Back in the day

Ukraine has been through a number of currency changes- the kupon, anyone?- but we're going a bit further back in time today. I've tried to find out as much as possible about these coins, but please jump into the comments if you know anything else!

This coin is called a denga (денга is actually written on it). My friend found it near Kharkiv, while digging at his dacha. Ebay lists these coins for $5-10 USD.

Is that year 1735?

Here's a five-kopek coin from 1789. You can find this coin on Ebay for $100-500. I have no idea how we encountered this coin. It looks like someone brought it to work one day and my husband took pictures of it.

Money Madness, or What Is It Worth Tomorrow?

I wish I had been born ten years earlier (to have been a twenty-something during the 1990s). That way I would be either rich or dead by now.

  - D's coworker

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the rest of the 90s were a time of chaos and hope for Ukraine. Obviously I wasn't in Kharkov then, but a friend of mine was. Here he shares his thoughts on the kupon karbovanets, a currency briefly used during those years before it succumbed to hyperinflation. 

What was your reaction when this currency was first released? Do you remember the reactions of others?

I was more than hopeful, but it was only me. Others were just interested and older people were suspicious. Faith in the soviet currency was immovable (until the annihilation of Sberbank accounts).

From the late 80s I was a great supporter of the idea of Ukrainian independence. In 1987, I dared to predict that Leningrad would soon become St. Petersburg. No one believed me. And they were right, it was beyond their imagination at the moment. So, when the news about our own Ukrainian currency appeared, I was very excited. We were allowed to have only a hundred kupons (that was the name, karbovanci was the Ukrainian word for soviet ruble) when they were released. A person was given a hundred kupons and the rest of their wage in rubles.  

 
Why did the government begin printing the karbovantsiv in the 1990s? What was their explanation? 

2012 Food Prices in Ukraine

This is the Ukrainian grivna.

Happy Sweet Sixteen, Ukrainian grivna! (1996 - present)

Also known as hryvnya, hryvnia, гривні, гривня, грн., or uah (plural griven - гривень) (*phew!*), it's worth approximately 12 US cents as of October 2012. The grivna was originally a currency used way back in the Kievan Rus... and surprise, surprise, who could that be on the front of the bill? None other than Vladimir the Great, a grand prince of Kiev way back in the Kievan Rus!

He's totally rocking that hat!

Born to a king and a housekeeper, Wikipedia claims that Saint Vlad had 800 concubines. Eventually he began to search for a suitable religion for his country. He called before him representatives of many religions. The story goes that he seriously considered Islam after hearing of plural wives... until he learned that wine would be forbidden! Жить без вина мы не можем, ибо на Руси все веселие и удовольствие бывает в подпитии, or thou canst not live lacking wine, for all happiness and pleasure in Rus depend upon it. At the end of the story he ended up picking Orthodoxy and he forced his lands to be thus baptized. And look, hey!, the majority are still Orthodox! : ) Anyways, the currency of modern Ukraine is also called grivna so I suppose it's only suitable to have his face on the front.

The fastest way to calculate prices between Ukrainian griven and US dollars in your head?

8 uah = 1 usd

It's not accurate to the cent, but it's close enough. Memorize that and you'll be able to calculate prices fairly easily (as long as the exchange rate is stable!)


How much can you expect to spend on food in Ukraine?
Let's see....

Meet cat, our buckwheat quality assurance specialist

For 8 uah you can pick up a kilogram of gretchka, a tasty traditional food. That's right, only 1 buck! It's prepared like rice and takes about 20 minutes to cook. Eat it for breakfast with sugar, for lunch with ketchup and sausage, or throw it in a soup. It's also known as a health/diet food.

How to spend 30 uah

Let's talk about awesome. Let's talk about the Kharkov zoo.


