You're reading: Slate: These early 1990s photos show life in the newly independent Ukraine

On this day 25 years ago, Ukraine became an independent state.Adam Hinton was a 26-year-old recent graduate of England’s Trent Polytechnic (now Nottingham Trent University) at the time, and he wanted to see what life in a new nation was like, particularly in industrial areas whose working class had been romanticized during Soviet rule.

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