"As soon as we win, I will immediately return to Bakhmut and set up a tent if I have nowhere else to live"

On the Facebook page of 58-year-old Svitlana Kravchenko, the “About Me” section reads briefly and succinctly: “I am a hereditary Bakhmut resident, from my Ukrainian great-grandfather. This is the most valuable thing I have.”

Behind these words is an incredible story of an indomitable city, an old house with secrets, and a woman who keeps the memory of both.

The house that saved its residents from the Gulag and the Nazis

“My great-grandfather built a house in the center of Bakhmut for his daughter Talia as a dowry in 1922. A few years ago, during the renovation, I found letters from my grandfather Volodymyr to my grandmother Talia, dated from that very year, under the roof. They were dating back then. My grandfather wrote in beautiful Ukrainian calligraphy. In one of them, he wrote: ‘I love you the most in the world. I can't breathe without you, but I can't come on Saturday because I have a lecture at the flying club,’” says Svitlana.

It was about the local Bakhmut flight school. Svitlana's grandfather Volodymyr worked as an accountant at the Donetsk Railroad at the time, and the lecture was probably related to his profession. In 1925, the lovers got married and settled in the house that Talia's father had built for his daughter three years earlier.

The letters, which his granddaughter Svitlana will find many years later, will reveal another family secret. Volodymyr sent several of them to Talia from exile: in the 1930s, he was arrested as an unreliable element.

More recently (because this story was kept secret in the family), Svitlana learned that her grandmother went to free a prisoner in one of the Gulag camps in 1940. She sold the most valuable thing in the house – the galvanized roof – to a neighbor who was a tinsmith. She used the money to bribe him to take the body of her supposedly dead husband.

She brought her husband, who had an open form of tuberculosis, to their house in Bakhmut. A year later, the Germans entered the city. They were disgusted and afraid to enter the Kravchenko's home. Although, if not for the infection, they would have been interested in the beautiful, spacious house with 5 rooms in the central park. Because the commandant's office was opened right next door.

On January 11, 1942, the Germans took about three thousand people, including wounded Soviet soldiers and local activists, to the alabaster mines. They bricked them up in one of the caves. Alive. Later, even women with babies were found there.

In 2009, Svitlana Kravchenko received a letter from the Israeli Embassy inviting the descendants of her grandmother Talia to receive the title of Righteous Among the Nations. This was another secret revealed.

It turned out that on that terrible day in 1942 when the Nazis were driving people through the streets to the alabaster mines, three Jewish boys ran past the Kravchenko house and jumped into their yard. Here they often played with Talia and Volodymyr's three sons. Talia hid the boys and took care of them herself: by that time, her husband was no longer able to get up because of his illness.

The boys stayed with them until September 1943, when Artemivsk was de-occupied. It is noteworthy that Volodymyr Kravchenko, Svitlana's grandfather, died a few weeks after that. The woman summarizes: “He covered these boys with himself to the end.”

Their father died in an alabaster mine, their mother went crazy with grief, and they grew up and never forgot about their savior. Many years later, Talia and Volodymyr's great-grandchildren received a certificate of appreciation from the state of Israel for saving Jewish lives.

The tragedy of 1942 went down in history as the Bakhmut Babyn Yar. And in the house in the central park of Bakhmut, life continued – Svitlana, her brother, and her sister were born.

There are no moskals here, there's Ukrainian culture

“I grew up in this house, and it seems to have extended my childhood. I wake up in the morning and the sun fills the room, and I can smell fried potatoes or navy-style pasta. The most delicious dishes in the world. My dad cooks it, my mom, a teacher, used to work on Saturdays,” Svitlana dreamily recalls the spacious rooms, the oak doors in two halves, the stucco molding on the ceiling, the old garden around the house. All of this has been preserved. Until the beginning of 2022.

“This is the best house I have ever seen in my life. And I really hope it will stay,” says a woman who had to leave last summer. She stayed in a village near Dnipro. “It's not just dangerous in Bakhmut, it's...” she pauses for a long moment. “No one has any idea what's going on there. On June 12, Trinity Day, a shell hit my house. It broke through the roof and damaged a lot of things. I don't ask those who stayed behind anything about the house: there is no point. Because it may be like this, and in 20 minutes it may be different.”

