In late May, classes let go slowly, retreating, calming down like a storm. “Go to the blackboard. Failed. Bring your grade book”—the same phrases sounded over and over, devoid, though, of their destructive potential. “The entire curriculum has not been…
In general, we can divide Odessa literature into three parts – guest, immigrant and “residual“. The best writers and poets of Russian Empire and later of the Soviet Union – Pushkin, Gogol, Bunin, Mayakovski, visited Odessa… Odessa appropriated them in…
My grandpa, no doubt, didn’t allow me to mix with them. A small, rigid village community held up to shame anyone who smelled like smoke from their drunken fires. “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare to go to those…
“Look, no one visited the Sakhvoniv family this year…” “Well, no one’s around. Their son is sick, the daughter’s far away. The grave’s growing over with grass. Look, how tall the acacia got.” “Me and you, Halka, will also grow…
By saying “they do nothing” I do not mean volunteering, taking part in social movements or political activity such as creating new parties, effective trade unions or strikes – it is too much to dream about. Young people do nothing…
All right, but do you know there are opponents of visa-free regime in Ukraine? Is it the Russian Federation, the fifth column, border guards, who have to work more on the border crossings now or the European Union itself? Not…
Honestly, I have a vast experience of interacting with people like him. In my student days, I used to give alms to a young daring gypsy woman. In the end, she started to recognize me and shouted hello to me…
This message has been repeatedly delivered by the President in his speeches and comments, this belief has been broadcast by real and pretend experts on TV dozen of times, the Danish Foreign Minister, even approvingly remarked in his recent article…
She also had an incredible habit, according to the Soviet mindset: she never accepted cheap, run-of-the-mill stuff, rejecting it almost organically. I couldn’t care less about clothes back then; it was beyond me why she put a dark blue checkered…