Picnic at the Iron Curtain: A Memoir: From the fall of the Berlin Wall to Ukraine's Orange Revolution

by Susan Viets

  I was not prepared for the shock of seeing Victor Yushchenko. He came on stage to give a speech. He stood there, rigid. His face was ravaged. This punishment by poisoning – not yet proved but also doubted by no one – might even be worse than exile to the Gulag. I remembered what New York Marta, who still lived in Kiev, had told me. “Doctors inject painkillers into Yushchenko’s spine,” she said. “Every time he’s on TV we try to see if he’s getting better, but he still looks so bad.”

  As I stood there and watched Yushchenko speak, I agreed. I admired his courage and stamina. He thanked people for coming to the square and addressed army officers. “My friends,” he said. He asked military men not to respond if the president declared a state of emergency and ordered the use of force. A student in front of me checked his phone. I saw his message. A contact sent him information on more pro-Yushchenko protests organized by students for the next day.

  “How likely do you think it is there’ll be a crackdown?” I asked Marta. She told me about a turning point a few days before I arrived when a military officer spoke in the square in support of Yushchenko. She also said, “some of the officers’ wives and children are in the square. I don’t think they’ll shoot.”

  We had come home and now sat on the sofa in Marta’s living room. I had been away for eight years, but her apartment still felt the same except for the sound of the window panes rattling from the noise in the square. The doorbell rang in the middle of our conversation. James arrived, then Stephen and finally Yaroslav. Time collapsed. All these friends from different periods, now scattered around the world, had come back to cover the protests. Everyone found a chair and worked.

  James talked to his editor. Then he flipped through a magazine on Marta’s side table.

  “I’m going to Crimea. Do you want to come?” Yaroslav asked me. I did not want to go. That life of chasing news stories had passed. I had only features to write and the luxury of time. Yaroslav, as action-oriented and sharp-witted as ever, quietly planned his next scoop.

  Stephen had come from London. We gossiped about old colleagues. There was no awkwardness in that gap of time that had passed. These friendships felt unchanged. Later, after everyone had left, I rummaged through my suitcase and handed Marta a package of earplugs.

  “I’m not sure they’ll work with all this racket,” I said.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Marta told me. I did not. Sleep was impossible, even with earplugs. At 2 a.m. I booted up my laptop and began work on assignments from my Toronto job.

  During the day, Marta and I wandered. The Orange Revolution, headquartered on Khreshchatyk and in the square, reached far beyond these hubs, to all the main government and presidential offices. We walked up a cobblestone hill, toward the presidential administration. We passed a group of young guys dressed in orange smocks made from garbage bags. The hip-hop anthem of the revolution, “Together we are many; they will not defeat us,” blared from their boom box. The music trailed behind us, then faded away as we turned right onto Bankova Street and saw riot police, who stood two rows deep. For several days protesters had blockaded ministerial and presidential offices, forcing the administration to work in exile from the outskirts of the city. These riot police had only recently arrived and now controlled the streets around the presidential administration, though the administration had not returned to Kiev.

  I knew this neighbourhood well. A small pedestrian path down an embankment, just beyond where the riot police stood, led to my old address. I still thought of it as Karl Marx Street, even though it had been renamed Vulytsia Horodets’koho some time ago. I had wandered here on evening walks and admired the stately architecture, much of which pre-dated the 1917 revolution, when sugar barons lived in Kiev. Beyond the rows of riot police, I could see Horodetsky House, its art nouveau facade strewn with fantastic animal scenes, and the imposing white columned presidential administration across the street, the old Communist Party headquarters, where I had watched looters inside after Ukraine declared independence.

  I thought again of Yushchenko’s speech and his appeal to officers. I wondered about the possibility of conflict. The police kept their helmet visors up and their shields down, which was a good sign, for now. Three young women crossed a no man’s land that separated bystanders like us and protesters from the police. The women held bright bouquets. They handed the flowers to the police officers.

  “What did they say?” I asked Marta.

