

I'm about to leave Kharkiv to take the train to Kiev (or Kyiv in Ukrainian). Lots to see there, including art and history museums, the Chernobyl Museum and various churches.

Kyiv is much more "Ukrainian" than Kharkiv, which is close to Russia geographically and linguistically. Language is a big deal in this country -- a "fault line" in journalistic terms. It divides Ukraine in several ways: The western part of the country, toward Poland, favors Ukrainian; the eastern part of the country, toward Russia, prefers Russian (as does Crimea, Ukraine's southern region, which used to be part of Russia).

Language overlaps with politics: The western part of Ukraine tended to support the "Orange Revolution" and the current president, Viktor Yushchenko; the eastern part of Ukraine tended to support Yuschchenko's opponent (and current prime minister), Viktor Yanukovich.

The politics of language plays out in several ways. The Ukrainian parliament -- the Verkhovna Rada -- has been pushing Ukrainian as a sign of the country's independence. It's the official language, of course; hence, the spelling of Kyiv. (But most outsiders consider to spell it Kiev, and some people say that for pragmatic reasons, the Verkhovna Rada should acquiesce to the "ie" spelling. I heard that the Kiev Post, a well-respected English-language paper, made that argument a few years ago. But even the Post eventually gave in, because it's now the KYIV Post.)

There is a mass communications aspect to the language debate. I have a tour book (Ukraine: The Bradt Travel Guide) that talks about how modern and tech-savvy Kharkiv is. This is true. The book then goes on to say, "Bill Gates chose Kharkiv as his base from which to launch the Ukrainian version of Windows." If that's true, it's a blunder -- along the lines of selling the Chevy Nova in Latin America (where "no va" means "doesn't go"). Kharkiv might be an appropriate launch pad for the Russian version of Windows -- but not for the Ukrainian version. Most of the media here are in Russian. (The exception: government-published newspapers.)

Language also was the focus of a recent proposal by Yushchenko. He wants a law requiring foreign films to be dubbed or subtitled in Ukrainian. Presumably, this would apply even to Russian films -- which are popular here, especially in the eastern part of the country.

Speaking of films, here's one that just opened in Kharkiv and Kyiv. Rocky speaks such a universal language :-)

I wonder how this was translated into Ukrainian: "I just want to say hi to my girlfriend, OK? Yo, Adrian! It's me, Rocky ..."