First off, you can get through the gates for just

this

this

 +

In fact, if you show up in the winter around 4 or 5 PM, they'll even let you in for less than 30 uah. I like this. Until moving to Ukraine I'd only gotten to the zoo twice in the past 8 years. With an average winter temperature of -20F/-28C, Fairbanks, Alaska obviously has no zoo. When we moved down to Anchorage we visited The Alaska Zoo once. It cost the equivalent of 100 uah and to see what?- moose?! No, thank you. I still remember nearly getting trampled once by a mother and her twins on a bike path. Another winter everyone lived in terror of a large moose who was always lurked down in parking lot of our building. We never went back to The Alaska Zoo because it housed mostly animals that literally hung out in backyards or frequently disrupted traffic. (The other zoo trip? Honolulu, Hawaii. Totally recommend. But that's neither here nor there...)

So 30 uah will get you in the door but it's good to bring an extra handful of small bills for all the extras: beer, cotton candy, and корм (animal food). Yes, that's right, you can feed the animals! The non bite-your-head-off kind, at least.

Money: 500 grivna

Do you remember the children's book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day? Yeah, today was like that.
  
I went to sleep with gum in my mouth, and now there’s gum in my hair. And when I got out of bed this morning, I tripped on the skateboard, and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running. And I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I'll spare you most of the details, but it involved sleeping four hours and then operating as a zombie for the next four as the sleeping pill wore off. It involved working. On a Sunday. It involved a rushed and awkward encounter with the neighbors. And three, no, four separate and unsuccessful attempts to find a working xerox machine before class started. And the school mixing up my schedule and my boss lighting firecrackers in the office and me being late for the first class and walking into a classroom of new students on the wrong foot. And a fight with D to top it all off : (

But at least this showed up in my pay envelope at the end of the day: 500 grivna, or about $62 USD.

Сковорода means frying pan in Russian

This man's name is Григорий Сковорода, or Grigory Frying Pan. Oops, I mean Grigory Skovoroda. He was a Ukrainian philosopher, composer, and traveling poet of the 1700s, back when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire.

Skovoroda was born in the same region as one of my favorite present-day Ukrainian artists and absolute favorite drag character: Verka Serduchka. One day this performer will get his own entry on my blog but not today, for today is Skovoroda's day.

Sorry, Verka Serduchka and entourage, we'll come back to you later. I wonder what a man from the 18th century would have thought of you.

According to Wikipedia, after years of wandering the country and thinking deep thoughts, Skovoroda dug his own grave and arranged for the tombstone to read The world tried to catch me, but didn't succeed.

MMM

MMM 2012: It's a fact!

Let's do a little test...

Test of American and post-USSR pop culture

How many of the following do you know?

• M&M's
• Eminem
• MMM

Well, how did you do?

If you could correctly identify the first two as tasty chocolate candies and a hooligan (that's what my Russian textbook claimed in the chapter titled "Professions"), congrats. You are an American pop culture expert! 

Did you have trouble with the third one, MMM? This was the post-Soviet Union question. It's not 3M, the scotch tape company. It was- and is?- a massive Ponzi scheme of sorts, operating first in the USSR, later getting shut down by the Russian government, and then popping up again in 2011 and yet again in 2012.

"Don't miss your chance!" "100% a month" "It's back, everything is like it was in 1994!"

Check out the front page of this Ukrainian newspaper from last fall:

"We got cheated again" "New Mavrodi pyramid has started falling apart; people are complaining that they're not getting their money" "Investors shared how they got involved in the scheme, however Mavrodi stated that 'everyone is getting paid, all accusations are a lie.' "

Since I'm not a professional historian, I'm going to give you the edited-for-excitement, colorful version of the story... which actually isn't that far from the truth.

1. A man named Sergei Mavrodi starts a company called MMM.

2. After the USSR disbands, he turns start airing alluring "get rich!!" tv commercials.

3. These commercials become a MEGA HIT. Everyone is following the protagonist, a folk hero named Golubkov who first buys a pair of boots for his wife before going on to buy a fur coat, furniture, a car, a house... The fourth commercial shows the hero talking with his tattooed, vodka-drinking older brother. They eat pickles and talk about making money honestly. And after that- after that they go to America, see the sights, and share their impressions of 90's America: "The beer is excellent, but our vodka is better!" "They have a nice system, but ours is better." Soon a Mexican telenovela star is hired and starts showing up in the commercials, speaking Spanish and dancing with the now-respectable older brother. Anyways, the plot just gets better and better. You can watch for yourself!