  “They’re begging the riot police not to harm anyone in the crowd.” Orange balloons bobbed above the police barrier, held in place with shiny ribbon. Candles, flames flickering, stood on the pavement in front.

  We strolled past tents pitched by the sidewalk and saw empty oil drums with fires inside that kept people warm. The Writer’s Union across the road, an elegant yellow low-rise with a soup truck parked in front, was another headquarters for the Orange Revolution. Marta and I walked inside. Protesters in orange packed the ground-floor hallway. We followed a sign for the medical centre. Doctors wore plastic name tags. Garbage bags ringed the perimeter of the room. Donated clothes tumbled from the overstuffed bags.

  “Do you need anything?” Marta asked one of the doctors.

  “We have all this,” the doctor said as he pointed at the bags of clothes, “but our medical supplies are low.” Marta pulled out her notebook. The doctor dictated the names of drugs to buy – antibiotics, eye drops and many more things that I could not identify with my limited vocabulary.

  We left the Writer’s Union and walked down the road to a pharmacy. Its shelves spilled over with products. I read labels as Marta ordered stock. For thirty dollars we emerged with a bulging bag of medicine. I found it odd that nothing, not even antibiotics, required a prescription.

  We returned to the medical centre at the Writer’s Union and gave a doctor our bag of medicine. As we left, we passed by a staircase. People wrapped in blankets slept across every step – overflow from the designated first-floor rest area. When I looked in that room, I saw a sea of slumberers and no unoccupied chair. Sleeping bags and pillows blanketed the stage. Those who found no space on the stage lay on the floor.

  We continued our walk. We took a back route, down a hill, to the top of Vulytsia Horodets’koho, crossed through a small park at the end of the street and climbed the footpath that led toward the president’s office. At the top of the path, we encountered more riot police, grim-faced, clutching truncheons, in no mood to talk. Admitting defeat – we would not get closer to the building than this – we hovered for a few minutes, then went back down the path. We stopped briefly, riveted by a news broadcast on a small television. Several large-screen TVs, professionally installed, stood at strategic points in the city centre to keep protesters well informed of the news. This small black and white TV was not one of them. It balanced precariously on a metal structure. Wet snow fell. I felt amazed that no one had been electrocuted changing channels.

  Yushchenko’s rival and the man backed by the regime, Viktor Yanukovych, appeared now on TV. The program showed clips from a big meeting of his supporters in southeastern Ukraine, who threatened secession from Ukraine. One of the announcers said Yanukovych’s wife, Ludmila, had addressed a rally of anti–Orange Revolution people outside. She said that Yushchenko supporters in the square in Kiev were so happy because they had eaten oranges imported from the U.S. laced with hallucinatory drugs.

  People who stood near us gossiped about Mr. and Mrs. Yanukovych. I heard that Yanukovych had been jailed twice, for assault and then theft; Ludmila used to drive a trolleybus and Yanukovych, in the 1970s, drove racing cars in Monte Carlo; on their first date, a brick fell on Ludmila’s head, Yanukovych rushed her to hospital and then proposed. I had no idea if any of this was true. All I knew was that they managed to stay married all those years. I had not.

  In the evenings, I met with friends and caught up on their news. So many of my female friends were either thinking about divorce, in the middle of divorce, already divorced or single. I tried to tease
wisdom from this observation but did not get far. We all loved to travel and had all worked as journalists, but the similarities in our circumstances ended there. I noticed some gender divide. Stephen, Yaroslav and James all remained married. I discussed this with Marta. Then, as always, with so much going on, our conversation drifted back to politics. The phone rang.

  “It’s for you,” Marta said and handed me the receiver.

  “Hi, it’s me,” Yaroslav said. “What are you doing for dinner?”

  “Marta’s busy, but I’m free,” I told him. We arranged to meet at Yaroslav’s hotel. A few minutes later Stephen telephoned. I invited him along.