We never mentioned the house again: Svitlana was in pain. We talked about the city and its people.

“I'm very sorry that Bakhmut, the oldest city in Donbas, and the entire Donetsk Oblast, has always been treated with disdain by scholars and ethnographers, who say that we had no folk culture, no language, and that there are only moskals here. I strongly disagree.”

The woman cites her grandfather's letters written in Ukrainian a hundred years ago and a photo of her little father in an embroidered shirt as examples and recalls that the family spoke Ukrainian. But in the year of her birth, 1965, the last Ukrainian school in Bakhmut closed. And around that time, ethnographic expeditions were taking out old things, including clothes, in wagons for the collections of large museums. Later, the locals were reproached: you have not preserved your folk culture. And it is Donbas culture, the youngest in Ukraine.

Before the war, Svitlana Kravchenko was a folk artist who made original dolls. And in 2016, in one of the villages of the district, she came across a simple, everyday hemp shirt. Since then, the woman has been recreating folk clothes worn in Donetsk Oblast. Her passion was shared by like-minded people and over the years she created 36 costumes. Their shows took place all over Ukraine. The models were either military wives or defenders of Bakhmut.

Last year she took a treasure with her – 18 bags of clothes. The rest of the collection is kept by her associates. She was unable to take the wooden items, ceramics, and authentic items she had collected over the years from her home.

Svitlana's Bakhmut: excursions where you can touch the city

Since 2014, Svitlana has been an accountant during working hours and a city guide in her spare time. She showed visitors the other side of Bakhmut. She showed the doors of old houses, of which more than 50 have survived on the main streets.

“Go ahead, touch them. What are they like? What is the texture? What discoveries can be behind them? Describe how it feels.”

She told people about the fairs on the central square, demonstrated old money, and showed them what goods one could buy. Here they are – towels and fabrics. Touch it, feel it.

She told them that the territory of Donetsk Oblast was once covered by the ancient Permian Sea, where huge deposits of rock salt were formed 290 million years ago. All Bakhmut residents know this information – salt is mined in their town. But when Svitlana gave them a salt crystal or an alabaster pebble with a shell imprint – there are plenty of them in the neighborhood – people's faces changed. Everyone realized the importance of the moment: “I am connected to this city. It is mine, and I am its.”

The war from the occupation of 2014 to the present day: “Why did you come here? This is Ukrainian land”

On April 12, 2014, separatists declared the “DPR” to be in power in the city. On the same day, local activists founded the public movement “Ukrainian Bakhmut”. At first, they put up leaflets at night and painted pillars with yellow and blue colors.

“Once I was caught by my brother's classmate: ‘What are you doing here?’ – ‘I'm asserting justice. This is my Ukrainian land,' and I ran away as fast as I could,” Svitlana laughs.

Most of the local authorities supported the Russians: the occupiers were given the keys to the prosecutor's office, police, and city council.

“Before my eyes, the orcs opened the building of the architectural gem, the Azov-Don Bank, and set up their headquarters. Igor Strelkov-Girkin used to visit there. I was so outraged when I saw these bastards entering the building with their dirty heels and machine guns! I called everyone I could. But in those early days, no one knew who was friend or foe. And I realized that no one would do anything. I went to the headquarters myself every evening. I naively believed that I could influence, and explain to strangers that this was our land and that we would not be traitors or slaves. After a while, I was warned not to come. They told me I was being watched,” thewoman says.

In her opinion, few people agreed to be with Russia. Of those shown at the rallies, 80% were imported provocateurs.

“And 20% were local idiots.”

The only place where the Ukrainian flag flew was a military unit in the city center. There, 30 Ukrainian paratroopers were under siege. They did not leave, and “this evil”, as Svitlana calls the enemies, did not set foot on their territory.

