Ukrainian Vodka

My friends always ask me what is the best Ukrainian vodka?  I am not an expert. But these two that you can see on the following picture are pretty good.
On the left-hand side of the picture,  you can see Zoloto Polubotka (Polubotka's Gold) vodka. It's made in Lviv. It's pretty pricey because it contains golden flakes in the bottle. Basically, it looks like the Goldschlager schnapps liqueur. But it's still vodka.
On the right-hand side of the picture, you can see Nemiroff Medova z Pertzem (Honey-based with Pepper). Nemiroff is a world-known brand of vodka so it's pretty easy to find it here in European/Russian deli stores. The honey-based Nemirroff with red hot chili peppers has a yellow color because the vodka is infused with honey. It also has a sweet and spicy taste because of both honey and red hot chili peppers. Nemiroff vodka is made in a small town of Nemiroff in Vinitsa province.
Both brands of vodka are from the Western Ukraine. I don't have an explanation for this spatial pattern. And on the final note I have to say that both companies avoid classifying their brands as vodka. The Polubotka's Gold is actually horilka (Ukrainian word for vodka). The Nemiroff considers its vodka a liqueur. As I recall, Poland as the EU members filed a request to patent the vodka brand as a hard liqueur made from potatoes. Since both Ukrainian companies don't use potatoes to make their vodka, these companies can't use the term vodka.


Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Ukrainian Dance

Everyone asks me about Ukrainian national dance. It can be different. Here is a link to the performance by the Zorya Ukrainian Dance Ensemble at the Texas State Fair, Dallas, TX on Oct 10, 2010. It was awesome.

Russian-Kazakh Cuisine in Virginia

I am always asked about Ukrainian cuisine. What's it like? And I've already blogged about it.
Here is a new place, Cafe Assorti, that offers a mixed Russian-Kazakh cuisine and it seems to have several food items from Ukrainian cuisine such as ravioli (pelmeni), cutlets (kotleti), meatballs (tefteli), pirogi, crepes (blinchiki), summer soup reminding French vichyssoise (okroshka), and borscht.

in reference to: CAFÉ ASSORTI (view on Google Sidewiki)

Ukraine’s Traffic Police Can’t Have Favorites

Ukraine's best soccer player, Andrei Shevchenko, got into car accident couple weeks ago in a downtown of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital. Here is a video clip provided by Ukraine's TSN news from TV Chanel 1+1. Andrei's Porsche Panamera Turbo crashed into Honda SUV. As you can see on a video, a car accident is not very serious. Nobody got hurt. Both cars got lightly dented and scratched. Mr. Shevchenko told TSN news that a woman who was behind a steering wheel of Honda suddenly changed lanes without turning a blinker on. So he couldn't do a lot to avoid the crash.

What's interesting about this news report is that Mr. Shevchenko despite his mega-celebrity status in Ukraine presents himself as a down-to-earth person. He has no problems talking to a woman whose car he crashed into. Mr. Shevchenko also seems to be very easy-going with cops. It's funny when this woman asks Andrei: "So what's gonna be next?". And he says that they need to exchange their insurances and sign the protocol. Once again, Andrei's behavior is very far from what someone could expect from a mega celebrity. Moreover, it's impressive to see how cops do their work while they certainly go crazy inside because they can see their Soccer God just in a few feet away. The whole news report is very cool and makes you ponder on an efficiency of law and enforcement in Ukraine. Perhaps, a rule of law is not so bad in Ukraine that even Ukraine's biggest soccer star can't avoid a police report.

Btw, Andrei started in FC Dynamo Kyiv in the 1990s and his excellent goal-scoring skills were spotted by AC Milan's recruiters. He had several excellent seasons with AC Milan in Italy and later he played for London's FC Chelsea. Now he is finishing his career by playing for FC Dynamo Kyiv again.

Merry Christmas!!!

The Russian Baths Are Good For Business

Yes, the Russian baths are good for business. Did you know that? If not, then keep it in mind next time when you have a business trip to Ukraine or Russia. Here is why the Russian baths are good for a business.

A dismal science, as economics is often referred to, often focuses on two basic mechanism of human behavior - signaling and screening. For instance, your resume serves as a platform for both signaling and screening. As a job seeker, you use a resume to signal your quality to a potential employer. If you are an employer, you use an applicant's resume to screen for his or her qualifications. Both signaling and screening offer a cost-effective way of match-making in the job market. These concepts can also be applied to other aspects of human lives. Think about dating!