  I felt that I was walking into my past as I climbed the hill to meet Yaroslav. He was staying in an old Communist Party hotel where we had often eaten in 1990. Few other restaurants existed then in Kiev. I wondered how Yaroslav felt lodged in this hotel, like a visitor in his own home city. His life was so different from when he left.

  I reached the hotel around 9 p.m. and rode up in the elevator with a man in his late thirties or early forties, who wore a bright orange down jacket. Heavy stubble covered his cheeks and chin. He had a scruffy air of authority.

  Stephen arrived not long after me. We waited in Yaroslav’s room while he filed his story. He spoke with his editor. I remembered this work rhythm so well and that sense of satisfaction with a story filed, the work day finished and dinner deserved. Much as I enjoyed reporting, I did not feel tempted to make this my life again. I still thought of my office in Toronto, worked on assignments for it and found time for writing to family, colleagues and friends back home.

  When Yaroslav had finished, we took the elevator down to the hotel restaurant. This cavernous room was mostly empty. People crowded around one long table at the far end. I recognized Volodymyr Filenko, a Member of Parliament and behind-the-scenes organizer for the Orange Revolution. The man with the orange jacket and a heavy-set male companion occupied another table. We sat at a table next to them. A few minutes later Stephen said, “Look, it’s Yulia.”

  This woman, Yulia Tymoshenko, fascinated me. She and Yushchenko operated as a team. Yushchenko was the statesman. Yulia had drive and popular appeal, even though some people hated her and pointed to her questionable past in the gas industry. It had made her very rich. Slender Yulia was also beautiful. She rose to power as a deputy prime minister and was then briefly held in jail on charges of forging documents and smuggling gas but was released and cleared of the charges.

  Yushchenko, the statesman, and Yulia were temperamentally so different that I could not understand how they even got along. But they were as good as married in the public eye as they fought together for new presidential elections.

  I watched Yulia stride through the restaurant in a snug orange sweater. Her hair was tightly braided and wrapped around her head in her trademark halo hairdo. She exuded such energy. I imagined lightning might flash from Yulia at any moment. Fascinated, I stared as she visited the men at other tables. Then she sat with the man in the orange jacket at the table next to us. We all tried to eavesdrop. Yaroslav had the best spot for that.

  When a crackdown had seemed imminent, Yulia helped inspire more protest. It had happened a few nights earlier. Marta and I returned home from a late dinner, astonished when we saw no people in the square. Our friend Nadezhda crossed it in the distance. We shouted out to her and met up in the centre.

  “Yushchenko and Yulia told everyone to block the presidential administration and the Council of Ministers, so they all left,” Nadezhda said.

  Marta went home. Nadezhda and I investigated. We went on a midnight stroll to the presidential administration.

  “Do you think Yulia’s braid is real?” I asked Nadezhda as we walked up the hill.

  “My friend’s grandmother loves that braid. It reminds her of villages in the Carpathians,” Nadezhda said. Neither of us could decide if the long blonde plait that Yulia wrapped around her head was real or a hairpiece. Near the top of the hill, we forgot about the braid, faced again with a massive crowd. As we penetrated farther into it, I saw no other women.

  We pushed and jostled our way to the front of the crowd and reached a human blockade. It stretched one very long block deep, from the main intersection, down Bankova Street, past the Writer’s Union to the presidential administration. Young guys stood, arms linked, stretched across the street, tens, if not hundreds of rows deep, illuminated by the yellow glow of streetlights.

  “Let us through, we want to see what’s happening,” Nadezhda shouted at one of the guys.

  He shook his head, “No one’s allowed past.”

  “We’re accredited journalists,” Nadezhda insisted. She pulled out her press card.

  The young man shook his head again, “It’s too dangerous.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “The order’s been given to send troops in,” he said. I saw no troops, but this militant atmosphere and mood of grim determination signalled major change.

  “Nadezhda!” someone shouted. We turned and saw six young guys, one a distant relative of hers, all from out of town and camped in her living room.

  “Tell your friends to let us through,” she fumed. They apologized but refused. The well-organized blockade held firm. Nadezhda relented.

