The time for big ideas

Photo: Igor606 (CC) commons.wikimedia.org

In 2014 a new era began for Sievierodonetsk – a city that is less than 100 years old and has a population of around 105,000. The regional administration is now based in the city. Public institutions moved here from Luhansk, while international NGOs opened their offices here. Several thousand new residents also came to the city. Together with the locals, they started diverse grassroots initiatives to improve their lives with activities varying from revitalising parks to building new institutions in the civic and cultural field. One can also observe these processes – to a greater or lesser extent – in other cities within the Donbas region.

Flourishing civic life

During my recent visit to Sievierodonetsk, I took my family out to watch a movie. It was Brama – a Ukrainian mystic, horror drama about those who live in the Chornobyl exclusion zone. The screening was organised by a local NGO called the Crisis Media Centre “Siversky Donets”. Located in a typical apartment block on Central Avenue (formerly called Sovietski Avenue), “Siversky Donets” is notable for the graffiti on its façade. This bright mural contrasts the rest of the block so much that I cannot help but think of it as a metaphor for all the creative projects in the city: a small bright dot on a desolate grey canvas. Since its foundation as a model Soviet town next to a chemical plant, Sievierodonetsk has always been a workers’ city – it was called “the city of chemists” – and as a result discouraged independent artistic thinking or creativity.

The events of 2014 made it possible for new forms of social life to be born here. Siversky Donets is a product of those changes. The city was shortly occupied by separatist forces in the spring and summer of 2014. Later the Ukrainian government and humanitarian organisations turned their attention to Sievierodonetsk – and to other cities in Donbas – that had been taken back from the separatists. What is more, the citizens themselves felt more of an urge for civic engagement than before.

Founded in 2015, Siversky Donets became a contact place for many Ukrainian and international institutions, as well as activists and artists who wanted to organise something in the city. In the room where the film screening took place, I saw posters from all the projects connected with Donbas that have been carried out in recent years: from documentary film festivals to leaflets about medical reforms. The posters vividly illustrate how the city is linked to the processes taking place throughout the whole country (before 2014 it was more isolated and less linked to them). Siversky Donets also openly declares itself to be pro-Ukrainian: the national flag proudly hangs on the wall.

Siversky Donets was founded by locals and supported by the Open Society Foundation and the UK Embassy in Ukraine (many such initiatives are supported by international donors). It is one of a dozen NGOs and informal initiatives that have started operating here since 2014 – from Vostok SOS, which works with displaced people from the conflict zone, to the Greek-Catholic church. The latter is a very interesting case: despite the fact that the city is predominantly Orthodox, the church strives to become an open meeting space for people from different backgrounds. One day here I came across a lecture about the unconventional image of Taras Shevchenko. Local NGOs understand they can fulfil one of the crucial needs of Sievierodonetsk’s residents – the need for a space where people can meet, talk and spend time together – and often they start with activities for children and teenagers.

One of the youth projects is called “Hochu Budu” (which can be translated as “I want, I will”), located in a former kindergarten. The positive impact of such initiatives is that they bring a new lease of life to otherwise unused spaces. The church, for example, occupies a former dormitory. Kyrylo Dubrovin, the co-founder of Hochu Budu, shares his thoughts on how things have unfolded over the past five years. He talks about the possibilities of travelling around Ukraine and meeting people from different regions. One example of collaboration can be witnessed on the table in front of us – a visual storybook about migration created by participants from the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk and the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk.

“Five years ago I didn’t know socially active people from other cities in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. I had no contact with Ukraine’s west at all,” Dubrovin admits. What prevented him from getting to know people from other parts of the country? And what changed? “People are united by working on common issues. The war has motivated people.”

Disconnected and atomised

Indeed, the war gave many Ukrainians a sense of responsibility for their communities, cities, and even country. Yet, at the local level, activists are often met with a lack of understanding from city officials. Many of the people I spoke with in Sievierodonetsk acknowledged the low level of support from local authorities.

“The city administration does not want to work with international funds,” says Oleh Nevenytsia, the co-founder of Siversky Donets. Even worse, its staff calls active citizens “grant-eaters”. Olha Lishyk, the deputy head of the Luhansk regional administration at an interview with me, explains that: “The city’s administration is hostile to civil society that understands the law and that writes projects in order to monitor the authorities.”

Research shows that there is still a low level of institutional support for NGOs from state and local officials. While this is true of many cities, the situation in Sievierodonetsk is peculiar. The mayor has been dismissed from his duties by the city council several times, but he then was reinstated by the court. That is one of the main reasons why it is challenging for the NGOs to build relationships with the local authorities.

