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1 All Aboard the “Titanic Ukraina” Kyiv, the Heart of Ukraine To understand the lives of women like Ivana, Svetlana, Vira, and Sofiia, we first need to become familiar with the settings in which they lived and worked. Kyiv is Ukraine’s capital city of around 2.6 million situated on both banks of the Dnipro River, Ukraine’s largest waterway. Kyiv is the political and commercial heart of Ukraine and by far the largest city. Much of the world came to know Kyiv through compelling images of the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, where up to a million protestors weathered the winter cold for seventeen days to challenge election fraud during the 2004 presidential elections. Media coverage of the Orange Revolution captured the sea of orange-clad and beribboned protestors, and the “tent city” where some protestors camped out, as well as the strange amalgam of built structures that make Kyiv a city of contrasts: ancient monasteries and churches, low-slung pre-Soviet buildings (former private homes of merchants and other local elites), imposing Stalinist structures, towering high-rise cookie-cutter apartment buildings, and the maze of statues, monuments, fountains, and other structures that now litter Independence Square. Revolution or not, Independence Square (formerly Lenin Square) is always bustling with people. Located in the heart of the city center, the square is a hub for shopping, access to services such as Kyiv’s main post office, and tourism . The square is bisected by Khreshchatyk, the wide street that has been Kyiv’s main downtown thoroughfare for the last hundred years. Most of the street was destroyed during the Nazi occupation of Kyiv in World War II—only one block survived—but it was rebuilt by the city’s residents. One side of the square is flanked by five tall Stalinist buildings, former apartment buildings and sites of government that now also sport stores, restaurants, and hotels, and are bedecked with neon advertisements for beer, banks, and construction companies. Narrow streets snake past each of these buildings, ascending up a steep hill to connect the Maidan with an equally grand venue—Sofiia Square, which boasts the ancient St. Sofiia’s Cathedral at one end and the newly reconstructed St. Michael’s monastery at the other. A beautiful yellow two-story prerevolutionary building stretches along the square. One of my friends lived in a communal apartment here in 1995 when I first visited Kyiv, but a few years later all the residents had been “bought out.” Developers offered families private apartments (and more square meters) in other parts of the city, and the communal apartments were turned into offices and stores. In the middle of Sofiia Square stands a bronze monument (completed in 1888 by Mikhail All Aboard the “Titanic Ukraina” 31 Mikeshin) to Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi, who led the Zaporozhian Sich (Cossacks ) in the 1648 Ukrainian uprising against the Poles, and through the 1654 Pereiaslav Agreement, accepted the Muscovite tsar’s overlordship of Ukraine. The Hetman’s mace in his hand still points toward Moscow. (Khmel’nyts’kyi’s legacy is debated by Ukrainians; some see him as a great liberator who roused Ukrainians to national statehood, whereas others mourn Muscovy’s subsequent domination of Ukrainian lands.) Nearby is a monument to the saints of ancient Rus’—Saints Cyril and Methodius (inventors of the Cyrillic alphabet) and Andrew the Apostle flank Olha, the first Christian ruler of Rus’. Turning left from the square onto a small side street, one passes several foreign embassies behind dark-paned security booths, as well as a state-run newspaper stand. After navigating a busy crosswalk, the street widens slightly and accommodates outdoor cafes with small umbrella-covered tables, where city dwellers and visitors to the city drink beer, soda, and vodka with snacks such as nuts, chips, and open-faced sandwiches. Further along the cobblestone street, which winds and descends down a steep hill, are street vendors selling original artwork, jewelry, handmade souvenirs (wooden spoons, embroidered Ukrainian blouses and towels, painted nesting dolls), Soviet watches and coins, propaganda posters, Che Guevara T-shirts, and many other treasures. This is Andriyivskyi uzviz (Andrew’s descent), familiar to tourists as the quaint “historical street” leading down to Kyiv’s Podil district, one of Kyiv’s oldest neighborhoods. Located on the banks of the Dnipro river, the Podil was the birthplace of industry and trade in the city. In times past, Andriyivskyi uzviz was a creative center of Kyiv, and many famous writers and other cultural...

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