While in Ukraine, I was compelled to make a few purchases. Obviously I had to buy cigarettes. Why obviously? Well, let's do the math. in England, a pack of cigarettes can set you back 7 pounds, which at this point is 14 dollars. In the US a pack of Marlboros is probably about 7 dollars. In France it's 5.30 Euros, Spain was around 4 Euros, which comes in right at $6.30, due to the dilapidated state of today's US dollar.
But moving East, things begin to shift. A pack of Marlboro's in Poland comes in at 7.35 zloty, (3.33 USD,) which is eminently more reasonable. And in Ukraine the same brand sells for 5 Hryvna, which works out to 2.21 zloty. Working our way backwards to the west, that 5 Hryvna is about $1, or 64 Euro CENTS. In British Pounds, it makes it all the way down to 50 cents. And, oddly enough, they aren't even the same cigarettes we get in Poland. The Marlboros in Poland are mixed and packed in Poland. The Marlboros which are bought in Western Europe are mixed and packed in Zurich, Switzerland, and are thought to be of a higher quality. Due to some quirk which only a lawyer in trade relations could explain, the Ukrainian cigarettes sold for .64 Euro cents are brought in from Switzerland, rather than neighboring Poland. So, all that to say that an investment in tobacco seemed like the sensible thing to do.
As did the purchase of vodka. Before we had even come to Poland, people had gone on and on about Polish vodka. Poles themselves mentioned it as one of the advantages to be enjoyed while living in their country. "The best vodka in the world!" they frequently opined. The truth, however, is either that vodka is preferred to be rather gassy, rough on the throat, and not very complex in flavor, or Polish mid-range vodkas really come in as, well, just average. By following a strict nightly regimen, I have drunk an astonishing number of different vodkas now, including higher range vodkas, and I am willing to concede that Chopin is indeed a fine vodka, and worth waxing eloquent about. It is flavorful, full, round, complex, smooth, crisp, sweet, and clean. It is everything a person might love about vodka with none of the accompanying punishment. But at a cost of half the average monthly salary, it surely ought to be.
I have purchased 4 different Ukrainian vodkas. All of them, without exception, were in the lower end of the scale. To give a sense of scale, properly distorted by the currency exchange rate, the vodka we often drink in Poland, providing the best intersection between thrift and pleasure, costs about 35 zloty for a half liter. The vodkas I purchased in Ukraine at 14 Hryvna came in just over 6 zloty for a half liter, and were FAR superior.
Speaking of which, I would like to say here that Smirnoff and Absolut are absolute crap. You people are getting suckered. I would like to stress that I am not making unfounded assertions here. As someone who drinks vodka on a near-nightly basis, I have a fair foundation of experience to draw upon. And these vodkas were all smooth, flavorful, crisp, light, and left you with less of a hangover. Even if you disregarded the fact that these bottles of vodka cost under 3 American dollars, they were a brilliant value. All of which to say that, in addition to cigarettes, I HAD to buy a couple bottles of vodka while there.
Unfortunately, by the time I got around to buying up my mandatory reserves, I only had a tiny bit of money left. Why? Well, in short, I am a sucker for open air markets. And L'viv, like most Eastern European towns, has one - one block away from the main drag. What's to be had there? Not a lot, really, unless you go in for hand-painted wooden easter eggs, lace, traditional costumes, old soviet helmets, wooden swords and shields for kids, sheepskins, old decorative pieces of brass stripped out of houses, a brass bust of Stalin, matchbook covers commemorating/glorifying the Nazi attack on Stalingrad, (yeah, I didn't really get that one, either,) house slippers made out of sheepskin, Soviet medals and pins, wooden Russian matryoshka dolls, old metal lighters, military fur hats, old coins, paintings, canes, jewelery, strings of wooden beads, old military belt buckles, scratched old silverware, and on and on and on.
The metal matchbox covers with large swastikas and tanks overlooking Stalingrad gave me pause - I mean, they can't be so old as to have been made by the German soldiers themselves, and if not, who the hell would be glorifying that side of the losing struggle at this late date, and furthermore, how had they found their way here, where public opinion doubtlessly falls on the Soviet side of that struggle? Oddly enough, though, there is a fair resurgence in Russia itself, and among other ex-Soviet countries of neo-nazi babblings. It may seem strange that a people regarded by Hitler as nearly sub-human, and who suffered terribly at Nazi hands, should now be sporting his symbols, and espousing his views. (Slightly edited, of course.) I suppose it just shows that the more abused a people are, the more they suffer, the more twisted their minds become, until the strength of their tormentor becomes quite attractive, and they would wish to co-opt it's strength by adopting its symbols. Or, Nazism is just that attractive to simpletons everywhere. Or Russians are just born with a need to suffer. Take your pick.