4. Everyone and their grandmother and their second cousin twice-removed starts buying MMM shares. The first people do, of course, make money, which fuels the fire. According to my local sources, MMM starts counting money by rooms: one room of money, two rooms of money, etc.

5. The pyramid starts to collapse, thousands of people begin clamoring for blood. 1994: The government shuts down MMM for tax evasion. 1996: Mavrodi becomes a politician and tries to run for president of Russia. 1997: MMM declares bankruptcy. Mavrodi escapes! Leaves the country. 2003: Mavrodi is arrested. He is given three years to review the charges against him. 2007: Mavrodi is convicted of fraud. Four and a half year sentence. However, he's released almost immediately for time served in custody.

And that brings us up to now. If you were Sergei Mavrodi and found yourself looking for work in the year 2011, what would you do?

Money: 50 grivna

This is Ukraine's 50 grivna note.

As of June 2012, it's worth about $6.50 US or €5.

The man is Mykhailo Hrushevsk, a Ukrainian politician and historian. He died way back in 1934 so I don't blame you if you don't recognize his face.

Quite the beard, no? Now you'll remember him : )

Here's the back of the 50 grivna note.

That is the building of the Центральна Рада, or the Central Council. Guess who was in charge? None other than Mykhailo Hrushevsk, the man with the beard.

Sometimes also called the Central Rada.

This was a short-lived group (1917-1918) that came into existence during Ukraine's very very brief taste of freedom after WWI. Prior to that Ukraine has been under the thumb of several neighboring countries. Shortly after that the Soviet Union came calling and Ukraine became the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. By the way, that's when Kharkov, the city I live in, was made the capital of the country for about two decades.

Wikipedia has a long list of what happened to the members of the Central Council (hint: not very happy endings.) Nowadays you'll hear talk of the Верховна Рада, or the Supreme Council. The Supreme Council is Ukraine's current parliament. It wasn't established until 1938.


The Central Council building is still around and you might want to consider seeing it if you are visiting Kiev. I'll ask my historian friend Lena to leave the address in the comment section of this post.

Keep reading:
10 and 20 grivna
100 grivna
500 grivna

Money: 100 grivna

It's always good to have one of these in your pocket:

The 100 grivna note (top = old, bottom = new). About $12 USD as of May 2012.

I've been wanting to write about Ukrainian currency for a while. Money is something that we handle and view daily but rarely do we actually stop to see what's on the bills. That's a pity because money can be used as a cultural shortcut. Think about it: what's printed on the bills is probably going to represent the most important places and people in the country. If you learn nothing else but these faces and places, it's a good start.

Also, I've got some great photos of really old money (dating from the USSR days all the way back to the 1700s). I'm really excited to share those with you in a later post!

Let's get back to the 100 grivna note.

The man shown on the front of both bills is Taras Shevchenko, the mega-famous Ukrainian poet. Born 1814, died 1861. Do you enjoy his poetry?

New bill

Old bill

When I am dead, bury me
In my beloved Ukraine,
My tomb upon a grave mound high
Amid the spreading plain,
So that the fields, the boundless steppes,
The Dnieper's plunging shore
My eyes could see, my ears could hear
The mighty river roar.



One of Kharkov's famous landmarks is this statue of Shevchenko. You can see it for yourself in (of course) Shevchenko Park.

                                      Moving on...

On the back of the older note is St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the 7 Wonders of Ukraine.

This cathedral has been around in one form or another for about 1000 years!! I think D and I visited it back in 2007.

On the back of the newer note is a landscape of Central Ukraine (Cherkasy?) and a кобзар (kind of traveling musician in the past).

I found this кобзар on the streets of Kharkov:

More info on the Ukrainian grivna:
10 grivna, 20 grivna
50 grivna
500 grivna