Imagine a village, being attended by sightseeing tours from countrywide and international delegations. Department store’s counters display salmon, caviar, and a local Shuba salad. The locals are involved in work within 135 occupations according to local schoolchildren’s calculations. For its time the village architecture is unique, local architects’ work is award-winning. But what do we have nowadays? Are given statements still true? If this village ever existed?

From the construction of the first Belle Époque tube in London to the present day, the subway is like no other transport infrastructure associated with scientific and technological progress and still serves as a sign of a high level of "civilization". The architects of the end of the "long 19th century", as well as the "short 20th century" did not imagine the city of the future without the subway. This type of public transport is still perceived by urban residents as an unconditional benefit, occupying an important place in the identity and evoking a sense of pride and affection.

Formerly, rest meant only recovery after exhausting work and consisted of sleep, time for food, and a Sunday visit to church. The upper strata of society had access to a variety of rest or unlimited rest. Instead, the modern era has offered such forms of rest as tourism. Now travel out of necessity (business) or need (natural disasters, war) has acquired research, cultural, entertainment purposes or even lost them altogether. The urbanization processes of the 19th century and the resulting availability of public transport (rail, tram, shipping) rapidly increased mobility for the masses, making freedom of movement the new norm. Of course, only the bourgeoisie could afford a full vacation or trip. Their request stimulated the formation of architectural typologies of hotels, boarding houses and resorts.

After the Second World War, the attitude towards Jews in the USSR changed dramatically as compared to the interwar period. Until then, the Jewish people had been regarded as a “loyal” minority without a conceivable homeland outside the USSR. (Although as far back as the mid-1930s they were unofficially squeezed out of the administration higher-ups, with an opportunity left for them to pursue careers in the fields of science and culture). However, after the proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948, the Communist party leadership and security services began regarding Soviet Jews, who were cultural professionals, worked at universities or medical institutions, as being a threat. In the territories that had undergone Nazi occupation during the war, this attitude was further intensified by the consequences of three years-long exerting ideological influence of outright anti-Semitic propaganda upon the local population.

Natalia Borysivna Chmutina (1912–2005) — an outstanding Ukrainian architect, honoured academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Architecture, People’s architect of Ukraine, PhD in architecture, professor.

The first children's summer camps appeared in the late 19th century in the United States and Europe. There are mentions of children's camps also in the Russian Empire. The ideas underlying the support of the camps by private individuals and statesmen in the capitalist West and in the early USSR were very similar. Both believed that urban industrialized space is harmful to children who have to spend more time in nature. It was also widely believed at the time that skilled professionals could better raise children than their own parents. In the context of these views, children's camps became institutions and spaces that were to combine the functions of rehabilitation, recreation and education.

They once left Ukraine – on the eve of the First World War, between the wars or during the perestroika, but still call themselves Ukrainians. They took with them memories of mountains, Hutsul legends about forest spirits, their native language, and created their own Ukraine — somewhere overseas — as an alternative reality that might have existed in our country as well if we had not been in the arms of empires for a long time. However, history does not know a conditional mode, so now here in mainland Ukraine, we are trying to deal with the postcolonial consciousness and traumas of the Soviet past, and they, the Ukrainians of Canada, are proud of their national identity and research Ukrainian culture and history. Together with embroidered shirts and chests, they managed to take out a part of the Ukrainian soul and preserve it. A striking example is the preserved Ukrainian spelling of the 1920’s. However, they failed to completely isolate themselves from the cultural influences of another continent, so a strange surzhyk of Ukrainian and English languages was formed in Canada, and sometimes Canadian Ukrainian sounds exotic to us.