The quarantine restrictions on the work of public transport could not but affect the choice of routes. Hiking in rural areas, where crowds are not to be seen but a walk through unfamiliar places promises to be instructive, was so far not prohibited. The choice fell on the settlements of the Lysivka rural council of the Pokrovsk district in the Donetsk region.
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| Lysivka, Pokrovsk district, Donetsk region. Lysivka rural council |
The Lysivka rural council includes 10 small villages. Some, such as Novoukrainka and Novyi Trud with 1-2 tiny streets, can be called hamlets. There are not even a hundred residents in these two villages. The villages are laid out in a wedge and pass in a chain from one into the next. The proximity to the mining towns is reflected in the rural way of life; many residents work at coal enterprises. The rural council sits in Lysivka, founded by Mennonite Germans in 1885.
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| Lysivka rural council |
The agricultural fields on the territory of the rural council are ploughed and sown.
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| Lysivka rural council. Agricultural fields |
There are no empty plots; among the arable lands, parks of agricultural machinery have been created.
A grain-threshing floor of the Soviet period is arranged like this: in the very top booth a vertical belt elevator is installed, and the grain passes from top to bottom through cleaning drums.
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| Lysivka. Grain-threshing floor |
In Lysivka there are 3 parallel streets — Olimpiiska (nothing sporting was found on it), Horkoho (the stormy petrel of the revolution was never in these parts) and the former Lenin Street, renamed to the trivial Tsentralna.
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| Lysivka. Olimpiiska Street |
The main thoroughfare, more than 4 kilometres long, stretches to the M-04 highway.
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| Lysivka. Tsentralna Street |
On the main street there are shops, administrative buildings, a church. Solar-powered lamps serve as decoration.
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| Lysivka. Pokrovsk district. Tsentralna Street. Shops |
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| Lysivka. Tsentralna Street. Solar-powered lamps |
The two-storey school was built in 1974. Children from all the surrounding villages study there. The community's participation in self-government competitions organised by the European Union and the UN made it possible to renovate the school building.
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| Lysivka. Tsentralna Street. School |
The schoolyard is equipped with sports machines and decorated with ornamental objects.
By the school entrance a granite monument to Taras Shevchenko has been erected, made in Zhytomyr. Fir branches leaning over the Kobzar make it hard to examine the bust of the national poet.
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| Lysivka. Tsentralna Street. Monument to T. H. Shevchenko |
The same thickets conceal the monument to the liberator soldiers. The bouquets of flowers, laid back on the Day of the Liberation of Donbas on 8 September last year, turned to dust after 7 months, but there is no one to clear them away.
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| Lysivka. Tsentralna Street. War memorial |
The rubbish that has accumulated behind the memorial, and the baskets of artificial flowers scattered by the wind, are noticed by no one, even though it is only 30 metres to the rural administration, and the area around it is kept tidy.
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| Lysivka. Tsentralna Street. War memorial |
The kindergarten is housed in a building from the 1960s. Playgrounds have been created on the grounds, and used tyres have been employed as decoration.
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| Lysivka. Tsentralna Street. Kindergarten |
A sports and play complex has been installed near the centre of culture and leisure.
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| Lysivka. Tsentralna Street. Centre of culture and leisure |
The pediment of the building is decorated with a bas-relief on the theme of art. The lira, an ancient plucked instrument, is framed by ears of grain and a floral garland.
It was not possible to learn anything about cultural leisure in Lysivka; lengthy repair works are under way in the former house of culture. To my question about what events, apart from elections, are held in the village cultural hub, the locals waved a hand at it and sadly recalled the events of days long gone.
In Lysivka there is no typical place of worship. Earlier the faithful would take the holy images and gather in the centre of the village. A few years ago a small house was bought at the end of Tsentralna Street, and the Saint Elijah church was set up in it.
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| Lysivka. Tsentralna Street. Saint Elijah church |
Lysivka is considered a place of pilgrimage for anglers. On the small river Solonyi, a tributary of the Solona which flows into the Vovcha, ponds have been created and fish are bred there. The disappearance of the crucian carp after the pike-perch, a predator, was released somewhat depresses the fishing enthusiasts.
But far more depressing are the spontaneous dumps on the bank of the pond, by the cemetery, in the ravines.
On the northern side of Lysivka lies the village of Sukhyi Yar.
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| Sukhyi Yar. The ravine that gave the village its name |
The toponym probably comes from the ravine that separates the villages. At the bottom of the picturesque gully a thin ribbon of the little river Solonyi barely breaks through.
The landscaped slopes of the gullies, the hills and the reeds in the floodplain of the rivers have turned black after the mad sorties of pyromaniacs. Small animals, birds' nests and the grass cover burn up in the fire.
The ravine that gave the settlement its name is being actively filled with rubbish.
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| Sukhyi Yar. Pokrovsk district. Spontaneous rubbish dump |
In Sukhyi Yar there are only 2 streets, laid out at a right angle.
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| Sukhyi Yar. Kalynova Street |
Set up at the crossroads, a harman — a stone gear with a hole in the middle, with which the peasants threshed grain — both restricts traffic and serves as a flower bed at the same time.
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| Sukhyi Yar. Kalynova Street. Harman |
Alas, on the street with the beautiful name Kalynova there are many abandoned and ruined houses.
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| Sukhyi Yar. Kalynova Street. Abandoned houses |
Neither a shop nor a playground was found in the village.
On the south-western side, the small village of Dachenske adjoins Lysivka. Its only street, Myru, runs up against the international M-04 highway. From September 1941 to 1943 there was a concentration camp in the village, located in the village school. It covered an area of 3 hectares, was fenced with barbed wire and kept under guard. The death toll in the camp reached 4 thousand people. In memory of the perished prisoners, a memorial has been erected on the mass grave at the expense of the rural council.
