"Someday She Will Drink This Water!"

It is the Michigan Avenue of Odessa; Ukraine's Miracle Mile that flows into and through the beautiful cultural center of bul Prymorsky, coming to a stunning end at the top of the Potemkin Steps that overlook a breathtaking view of one of the busiest international ports on the Black Sea. I met Svetlana here on my first day in Odessa in April 2005 while she was working her beverage and snack kiosk near one of the many busy intersections somewhere in the heart of Deribasovaskaya Street.

This is a world set free manifested by capitalism graffiti splattered against a facade of a former KGB and communist nightmare. The famous yellow M is stamped against boarded windows. Kodak, Samsung, Banks, Internet Cafes, Gap, Nike; color and neon light somehow attach to rustic bricks and refurbished street-level floors. There is a distant skyline of towering cranes, faded by the smog. Suicidal taxi drivers zip around in anything that still has four wheels that roll, weaving carelessly around traffic jams of machine and man. It doesn't matter if it's legit or not, for a couple of bucks they will get you anywhere you need to go safely, fast and furious. Deribasovaskaya Street is alive and free, fast and busy; a hustle and bustle capitalist profit center – a refreshing reminder of free market, free enterprise and confident, free people.

Svetlana is tall and slender, in her mid 50s, and very polite and respectful. Her rugged face suggests her obvious rough life, but she keeps her sandy blonde hair neatly pulled back and tied in a little ball at the back of her head. It looks like her hair might barely touch her shoulders when it's not wrapped up for work. Her beautiful blue eyes are still a striking reminder that she was no doubt a knockout in her day. She speaks broken, yet pretty good English. Her life, now, is her beverage and snack stand so that she can pay rent for her one bedroom, one bathroom, tiny apartment that she proudly shares with her 82 year old mother, lazy brother and Tatyana - her 20 year-old daughter who is a student at Odessa University. 

I buy a Coke and a bag of Doritos and she calculates the currency exchange in her head in seconds. She adamantly refuses my recurrent attempt to tip her to the point where I feel as if I may have insulted her. After pondering the usual list in the traveler's guide for a few days, like the Russian pride, or the danger of insulting the people as another “rich American" or my assumption that perhaps she just doesn't want any help from any man after what she probably has been through - she later concedes to me a very emotional, painful and deep battle that she struggles with every day:  Svetlana cannot allow herself to let her guard down. She must always be prepared to protect Tatyana. 

The young adults up to about their low 30s are the movers and shakers on Deribasovaskaya Street. They are the entrepreneurs running the Internet Cafes and the sidewalk kiosks; they are the barterers and hagglers, the shoppers, the bankers, the ones cramming the sidewalk café’s, laughing over frothed lattes, texting on their Samsung phones that none of them can afford while hanging out under shady, hundred-year-old Acacia and Horse Chestnut trees.

This generation has embraced freedom and capitalism and the entrepreneurial spirit. While the scars of socialism and capitalist defectors still surround them, they were either not born yet or were too young to remember what it had been like under a communist regime. It doesn't matter that they still live in poverty because to them there is no price for freedom. It is, in fact, all they know. They have never directly experienced the brutalities of socialism prior to President Reagan. They only see President Reagan in front of the Brandenburg Gate at the Berlin Wall on June 12, 1987 uttering the famous words etched in stone in many former Soviet Republic historical museums: “Mr. Gorbachev. Mr. Gorbachev! Tear down this wall!”

Svetlana rarely smiles. When she does, it's brief but sincere. I see it only once a day and it's when I approach her kiosk every morning for coffee and to wish her a good day. We chat about this and that for a while and she marvels at my stories about America. I always have to remind her that what she sees on “Hollywood television” is not actual America. “No, we’re not all as funny as Seinfeld, Svetlana.” "No we're not all fat because we eat at McDonalds."

On my second visit she asks me if I need some bottled water, reminding me that I should not drink the water in Odessa. She asks me how I have been brushing my teeth since I arrived and I tell her that the instructions in the hotel say it's okay to brush as long as you don't swallow too much of the water. She insists that I take a free bottle of water, and adamantly refuses a tip.

I notice that most Ukrainian adults maintain a serious demeanor. There is little small talk. "Nice day, isn't it?" is almost insulting. I stand out like a sore thumb. Svetlana had told me something that is quite profound, and I think of it often. She says that she does not know how to be free.  She says that while she loves freedom "very, very much" she is afraid to fully embrace it. It began around Tatyana's birth and she still cannot believe that it is happening. She worries that someday it will all be taken away. She must keep her guard up and be prepared for that possibility every day. Her greatest fear is the impact that it will have on Tatyana who knows only freedom. That is how Svetlana raised her. She would watch her sleep for hours when she was a baby, and then finally Svetlana would cry herself to sleep.

