In Ukraine, Lenin Gets the Boot From Uncle Sam

There’s a saying in Ukraine about the four stages of being poor...
In Ukraine, Lenin Gets the Boot From Uncle Sam
U.S. and Ukrainian soldiers attend an opening ceremony of the joint Ukrainian-U.S. military exercise "Fearless Guardian" at the Yavoriv training ground in the region of Lviv on April 20, 2015. Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP/Getty Images
Nolan Peterson
Updated:

KYIV, Ukraine—There’s a saying in Ukraine about the four stages of being poor. It goes like this: First, you don’t have any hryvnias (the Ukrainian currency). Second, you don’t have any food. Third, you don’t have any dollars. And finally, you don’t have your $2 bill.

For Ukrainians, dollars are a precious and jealously guarded rainy-day commodity. And for whatever reason, when the United States reintroduced the $2 bill in 1976, notes dated from that year became a popular good luck charm. Many Ukrainians still keep a $2 bill from 1976 in their wallet, with no intention of ever spending it.

But starting in 2014, as Ukraine’s currency fluctuated wildly against the dollar in the wake of revolution and amid a war against Russian-backed separatists, bank tellers reported a trend: Many Ukrainians were exchanging their $2 bills.

In a pro-America style choice, a Ukrainian soldier on the front line wears a T-shirt from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. (Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal)
In a pro-America style choice, a Ukrainian soldier on the front line wears a T-shirt from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal
Nolan Peterson
Nolan Peterson
Author
Nolan Peterson is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an independent defense consultant based in Kyiv and Washington. A former U.S. Air Force Special Operations pilot and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Peterson has more than nine years of experience reporting from Ukraine's front lines.
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