"We decided to bury the war, to close it behind my glass and stone walls. To make it a memory and a lesson of the past. I failed. From above the clouds, new exhibits landed on my roof," says the voice of the Avdiivka museum in the eponymous short film.
The Avdiivka Folk History Museum used to operate on 11 Komunalna Street. But now, you won't see its operating hours on Google Maps. It has been destroyed. For the second time.
After the first destruction, the museum was revived in another building. Since 2016, it became a community space, once again uniting the youth of the frontline city.
"Suddenly, people brought me back to life. I am happy to search for new heights with them, even without lunch breaks," continues the museum's voice in Piotr Armianovski's film. He made the short film in 2018, after attending the "Avdiivka FM" festival.
Avdiivka welcomed guests with the smell of the coking plant: since there was no other way into the city, everyone had to pass by the coking plant. However, the locals (before the full-scale invasion, the city had 30,000 residents) did not notice this aroma of metal and earth.
The city's history begins in the mid-18th century. At that time, peasants from Poltava and Siveria founded the first farmstead in this area. At the end of the 19th century, a railway was laid here.
Until the mid-1950s, this territory consisted of settlements. In 1956, they merged into a city. The plant started operating in 1963 and became one of the largest coking plants in Europe. It produced over 30 types of products for Ukrainian industry and exported to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Egypt. Before the great war, more than 3,000 people worked at the enterprise.
"For me, Avdiivka has always been associated with blooming lindens in spring, the aroma of lilacs, and the warm smell of fresh buns from the café in the center. My museum was located near the park, where children's laughter and the measured steps of adults always echoed. Sometimes I would stop by the window just to watch this life," recalls Tetiana Pereverzieva, the head of the Avdiivka Folk History Museum.
She loves this city unconditionally. She was born and lived her whole life here. After the start of the war in 2014, Tetiana left the city for a short time, which was under the control of militants since April. Together with the Plast scout movement members, as the organizer of the Avdiivka branch, she went to a camp in Kholodnyi Yar. While the Plast members were away, Ukrainian troops liberated Avdiivka at the end of July.
"When we returned, the city was different. Without electricity, with a non-functioning plant. My parents were left without work, stores were closed, and we had to go to Pokrovsk for groceries. It was a completely different reality," recalls Pereverzieva.
Tetiana worked in a school at that time. They studied during breaks between shelling: between 08:00 AM and 12:00 PM, the aggressor usually did not disturb the city.
Polina Pushkina was an 8th-grade student at the time. She no longer knows what she was like before the war. Because for her, the war has lasted half her life. She came under the first shelling on July 27, 2014. It hit her home. The girl took a photo with the hole in the wall as the backdrop.
After this, Polina left the city for half a year. Her family went to relatives in Russia. At first, they helped, but after a month, they kicked them out of their apartment. So, the Pushkins lived in a factory dormitory in Moscow Oblast. They struggled as even meat was a luxury. In school, the girl was bullied by Russian children.
Returning to her hometown in winter, she often passed by her native School No. 2, which was already destroyed.
"It was unpleasant. We were promised that it would be rebuilt and we would return to study there. It was like a symbol of empty promises that something would change," recalls Polina.
Polina herself went to study in another school in the city. School No. 2 was restored only in 2021, a few months before the full-scale invasion.
In 2017, the girl started a diary in which she noted the names of the long-suffering streets of Avdiivka—those that were most often shelled.
From the diary:
"March 2, 2017. We were waiting for spring—we got disappointment. At 5:30 PM, there was a strike on my yard and neighboring streets."
"March 11, 2017. In the morning, We were riding bikes with a friend. At 4:00 PM, the shelling began. We hid in the nearest building entrance. We heard a whistling sound. My friend and I had rubber pigs in our backpacks that squeaked when pressed. As the whistle sounded, we fell, the pigs squeaked, and we laughed. The neighboring building was hit."
"May 28, 2017. We were riding bikes with a friend in the old part of the city. We accidentally ended up on Lermontova Street, and lay on the ground for half an hour, with bullets whistling by. I crawled and collected snowdrops. This was the first time under bullets, usually, it was just shelling."
Later, the city became "quieter." After 2017, artists began to come en masse and create their projects together with locals. Art exhibitions, concerts, performances—all this became part of life, which was almost non-existent in the industrial city before. This reminded Tetiana Pereverzieva, the museum director, of tolokas, which were held in the city long ago. Her house was built during such a toloka.
"Perhaps because there was always a need for housing due to the development of the station and the plant. People could not finance the construction themselves, so they united. Everyone lived in harmony, and this tradition of toloka existed for many years," says Pereverzieva.
The construction of the railway station is connected with her favorite city legend. According to it, two men were in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and learned that a treasure was buried in Avdiivka. They dug for a long time and even found something, but envious people wrote a denunciation to the law enforcement agencies. The treasure remained in the ground, and the men were allegedly punished. A park and a road were arranged on the site where something valuable is presumably buried.
"Children really liked this story, that there is a treasure somewhere here, with which we can restore our Avdiivka. They remember this place, so someday we will look for these treasures," adds the museum director.
By the way, it was Tetiana who helped revive the recipe for Avdiivka porridge, which was lost at some point in Soviet times. In 2018, during the preparation for the "Avdiivka FM" festival, there was a need to present some highlight of the city.
And then Tetiana remembered that her grandfather and grandmother lived in Hahayivka—this is what the place was called, which belonged to the settlers called hahayi. According to the legend, each person was allocated as much land as they could run, shouting: "Aaaah." One person, to not lose his breath, shouted: "Hay! Hay! Hay!" Supposedly, that's how the name was established.
It was the hahayi who cooked this sweet porridge—made from rice, eggs, milk, and butter. To record the recipe, they interviewed those who remembered it. Then this technology was included in the list of regional intangible cultural heritage. And in 2022—in the national one.
"Now we travel to communities in Ukraine where Avdiivka residents live once a month. We also gather interested locals, to whom we tell the history of Avdiivka and present our porridge," says the activist. This is part of the efforts to ensure that Avdiivka residents do not lose touch with each other.
Polina Pushkina was last in Avdiivka at the beginning of 2022. The city was decorated for the Christmas holidays, snow-covered. Then there were hundreds of news reports with photographs, in which she recognized her native districts less and less. Eventually, the girl stopped reading the news. She physically could not.
In 2022, for the first time in over half a century, the coking plant extinguished the fire in the furnaces and completely stopped; later, the workers finally left the plant.
Until the fall of 2023, Ukrainian troops repelled attacks and held the city. In October, the Russians renewed their offensive. The then Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi reported that in just one month of battles for Avdiivka, Russia lost about 10,000 soldiers and over 100 tanks. Due to the threat of encirclement, the Armed Forces of Ukraine left the city on February 17, 2024.
"Everyone lives with the dream that we will return to Avdiivka. There will be a lot of work, but they hope to live to see this moment. In any case, I will visit the city at the first opportunity, if God grants me life, at least to visit the graves of my relatives," says Tetiana Pereverzieva.