The Holodomor was the famine of 1932/33 caused by Stalin’s reorganisation of agriculture in Ukraine and Russia. Something like five million Ukrainians died and the same number were born with defects or stillborn further depleting the population.
Mhar Monastery was founded in 1619. We arrived on a crisp, sunny Saturday morning. The church was built in the 1680s, funded by two Cossack leaders, hetmans, one of whom is our old friend Mazeppa.
After Friday morning sightseeing in and around Poltava, we drove north west for about 200 km along a two lane highway to Lubny, our Area of Observation on Election Day.
In Chisinau in February I averred that Englishmen, perhaps not women, prefer not to talk at breakfast. Rules are made to be broken. On Friday morning over scrambled eggs, ham and black coffee I found myself discussing the Battle of Poltava with a Spanish observer.
As a postscript to yesterday’s post, Pamela and Tatyana (by e mail) amplify by referring to Byron’s narrative poem, Mazeppa, which, as with Onegin, inspired Pushkin.
Yesterday evening about twenty of us took a train to Poltava. Not a place I’d heard of which exposes my ignorance. I hadn’t heard of Tchaikovsky’s opera Mazeppa either; there is a connection.