Free Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations by Norman Davies Page B

sixteenth century, sold in the slave market of Istanbul and raised to be the consort of the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent: a local girl lost but not forgotten. The date of birth that appears on her statue is questionable, but her story is authentic. Renamed Hurrem, ‘the Smiling One’, she bore the sultan six children; her son Selim succeeded to the Ottoman throne; and the resplendent Baths of Roxolana (1556) are still one of Istanbul’s prominent tourist attractions.
    The traffic on the road to Halich says much about contemporary Ukraine. Pan Volodymyr, who is reputed to be a bishop’s chauffeur, an aristo of his profession, drives a gleaming Renault Espace, which keeps company with similarly up-to-date Toyotas and Skodas and an occasional BMW, but most of the vehicles are twenty or thirty years older. In L’viv, we had ridden in a colossal Volga taxi, which thundered over the cobbles at perhaps 10 mph and was easily overtaken by a student jogger.
    Here, in the countryside, one sees why the road has to be 10 yards wide. Soviet designs, especially of trucks, combined gargantuanism with pre-war technology. Many such monsters are still crawling around like decrepit dinosaurs, indeed one of them is edging painfully up a steep slope and being imperceptibly overtaken by a dilapidated ex-German charabanc belching heavy black smoke. As Pan Volodymyr roars up behind, blasting his horn and aiming for the narrow gap between them, another huge truck comes into view at the top of the hill, broken down and stranded on the verge, which our cavalcade has somehow to pass. The roadway is wide enough for three vehicles, but not for four. I close my eyes in prayer.
    Ordinary Ukrainians do not have such problems. They usually walk, or ride between the villages on creaking bicycles; they drive a horse and cart, a fura , or they stand for hours at forlorn crossroads in the shade of derelict bus shelters, waiting for the lift that may or may not come. They push sacks of potatoes on handcarts, or pull wooden beams on improvised trailers, or, with no shop in sight for miles, they trudge homewards with bulging shopping bags. They try to flag us down, or to sell us a jar of forest berries, but Pan Volodymyr careers on. Episcopal drivers stop for no man.
    Like the roads, the Ukrainian countryside is only partly de-Sovietized. The collective farms which once turned the peasants into state serfs have been disbanded, but they have not been replaced by a viable system of private farming. ‘The young people are leaving for the cities in droves,’ one of our companions says sadly, ‘or are working abroad.’ One sees the results. An old woman, bent double, holds a single cow on a rope in the pasture. The ex-Soviet dairy stands abandoned nearby. A ragged lad watches a herd of grazing goats. A grandfather dangles his grandchild on the porch of their cabin. The plots and strips and orchards adjacent to the village are tilled and tended, full of fruit and vegetables, but the great open fields, untouched for years, have gone to seed, turned into oceans of bracken and meadow-wort. ‘No one knows who owns what,’ we are told; ‘they are waiting for legislation.’ One thinks: for legislation, like the bus which may or may not come.
    The town of Burshtyn is announced miles away by a soaring yellow cloud that rises into the summer sky. It is a prime relic of Soviet times, a whole community dependent on one colossal coal-burning power station in the heart of a rural region. The coal comes from the Donbass (the Donetsk Basin), almost 1,000 miles away. Three red-and-white chimneys, extraordinarily tall and covered in soot, belch out their pungent filth perhaps 900 feet above the ground. Acres of rusting gantries line the streets. The wrecks of abandoned boilers, trucks and railway equipment litter the townscape; a thick layer of ubiquitous grey powder stifles the weeds that grow between the sleepers and the rails that no longer lead anywhere. The