In Europe

war, that survived Stalin, that rebuilt a flattened Kiev. And these are the same people who must survive today on a pension of twenty euros a months.
    Most of the older people don't understand the society in which they suddenly find themselves, and do not want to understand. They are like passengers who get off the train a few stops too late, look about in surprise, and decide that this is not where they want to be. Close to the war memorial – a hundred-metre-tall woman nicknamed ‘The Bitch’ – an old colonel with a megaphone spews his rage all over the crowd: ‘No one pays any attention to the working people any more!’ he shouts. ‘This country is full of bandits and robbers! Shame on this government! We have only one mother country: the good old Soviet Union! The Ukraine is only our stepmother! We are being exploited by bandits! The Germans have invaded the country again with their money and their decadence! We have been sold out!’ There are ten people standing around him.
    My interpreter calmly translates the man's tirade. Her name is IrinaTrantina, a brisk fifty-year-old, daughter of a Soviet general. She doesn't find it too hard to imagine the old veterans’ rage. ‘This is the generation that builtmodern Kiev up from the rubble the Germans had left behind. They worked their fingers to the bone all their lives, and now the Germans come back here, as tourists and investors, rich and powerful, while they …’
    I had visited Kiev in 1997, and I tell Irina that I can see that the inner city has been fixed up a lot in the last two years. Many of the houses have their old colour back, soft yellow and blue pastels, and the domes of the churches and cloisters sparkle in the sun again. All thanks to the dollars, guilders and Deutschmarks.
    ‘But that's only the centre of town. All those Western banks, all the advertising you see, it's not anything substantial, it remains on the surface of the economy. What goes on beneath – the corruption, the salaries that can't be paid for months at a time, the official ninety per cent tax on profits that makes all legitimate business activities impossible – those are the things that actually determine the way we live. What you Westerners see is a shop window. Our country is just like a family: the real problems are never aired outside the home.’
    And what about freedom, the new freedom?
    Irina laughs. ‘We used to be afraid to talk, but we talked anyway. And things happened. Now we can talk as much as we like, but we never see any results.’ She tells me about her mother, the general's widow. She died not too long ago, at the age of ninety-five. Just before she died, she asked Irina to buy her a kilo of candy, the kind she always kept in the house. ‘Wouldn't it be better to start with a hundred grams?’ her daughter asked. ‘A kilo of candy, that costs more than half your monthly pension.’ ‘You're trying to trick me!’ her mother had shouted. She died in total confusion.
    Irina and I head out to the Women's Ravine. It lies at the foot of Kiev's broadcasting centre. I had imagined it in many different ways, but not that it would it be a pleasant, normal park in which to take a walk. Families are picnicking there, young mothers are teaching their children to walk. Beside the park is a ravine more than two kilometres long and fifty metres deep. In that ravine, which the Russians call Babi Yar, something close to 100,000 people were murdered: Jews, Gypsies, partisans, prisoners of war, up to and including the entire staff of the
Nova Ukrainski Slovo
daily. The Germans later dug up most of the bodies and burnedthem, but the park workers here still regularly stumble upon bones, almost every time they plant a shrub. Sometimes the skeletons are bound together with barbed wire, which is how some of the victims were forced to march to the place of execution.
    On 29–30 September, 1941, just after Kiev was taken, the city's 33,771 Jews – the number was carefully noted – received orders to prepare for transport to Palestine. They were to bring money, valuables and warm clothing with them. After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin had banned all criticism of Germany, and few or no reports about the persecution of the Jews had reached the Soviet Union. And so almost all the Jewish families of Kiev walked to the edge of town, a colourful crowd of people, chatting quietly, convinced they were leaving for the Promised Land. Later, the same spot was used to