Tales From the Ukrainian Woods

Tales of the Ukrainian Woods

pom pom tree
Monday October 26, 2009
My guide for the day is Mikail, a rather woodsmen looking fellow with limited or no English. My translator is Vlad, who is also my driver and my travel agency contact and solver of some problems. He hasn't solved them all yet but he’s trying.
Mikail starts chattering as soon as we are out of the driveway. He talks about 2 or 3 minutes and then Vlad gives me a one or two sentence translation. I am always amazed at how many different languages take a paragraph to tell when it only takes a sentence in English to tell the same thing. Ok, raise your hand if you didn’t realize I was being sarcastic. Again I ask, where is my universal translator because I am sure the stories are much more involved and intricate and interesting when heard from the master storyteller or in the native tongue.

outbuildings of Sharovka estate
We drive by a few buildings where I get the "this is blah blah blah and before I can look, we are past it and I’m not sure what I was looking at or for. Finally we are in traffic enough for a slow drive past the prison. Now I start getting stories.
Cold Hill
That’s the name of the prison. A side story is during the 1980 Olympics held in Moscow, some of the pre events took place in the Ukraine and there must have been a pre-event here in Kharkov. Moscow did not want people to see the prison and didn’t want questions about it so they painted it to look like an apartment building complete with fake balconies and flowers. It has since been re-painted again to look like the prison that it is.

reflection
Prisoners were put away in a cold place or put away in cold storage. So the hill was then named after the prison. But the prison was only there since the 20th century and the hill has been called Cold Hill for much longer so that can’t be the name. Vlad translates, “So I don’t think that’s the reason for the name."
Next it is said that Catherine the Great of Russia loved to travel and as such, she traveled to and throughout the Ukraine. When she was in Kharkov, she had to walk sometimes as it would be too boggy and muddy for her horses to carry her. It is said that she had cold feet up on this hill. The legend also has that she lost her hat up on this hill so either because of her feet or because of her hat, she said that this hill was very cold and hence the name of the hill became Cold Hill. But again the hill was there and referred to as Cold Hill long before Catherine the Great strode about its heights so Vlad translates, “So I don’t think that’s the reason for the name.:

Stone of Love
His third story of Cold Hill was much simpler. The first settler was a man named Cold. The hill was named after him because people needed to know how to get to his house and people would say he lives on Cold Hill. Vlad translates, “So I don’t think that’s the reason for the name.”
But there were no more stories of Cold Hill so I will leave you to take your pick of which story you want to name Cold Hill.
Free Ukraine
We are driving in an area that was known as “Free Ukraine” since earlier times. This was not a political statement in that the people were “free” such as a democracy but more that they were invited to come and live there “for free”. The region was beset by problems, mainly with the Tartars swarming up from wherever and helping themselves to the riches of the region, grain, furs, water, women, sheep, etc. So it was quite a dangerous region to live. The Czar of Moscow (there was no Russia at this time but there was a Moscow and it had a Czar who was pretty powerful) knew that the way to tame a region and eventually bring law and order was to have people live there and farm the land and settle. So he invited people to go and live there and he had his three freedoms that he would allow if someone would go and settle. Freedom one was free land. You could go and settle on as much land as you think you needed/wanted/farmed/held. Freedom two was no taxes. That was a pretty amazing freedom for those days as most Czars and rulers lived on the taxes of their subjects/serfs/peasants. Freedom three was the right to make and drink as much vodka as you wanted. Again, an amazing freedom as making vodka was often the province of the ruler so that he could collect taxes on it. So people did go and settle and even with the Tartars coming around and making their lives miserable, the Czar of Russia would also come in every once and awhile and protect them.

