A Bit about the History of Kaharlyk

Today, Saturday, December 5th, our cluster took a tour of the museum in our little town, Kaharlyk. The first weekend I arrived in Kaharlyk my host mother promised we would see it at some point, and this was something I looked forward to. I pass this building on my walk into the center of town everyday. It is not, and has never seemed, like much to look at. The building in the museum is a very nondescript and unassuming . . . and, to be honest, I did not expect much from this museum in the small town an hour or so outside of Kyiv.
We, or at least two of us, but I assume all, were shocked when we saw the museum, and its contents. None of us had expected anything out of the ordinary, just some minor artifacts, of important thigs in town history . . . More than answering questions, the museum showed us where Kaharlyk stood in the sense of world history . . . and opened up many more questions.
In terms of the building: In the mid-1700s (or so, I am doing this by memory, so don't get all uppity if the date is off) Catherine the Great decided she would take a vacation on the Black Sea in Crimea. To get there, she would travel down the Dnipro. One of her stops along the way was Kaharlyk. The building in which the museum now resides was used as a rest house for the servants of Catherine on their way down to Crimea. She brought some crazy number with here around one thousand, and three thousand . . . something absurd. The building after this was used as a post office, a guard house, a rest house, and a Jewish synagogue. I'm sure there are other roles that I have failed to remember, but that's what I can recall.
We started in the small foyer of the museum. This foyer was decorated with beautiful bucolic scenes; the natural beauty of rural Ukraine. These paintings were of both pastures, and the river front (the river is the Dnipro, or Dnierper). Under these painints were birds preserved by taxidermy. There were two sections, one for birds by the river, other for birds of the fields. These were very impressive, and included ducks, a sea-gull, a plethora of small birds, and one of the largest crows I have ever seen. It was massive to the point I cannot describe. What was more impressive about these birds, is that they truly were gathered within the region, by two young boys from the town. In this foyer, there was also two figures, and typical "babusiya" and "dideuce" dressed in traditional Ukrainian designs. They were very impressive as well. . . and had typical tools of the trade, a spinning wheel, and a tool for gathering and beating wheat.
The next scene was a map of our park . . . It was impressive to see the smaller version of it, with the pond mapped out, the hills, the bridge (which we will come back to), and the monuments all clearly defined. We also found out, that right where some of the main monuments stand now there was once a beautiful mansion. This mansion was destroyed by the Germans during World War II. The park was designed to show everything of natural beauty in the world. There was water, for the ocean, hills to signify mountains, a field, many trees, and it is still a beautiful park.
This brought us to the next exhibit. The next exhibit was more paraphanalia of Kaharlyk's past, and also and explanation of the name. Kaharlyk is a Mongul, not Ukrainian name. The name comes from Kaha, the name of a high ranking mongul, and Arlyk which was the name for a deed of ownership. This was shortened to Kaharlyk. There were also artifacts from Kyivan Rus a kindom that started around the 10th or 11th century. (There is a monument in town that claims 1185 as the founding date of the town).
Skipping over an exhibit of peasant dress, the next period I'll discuss is communist times. Our guide, the curator of the museum (who, though she has two higher educations still only recieves a very modest salary) said that though many bad things happened during communist times, it is a part of our history, and we will remember it, because it happened. She mentioned at one of the exhibits that during the late 80s she had showed an American around the museum. The man was not very interested, until coming to the portion which showed communist times. One thing that he asked our guide was about the great famine. In the 1930s 5 million people in Ukraine, and 7 million people in the entired Soviet Union died because of forced rationing of grains. This, in some textbooks is equated with Margaret Thatcher's bitter pill - a necessary evil of collectivization - but, especially more recently it has become more clear that this was a false famine caused to weaken the people that the Soviet Union governed, and, as indicated by the numbers above, the majority of the suffering occurred in Ukraine. Our guide, and keep in mind this was while the Soviet Union was still in existence, told the American when he asked that she definitely believed it was a false famine. He asked her how she could be so bold to say such a thing. He asked not because he did not agree with her, but because she could be put in prison for saying something like this; before democray, before independence. She agreed, because she had documentation to support these facts, and truly a brave soul, she would not refute facts she knew to be true. A documentary was made by this American, it is a documentary I would love to see.
Our final section was based around the Second World War. This room was full of the slogan "Nobody forgotten - nothing forgotten". There were pictures of Ukrainian heroes of the Great Patriotic War, as well as medals that would have been given out by the USSR to soldiers, for achievement and bravery. This room was full of the propanganda posters created by Moscow which were also provocative. We also learned that Nazis (they are usually referred to as fascists here) occupied this part of Ukraine, including Kaharlyk for around two years. They were responsible for the destruction of the mansion. As I mentioned before, in our park there is a beautiful bridge, that leads over a shallow ravine. During World War II, over 700 people in Kaharlyk were killed by the nazis. They were forced to strip off their clothes, stand on the bridge naked, and they were shot, killed, and dumped into the ravine. This was especially chilling. Something I, for one, had no idea of. I think this is, however, an example of how interconnected simple places in Europe are with history.
And this, friends, is where my little story ends. I did not expect it to be so long, so my apologies, but goodnight, and Go Friars.