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| Dachenske. Pokrovsk district. Memorial sign to the concentration-camp prisoners |
On the black stele nothing is said about the dead or the concentration camp.
Two local women complicated the situation even further, telling me that Vlasovites are buried in the grave!
Among the fields near the memorial sign a cross has been erected to the victims of the Holodomor of 1933. The mass death of Ukrainians who lived and worked on the most fertile lands was caused by an artificial famine organised by the Kremlin government.
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| Dachenske. Memorial cross to the victims of the Holodomor |
In Dachenske, on a small pond in the bed of the Solonyi river, a rest area with gazebos, a beach and a footbridge has been created.
From Dachenske we head north along the M-04 highway to Chunyshyne. On the western side lies one of the oldest settlements of the Pokrovsk district — the village of Zelene, on whose territory the first mines were opened at the end of the 19th century. Chunyshyne has about 100 residents. Liutneva Street is marked on the sign as Fevralska. There is no shop in the village, but there is an abandoned railway station.
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| Chunyshyne. The abandoned station building of the closed railway station |
The station, built in 1915 in the Neo-Romanesque style, has been looted and is falling into ruin from mismanagement and neglect. The local historians Pavlo Belytskyi and Serhii Lukavenko proposed opening a museum in the station building, but the authorities and departments have no time for history and the preservation of national heritage.
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| Chunyshyne. The abandoned station building of the closed railway station |
With the natural heritage it is the same story as across the whole territory of the Lysivka rural council: spontaneous rubbish dumps and a black burnt patch in the gully.
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| Chunyshyne. Burnt patch in the gully and a rubbish dump |
More about Chunyshyne
here.
Novopavlivka lies closest of all to the district centre. Pokrovsk is a stone's throw away, just 1 kilometre. Two streets are named very beautifully — Yabluneva and Vynohradna, while the third, the newest, with a dozen and a half houses, decided to stand out and was named Festyvalna.
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| Novopavlivka. Lysivka rural council. Yabluneva Street |
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| Novopavlivka. Lysivka rural council. Vynohradna Street |
In the village there are 2 shops, a paramedic station, broken asphalt and the neglected building of the old school, and later a club.
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| Novopavlivka. Lysivka rural council. Yabluneva Street. Shop |
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| Novopavlivka. Lysivka rural council. Yabluneva Street. Paramedic station |
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| Novopavlivka. Yabluneva Street. Former school. Later — a club |
In the rubbish question the people of Novopavlivka are no different from their neighbours.
The banks of the Solonenkyi stream, which barely breaks through the reeds and the waste products of the villagers, are littered with junk. To the question of what the watercourse is called, the local women answered: "It's called nothing at all!".
In the cemetery there is a military burial from 1943. On the renewed monument the standard phrase "Eternal memory to the heroes" is written, and the names and ranks of the fallen are not given. A formal approach to eternal memory.
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| Novopavlivka. Lysivka rural council. War memorial |
In my notes I always try to note the hospitality of our people, the friendliness, the courtesy of the people I have met, chance passers-by or fellow travellers. In all the regions where I have happened to be, I have always come across kind people who were glad to show me their town or village and tell me about it. In all the places of my travels people gave me directions, gave me lifts, accompanied me, invited me as a guest.
During a walk around Lysivka an incident occurred that left an unpleasant impression of my stay in the village. As I was photographing the centre of culture and leisure, a woman approached me with a decisive step and, without greeting me or naming herself, in an unkind, commanding tone demanded that I explain what this would be and where. The unfriendly intonations simply bewildered me; nowhere and never had anyone spoken to me in such a voice. I asked the woman to introduce herself. The village head, Yuliia Volodymyrivna Kabanets, was interested in why I was taking photographs and what I intended to write. The representative of the authorities voiced the phrase several times: "I must know." Strange — had they never seen a person with a camera in Lysivka, and is it forbidden to take pictures in public places in the village? Are people persecuted for photography here? Is there something in the village that one would not want brought before the public, like dirty linen from the house? I explained the purpose of my visit: I take no interest in any secrets, in broad daylight I walk along Tsentralna Street, I do not hide. My mood was spoiled.
Probably the head would do better to ask her voters what she owes them and to recall her election promises.
The people of Donbas are distinguished by a particular friendliness and hospitality; here they are always glad of visitors. Lysivka is an exception. The unpleasant aftertaste of the encounter with the person in power was intensified by the church. I did not even step behind the fence; I photographed the church from the street. Suddenly a woman ran out of the house across the road and, shouting, swooped down on me. All over the world millions of people photograph billions of objects and report to no one, yet in Lysivka in broad daylight they attack a person with a camera. I politely asked the defender of Lysivka's interests who she might be — the elder, an administrator, a priest — and to whom the church belongs? To the people? To the community? Why can it not be photographed? Is it illegal? Is there something unlawful there? The woman calmed down and, in her own justification, said some nonsense.
Undoubtedly, savagery, ignorance and lack of culture lead to malice and suspicion. People can tell nothing about the military burial, cannot clear the withered bouquets from the monument, do not know the history of the village or the toponyms, and leave mountains of rubbish to their descendants. It is a pity that the authorities and the residents of Lysivka and the rural council do not see that in all the tree belts and gullies near the 10 villages of the Lysivka rural council, every 10-20 metres, a dirty legacy has been left by these same residents, because plastic decomposes over 100-500 years, and glass — up to 1,000 years.
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