Inside the Building That's Calling Itself the People's Republic of Donetsk | Hacker News Reader

Inside the Building That's Calling Itself the People's Republic of Donetsk

newrepublic.com

82 pointsgood-citizen36 comments

This very much reminds me of the time when I tried to get a work-permit for Poland back when it was still firmly communist. The never ending back-and-forth, fear of reprisals from higher up for misplaced chalkmarks or stamps and so on was quite similar. I eventually did get it (I still have it), one of very few westerners that ever did.

The most heard question was why on earth I would be trying to get into the Eastblock when everybody else was trying to get out.

And now you have to tell us the story!

I'll think about that. It involves two hitchhikers, tulips, an ancient Citroen DS and a very large pile of paperwork.

If you share it, I'll also throw in my story of entering (and leaving) an autonomous breakaway region in Moldova (Eastern Europe) under the guise of a footballer (soccer player) trying out for the local team.

So... now that he has, will you share your story too? :D

Sure, I just wrote it up (partially) as a reply to another post:

> Entering Moldova is easy if you're a US citizen; the visa is granted upon entry, with no fee.

> Entering Transnistria is trickier...

> You need to fill out a customs form, either at the "border" (a buffer zone which includes Russian "peacekeepers") or in advance if you know someone who has a stack of empty forms.

> Then you'll submit the customs form to the guards at the border and be subjected to questioning and possibly a bribe demand. If you do everything right, you'll be allowed to enter. A portion of the customs form will be teared off, stamped, and given to you to hold.

> (In my case, I was traveling with someone affiliated with the local football (soccer) team. He convinced the border guards that I'm an American player being tried out for the local team, which got us through the border with relative ease. It helped that I was wearing aforementioned Adidas track pants and have the physical build of a football player. It did not help that I was not told about this plan ahead of time, but thankfully they only questioned him and not me.)

> The clock is now ticking, because this stamp is only good for 24 hours. If you intend to stay overnight (>24 hrs), you need to find the "Ministry of Interior" and go through another round of questioning and paperwork (and again, possible bribe demands) before receiving a multi-day stamp. Oh, and this "Ministry of Interior" is actually just a police booth somewhere deep inside in Tiraspol (the capitol), next to several abandoned factories, crumbling homes, and roaming chickens. Good luck finding it.

> Getting out is just as, uh, fun.

Are you sure that's not the plot to one of the unfinished Douglas Adams novels?

Unless he was following me around I don't think so. Though I do admit to being a huge fan and reading the guide multiple times around that time.

Ok, done:

http://jacquesmattheij.com/a-western-kid-living-in-communist...

Enjoy!

That was a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing!

Adidas track pants and leather shoes (mentioned in the article) are typical attire of Russian gopniks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopnik).

Last year I visited a soviet-era break-away region in Eastern Europe[0]. I specifically bought a pair of Adidas trackpants so that I would stand out a little bit less.

It worked: Many people thought I was Russian, not American.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria

That is really cool. Mind telling me how the visa situation works out in such a scenario? Did you walk in on an American passport? Or ..?

Entering Moldova is easy if you're a US citizen; the visa is granted upon entry, with no fee.

Entering Transnistria is trickier...

You need to fill out a customs form, either at the "border" (a buffer zone which includes Russian "peacekeepers") or in advance if you know someone who has a stack of empty forms.

Then you'll submit the customs form to the guards at the border and be subjected to questioning and possibly a bribe demand. If you do everything right, you'll be allowed to enter. A portion of the customs form will be teared off, stamped, and given to you to hold.

(In my case, I was traveling with someone affiliated with the local football (soccer) team. He convinced the border guards that I'm an American player being tried out for the local team, which got us through the border with relative ease. It helped that I was wearing aforementioned Adidas track pants and have the physical build of a football player. It did not help that I was not told about this plan ahead of time, but thankfully they only questioned him and not me.)

The clock is now ticking, because this stamp is only good for 24 hours. If you intend to stay overnight (>24 hrs), you need to find the "Ministry of Interior" and go through another round of questioning and paperwork (and again, possible bribe demands) before receiving a multi-day stamp.

Oh, and this "Ministry of Interior" is actually just a police booth somewhere deep inside in Tiraspol (the capitol), next to several abandoned factories, crumbling homes, and roaming chickens. Good luck finding it.

Getting out is just as, uh, fun.

That's similar to American tourists wearing Canadian flag apparel.

