"Bread and Water Lines": Par for the (post-Soviet) course?

Bread line, Luhansk. Photo New York Times.

"But to people standing in the bread and water lines that snake through the streets, life here is tough but far from catastrophic. In the predawn, the city comes alive with pedestrians carrying plastic water bottles, headed for the working fountains and grocery stores, on the assumption that fewer shells land early in the morning. One grocery had noodles, gum, sugar, eggs and vodka." (NYT 14 August 2014)

New York Times reporter Andrew Kramer seems surprised at the patience in Eastern Ukraine. One woman he interviewed commented: "I have everything I need but peace."

Russians, and Ukrainians, are good at standing in line. Their patience is epic, legendary really. Some of the people standing in these lines were small children during World War II and lived through the Soviet experiment and its post-Soviet variant. They have come to understand better than most that the forces in the world are greater than the individual. Heads down, hang on, hope for another day.

Others, though, especially people born after the Soviet Union dissolved, must surely be angry. Not, perhaps, as well-trained as their Soviet parents and grandparents in the art of reading propaganda, many Ukrainians in the East must believe what they see on Russian state-sponsored television. They must be certain that the West is out to get them, that they will be discriminated against if they remain a part of Ukraine and that they would be better off with Russians as their masters.

Or maybe not. Maybe they are cynical about the twenty years of Ukrainian independence that have made them the targets of bombs and artillery today. Maybe the idea of negotiated autonomy -- of an independent republic Luhansk and Donetsk -- seemed like a good one, and now it is too hard to back down from separatist claims issued in a braver, safer world.

Getting water from a canal (NY Times photo)

It is easy to explain how some of the scenes of hardship, like this one at right, aren't really that hard for the people living in eastern Ukraine. If we didn't know there is a war on, this could be a photo of country life anywhere in Russia or Ukraine. No running water in the city is a hardship, and can lead to severe problems with disease and sewage. But many people in this part of the world are used to spending time in country homes where there is little or no running water, where carting large bottles down to the river is a part of daily life, enabling residents to wash and to water their tomatoes and cucumbers.

My favorite part of "country life" the week I spent at a friend's dacha twenty years ago was driving down to the river and filling enormous containers with water, containers so heavy that only the strongest men could hoist them into the trunk of the car and then out again near the garden.

Absurd? Perhaps. But an example of the inventiveness of people who have lived without modern conveniences, like plumbing, for centuries. The bombing and military actions that have dominated the summer really are terrifying. But "noodles, gum, sugar, eggs, and vodka"? That isn't an empty store, but a store with all the necessities of life, and then some.

Normal life has ceased in this part of Ukraine, and we all watch in horror to see what may happen next. (It's hard to imagine anything worse than the tragedy of the Malaysian plane.) For the people who are there, though, waiting in line at the river must offer some small solace: there's a sense of unity, of coping in a crisis, of not being alone. My guess is that whether or not the "humanitarian aid" from Russia crosses the Ukrainian border, these very tough people can wait out the war for a good long time.

Another line -- at the river (NY Times photo)

The question is, what awaits them on the other side?