“You write a letter to the city mayor, but when the letter reaches the office, this person doesn’t hold the position anymore,” Dubrovin says, describing his experience. He indicates that the “eternal” problem is that “city officials think about personal enrichment and how to increase their influence”.

Along with the issue of communication with city officials, both Nevenytsia and Dubrovin mention the lack of trust that exists across society. Nevenytsia admits that civil society actors are atomised: “We all have friendly relations, but, at the same time, we compete for the resources.”

Another reason for this atomisation is the lack of local media that is independent of political influence and that is willing to cover challenging stories and the various developments taking place within social life. However, there is opportunity for change that comes from both the city’s origins and its 21st century developments.

Migration as a chance

Sievierodonetsk as a town began with migration. It was founded in the 1930s when people from near and distant parts of the Soviet Union came to work and live there. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the industry decayed and migration stopped. Instead, many began to leave Sievierodonetsk in search of education, employment and a better way of life. In fact, this is how I remember Sievierodonetsk in the early 2000s.

However by 2014 this trend reversed and a new wave of migration, due to the nearby conflict, hit the city. By January of this year, there were almost 48,000 internally displaced persons (IDP) officially registered in Sievierodonetsk (there are around 1.5 million IPDs from the occupied Donbas and Crimea regions currently present in Ukraine). Although not all of them constantly live in the city, its population has nevertheless substantially increased. However, the locals were not fully prepared for the influx. Some were afraid that the newcomers would take their jobs, while others feared they would be a drain on the economy.

“There was a division in society at the beginning: the locals vs. the newcomers,” says Tetiana Prytula, from Luhansk, who has lived in Sievierodonetsk since 2016. It has settled down now and my interlocutors see the arrival of new people as something positive.

“I believe it has helped the city a lot,” Nevenytsia says seeing the exchange between the locals and the newcomers as a chance to build a more cosmopolitan community. Today, Sievierodonetsk is culturally monotonous, he admits. Although it will never “be like Barcelona,” Nevenytsia is sure the city can find its way and define itself. It only needs a strategy to follow, for instance, to become a city of science or education. “Why do people come to Sievierodonetsk today? There are only two reasons: either the water supply to Lysychansk was cut off, or power is out in Rubizhne,” he says with bitter sarcasm.

“If I were a mayor, I would say: ‘let’s build a synagogue, a mosque and other temples here, so people of different denominations would come to the city bringing money. Each temple would have a cultural centre as well.’” Nevenytsia’s ideas of diversity correspond with that of Hiroaki Kuromiya, an American historian who specialised in research on the 19th century Donbas. Kuromiya wrote that Donbas has its own understanding of democracy: an inclusive one, unlike exclusive nationalism.

A new space for trust

Nevenytsia’s image of religious diversity is not the first big idea for the city. Sievierodonetsk’s builders in the early Soviet times dreamt about “a town of the sun” erected next to the chemical plant with parks in every quarter. The structure of the model Soviet town is still visible today. Druzhby Narodiv, or  the People’s Friendship Boulevard, connects the industrial plant with a large square where Lenin’s monument stood until 2014. The brightest building on this street is the Luhansk music and drama theatre. It was renovated after the theatre was relocated from Luhansk. Other cultural institutions also moved to Sievierodonetsk: universities, the philharmonic, etc. As Olha Lishyk, says: “The city became full of people with diverse skills”. And these skills can be a resource to transform it.

Sievierodonetsk is more open and diverse now thanks to the new institutions and the people who have migrated here since 2014. Now that civic initiatives have started to flourish, it is time for them – along with local businesses, politicians and residents – to co-operate. As the 2018 USAID/ENGAGE Civic Engagement Poll shows, the level of trust in civil society organisations within Ukrainian society is quite high, and Donbas is ranked the second highest region in the country. The new-born culture in Sievierodonetsk, like Siversky Donets and Hochu Budu, could become spaces for strengthening this trust.

Sievierodonetsk was founded in the midst of a sand field and entered the 21st century almost like a desert lacking modern and independent forms of civic and cultural life. Similar to those who strove to transform this place into a liveable and green oasis at the outset of its history, the residents of today now have an opportunity to transform it into a lively urban centre. The space for dreams is still open here. “I want our city to develop, use the opportunities available and to have wise rulers,” Lishyk says. I have no doubt other residents would stand by these words.

Svitlana Oslavska is an independent journalist from Ukraine and the book review editor at Krytyka magazine.

activism, reforms, Sievierodonetsk, Ukraine