  We walked in the other direction, toward the Council of Ministers building, a few blocks away. I checked my watch under a streetlight – 1:25 a.m.

  We heard drummers before we reached the building. They lined a leafy park embankment across the street. Their beat sounded like a celebration.

  “Why is everyone so happy?” I asked a group of smiling young women outside the Council of Ministers building.

  “They’ve pulled back the troops,” one of them yelled over the sound of the drums. It was tense back there but a party here. I wondered whose information was correct.

  One thin line of students guarded the building. I bumped into an American acquaintance who was still working in Kiev. Well-connected and a trustworthy source, she confirmed that troops had been pulled back.

  In the morning, Marta and I woke late and rushed half a block down the road to the tent city. One of Marta’s colleagues from the National University of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy planned to let us in. Guards who surrounded the camp perimeter stopped us. They stood on slabs of Styrofoam, which insulated their feet from the cold. They dispatched a student to find Marta’s colleague. She arrived and vouched for us. The guards stamped our hands and let us through.

  The tent city was long and stretched down several blocks of Khreshchatyk. We entered the Kyiv-Mohyla section, near Independence Square. Students operated in shifts that lasted from three to ten hours. A donation of large tents had just arrived. Everyone discussed how best to pitch them and looked forward to better conditions.

  “We’ll be able to stand,” one of the students enthused as we hunched close together under the low roof of a pup tent. “Heaters should fit inside.” Already damp and a little chilled at minus 3 degrees Celsius, I became nearly as excited as him. As we left, a student who passed by us thrust squares of Styrofoam into our hands.

  “Stand on them,” he ordered Marta and me, “or else you’ll come down with the flu.” We moved on, handed our Styrofoam to a cold-looking nineteen-year-old, and then bumped into the cough drop and vitamin brigade.

  “Please, save them for others, we’re just visiting,” I insisted. The two young women – more determined than us – shovelled cough drops and vitamins into our pockets and waited until we swallowed some.

  “Illness is a big problem for us,” Marta’s colleague explained. “They’re taking every precaution to keep people healthy.”

  “Only a dozen people showed up today,” one of the students said. “Some of us have been out here for ten days. We’re getting tired and sick. We need a break.”

  Others worried about falling behind in their studies. I thought of Senad in Sarajevo and how he had said the siege had cheated him of time. Corrupt as the election here might have
been, I felt thankful these students would not face war.

  As we spoke, I heard the clang of metal hitting pavement. I turned and saw a crew that shovelled garbage. Marta and I said goodbye and walked a short distance away from Independence Square, down Khreshchatyk and farther into the camp, in the direction of the Bessarabskyi Market. We met some young women outside a tent, who offered us tea and orange candies.

  Refreshed, we continued our walk. We passed by a huge orange-coloured Christmas tree and a prayer tent that also contained sacks of food and then reached a building identified as command headquarters. A sign that said Do Not Enter was posted on it. We could go no farther, so we turned back and moved toward Independence Square. Soon we reached a Styrofoam wall.

  “What’s beyond this?” I asked one of the students.

  “Headquarters for another section of the camp,” he said. We had reached the end of Kyiv-Mohyla territory. It was well organized, with a military-like structure.

  Marta and I were in her apartment when we heard the good news. She monitored TV broadcasts while I worked on Toronto assignments in the kitchen. She shouted, “Susan, they’ve done it. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of a repeat election.”

  “The square!” I yelled back. I had already pulled on my coat and boots.

  “Go ahead without me,” Marta said, scribbling furiously in her notebook, “I want to hear the rest of this newscast, then I’ll join you.”

  I emerged from her courtyard into a street packed with people. One man beamed and then shouted “There is a God!” People streamed into the square. I joined them, buoyed by all the energy and excitement.

  Somehow, Marta found me a short while later. We stood shoulder to shoulder as we were nearly the same height. We squeezed closer each minute as more people poured into the square. Soon no space remained and the adjacent streets were just as crammed. Yushchenko came on stage. He called the judges who issued the ruling “heroes.”