Svetlana instilled education and a solid work ethic in Tatyana at a very early age. Every day after school Tatyana will come to the kiosk and work with her mother for 6 Hryvnya a day, which is around .75 cents American currency. She is allowed to spend half of it and must save the rest. Svetlana speaks for a large adult population in Ukraine when she told me one morning that, “This is too good to be true. They will not let it last. It cannot.” She struggles to maintain eye contact. Once she gathers herself I explain to her that the only way freedom can be taken away from her and Tatyana is if she and her fellow citizens allow it to happen. I tell her it has lasted in the United States for over 200 years and say, “Now that your people have tasted the wonders of freedom, and a new generation like Tatyana has grown into it, it is all they know. They will not accept socialism. They can never take you back to that again.” Out of curiosity,  I wish I'd have asked her who she meant by “they” just to see what she would have said, but I had been too hypnotized at how she bristles and struggles to not lose her temper every time she hears the word, “socialism.”

I have been thinking a lot about Svetlana lately. Especially on April 9 when a Rasmussen telephone poll of 1000 adults reports that only 53% of Americans think capitalism is better than socialism. A more disturbing trend shows that adults under 30 are more evenly divided where 37% prefer capitalism and 33% socialism. Thirty-somethings are more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and only 13% believe socialism is better. There is a partisan gap as well. Republicans favor capitalism by an 11-to-1 margin. Democrats are more evenly divided where 39% say capitalism is better while 30% prefer socialism. As for those not affiliated to either major political party, 48% say capitalism is best, and 21 % prefer socialism.

According to this poll, the United States of America appears to be trending in the opposite direction than a former Soviet Republic. Our young adults think socialism is better than capitalism while the exact opposite exists in the Ukraine. The poll, however, does not offer a definition of capitalism or socialism, which might have skewed the results. Think about that.  Have we arrived at a point in this country where if a telephone poll does not define socialism or capitalism that nearly a majority of Americans think socialism is better than capitalism? Is this what our children are being taught in our schools today?

I believe it is a natural order for apathy and complacency to settle in for all human beings as we move further up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. As we prosper and achieve under a free capitalist system, and we raise our children to be even better than we are, we all want to be able to reach a point in our lives where we aren’t concerned about being able to afford to put three meals a day on the table for our families, rather we try to find the time to do it. We don’t want to worry about what our parents’ and grandparents’ had to worry about. They encouraged us to be the best we can be, like we do for our children. We want to be able to choose how we live our lives and have the freedom to do so. Even though we can drink our water from the spigot in America without any serious health consequesnces, we want to have the freedom to choose not to. So most of us don’t.

So what’s with this poll?

Have we forgotten why and how we’ve achieved such prosperity in this country in such a short time with respect to world history? Have we forgotten the hardship and sacrifices that a few generations before us has had to endure, that we now take for granted that our liberty and freedom will always be here no matter what? Do our young adults really believe socialism is better than capitalism or are they just a generation of uninformed, misguided victims that has not really seen a bad day in their young lives?

How many of our teenagers and young adults have really heard, “No, we can’t afford it” these days? Could it be, too, that our younger population is suffering from a lack of education in our schools and/or at home? Or maybe it’s from an evolving trend of radical, socialist liberals coming into more powerful positions in Washington over the years, gradually occupying a major political party where they now dictate today’s Democrat Party policy.

They have managed to put a slick, likeminded salesman in the White House who has the ability to make socialism sound pretty damn cool if you don’t know what the hell it is. If you’ve never lived under it and have never seen the devastation that socialism has caused throughout history from Stalin, to Pol Pot, to Hitler then socialism might not sound so bad these days when things appear to be getting a little too inconvenient for a generation who really hasn’t had to worry about much other than the next best thing Steve Jobs has brewing in his brilliant mind.

Have we forgotten, or do we even know, that everything we have achieved as a nation and as individuals in this country is not because of centuries of power-hungry dictators confining and restraining individuals from reaching their full potential to be the best they can be, but because of the chance a few great men took over 200 years ago when they knew exactly the kind of government structure needed to hold the 13 states together and prepare for western expansion while preserving the peoples’ God-given right to liberty and freedom? It is because these great men had faith in natural law and our right to liberty as written in the Declaration of Independence that we are able to take advantage of the precious opportunities bestowed upon us to live the best life in the best country this world has ever known. There is a reason why the Founders’ humble project is now the longest standing Constitution in the history of the world. Unlike Svetlana who is waiting for everything to come crashing down, maybe we just think that it certainly can never happen to us. Certainly, President Obama doesn’t mean everything he’s saying, does he? He isn’t really going to do all that stuff, is he?

How many of us felt that way on September 10, 2001?

On my last day in Odessa, I stop by to say goodbye to Svetlana. We wish each other the best and she asks me to come back to Odessa so she can cook me a "big dinner of Russian food that I never find in America."  She invites me to see her home and meet her family and share my wonderful stories of America with them. She says she would "love that very much."  I tell her, "So will I." 

Finally she smiles, a little, and leans over and hugs me, timid, protective. She still doesn't allow me to tip her after I buy a Coke and bag of Doritos for my walk back to the hotel, instead she hands me another bottled water while waving her finger at me as if she is scolding me saying, “I will take Tatyana to America when she finishes University. It will be my gift to her graduate because Tatyana has a wish she tells Mama all the time. One day Tatyana wish to go to America, put her mouth under spigot, turn spigot handle not turn this lid on bottle, and drink the water because she can chose to if she wants.  Because Tatyana can do this for Tatyana. Without mama. It will be Tatyana's choice. My dream for Tatyana is for someday she will drink this water."

Chuck

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