AUGUST 12, 2023
Jae C. Hong—AP
KYIV, Ukraine — The Pochaina neighborhood in the Ukrainian capital comes alive every weekend as hundreds of people flock to its famous flea market, looking for finds.
Antique-hunters, collectors and many others look over seemingly endless rows of trinkets and time-worn wares. It’s a dizzying array that includes Soviet-era relics such as decorative medals, ceramics with communist leaders’ portraits, Cold War-era gas masks and military uniform items.
Despite Ukraine’s ban on Soviet and Nazi symbols adopted in 2015 as a part of the country’s effort to distance itself from its totalitarian past, vendors, buyers and law enforcement all seem undisturbed by such historic relics being openly sold.“It’s purely business, there are no (USSR) sympathizers around here. Items like this are in high demand,” says Kristian Zander, a 49-year-old market vendor, pointing at the “Buying USSR relics” sign at his stand. On display are kitchenware and utensils, hunting knives, Soviet badges and bottle openers.
The market has survived the Russia-Ukraine war, even with the disappearance of tourists and the decreasing purchasing power of most Ukrainians.
Despite more and more buyers having to tighten their belts, the market still offers a large and eclectic variety of goods to those with any money to spend. A single vendor may sell items including almost-vintage VHS tapes, World War II dishware, manicure scissors, brand-name sneaker knockoffs, decades-old lingerie, broken multimedia players and cracked guitars. The vendor often hopes to sell the wares for pennies before they go to waste.
I always try to go to this flea market whenever I’m in Kyiv. It’s large and does have a huge variety of items to offer the buyer. But, the buyer must beware when buying German WWII items. Many, if not most, are fake.
Anyhow, this flea market has just about anything you can imagine, including stuff that is total junk. I also saw stuff from metal detectors, live grenades from WWII, for instance. In Western Europe, the authorities would freak out. If you are persistent and maybe a little lucky, you can find some real gems within all this seemingly convoluted mess. It’s interesting, for sure. I even got my Oksana hooked on it!
Now I know it is there I will put it on my list of places to see as it is not far from where I usually stay!
Maybe we’ll see each other there. 😉
Despite Ukraine’s ban on Soviet and Nazi symbols adopted in 2015 as a part of the country’s effort to distance itself from its totalitarian past, vendors, buyers and law enforcement all seem undisturbed by such historic relics being openly sold.“It’s purely business, there are no (USSR) sympathizers around here. Items like this are in high demand,” says Kristian Zander, a 49-year-old market vendor, pointing at the “Buying USSR relics” sign at his stand. On display are kitchenware and utensils, hunting knives, Soviet badges and bottle openers.
I didn’t know about this one, but a lot of the stalls on Andriivs’kyi descent sell stuff like that.
As OFP says though, watch out for fakes.
I always imagine there is so much ‘genuine nazi’ stuff there it has all come from China in a Container………
Yes, Andriivsky Descent also has a flea market, and there is a high concentration of militaria items offered there. A good guideline to go by is, if the price is too good to be true, it’s a fake. But, knowing what features to look for helps even more. I found that there, the German stuff is around 90% fake … or more.