The bureaucratic misadventures at the start of the article sound like this is a bunch of people playing a LARP version of Papers, Please. Which, come to think of it, should be a thing.

Yup. It seemed like they were just having a good time with the journalist.

Isn't there an actual real-life game where someone is sent from person to person to get help, eventually landing back at the first person?

Some snipe hunts are like that. Apparently it's a Navy thing.

I was once asked to acquire 'one yard of gig line'.

http://www.ask.com/question/what-is-a-gig-line

You'll need a license from Lucas Pope, and a permit from the venue. The permit-issuing authority will want to see your license before granting the permit, and Lucas will need to see your permit before granting the license, but you can get around this by obtaining a provisional temporary interim permit from the protests and demonstrations secretary at the mayor's office. You will need to claim that the LARP is actually a protest against government bureaucracy, which it is, technically, albeit satirical. That permit is only valid for the grassy verge between the sidewalk and the west wall of the city government annex. So you will need to apply for a change of venue on your real permit application, which requires approval from the police chief. Since the best place is the county administration center, you will also need to get approval from the sheriff. Now the sheriff and the police chief don't like each other, and won't agree on anything, so you will need to make the first approval look like a rejection to get the second. I'm sure you can figure it out from there. Good luck. There's nothing else that I can do for you without possibly getting fired.

This was actually a thing. https://twitter.com/ocornut/status/446353072944451584/photo/...

And I'll agree this quote seems pulled right out of Papers, Please

>“No, a letter isn’t good enough anymore. It was fine last week, but the guys on the tenth floor”—the security team’s floor, which is known as the NKVD—“said you have to have a press card.”

Doing that with your real passport sounds like Bad Idea(TM).

About halfway through, I was very nearly convinced that the headline was a misdirection and that this "country in an 11-story building" would be revealed to be an art installation that deconstructs Soviet-era bureaucracy.

I guess that's how most of medieval states worked.

One big building (castle) plus a few semi-autonomous groups of warriors.

UPD: News that we get from Donbass frighteningly remind Game of Thrones.

Amusingly enough the feudial system still slightly exists in Africa. Who the west calls war lords aren't very different from Feudal Lords, Barons, and Vassals.

Actually, it pretty much exists in the U.S. too. The internal structures of most government agencies and large corporations are essentially feudal. The only difference is that the barons (a.k.a. middle-level management) fight over budget allocations rather than physical territory, and the battles are conducted with memos and powerpoint decks rather than swords. But other than that, it's pretty much the same thing.

The article states the Donetsk People's Republic has 1 11-story building.

It sure seemes a lot bigger in the wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donetsk_People's_Republic

"Occupation of government buildings then spread to other cities in the region."

Exactly. This seems a bit propagandist.

Something along the lines of "See, the pro-Russian Ukrainian separatist movement is only one building..."

There is a lot of information buried in the talk and history views of contentious pages like this - are there any sites or tools that help unpack some of that? What are the most frequently re-written bits of text? What parts of the article are most associated with certain editors (or groups of editors)? What about those editors - how many are anonymous or new? What other pages do those editors work on as well?

Even staying away from actual NLP analysis of the article or talk page, having a view of the dynamics of the construction of the article would be quite interesting.

This submission managed to break four rules. (1) It rewrote the title ("One 11-story building is the smallest country in the world"); (2) the rewritten title was linkbait; (3) the rewritten title was false; (4) the article is garden-variety politics. The latter, admittedly, is disguised a bit, but you need only read the last sentence to see its point.

Fantastic story. Reads like a sci-fi post-apocalyptic novel.

Or a soviet version of Passport to Pimlico.

I was thinking of Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

    ...I couldn't seem to find the right room.  None of them had 
    the number designated on my pass.  First I wound up at the 
    Department of Verification, then the Department of
    Misinformation, then some clerk from the Pressure Section advised
    me to try level eight, but on level eight they ignored me,
    and later I got stuck in a crowd of military personnel -- the 
    corridors rang with their vigorous marching back and forth,
    the slamming of doors, the clicking of heels

Indeed, hard to believe it's not fiction. Sounds like Kafka meets Brazil, lacking only a fly, cockroach, and guerrilla HVAC repair.

Hmm I feel sorry to say that but... self-proclaimed by 2 activists 7th of April 2014...

The title is way miss-leading and should have said 11-story building "Trying to become" ...

Closer to the original articles title!

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