But we live in a world of imperfect information so it can be difficult to get a perfect match each time. So both signaling and screening are also associated with a couple of side-effects such as moral hazard and adverse selection. In other words, you always risk of running into a wolf under a sheep's skin that is a so-called "ship-skin effect" popularized by the labor economists and vice versa. So you got the point. Now let's talk about the Russian baths!

In my undergrad (i.e. in Ukraine) I had a professor who taught Principles of Investment Banking. He was actually one of the first investment bankers in Ukraine. And I remember him complaining a lot about spending 90% of his time in the Russian baths. He said that it helped to check a credibility of their investors. I had no clue what he talked about. I just thought that doing business in a sauna was a fashionable trend in the 1990s.

Well, a sauna has obvious health-related attractions. It improves your immune system and clears your pores. All nations use the same concept of sweat lodge while they just call it different names: the Turkish baths, the Korean baths, the Finnish sauna, and the Russian baths. But it seems that the Russian baths also provided a unique platform for signaling and screening for entrepreneurs in the former Soviet countries, such as Russia and Ukraine, in the tumultuous 1990s.

How did it work? Well, it's easier to picture this if you've seen a movie Eastern Promises staring Vigo Mortensen as a Russian mobster. Russian or Ukrainian (i.e. post-Soviet) gangsters have a very distinctive subculture of prisoner's tattoos. These tattoos are very informative. They can tell a whole life path of a gangster starting from his first incarceration and up to a present moment. A tattoo that pictures Eastern Orthodox Christian church usually tells you how long a gangster was in prison. A tattoo of a cougar on a shoulder will tell you that you are facing a criminal who was in prison for a robbery and assault. Other tattoos can tell you a rank of a gangster in a hierarchy of underworld (i.e. wise guy or made), his responsibilities in a gang (i.e. con artist or racketeer), his criminal record, his religion, his ethnicity, etc. If the Russian mafia can be proud of something, its subculture of prisoner's tattoos must be a source of its pride.

A main goal of the prisoner's tattoo is to introduce a gangster without much to say. Talk is cheap, right? But who would think that the Russian businessmen could utilize the knowledge of prisoner's tattoo as an effective mechanism of screening and signaling. Since it was impossible to have a proper credit check in the sketchy 1990s, the potential business partners would have a meeting in a sauna where you would be almost naked. Do you see where I am getting? If you had prisoner's tattoos, you could not hide them. Of course, the meeting would require a presence of an expert in prisoner's tattoos who could be either a cop or a gangster. Once you've gone to the Russian bath, the credit check is done. Was it cost-effective? Hell, yes.

What about signaling? Ceteris paribus, a businessman needed to collect a debt from his irresponsible business partner in the shady 1990s. Then he would hire so-called "debt-coll ecting agents" who would invite a debtor to the Russian baths. A debtor who would see the prisoner's tattoos of the debt-collectors in a sauna would be more eager to pay back his debt. Here's ECON 101 for Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet countries in the early 1990s. Do you still think that economics is a dismal science? Think about it next time when you have a visit to the Finnish sauna or the Russian baths.

From UkraineWatch

 

Ukrainian Cuisine

People often ask me about Ukrainian cuisine. What's that like? What do people eat in Ukraine? What are the most popular dishes? Ukrainians are a very carnivorous nation. Btw, there's a really funny movie Everything is Illuminated with Elijah Wood who plays a vegetarian American Jewish teenager who goes on a heritage trip to Ukraine. This movie has a funny episode that shows how hard it's to be a vegetarian in Ukraine.

Anyways, Ukrainian cuisine differs across Ukraine. In the West, most dishes are very close to Hungarian and Polish cuisine. In the South, you can really enjoy food if you are piscatorial. If you like spicy and kebab-type cuisine, you should go to Crimea that is the most Southern part of Ukraine. In the Eastern Ukraine, food is closer to Russian cuisine.

So here are my top three dishes from the Eastern Ukrainian cuisine:

1. The Borscht. Topped with a sour cream. Main ingredients are sugar beets (they give it a red color), potatoes, carrots, and beef.
   
2. Any kind of blintz. This picture shows you blintz stuffed with ground beef. They are usually served with a sour cream too.
   
