Prioleau Alexander: The Poverty Of Ukraine’s Socialism

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Let me start by saying I’m a fan of Tucker Carlson. One of the things I enjoy about his reporting approach is that he is like Elon Musk, minus $60 billion dollars. Neither of them cares what you or I think — and sometimes say very controversial things. I may disagree, but it forces me to think through the issue, and figure out why I disagree.

That’s something grown-ups do. Critical thinking … not just a total absorption of the firehouse of infectious diarrhea blasted forth by Whoopie Goldberg.  

That said, Tucker recently fell for the same bullshit American socialists do: He went shopping in a Moscow grocery store and rode the Moscow subway, and was “shocked” by the nice, clean, orderly things he saw.  When I was younger and naïve, I might have fallen for the same thing. After all, Moscow must be like rest of the nation, right? But I, unlike Tucker and those on the left weeping for socialism, have seen the underbelly of this particular on hell on earth. Not the “long lines and cheap products” underbelly, but the real thing.

Left, right, or center, if you haven’t walked in the places I have walked, don’t bother remarking. Your “opinion” doesn’t matter. You might as well be offering your opinion on how it felt like to walk on the moon.

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I’ve been to Ukraine three times on what Christians call “short-term mission trips.” Our trips entailed two primary teams: First was a team to preach the Gospel and teach about “healing prayer” to those interested … and the second team went out into the villages to deliver food to the poorest of the poor based on direction provided by a village leader. No one was asked to profess a belief in Jesus in order to receive the food; yes, we offered them the chance to ask questions, but it was simply a mission of mercy.

We were headquartered out of the city of Zertoma, and our host families were lovely, kind, and (thank God) entirely unaware of what a shit hole their city was (is). Zertoma is a classic Soviet Union city, where everything was designed and built by idiots — surely the most corrupt and connected “bidders.” The infrastructure is second world at best. The buildings are all drab, crumbling, and pathetic. Of course, none of the elevators worked, so some lucky souls got to live in a 20-story walk-up.

The two-lane highway from the Kiev airport to Zertoma is such a disaster, drivers created their own third lane… and drive in the dirt outside the left lane shoulder, going 60 mph. The roads in Zertoma are like the roads in ghettos in the United States, where residents can’t give enough money to politicians to get them to care. Potholes big enough to not only blow a tire but rip an axle off a car are common. Everything sucks.

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Our hosts were oblivious. Yes, they know massive Kiev is an urban paradise, but they also know it is run by a mafia so brutal it scares other organized crime syndicates in America. Kiev isn’t “kinda-sorta” run by the mafia like Little Italy in NYC — it’s run-run by them. The mafia paid for the improvements to the Kiev airport so they could better move their products in and out of the country. Many of the major streets in Kiev have Parisian sidewalks 50-feet wide, and the mafia thugs simply park their Beemers on the sidewalk, outside the restaurant they’re patronizing.

The police do nothing, of course, because writing a ticket could get you dead. A drive through Kiev will expose you to dozens of the compounds owned by these psychopaths, with guards holding automatic Uzis standing in the street. Imagine seeing that in the upper west side of Manhattan: Former Navy Seals on the sidewalk, guarding gated homes.

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Although I am not what one would call a “charismatic” Christian, I can tell you there is a palpable feel of Soviet-era evil in the air. If you are spiritual in any way, you’ll feel it if you go there.

So, back to our mission work. As I said, I was part of the “feed the poor” team in the impoverished villages team. How poor? We gave the sugar, flour, pasta, salt, cucumbers, onions, and bread – and some of the recipients wept with gratitude.

The place where we bought the food was at an outdoor market, which sold items in bulk; it doesn’t make sense to buy 60 three-pound bags of flour at the grocery store. The market was interesting — you’d never see anything like it in America, as flies sat munching and defecating on the raw meat — but it seemed to be a place where Americans might go for supplies if their area was leveled by a hurricane (minus the fly-covered meat, of course).

My initial thought was, “So this is Ukrainian poverty.” 

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“You probably think you’ve seen cruel poverty before, but you have not…”

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After my first hour in the villages, though, I was thinking, “that wasn’t povert – that was the urban middle-class.”

You probably think you’ve seen cruel poverty before, but you have not. The kind of poverty found in these villages is retched … they live in hovels, in a region that drops to minus-20 degrees in the winter. Filth covered 80-year-old men and women using only a hoe work the small plot of land behind their “home,” growing potatoes and a few vegetables. The roads running through these villages are like the mud-filled bogs that served as American roads in the Wild West. Driving a car on them is impossible.

