Weekend Economists Debate: Which Came First? The Incredible, Edible Egg November 27-29, 2015

[MattSh]

21. Life in Crimea - Then and Now

From an American living there - then and now.

I'd like to mention that a good deal of what he says about the "then" part certainly applies to a good portion of the rest of the country. A good section of Kiev has always had it better than the "then" in this article. Why? All of the national level politicians must spend at least some time in Kiev and generally maintain a residence here, meaning the roads and the electric and the water system must be maintained better than most areas. Plus, a general facade of modernity must be maintained for when outsiders come in looking to invest. If a certain level of economic activity can be maintained, it means a higher level of prosperity and greater opportunities for those whose sole purpose it would seem is to leech off of everybody else.

Us? I guess you could say we're in a good position. We live not too far from a hotel, and have lot of restaurants around too, including one in the $50 per person range, we're not too far away from a couple of important government buildings, and have housing decent enough for a lot of the short and long term expats, whether they live here, like me, or are on a diplomatic or UN or EU assignment. Don't want these people returning home badmouthing the place, now do we? So our electric, heat, and water situation, etc. remains much the same as before. Not to say that you don't notice problems though. I've seen some nice new painted lines on roads that have seen minimal maintenance since the "revolution", but don't let that fool you. There will be places that will thoroughly rattle your car if you hit it the wrong way. But at least the roads look nice when that happens!

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Life in Crimea 20 months after reunification with Russia … by Auslander | The Vineyard of the Saker

Life in General

Krimea and Sevastopol were treated as a backwater, a poor southern province of little import beyond a pleasant place to holiday in summer and an area to be looted to the very ground and beyond. Not a kopek was spent on infrastructure since the fall of SSSR beyond what was needed to keep the water, gas, electric, sewer and transportation systems functional within reason.

The roads were, and are, a patchwork quilt of small repairs done only as needed and the rule of thumb was and is the repairs are done only if someone of importance is discomfited by a particular street or road. On the other hand it is quite hilarious to see hectares of palatial mansions built on former vineyard lands (illegal in both Ukraine and Russia) with the required number of S Klasse and other luxurious transport sitting outside and inside the compounds and the streets are rutted dirt that become quagmires during the first drops of rain. The old saw of ‘money don’t buy you class’ apparently holds true in this humble city as it does everywhere.

The city electric supply system was, under Ukraine, a nightmare. Nothing was renovated for over 20 years and in fact little was ‘modernized’ since the system was rebuilt in the late ‘40’s, the philosophy being ‘it still works, why spend money on it?’. Going in to a substation, which I have done, was like taking a tour of an electrical museum, exposed electromechanical relays and switches carrying 480 volts, fabric wrapped wiring, generally aluminum, crumbling concrete walls, floors and ceilings that dripped water in heavy rains, in essence a disaster waiting to happen. Electric service could be relied upon to cease at random intervals, the norm was two or three times a week, reason unknown, but it was often enough and long enough that one of the first purchases I made when we started to build the house was a diesel generator.

With the change of landlord the city electrical grid was the first, and so far only, infrastructure system to be renovated after a fashion. Sevastopol does have a fair sized electrical power generating plant located on harbor near Inkerman. It is coal powered although plans are to switch to natural gas power. I do not know when this change of fuel will happen and it is possible it will never happen, for a reason.

Many of the small substations were renovated and modernized including the tiny one feeding our valley not a block away, located in an obscure corner of the park. This alone stopped most of the outages in our valley. There was also an attempt to at least make some order of the jumble of feed wires coming to and from the stations, must of which would give an electrical engineer a heart attack at the sight of them. By summer of 2014 the random power outages were generally a thing of the past. If there was to be a power cutoff announcements were made on radio and TV as to where, when and the projected time frame of the cutoff.


-----> http://thesaker.is/life-in-crimea-20-months-after-reunification-with-russia-by-auslander/