Natalivka gates
It is said that at one time criminals were sent either to Siberia or to the Ukraine. While you might think that they would prefer the Ukraine, criminals preferred to go to Siberia because while it was much colder, there weren’t the dangers from the Tartars. They could probably, hopefully survive the cold but there weren’t many ways to survive the Tartars should they come into the village where they were being held a prisoner.
Cossacks and Chumacks
Cossacks were people misplaced so ended up living in the woods and as they were basically rather lazy, they would ride out and rob and pillage trading caravans going through their territories (remember I am not swearing to historic accuracy, this is just tales I was told as we drove along). Chumacks (not sure of the spelling, this is what Vlad said) were traders of salt and fish. They would band together with their wagons and travel through various regions and sell the salt and fish.
The Chumacks had an agreement with the Cossacks in being allowed to travel through their territory. The Cossacks would know they wagons were coming and place a set of sticks by the road where the wagons would pass. For an example, if there were two long sticks and one short stick, it meant that each Chumack trader was required to place two bags of salt and one bag of dried fish at the crossroads for the Cossacks. A boy would be placed to watch and count to make sure the tribute or toll was paid. If it was not completely correct in the number of bags of salt and fish being left, the boy signaled to the Cossacks who then rode out and surrounded the Chumacks. The Chumacks would circle their wagons and wait for the guilty party to admit he had not left the correct party. No words would be exchanged anywhere for this encounter. Finally under the weight of the collective disapproval of the Chumacks and Cossacks the guilty party would step forward and be taken away by the Cossacks and the rest of the Chumacks could go on their way.
The guilty Chumack then gave the correct number of bags of salt and fish and one would think that would be the end of it but as a punishment, the Cossacks would remove the skin from the bottom of his feet and then he was free to go back to his wagon train. Of course it would be rather hard to do without any skin on the soles of your feet. I would also think that after this happened one time that none of the other Chumacks would risk shorting the Cossacks in their tribute but apparently they weren’t always that smart as it took several Chumacks without skin on their feet before the lesson was learned.
Cossacks and Hidden Treasures
Every once in awhile, the rulers would decide they needed to clear out the woods of the robbers which included the Cossacks. So they would swoop down on the forest villages and the Cossacks would disperse and leave for another area for a time. Usually the Cossacks were aware that the military was sweeping down on them and would take time to bury their treasures as it would be too much to carry with them. The leader of a tribe or unit of Cossacks would have a hole dug. It would be deeper than the height of one of his men. The treasures would be put into the bottom of this pit and one of the men would get into the pit on top of the treasures and they would bury him alive. While this seems like a punishment, the Cossacks were happy to do it as it was considered a great honor. I don’t think I would like to meet the charismatic leader who convinced men it was wonderful to be buried alive on top of a bunch of treasure.
Of course it wasn’t enough to just put a man in there to “guard” the treasure. All sorts of chants and rituals also accompanied the burying of treasure. One went something like, “He who covers this treasure will be he who discovers this treasure” meaning of course that only the owner of the treasure would be the one who digs it up.
And equally of course, people knew of these pits of treasure and holes of men and treasures and chants to protect the gold. Some robbers because quite ingenious and if a Cossack leader was capture who had treasure, and if he could be convinced somehow to reveal where it was, the robber would cut off the Cossacks hands and use the owners hands to dig with until they uncovered the gold.
Finally, some Cossack leaders just couldn’t remember exactly where there pit of gold and treasure was buried. It is said that a very ugly and dirty woman would appear to the Cossack band and she would ask for a favor. She would ask to have her face washed. If the Cossack leader refused, she would ask another member of the band. When a man finally washed her face, she would dissolve and turn into a heap of gold at his feet.
Other bits and pieces
Guilds:
Most professions had guilds. There were guilds of icon painters and they were mobile and moved from village to village to paint icons for the churches and homes of people who could afford to pay. Usually as is with most professions of the day, the children were taught the profession of their father and carried on his business eventually. But icon painters couldn’t just be anyone. They had to be approved by the church.
Musicians were also in guilds. The guilds controlled the territory that a musician was allowed to wander. Each musician had their own small area of villages and towns where he was allowed to go and play.
Sugar Hill and the Stone of Love:
Parhomovka is the village of the sugar beet factory. Housing was provided for workers but now it is a derelict building. The museum is in an Italian style Palazzo because the builder of the sugar beet factory loved Italian things. Later the owner was Koenig who built the palace of Sharovka.
Sharovka’s owner was German and missed his homeland so his outbuildings were designed by a Russian but made to look like German style buildings at the time. He really didn’t like Ukrainians either so he took the village that was close to his palace and resettled them to the Ural mountains. The villagers didn’t take much to the Urals as the land wasn’t as fertile and the landscape was alien to them so they made their way back to their home village which was totally gone as Koenig had swept it away.
Koenig had a lovely wife that he loved dearly and tried to do everything to make her life easier and grant her every wish. One winter she wanted to go sledding on the hill that was behind their house but there was no snow at the time. Being owner of a sugar mill, Koenig solved the problem by covering the hill with sugar so his wife could sled. Thus this hill was named Sugar Hill.
Koenig also would send his wife away on trips to “rest”. One trip sent her to the Crimea for a rest. Koenig sent his plant manager down to the Crimea to check on his wife and see if she needed anything. When the man returned, he was obviously nervous and upset and just looked at the floor as he stammered out that his wife was fine and didn’t need anything. That raised Koenig’s suspicions as you would expect and he decided to go to the Crimea himself and see if his wife was ok.
Upon his arrival, he asked the hostess of the lodging where his wife was and she replied that the wife was out in the woods for a walk. Sure enough, when Koenig rounds a corner, he sees his wife in the embrace of an officer in the military. He says not a word but stands with his arm crooked until she comes to take his arm and they walk back to the inn together. The officer fades into obscurity and not sure if he ended up being killed by Koenig but I am thinking that it is yes. The translation muddied here and I never got around to asking for clarification because of subsequent events.
This was a time when people of leisure would take walks for 5 or 6 hours a day because they basically had nothing else to occupy their time. Koenig’s wife would walk in the gardens around their house for hours. Koenig never said anything to his wife in recrimination but he had the rock where he had discovered his wife and her lover shipped to his home and put it in the garden where she would pass it everyday on her walks. So it is either called the Stone of Love by some or the Stone of Betrayal by others depending on your point of view.
Whether the stone there is actually from the Crimea and a part of a love triangle is anyone’s guess but it is has enough graffiti now to qualify as the Stone of Love.