3. The potato pancakes aka dranniki. With a sour cream again.

From UkraineWatch

From UkraineWatch

From UkraineWatch

Ukraine Seriously Needs Harvey Milk

It's been less than a week since a homophobic scandal surrounded Sir Elton John's visit to Ukraine and his humble attempt to adopt a 14-month-old HIV-positive orphan. And Ukraine has already had another outbreak of homophobia. Now it went much further than Minister Pavlenko's rambling statements about Elton John's Ukrainian adoption. Btw, it still remains a mystery whether Elton John's hubby meets the age requirements to adopt baby Lev or not. I also really wonder whether Minister Pavlenko has finally established whether baby Lev is orphan or not and whether baby Lev has HIV or not. Btw, will Minister Pavlenko make an official apology to Sir Elton John on behalf of the homophobic government? What about baby Lev? Will he just stay in the orphanage after all commotion?

Anyways, if an American gay activist Harvey Milk were alive today and somehow found himself in a downtown of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, he would be unpleasantly surprised. He would see the anti-gay rally organized by Ukraine's NGO Love vs Homosexuality aka Love Contra. A very mixed crowd that ranged from teenage girls to grandmas protested against homosexuality in Ukraine. NGO Love Contra asked the government to reconsider a gay sex as a sex crime as it was in the Soviet Criminal Law. Protestors also carried posters with the following anti-gay statements: A Father Can Be Anybody, But a Father Can't Be a Mother; Mother + Father = Child; We Must Stop Homo-dictatorship! (Apparently, the Ukrainian democracy is over); You Aren't Born Gay, You Become Gay; Homosexuality = AIDS; Protect Your Motherland and Your Kids (I guess from gays).

You'll be surprised by a reaction of Svyatoslav Sheremet, a head of Ukraine's Gay Forum that is a leading gay rights organization in Ukraine. He says that NGO Love Contra made him a huge favor by getting together so many people and informing them about Ukraine's gay movement. I don't like Mr. Sheremet's position that must represent a view of the main gay activist of Ukraine. He still needs to learn a lot from his American role model. Why? One, a majority of Ukrainians is homophobic. Two, Ukrainians are homophobic because the whole "coming out of closet" thing is just very new to them. Common, people still have problems with getting used to a market economy and a democracy. The obvious question is: How are Ukrainians homophobic? Well, they'd rather accept you as Jewish friend than as gay friend. If you doubt my words, you can look up the public attitudes towards Jews and gays in Ukraine here. Anyways, the recent events clearly show social tensions between the gay community and general public. Though the Ukrainian politics is very far from making gay rights the main political issue, the gay problem must be addressed so that the Ukrainian society can get rid of the anachronistic fears of homosexuality and move on to celebrating Gay Pride Week or GLBT's October.

Ukraine’s Land Reform in Faces

I conducted a fieldwork in Ukraine between two summers of 2007 & 2008. It's approved by the Human Subject Review Board (HSRB) at George Mason University. Every social scientist has to go through HSRB if your fieldwork involves interviews with human subjects (that's how HSRB calls people).

Why did I conduct fieldwork in Ukraine? First, I am very interested in the aftermath of Ukraine's privatization and its unintended consequences for Ukrainians. I've also noticed that Ukraine has developed a very interesting mix of socialist-capitalist property rights system since its breakaway from the FSU. Second, I strongly believe that a quality of fieldwork improves significantly when you understand indigenous culture and speak indigenous language (in case of Ukraine, you have to speak both Russian and Ukrainian or their mixed version Surzhyk). Otherwise, you'll be either brushed off for cultural ignorance or lost in translation. I'll post more about my fieldwork soon. But now I'd like to invite you to check out a photo report about my fieldwork because I honestly believe that one picture is worth ten thousand words.

Ukrainians have the worst teeth in Europe

I stumbled on a very interesting fact about Ukraine while I was browsing Dr. Rosling's GAPMINDER web-site. An average Ukrainian 12-yo child had 4.4 bad teeth in 2004. This makes Ukrainian kids have one of the worst smiles in Europe. Bosnia and Herzegovina was the only country in Europe where the child dentistry was in much worse shape than it was in Ukraine. An average Bosnian or Herzegovinian 12-yo child had 4.8 bad teeth in 2004. I am not sure why Ukrainians kids have the worst teeth in Europe. Ukraine's dentistry is up to European standards. Dental services are also quite affordable given the current level of income. Tooth paste and dental floss are not the luxury goods either. Could it be that Ukrainians kids just have the sweet tooth? Or should I say the sweetest tooth in Europe? Could it be that their marginal benefits from having a sweet tooth are much higher than their marginal costs from having a bad tooth?

