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| Respublicanski Stadium- Eastern Europe's second largest sporting facility with a capacity of 80,000 people |
Kiev,
Ukraine, 1998
So
I get call at around 2pm from my American buddy Patrick who tells me that
Ukraine is playing Russia in a World Cup qualifying match at 7pm at
Respublicanski Stadium. He’s going with
his Dutch friend Jan and they have an extra ticket. He asks if I want to join them. I had nothing to do and it sounded like fun,
so we agreed to meet in front of the stadium at 6pm to grab some drinks and
then go to the game. I’d been living in
Kiev for some time, but hadn’t been to a major football match like this before,
so I was excited to go.
Respublicanski
Stadium is the second largest sports facility in Eastern Europe and holds over
80,000 people. It was swarming with
people when I arrived, but it was fairly easy to find Pat and Jan, as there weren’t
many foreigners about and these two guys stuck out in the crowd like the moon
in a clear evening sky. They were
dressed differently from the Ukrainians.
Also, Jan is a tall guy, probably six and half feet, with wavy
hair. Pat is a stocky Irish-American
from Boston, which also provides a strong contrast to the Ukies who were all
pretty non-descript in bland tones. Anyway,
we met up and Pat says that they’re selling beer in the stadium, so instead going
to a bar around the corner to pre-game like we discussed, we’ll just go in, get
through the security, grab some beers and find our seats.
We
have some really great seats right at mid-field, maybe 10 rows up. It’s lively and there’s much energy emanating
from the crowd. This is also the first time
beer is being sold in the stadium. This
is probably because a leading oligarch recently took over the brewery that is
selling these beers. It’s safe to assume
that he managed to get permission from the city to set up small beer stands
throughout the stadium for a nice bribe, but that’s just the way things are
done out here.
The
game is a real nail biter with it tied 1-1 going into the close and then in the
final minutes Ukraine manages to squeak a goal in and they win 2-1. We’re told by a Ukrainian sitting next to us
that this is the first time that Ukraine has ever beaten Russia, which makes it
an even more sweet victory. Everyone is
jubilant and going crazy. On the way
out, we stop and get another round for the road and begin the slow walk through
the exits. People watching is
interesting with everyone in a good mood and we’re swept up by the atmosphere.
As
we get out of the stadium and are making our way to the main boulevard we pass
a guy and girl getting their photo taken with the stadium in the background. Jan, always the joker, decides to jump into
the photo and puts his arm around the girl with a big toothy smile. Pat and I turn to see what Jan is doing and
just catch the photo bomb occurring. He’s
smiling and clearly trying to just have some fun, but the Ukrainians start
freaking out and all of a sudden the guy who was having his photo taken with
the girl is getting in Jan’s face and being all aggressive. Pat and I cannot believe that this is
anything serious, so we just sit back and wait for Jan to talk his way out of
it, but after a couple minutes, it’s heating up, not cooling down. Jan is apologizing and saying he’s sorry and
“it was just a joke” in his competent, but clearly not natural Russian, but he’s
surrounded now, so I hand my almost full beer to Patrick and tell him that I’ll
try to end this before it gets out of control and walk over.
This
was not a good idea. I get up to Jan and I'm about to say that it’s all just a misunderstanding, but once I step in, the
guy shifts to me and immediately takes a swing at my face. I reflexively dodge it, but out of nowhere I’m
in a real fight and this guy is coming after me with abandon. Now I realize my error. I was caught up in the moment and had
forgotten what being an olive skinned guy with dark hair means to many
Ukrainians. It means I’m an
asshole. I’m a piece of shit. I’m from a part of the world that they can
and will fuck with whenever possible.
While it’s gotten better over the years, back then, the country was
still pretty isolated and racism was potent and something that many people
clung to, a legacy of Soviet culture. They’d
lost so much over the years that having someone else to blame and pin their
anger on was almost encouraged by the authorities.
So
this guy is coming at me and the only thing I can do is defend myself. I start swinging back and I land a couple good
hits to his face, but as he goes down, I’m then hit from behind by one of his
friends. I turn and I now have another
drunk Ukrainian to deal with. He runs to
tackle me, I side-step him, grab his shirt and whip him down behind me, using
his momentum, so he goes falling down on his face, but it’s no use- it’s turned
into a riot and everyone is going after the dark skinned asshole who is
fighting the white Ukrainians. It’s intense. It’s a mob.
