This carefully preserved head of Lenin stands in front of a building in Tiege that was once a Mennonite school for the Deaf and Dumb; a similar statue of Karl Marx is mounted on the other side of the entrance.  Our guides from the city sometimes wanted to tell us that the myriad of statues of Lenin only stood because there was no money for removal, but the ones that we saw were well cared for.

There are many people who yearn for the old days, possibly the elderly to the greatest extent who may be suffering the most from the crashes in the economy.   For others in the rural areas, change is not easy.  The collective farms remain in tact, in large part because there is no capital for a farmer to operate independently, even if they wanted to do so.  The formerly Mennonite villages were largely populated by workers on the collective farms.

"Freedom" has not been easy in Ukraine, and there are many who fear, even expect, a return to authoritarianism before long.