I tried on the big furry hats. While fun, I couldn't escape the thought that it would be one more useless lunk of crap, and furry crap, that I would lug around the globe with me. I knew I had to buy a set of Russian dolls for my nieces - that went without saying. I knew my wife would like a scarf - but then I saw the belt buckles.
Brass, curved, a huge star stamped into it, with the hammer and sickle inside two circles at the center of the star, rays emanating outward from it. The perfect example of ideological use of symbolism. - the implements of the workers, rays shooting out from them to remind us of the sun, which gives us light, and life, set within the communist star. All captured in a glowing brass, heavy and crude enough to beat the life out of a buffalo with.
I had to have one of those. I asked at various stalls and found that they were all nearly the same price, and reasonably so - about 5 bucks - which, mind you, in Ukraine is enough to purchase a month's supply of cigarettes. I could choose between the matte grey, the rubberised painted green, but I knew it had to be the brass - only brass put the symbolism in its proper context, made it come alive, glorified it, and with our present-day historical hindsight, gave us pause to consider the folly of totalitarian systems bent on changing the world.
I shopped up and down the market. I looked at many of them, and found a problem - when you turned it over and looked at the fastening mechanism, the tooth (which should enter the belt hole) was so large, so wide, that it would never fit into a normal belt hole. Either you would have to grind a hole in your belt that you could stick your index finger through, or grind down the tooth of the belt buckle. Unfortunately, the metal itself was so thick that you would never be able to cut it down to an appropriate size without a power saw, or an electric grinder, neither of which I happen to have in my flat back in Poland.
Then I found him. The one guy in the market selling not just buckles, but the belts to go along with. After a bit of haggling he removed the long, beautifully grained, worn and scratched leather strap from one buckle, and threaded it onto another.
Which was how I found out how the damn contraptions worked. The female end of the belt was non-adjustable, and consisted of a single heavy staple which had been fired through the belt about 1 cm back from the end, then both tips bent back, the belt end folded over them, and crudely stitched in place. All the adjustment happened at the buckle end, where you pull it through the buckle till is of the appropriate size, and voila!
Or not. I am wearing this belt as I write this. The sizing mechanism needs adjustment about once every two or three days, as it constantly slips. And I can scarcely convey to you how much that delights me. This belt is the symbol of a system took mass-production at its word, and practically tried to mass-produce the human spirit. This buckle, a mass produced lunk of brass, intended to be worn by the the system's enforcers, the soldier, captures perfectly the heaviness, the crudeness, which accompanied every aspect of the communist system. The simple utility, the thickness of the metal, the uncomfortably tight curve of the buckle which juts the star out into unlikely prominence, (while the edges push backward into you at an unnatural angle.) The crude stitching is so poorly done one wonders if it was done by hand or machine, either seeming equally unlikely. And above all, the fact that it doesn't even work properly. I see wave after wave of grey-coated, fur-topped soldiers, tilted forward at a run, charging the bastions of the capitalist oppressors, one hand raised in the archetypal clenched fist, the other pulling up the poor bastard's trousers.
Which is really what it comes down to. Communism was not a system designed to fit man. Man was meant to be a cog fit roughly into the gears of communism.
In the end I paid much more for this belt than perhaps I had to. I wanted the leather belt to go along with the buckle, money was cheap, and the attraction of having a buckle I could use to open bottles or possibly re-tread a tank was just too much. I can't really wear it out of the house here. I don't suppose I would get beaten, but in any given room there is probably at least one person whose grandfather was disappeared by the NKVD, or someone whose father had to run to the west while the old grandmother disassembled the printing press and buried it in the garden. I have talked with people who recall sitting under the kitchen table as small children while the state police overturned the house for the 14th time. Or those who, out riding bikes in the country come across Russian tanks and soldiers whose presence the government was denying, while on the radio they spoke of impending martial law.
No, I may not get to ever wear it outside the house, but it nevertheless delights me to no end to see the gear of yesterday's soldier sold today to a gawking western tourist.
