A decrepit Soviet-era factory and natives being restless

For a change I thought I’d keep my inane commentary to a strict minimum and instead just share a few pictures.

Last week I got up at silly o’clock on a day off and went on a little field trip with a couple of colleagues to the Klavdievskaya Christmas Decorations Factory, about 40km from Kyiv. The factory, first opened in 1949 with production starting in 1952, was one of three companies in the Soviet Union which specialized in the production of Christmas ornaments.

Today the place is a shell of its former self. In its heyday, it employed around 1000 people (or so our guide thought, her estimates ranged from 700 – 1500, so I’ve compromised with my figure), yet we saw only around 20 souls working away in cold, gloomy conditions. Still, it was interesting to watch these women at work glass-blowing, silverworking, painting and ornamenting.

Because my camera is crap, and because I’m a lousy photographer, my pictures hardly amount to much. If you’re interesting in seeing more, this link offers a far clearer picture of the painstaking process of making these ornaments.

Later in the day, I walked to Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), where I watched bored locals in another one of their almost daily protests. The latest gripe is the new tax reform legislation that Parliament has adopted and President Yanukovich is soon to sign into law. The details are long and drawn-out, but in a nutshell, it’s seen as severely harmful for small and medium-sized businesses, and there have been swathes of protests across the country in recent weeks.