Kiev, April 15, 1984

My Motherland Statue

Kiev Subway Train Station

Almost a month after we settled down in Zaporozhye, we arrived in Kiev on a beautiful spring morning of Palm Sunday, 25 years ago today, for a 4-day visit to this capital of Ukraine, then the 2nd most prosperous among the 15 republics of the USSR.

Having obviously lost contact with the outside world, I didn't even remember it was already Holy Week. Booked at Hotel Ukraine, our first impression of the city was good. It was clean, with more beautiful buildings and sloping, hilly streets, some of cobble stones

St. Andrews Cathedral, Kiev

Kiev is an old city, and the 3rd largest city of the Soviet Union after Moscow and Leningrad. It is a city of parks (there were 150 of them all), monuments and memorials, just like any other city there. Places we visited were the Arc of Friendship (where Kiev was founded) overlooking the famous Dneiper River, Prince Andrew Cathedral, the Marinsky Palace of the Czar, War Memorial, Ukrainian Parliament, Chekovsky University, a 100,000 sports complex (home of the Kiev Dynamo Football Club), and the vast Exposition of the Industry of the Ukraine. There were no plant visits this time; it was a purely social and cultural trip, which we liked.

But we equally enjoyed our "on our own" adventures in the city, mingling with the people, drinking in bars and cafe's or just standing idly along the street pavements, enjoying the sites of people passing and couples kissing.

At dinner on our first night, we were delighted to hear for the first time, attendants greeting us "Dobre Becher" (Good Evening!). Service however was still the same. Slow.

St. Sofia Cathedral, Kiev

Kiev was more urban, in fact quite Western in some ways, with more foreign tourists roaming , mostly though from the European Eastern Bloc nations.

It was an eventful visit. Events in later years would prove historic for this seat of Ukrainian power after the disintegration of the mighty Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.