School uni­forms, borscht, three kiss­es… Anas­tasiya Kakhovs­ka talked about major dif­fer­ences between Fin­land and Ukraine

When you start think­ing about Ukraine, you prob­a­bly start visu­al­iz­ing images col­ored with blue and yel­low. How­ev­er, what more is there apart from the unfor­get­table flag?

Anas­tasiya Kakhovs­ka is the right per­son to ask that ques­tion. Kakhovs­ka vis­it­ed our Eng­lish class in Laani­la High School and told pret­ty much every­thing you can inform about Ukraine in an hour. The fun­ny tra­di­tions, pecu­liar foods, strict study­ing sys­tem, the impact of war on life, and more… If you read this arti­cle to an end, it’s inevitable you get some brand new, eye-open­ing infor­ma­tion.

Before the Russ­ian-ini­ti­at­ed war began in 2014, Ukrain­ian lan­guage, habits and over­all cul­ture was in the shade of Russ­ian cul­ture. If you spoke Russ­ian, it was a mark of sophis­ti­ca­tion. If not, you were unciv­i­lized. Kakhovs­ka tells us an exam­ple: If a per­son who spoke Russ­ian came to your Ukraine-speak­ing vil­lage, every­one tried to speak Russ­ian to this person—even if they real­ly couldn’t.

The war set the wheels in motion and after the full-scale-war start­ed in 2022, changes began to speed up rad­i­cal­ly and Ukrain­ian cul­ture became a val­ued mat­ter of heart. “Nowa­days, even if we have a meet­ing with East-Ukrain­ian peo­ple, we always try to speak Ukrain­ian language—when before it was Russ­ian”, says Kakhovs­ka. She her­self lived in Kono­top, which is near­by the bor­der of Rus­sia. Back in the days about 90 % of the peo­ple there spoke Russ­ian in their day-to-day life. Nowa­days the num­ber is scarce­ly that high.

Rigid study­ing sys­tem

Kakhovs­ka has lived in Fin­land for 12 years now and has noticed major dif­fer­ences between Fin­land and Ukraine. One size­able dis­sim­i­lar­i­ty con­cerns the school sys­tem.

In Ukraine, all the stu­dents have school uni­forms. Usu­al­ly, girls come to school wear­ing black skirts and shirts and boys with black pants and white blous­es. In addi­tion, schools are more reg­i­ment­ed and teach­ers stricter. As we can have a snack in the mid­dle of a les­son, go to bath­room and tell our opin­ions freely with­out being scared of the con­se­quences, in Ukraine none of those are — or at least were in Kakhovska’s times — fea­si­ble.

“When I once stood up for our his­to­ry teacher and said: ‘How can you say things like that’, I got evict­ed from the les­son and lec­tured with my par­ents”, tells Kakhovs­ka.

The rea­son for teach­ers’ cru­el­ty was in Kakhovska’s opin­ion the edu­ca­tion dur­ing the Sovi­et Union. Nobody real­ly want­ed to be a teacher any­more because of the decreased pay that you got from it, so the ones that end­ed up there were the con­ser­v­a­tive ones who got edu­cat­ed under the old sys­tem. Kakhovs­ka hopes that there have been changes in the school sys­tem in recent years.

Extra­or­di­nary eat­ing habits

As every­one could guess, one big dis­tinc­tion between Ukraine and Fin­land is food. One—probably the most popular—food is borscht.

“It’s impos­si­ble to give a spe­cious recipe for it”, says Kakhovs­ka. She tells how every fam­i­ly in Ukraine have dif­fer­ent secret recipes for it.

How­ev­er, the gen­er­al idea of borscht is soup that con­tains beet­root and some kind of sour broth. Still, should you add any veg­eta­bles to the soup, it can still be called borscht. Self-baked bread rolls are very com­mon to enjoy while hav­ing borscht. The bread rolls are dipped in gar­lic oil and pork fat is put on top.

Unlike Finns, Ukraini­ans use plen­ti­ful of smetana in every­thing, espe­cial­ly in tra­di­tion­al foods. Anoth­er very pop­u­lar side dish in Ukraine is curd. Its tex­ture is very dif­fer­ent from the Finnish ver­sion. When here the curd is very smooth, in Ukraine it has a great deal of lumps in it—such as cot­tage cheese. This curd is used in very dif­fer­ent ways. For exam­ple, on top of a thin pan­cake.

Sum­mer camps as improve­ment tools

Ukraine is a very big coun­try; almost two times as big as Fin­land. Its south­ern bor­der is at the same lev­el as Italy’s north­ern bor­der. This is why Ukraini­ans tend to spend their hol­i­days inside their home coun­try. Cit­i­zens who seek sun, warmth and beach, go to south­ern Ukraine, and those who want snow and good ski­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties go to north­ern Ukraine.

Espe­cial­ly sum­mer hol­i­days are the gold­en times of Ukrain­ian ado­les­cents, since almost every one of them goes to month-long camps. In the camps they learn to impro­vise — which is in Kakhovska’s opin­ion “the super pow­er of Ukraini­ans”. There are also lots of per­for­mances, so the chil­dren learn to throw them­selves into thrilling sit­u­a­tions.

When being in the camps for so long with ran­dom peo­ple, it’s impor­tant to be talk­a­tive and open to get to know every­one. This is how you get the best pos­si­ble expe­ri­ences out of the camps. Ukraini­ans are indeed very social people—much more social than Finns.

For exam­ple, in Ukraine it’s very com­mon to ask for food items from your neigh­bors if you need any­thing at all. If you did that in Fin­land, you would prob­a­bly get some odd looks on your­self. You can also see the dif­fer­ences from the offi­cial greet­ings: when we Finns shake our hands awk­ward­ly, Ukraini­ans give each oth­er three kiss­es on the cheek.

Diverse wardrobe

In Ukraine it’s very com­mon to use cross-stitched dress­es and shirts. Prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar Ukrain­ian cloth­ing is vyshy­van­ka — embroi­dered shirt. These are usu­al­ly hand­made and can cost any­thing between 50 and 4000 euros. Every area has its own pat­tern and col­or, so when look­ing at someone’s vyshy­van­ka, you can deduce where they have bought it. Ukrain­ian nation­al clothes also include large neck­laces.

Killer corn­fields

Because of the size of Ukraine, there are also areas with very good grain-grow­ing con­di­tions. Ukraine is actu­al­ly very sig­nif­i­cant pro­duc­er of grain. There­fore, when the war start­ed and loads of grain trans­ports to Africa were can­celled, peo­ple in Africa suf­fered from food short­age.

The corn­fields of Ukraine are nowa­days very dan­ger­ous places to be in since Russ­ian sol­diers have hid­den mines all over them. A child of one Ukrain­ian fam­i­ly that Kakhovs­ka knows, was run­ning in the field when they acci­dent­ly hit a mine and passed away imme­di­ate­ly.

It’s impor­tant to under­stand Ukrain­ian tra­di­tions and cul­ture, because there are about 40 000 Ukraini­ans in Fin­land at the moment, and more is to come.

Text: Lau­ra Kuis­ma