I’m moving, punching, getting whacked and throwing people around like
crazy. One guy finally manages to grab
hold of me and then he and the crowd behind him started pushing me hard and
fast toward a wall of a big carnival style tent that was set up in the parking
lot. They want to crush me into it, but at
the last minute I manage to swing the guy holding me around and free myself and
the whole posse goes into the wall instead.
It was a good move, but it was also no use, as I then immediately had
another group replace them.
This
was the type of fight that if I went down, I’m sure I’d be stomped on my head
and body until I couldn’t move. It was literally
life and death in a sea of violence and hatred.
It was all out war. It was only a
fucking photo bomb for goodness sake!
After
I managed to get through a few more people, I’m tackled hard from the side. I didn’t see the guy coming, so we’re both
airborne upon contact and then we land on a small foot table that an old woman,
a Ukrainian babushka, was selling sunflower seeds on and the guy’s on top of me. The little table collapses with a bang, the
babushka’s screaming and I’m rolling around with this dirty, drunk Ukrainian,
but I have so much adrenaline in my system, that I’m on fire. I squirm out from under him and pin him down by
the neck. I whack him a good couple
times hard in the face but right then, I’m grabbed from behind by the hair
something fierce. I swear, I’ve never
had my hair pulled so hard in all my life. I was actually lifted up from the
ground by it and when I turn around ready to unload, I see it’s a cop holding
me!
I’m
relieved and immediately yell, “Ya ne hochoo- Ya ne hochoo etot!” which means,
“I don’t want it, I don’t want this!”
I
now have a moment to look around and see the destruction and crowd. There are at least 10 cops surrounding us and
it’s a complete mess. Seeds everywhere,
the babushka is screaming about her table and the cops are lining up all the
Ukrainians that were after me. The cop holding
my hair demands my passport. I take it
out and when he sees it is a U.S. passport, there’s a look of shock in his eyes
like he’s just seen a unicorn. He, like many
Ukrainians at this time, cannot understand how a dark skinned person is an American. They all think I’m Jewish, Georgian, Arab, Indian
or god knows what, but never an American.
He lets go of my hair and turns to the cop next to him and says, “On
Americanske!” ("He's an American!") with an almost nervous chuckle.
I now know that I’m safe. I try
to explain what happened and how it started, but as I start, he tells me to,
“Go, leave now!” and they turn their attention to the line-up of the drunken
bastards who were after me.
I
quickly find Jan and Patrick, who actually came up when the cop what looking at
my passport and we b-line it out of there in a hurry and go straight to the bar. With our adrenaline through the roof, we slammed
drinks at a fast clip until closing time.
I learned that Jan was jumped by a couple guys after the shit storm
started and Patrick dumped the beer and tried to bring some order to the chaos,
but it wasn’t containable with so many different people jumping in and trying
to cause serious harm. Thank god for the
cops- without them, I don’t even want to contemplate what would’ve happened.
As
we compare wounds, surprisingly, none of us had any visible, physical
scars. They never got a good shot in on
my face, but my clothes are ripped and totally stretched. I took a lot of blows to my head, as I
instinctively pulled in and covered up when things became too crazy, but I
somehow managed to stay afloat in a raging sea of violence long enough to walk
away. The next day, my head was bruised
something awful, but at the bar this night, I was elated with relief and
feeling no pain.
From
this incident, I stopped going to all sporting events in Kiev (and later in
Russia). Years before I had a similar skinhead
attack at a hockey game in Prague, but it never got so out of control and the
true danger didn’t really sink in. Now, I
just couldn’t find it worthwhile to put myself into such a position again for
the sake of watching sports. I also accepted
in no uncertain terms that despite believing I was a white person for my entire
American childhood, outside of the States, I wasn’t white and there were many
people out in the world that could only see me as an object to hate.
I
somehow got used to this notion and I grudgingly accepted it. I saw it as the price of entry for the
opportunity of living in a country going through an amazing once in a lifetime
cultural revolution. There is always a
balance in life and racism was an offset to the life changing opportunities
that this huge emerging market provided- for me at least. While it got a lot better over time as the country opened up, the cops were
the slowest to change. It’s strange how that’s something
similar to the U.S.
I
later found out that they stopped selling beer at the stadium after that one
game. Cramming 80,000 Ukrainians into a
stadium and getting them drunk on cheap beer wasn’t a good idea. Thank goodness no one was killed that night,
and when I say no one, I’m mostly thinking about myself. I also never photo bombed anyone ever again,
why risk it?
###
Thanks
for reading. Interested in another tale
from Kiev’s golden early post-Communist days?- check out this blog I wrote on dealing
with Police Harassment:
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