“And then our local residents, ordinary elderly people, youth, entrepreneurs, supported them. They carried and threw food and laundry over the fence. The paratroopers were fired upon from the windows of high-rise buildings. Once the military announced over a loudspeaker that they would return fire. Since then, the shelling has stopped.”

The woman is proud of her fellow countrymen who were able to unite in such a way. All the paratroopers survived and left the military unit on July 6, the day Bakhmut was liberated. That's when soldiers from the Donbas, Zakarpattia, and Artemivsk battalions entered the city.

From 2014 to 2022, Bakhmut lived in the status of a frontline city. Active pro-Ukrainian Bakhmut residents fed the military, cared for the wounded in the hospital, and repaired army vehicles.

“Everyone has the same motives: this is our land. Activists of the Ukrainian Bakhmut movement did everything possible to prevent the war from coming to us. But it did come,” thewoman sighs.

Since February 24, 2022, activists have been helping the terrorists. On February 25, they opened a humanitarian headquarters: old ladies with a split pack of buckwheat and two pies, and people with money who brought bags of food from the supermarket in fancy cars, came to them.

Happiness is living at home

Svitlana Kravchenko stayed in Bakhmut as long as she could “not to betray the city”. But she had to leave her home eventually.

“Most of my friends moved to Dnipro, but because of the sky-high prices, they quickly moved to the villages. A one-room apartment in the city costs 9 thousand hryvnias and more, and a two-room apartment costs 13 thousand and more plus utility costs. You also have to pay 100% to the realtor. There is no war in this region, people here earn money and go about their business. My presence disturbs them and they openly show it,” thewoman sounds sad and bitter. “No one is waiting for anyone anywhere. I understand people who stay in Bakhmut to the last.”

Svitlana rents a house in the village. At first, she paid 10 thousand hryvnias, and this time she found another one for 7.5 thousand. The heating doesn't work there. We spoke the day after she moved in.

“It's not a house, it's a dog kennel. I can’t find a job in my field, and I asked employers frankly why. ‘Because you'll go home right away.’ ‘Yes, I will.’ ‘Why do I need such an employee?’ Why do I live here, and not in Kyiv Oblast, for example? Because it's closer to home from here. As soon as we win, I will immediately return to Bakhmut and set up a tent if I have nowhere else to live. I think about my city all the time because my life is there. There are 19 graves of my ancestors there. Even if you force your thoughts away, the city comes to you in your dreams.”

Bakhmut’s smell, color, and taste

I asked the woman what Bakhmut smells like to her.

— We were talking with our friends about what we would do after the victory. And we decided that we don't need so many roses. They are not our flowers, because they require a lot of care. We need something suitable for our area: marigolds, petunias, and salvias. Therefore, their scents, as well as the aromas of blooming linden trees, young poplar leaves, and bitter herbs (the steppe is outside the city), infused on a summer day, can be used to make cool compositions.

— What is the color of Bakhmut?

— Green. Bright. A little covered with dust, but it's not dirt, it's a light urban dusting. It is also the color of rain-washed asphalt. And the color of red brick. The city was famous for factories producing such bricks.

— What do your eyes see when you say: “Bakhmut”?

— My city is the sun. We have a lot of it. And when you look up, you see a clear sky and silver poplars. Warm old buildings and very nice people, — the woman stops talking. She is crying.

— What does Bakhmut taste like?

— Like freshly baked bread and salt.

— How does Bakhmut sound?

— It's a brass band. I grew up in the central park. It's music from the speakers, singing on the benches. This is the greeting “Glory to Ukraine!” from the youth in 2022. I treat Bakhmut as a living being. Although I left a long time ago, I feel that my body is here and my soul is there. There is no better city. I am sure that Bakhmut has a great future. I talked to historians and heard from them that Bakhmut was founded according to all the rules of urban planning. That it will flourish under any government because it's like a person, who is born talented. So is our Bakhmut. It was born and it will continue to exist because it has not yet reached its potential. It will be rebuilt. It's not that I believe in it. I just know it. Kyiv will stand forever, as will Odesa and Bakhmut.