The Industrious Carpathians

When you travel to the Carpathian region, from the bus windows you can see two or even three - storey villas with beautiful well-kept orchards and gardens.
When you are closer to the Hungarian border, you will notice small one-storied houses that are very different from those in western Ukraine.
Foolishly the Imperial conquerors tried and failed to instil a sense of inferiority in the West Ukrainian peasants. (It seems not so long ago, Vladimir Putin described the Western-Ukrainians as 'second-rate people')

The West Ukrainian peasant from the Carpathian region, in the absence of industry, with mass unemployment (in the post-Soviet period) has proven that he's a "his own real boss" or "Gazda" as they say in Western Ukraine.

The culture of poverty is alien to the Western Ukrainian peasant.

He is a stranger to the world of drunken men who sit on the broken furnace and happily chews the semichki, whilst gazing at the yard full of weeds through the window.

Therefore it is not surprising that this Western Ukrainian peasant household-landowner, with his European hard-working nature, will always look inferior to the Imperial dreamers.

But beautiful homes and villas, manicured gardens and orchards prove quite the opposite.

Here is a video of one of the villages in the border region of Transcarpathia
https://goo.gl/48ugXy

"The Villages in Western Ukraine."
https://goo.gl/UkiJH7