Ternopil

From UkrainianBible

Ternopil (Тернопіль) is a city of about 225,000 people located in western Ukraine, located about two hours' drive from the western border. Professor Roger Kovaciny of the Ukrainian Bible Translation Project makes his home there.

Ternopil is a growing city with a LOT of large new churches popping up everywhere. Before World War II it was in Poland and had only 35,000 people, 40% Polish, 40% Jewish and 20% Ukrainian. Stalin took it over in the infamous Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact by which the Soviet Union stabbed Poland in the back while Hitler blitzkrieged it from the front. But at least Ternopil escaped the forced famine of Stalin, which would have starved most of its population to death.

During the war the city was essentially destroyed by the retreating Soviets in the second-largest battle on Soviet territory. The reason why Ternopil was so strategic is that it is a major railroad hub. Hitler murdered the Jewish population, of course, and the Poles and Ukrainians were taken to his labor camps or fled.

After the war, Stalin expelled those Poles who returned to Poland and murdered those Ukrainians who had been in Hitler's labor camps. The city was resettled and rebuilt by entirely new people, including a ruling class of ethnic Russians. Even today, if you have to deal with bureaucrats (and who doesn't?) you'd better understand Russian.

Most of the destroyed pre-war buildings are now covered by an artificial lake which divides the city in half. The rebuilt city was designed poorly and did not anticipate the increased vehicular traffic: there is no good way to get from one side of the city to the other; and at one point, to drive your car a single block, you would have to detour around half a dozen odd turns and two stoplights.

The population is educated and hard-working but not well paid. Many work abroad for this reason, often as illegal immigrants, disrupting their families for years at a time.

• Read more about Ternopil on Wikipedia.