You don’t see any donated clothes, goods or services like you see so frequently in nations where black and brown people reside. The men’s trousers have holes, because they’ve been wearing them for years. The stereotyped “cheerful babushkas” are anything but cheerful; 70-years devoid of medical care has them stooped and in pain, struggling to walk with a cane, hoping they can make to a bench where they can sit and pray for death.

Pray for death? Yes, that was a common prayer request.

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The dentist who accompanied us offered a magical thing called Novocain, so residents waited for hours to see this no-pain dentist from America. The mouths they worked on were wracked with dental disease, and there simply wasn’t time to save any of the rotted and infected teeth—they had to be pulled. Every tooth extracted came with a carefully formed pocket of infected pus attached to the tooth’s rotten roots — a thing dentist’s call a “hickie.”

Many villagers invited us inside their homes — most had never seen an American, and wanted to spend at least a couple minutes talking to these novel creatures via our interpreters. In the homes of most elderly, the temperature is stifling — older folks become sensitive to the cold, and keep the place winterized year-round. In many cases, the smell was overwhelming — showers are rare, and the smell of body order and urine was overwhelming to our spoiled American noses. 

We sat with one older lady while she ate her lunch — pickled cucumbers, onions and radishes. Alcoholism among the men was so common, there was simply no stigma attached to it. When asked if they were addicted to vodka, men would simply reply, “Dah, dah.” There were very few children in the villages, as young parents did whatever it took to get their family into the city — any city, no matter how crappy.

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“Through tears, they would confess that decades earlier they gave information to the KGB about their neighbors in exchange for gas heat…”

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My wife, who was assisting the dentist, asked one afternoon if she could take a break and join us making deliveries to the homes. Given what she’d seen in the past few days, I didn’t object. I now know I should have, because during her experience in the first home, she slipped out quietly … and I found her in our van, crying.

From time to time I attended the prayer sessions, and the system was quite ingenious. Each attendee was offered a sheet of paper, which had a human body accompanied by arrows pointing to various areas that might be painful — knees, elbows, feet, etc. — with words written in both English and Ukrainian. Some ladies circled all of them.

All ladies circled “abortion” and “need for forgiveness.”  

Why they felt they needed forgiveness was the exact same, to a woman: Through tears, they would confess that decades earlier they gave information to the KGB about their neighbors, in exchange for gas heat being attached to their home.

What never occurred to them was that every home in the village had gas heat … which meant every other mother had done the same. In a place where winters reach 20-below, gas heat meant better odds of survival.

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“These very real humans in Ukraine and Russia’s villages despair because they have nothing…”

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There is nowhere in America entrenched in this level of poverty. Our homeless have it better than most Ukranians.

There is, however, the same level of despair in many parts of America, but that’s because we so often see the things we want, but don’t have. We covet others’ money and grown-up toys — nice cars, boats, vacations, dining at nice restaurants … the list goes on. In short, our despair is grounded in a lack of fun stuff, and the hours we’re required to work to attain the basics.

These very real humans in Ukraine and Russia’s villages despair because they have nothing … not even the basics.

It would be quite easy to “make it” in America if you worked, literally, from sun-up to sundown, ate homemade pickles as a meal, owned two pairs of pants and two shirts, and a few 20-year-old wool layers to ward off the cold. Look at your monthly budget, then eliminate restaurants, cable TV, cell phone, internet, evenings out, all insurance, car payments and repairs, air-conditioning, appliances, medical care, decorating, computer/printer, new clothing/shoes, Starbucks, vacations, and all retirement savings.

That’s real socialism. 

Of course, not for the people of Kiev … or Moscow … the economy is always good where they make the laws and print the money. I’ve been to Kiev, but I can tell you it’s far more beautiful than any city in America. Think Rockefeller Center at Christmas, covering all five boroughs.

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And socialism does keep a city clean and fairly crime free. Of course that’s because the police can beat you unconscious for littering, and petty criminals can be murdered by the mafia for interfering with their business. Oh, and forget about any sort of “alternative paper” criticizing the powers that be. Sure, you can write about “City Hall,” but not the Mafia running the show.

That gets you dead.

The socialism in Russia and Ukraine is real … and Scandinavian “socialism” isn’t socialism. It isn’t even socialism light. In fact, Scandinavian socialism might be closer to what America once was than what America is now.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to a Swede …

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

Prioleau Alexander is a freelance writer, focusing mostly on politics and non-fiction humor. He is the author of four books: ‘You Want Fries With That?,’ ‘Dispatches Along the Way,’ ‘Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?‘ and ‘They Don’t Call It The Submission Process For Nothing.’ 

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