Why is Gangster Music So Popular in Russia and Ukraine?

Russians and Ukrainians love gangster music that is often referred to as Shanson. It has nothing to do with French chanson and chansonniers such as Charles Aznavour or Mireille Mathieu. Neither Aznavour nor Mathieu sang about taking a prisoner's train to Siberia or stabbing ex-girlfriend for snitching. One of the Shanson masters, Michael Shufutinsky, sang about it a lot.

If you've never heard the Shanson song, it usually sounds like a light rock. It is quite often just a guitar solo that is actually considered to be the original GULAG's Shanson. Its lyrics are a mix of reggaeton and gangster rap with a Russian flavor. To become a well-respected Shanson performer, you must have a criminal record and tattoos that describe your crimes and prison sentences. Btw, a movie Eastern Promises did a really nice job with breaking down a meaning of the Russian criminal tattoos.

Shanson is so popular that there are several Shanson-oriented radio stations in Russia and Ukraine. They all have similar names such as Shanson-RU, Shanson-UA, RussianShanson etc. Ukraine's Radio Shanson is extremely popular among certain groups of population. If you happen to take a cab or a shuttle in Ukraine, you are 100% guaranteed to listen to the Shanson your entire trip. Shanson is very popular among cab/shuttle/delivery/truck-drivers. It's funny that Shanson is equally popular among both law enforcement officers and criminals. I never understood why the police officers liked Shanson songs which always portrayed them as violent and corrupt outlaws. But it's 100% guarantee that you can hear the Shanson song requests made by the police or attorney district's officers when they celebrate the Law Enforcement Day (December 20^th) or the Criminal Investigation Unit Day (October 5^th).

So why is Shanson so popular in Russia and Ukraine even though the times of GULAG are far gone? I have two theories. First, cab/shuttle-drivers use Shanson to signal their customers that they are tough and you shouldn't mess with them. In other words, pay for a ride and don't comment on their aggressive driving habits. I guess that police officers and their counterparts listen to it for the similar reasons. Truck-drivers also use it to signal their toughness to hitchhikers. The second theory is that cab/shuttle/delivery/truck-drivers used Shanson to protect their or their company's private property in the sketchy 1990s. The mechanism was the same signaling of toughness. In this case, a number of Shanson fans must have a negative correlation with a rule of law. It is actually true. A number of Shanson listeners reached its peak in the late 1990s and since then it was down the hill.

And let me finish by showing you a picture of one of the best-selling Shanson artists, Gregory Leps, that speaks for itself.

The Happy Planet Index Places Ukraine between Chad and Yemen

Here is a new index that I've just come across. The Happy Planet Index measures "the ecological efficiency with which human-being is delivered". The HPI consists of three measures: life expectancy (data comes from UN), life satisfaction (source: the World Values Survey), and ecological footprint (source: Ecological Footprint Atlas). According to the HPI, Ukraine and Latvia are the least satisfied countries among the FSU countries. Moreover, the Ukrainians enjoy their life a bit more than the Yemenis and a bit less than the Chadians. The ecological footprint situation is OK in Ukraine. Finally, Ukraine has a pretty high rate of life expectancy (67.7 years) as compared to the rest of the FSU region. Btw, data is a bit out of date but the HPI still provides a pretty easy comparative framework for the whole world.

Ukraine Celebrates Its Independence Day

It has been 18 years since Ukraine's breakaway from the former Soviet Union. Ukraine's parliament declared the independence of Ukraine on August 24^th, 1991. The former Soviet republic of Ukraine has changed a lot in the last eighteen years. The first wave of major structural changes, perestroika, was initiated in the 1980s. The second wave of market and political reforms stormed through the early 1990s when Ukraine was already a sovereign state. These political and economic changes have transformed FSU country into a modern Eastern European state with a consolidating democracy and emerging market economy.

Happy Independence Day! (ukr. Vitau s Dnem Nezalezhnosti)