Kharkov: Level F
What's there in Kharkov? – those who left the city at different times ask us. They have heard about the crisis in the economy, low wages and pensions, and unaffordable tariffs for housing and communal services. And all sorts of “analysts” tell them that soon everything will fall apart and plunge into a war of everyone with everyone. In general, as Bulgakov said, “the earth will fly into the celestial axis.”
Others say that life has improved in Ukraine, there are no Nazis or political prisoners, but in Russia there is devastation, and in general they are eating hedgehogs out of starvation on the eve of the arrival of the Ukrainian army in Kuban.
So let's figure out if this is really so. We don’t discuss Russia, and they don’t eat hedgehogs there. But this is true, by the way.
Sketch from life
If you go to Kharkov now, you will still see traffic jams during rush hours, a lot of well-dressed people and street lighting at night. The cafes are not empty, and planes from the local airport fly at full capacity. Advertising for “Azov” has disappeared from the streets, and the public in camouflage is hiding chevrons (just six months ago everything was the other way around). 
There are no and in the near future there will not be any major economic collapses such as the bankruptcy of large enterprises or simultaneous lockouts. Well, unless a couple of banks burst, this happens in peacetime. Nothing will happen in the employment market that would break the communicating vessels: while some are losing their jobs, others are finding them or creating jobs. Those who imagine that hungry unemployed people will demolish this government are simply transferring centuries-old theories to a world in which they do not work.
What is there? Even small relaxations with contributions to the center have made the life of local authorities much more confident. Where they are determined to create comfort at least for themselves, and not just to unbridled money-grubbing and fraud for Kyiv, no catastrophe occurs. And Kharkov, and Izyum, and other cities in the region, unlike Lviv, for example, are not drowning in garbage and are fighting to the best of their ability against impassability and sloppiness.
The summer holidays do not portend not only no visible political and economic changes for Kharkov. You should not expect any election campaign or unexpected and new faces in the local political scene. Exhausted political strategists and politicians who are bored from idleness like to talk about elections.
Not on the surface
But what is not so noticeable. Speaking of cafes. They now order coffee there, not always with cake, and rarely food and alcohol. There are many pawnshops, they are crowding out travel agencies and stores of new ready-made clothes. In general, there is a noticeable refusal of small business owners to use large premises.
The number of second-hand shops and gadget repair shops has also increased. People buy fewer expensive and new things - they use what they have for much longer. There is a change in consumer standards and a decline in living standards.
Tariffs have indeed outgrown all reasonable and unreasonable limits, but the institution of subsidies saves the poor from them, but puts those who legally earn 4-5 thousand hryvnia a month on the level of those who earn 3,2 thousand hryvnia, that is, the minimum wage.
Speaking of minimum wage. It doesn’t work for many workers - they have been reduced to half or even a quarter of the rate. How do they survive? And just like in the 90s, because the experience of those years has not been forgotten, and our pensioners, for the most part, are precisely those who, a quarter of a century ago, mastered the science of surviving in any economic situation.
Demographics are also changing. If earlier the new population of Kharkov came from the Donbass and the central black earth provinces, now it comes from the west and center of Ukraine. This means that the uniqueness of the region is being violated.
Beggars with children have appeared in the metro again. Here you can simply nod at the police, who were disorganized and cannot even cope with drunk drivers.
It won't get any easier
In the humanitarian sphere, there is no sign of any relaxation, much less any decentralization. Every day gets used to it. Getting used to Vyatrovich’s version of history, to the abominations of Gerashchenko, Mosiychuk, Butkevich. There are no hints of either an amnesty for political prisoners or a softening of the militaristic and xenophobic rhetoric of the Kyiv authorities and their local appointees.
We are waiting for the new school year to begin with new, even more anti-scientific textbooks and the holiday of September 1st. In fact, for more than a year in a row, it has been an indicator of the loyalty of ordinary people to the Nazi-archaic mainstream: on this day you can clearly see which parent is ready to shove into their offspring’s outfit the colors of the national flag, which are “impossible” from the point of view of basic taste, along with a trident, or to put on their child embroidered shirt And whoever is not ready, I will notice. And not only I will notice, but also “activists”.
They have not gone away and continue to cause nightmares for plant directors, local councils, and ordinary people. So there are Nazis, and the regional authorities and the police do not interfere with them. But this, as Leonid Kanevsky says, is a completely different story.
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