
Inside the Building That's Calling Itself the People's Republic of Donetsk - good-citizen
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117846/donetsks-people-republic-one-building-endless-bureaucracy
======
jacquesm
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.

~~~
bernardom
And now you have to tell us the story!

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

~~~
gk1
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.

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

~~~
gk1
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.

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

~~~
gk1
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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria)

~~~
eshvk
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 ..?

~~~
gk1
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_.

------
AimHere
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.

~~~
logfromblammo
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.

~~~
jere
This was actually a thing.
[https://twitter.com/ocornut/status/446353072944451584/photo/...](https://twitter.com/ocornut/status/446353072944451584/photo/1)

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.”

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

------
guard-of-terra
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.

~~~
valarauca1
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.

~~~
lisper
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.

------
meric
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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donetsk_People's_Republic)

~~~
jbattle
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.

------
dang
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.

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

~~~
chiph
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

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hellbreakslose
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!

