Memories of Ukraine

This Substack newsletter from Blue Ear Books features occasional articles by authors of the books we publish, such as this one from Qaisar Shareef, author of When Tribesmen Came Calling, which includes an account of his time as Ukraine country head for Procter & Gamble Company from 1996 to 1998. This newsletter is free, but consider supporting our work with a modest paid subscription.

“As I am writing to you now, a siren is going off telling everybody to go down in the basement. It all still seems unreal and crazy,” wrote my friend and former colleague who now lives in Lviv with her family. She wrote this message on Friday, February 25.

Lviv is a beautiful city situated on the western edge of Ukraine, close to the border with Poland. Formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Lviv got absorbed by Stalin into the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Second World War. Until now, it had been considered one of the safest large cities in Ukraine, situated as it is far from the Russian border. I have been communicating with friends in Ukraine over the past few weeks. Former colleagues from the time in the late 1990s, just a few years after independence, when I served as the head of an American company in Kyiv, where I was based with my family.

What has transpired in Ukraine over the past few days is unfathomable. I keep seeing in my mind the faces of friends and colleagues and everyday citizens going about their lives on the streets of Kyiv. We had moved there in August of 1996, with no knowledge of the Ukrainian or Russian languages, armed only with a phrasebook as a guide. In the early days after our arrival, I remember going with my wife to the bazaars to buy fruits and vegetables. Not knowing numbers in the local language, we would put all our money on the table and allow the vendor to take whatever was the right amount. While we could not know for sure, we never had the sense of being cheated.

Ukrainians are among the most friendly and gentle people I have met. In 1996 the country was just emerging from their Soviet past. The economy, in fact the entire society, had been turned upside down. People were struggling to make ends meet. Yet, they were facing the challenges with fortitude and grace.

“Ukrainians have very little, but they will happily share with you whatever little they have,” I had read in a tour book before we left for Kyiv. We found this to be true of the character and spirit of the vast majority of Ukrainians.

We lived in the middle of a historical part of Kyiv. All around us were beautiful buildings from the 19th century and wide cobblestone boulevards and sidewalks, some built in the Soviet era. There were grand buildings everywhere that had been allowed to run down during 70-plus years of the Soviet regime.

Ukraine was once known as the breadbasket of Europe. Blessed with extremely fertile soil, they were surplus producers of wheat and corn. Kyiv historically had been home to some of the wealthiest agriculturalist families of the region. The grandeur of many buildings in Kyiv was testament to the wealth that had once resided in this city. The Kyiv Opera was a five-minute walk from our apartment. During our stay we would walk there and easily get tickets for a couple of dollars to watch ballet shows, performed by some of the most accomplished performers. Our children, seven and ten years old at the time, fell in love with the city. On weekends our ten-year-old son would go rollerblading with his friends to the city center. No need for an adult chaperone. When they were done, we would meet downtown at the McDonald’s above the Kreschatyk Metro station, one of the highest-grossing McDonald’s locations in the world at the time.

The nature of my work in consumer goods required me to visit all parts of the country to see the stores and bazaars, look at the state of our products’ distribution, and chat with storekeepers. Even as temperatures plummeted several degrees below freezing in the winters, operation of the open-air markets and our visits continued. One could only admire how rapidly Ukrainians were adapting to the new reality of a market economy that was thrust upon them.

As I watch the news today, the names of Ukrainian cities, and my memories of them, flash before my eyes: Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, Odessa, Sevastopol, Simferopol, Donyetsk, Lugansk, Zhitomir, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, and many more. To me these are not just names of cities from news bulletins or a map. I have been in all these places and more, and I have conducted business with locals there.

In 2006, several years after we had left Ukraine, when my wife and children and I were discussing where to spend our 25th wedding anniversary, the family unanimously voted for Kyiv. We went there for a few days and were thrilled to see how much nicer the city looked. Many of the old buildings had been painstakingly restored. The city center was bustling with activity, and coffee shops and restaurants were everywhere.

Yet, it is hard to ignore how the Ukrainian people have been let down by their politicians and leaders over the 25-plus years following independence. Even as ordinary citizens struggled with grace to make ends meet, their politicians got busy looting the country’s resources. Managers of Soviet-era factories and mines became owners of these national resources. Ordinary people were cheated out of their share.

Meddling by superpowers, from the East and the West, further undermined Ukraine’s ability to stand on its feet. The West dangled the promise of some undefined gains for Ukraine from aligning with them, while Russia continued to threaten consequences of moving out of Russian influence. Several elections were rigged to install governments favored by Russia and perhaps others. The people of Ukraine stood up and overthrew the puppet governments several times, only to install in their place leadership that went back to looting the country.

Now that Russian forces are sweeping across Ukraine, I can’t help but think about what could have been. This country of highly educated, talented, and hardworking people could have been a positive example to all of Europe, perhaps the world.

“There is no reason we cannot become like a United States in Central Europe,” a Ukrainian colleague had said to me on a road trip across the country back in 1998. Yes, it could have been. We can now think back to all the elements that would have had to come together to make this a reality. As I watch in horror, civilians fleeing for their lives with young children in tow, vowing to protect their families, my heart weeps for the wonderful, innocent people of this Ukraine. This wasn’t preordained. It could have turned out a lot, lot better. And maybe still will, but not before the lives of generations are set back.

This Substack newsletter from Blue Ear Books features occasional articles by authors of the books we publish, such as this one from Qaisar Shareef, author of When Tribesmen Came Calling, which includes an account of his time as Ukraine country head for Procter & Gamble Company from 1996 to 1998. This newsletter is free, but consider supporting our work with a modest paid subscription.