Independent Ukraine | Look How Far It Has Come
Dispatch From Kyiv
At the Ukrainian equivalent of Oxford Circus, the last remaining Lenin – a tall statue in red marble – was playing to perfection the role of foreman.
With one hand clutching a lapel and the other resting on his hip, Lenin couldn’t have looked happier watching over the labours of Kyiv’s assembled builders. All day long they dug, shoved and welded. They tore the place apart and gradually put it back together again, with attention to detail that included repainting every municipal rubbish bin.
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24 Feb 2022.
Today, Vladimir Putin sent Russian tanks into Ukraine. I think it's fair to say that Ukraine had become much more democratic - and safer - in the years since Wallpaper magazine published the following story (words by me) in November 2001.
(Hi, I'm John-Paul Flintoff. This is my ::Everyday Writing:: newsletter.)
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Meanwhile, at the other end of vulitsya Kreshchatyk (think Fifth Avenue), they did the same to the even bigger territory of Independence Square, maydan Nezalezhnosti.
Major building work is not exactly new in Kyiv. In 1943, when the Red Army recaptured the city after two years of occupation by the Nazis, four out of ten buildings had been destroyed and more than 80 per cent of residents were homeless. Most of the rebuilding, then, went into drably efficient housing blocks in the suburbs, but Kyiv’s builders also tackled Kreshchatyk – widening it to accommodate May Day parades – and restored landmarks such as the neoclassical university building by Shevchenko Park.
The latest project [in 2001] was to prepare the city for celebrations marking ten years of Ukrainian independence. With less than a week to go, they were behind schedule, so more and more workers were drafted in – including a contingent in military uniform – and somebody, somewhere took the decision that they must work through the night.
That’s how, driving through the city shortly before 4am, I came to witness the ceremonial lowering into place of Kyiv’s most hotly anticipated landmark. There she was, the new statue of independent Ukraine, dressed in green folk dress, wobbling gently on to her 62-metre column, arms raised in triumph.
Next morning, I went back to photograph her.
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But what did she have to celebrate? Independence had seemed like such a good idea. Geography, for once, had played in Ukraine’s favour, bestowing upon it a substantial quantity of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons and a portion of the Black Sea fleet.
All of a sudden, Ukraine found itself the largest country located entirely in Europe. Many in the western part of the country entertained hopes of joining the European Union and Nato. But others, especially in the east, saw their future with Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States...
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You can read the rest of this story, including how I was taken into custody very briefly, on my website:
https://flintoff.org/gangsterville
Interlude: Light relief from global affairs, I hope.
This is a picture of my schnauzer Peanut, having her portrait done. If you think she was a patient sitter: think again. She kept nudging me with her nose, and tapping with her foot, to tickle her. She also kept biting my pen. But I don't mean to complain.
What Else Has Changed In 21 Years?
I'm doing some research about journalism right now - for another potential book project - and looking back on my story from Ukraine got me thinking about how much has changed for journalists since I wrote it.
I was sent to Kyiv by Wallpaper* magazine (the asterisk is part of the magazine's title, and serves no purpose except to snag your attention). I was given flights and several days in a smart hotel, paid by the magazine. I took taxis, to be reimbursed later. I ate out (obviously, since I wasn't at home).
And for the 3,000 word story I was paid... honestly, I don't remember. I was going to say £2,000, but I may be wrong. It could have been more, or less - even significantly more or less. But £2,000 is probably close.
Taking account of inflation, we might hope that a person writing a similar story today would be paid £3,080.
Not so. According to London Freelance, few journalists get even half as much as my original fee. And I know from personal experience that rates have halved - at best.
When I was on contract to The Sunday Times, I was paid very well indeed for each magazine story I wrote: £4,000. I was very lucky. But the contract ended, time passed, and the magazine got thinner (in every way). Then one day I was asked to write a feature for the same Sunday Times magazine, and told that ("because it's you") I would be paid an unusually large fee: £2,000.
I said, No, thank you. The story wasn't that interesting anyway, and I couldn't bring myself to accept just half of what I still thought of as "my rate". (Hah!)
It was around about that time that I realised I could no longer make a living as (only) a journalist any more. I know others have come to similar conclusions. But this isn't about me, or any other individual. It's about the industry as a whole.
If you pay half as much as you paid before, for a job that involves no less work than it did before - well, you will either drive your workers into poverty, or else they will produce work of considerably inferior quality. Or both.
What this means in practice, for the freelance journalist, is an increasing reliance on reporting by Zoom, rather than in person. Travel takes time, and it's expensive. If you stay home to work, you may be able to fit in another story too, doubling your income in the time available.
Readers may not always and immediately notice a difference. But I think that, taken in aggregate, over time, readers sense that something has been lost.
I'm not exactly talking about objectivity. I've never believed that journalists are objective. We're as opinionated as anybody else, and as susceptible to believing all kinds of nonsense. Plus, by choosing to write for a particular publication, we necessarily find a way to accommodate the views of our paymaster.
But years of experience tells me that by going out and meeting people - nice people, horrible people, clueless people and people who know everything - we can piece together stories and opinions more valuable than the thin stuff that circulates in our social media echo-chambers.
We may not ever know the objective truth, but we form a much better sense of what is honest.
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In May, it will be ten years since I published a book called How To Change The World.
If I had to summarise that book - and I've done so many times - I would say that there are three parts:
Draw attention to an issue.
Stop doing or contributing to the bad things.
Create something better.
In reverse order: the third step, creating something better, is essentially the business of politicians, entrepreneurs and artists. The second, stopping bad things, is (at least initially) the work of campaign groups. The first, drawing attention to an issue, is the business of journalists, whether professional or amateur.
That's what we do: draw attention to things. We make the familiar interesting, and the exotic comprehensible.
Historically, our greatest problem was finding information. Today, it's capturing people's attention - being read, seen or heard above the general cacophony.
And one way to do that, I think, is to embrace a very small audience.
The Famous Envelope "Magazine"
In the last email, I told you about an experiment. I'm creating a physical "magazine" that will be published in just three issues, for distribution among a teeny tiny readership.
I put the word "magazine" in inverted commas because it's the most stripped-down aggregation of content I could imagine: separate parts loosely despatched in a shared envelope.
Three other authors are contributing to this microscopic publishing phenomenon. Nobody is being paid. The enterprise will make me zero quid. In fact, I'll make a loss. But it's a thrilling adventure all the same, because it's a chance for me to publish what I want to publish. I hope that readers will enjoy the pieces as much as I do.
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Till next time.
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PS. I was going to make a big song and dance about the new way my website works, now that the brilliant Julian R., has whooshed it up, enabling me to do picture galleries and so on. I'm really chuffed about it. This morning I added tons of photos of Kyiv, taken on my 2001 trip, to the story on my site. I hope you might find time to look at them, and understand why I'm so pleased about Julian's work.