For the past 42 years since I arrived to USA as a stateless refugee from the USSR, I have been fighting to preserve the integrity of my story. I am NOT from Russia. I never lived in Russia. I’ve visited Russia for a total of 4 times, adding up to less than 1 month. Last time last summer, and Moscow and Saint Petersburg impressed me by their change from my prior, 1979, visit.
Immediately upon my arrival to USA in 1980, Americans began calling me a Russian, and I could not dissuade them. They “knew better” and I was a lowly stateless refugee. In my very dismal English of that time, I attempted to insist that I was from the Soviet Union, call me ex-Soviet. It was very important to me then, and continues to be important to this day, because it is incorrect to call me Russian. I never was.
My native language is Russian and I am from the very first Russian city ever, Kiev.
For 42 years I had to explain to Americans where it is, practically on the daily basis.
In the USSR, where our passports were stamped with identifier in line #5 of what was called “nationality,” I had a word “Jewish” even though it did not mean religion. Religion was outlawed for every such nationality then – Russians and Ukrainians could not practice their religion just as Jews or Poles or others. Nationality as such was established during the 1933 Stalin’s passport reform in order to begin special population control programs and repopulate Gulag with those opposing the regime.
I grew up in Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, one of 15 such republics that made up the USSR and of its two complete initials namesakes. The other one was Uzbekistani Soviet Socialist Republic, from which thousands were also arriving to USA in the 1970’s, predominant majority of all of us USSR refugees then, Jewish. Most USSR European Jews never knew anything about their Jewishness. Their families were persecuted for it and they were afraid to pass it on. I knew of being Jewish predominantly through extreme anti-Semitism I was subjected to since the age of 4. So, I never wanted to be called Ukrainian. Ukraine and many of its people hurt me too deeply.
Americans then did too, because they did not want to bother learning our specifics and that label “Russians” became firmly attached to anyone who communicates in the Russian language or hails from many of the former Soviet Republics. So Belorussian and Moldovan were Russians and so were Latts and Lithuanians and Goergians and Uzbeks and Kazakhs. And so it was until 1991, when Soviet Union, USSR, was no more.
In 1995, when I was organizing the reunion of my former USA student compatriots, I just called it “Russian reunion” – that was not a strategic battle, I conceded.
When my USA passport expired, however, and I went to receive a new one in 1997, the clerk at the passport office in Downtown Manhattan tried to correct my “Place of Birth” response from “USSR” to “Ukraine”. I insisted that USSR was my place of birth and it should be entered in my renewed passport just as it was in my original USA passport. We went over it many times, before at last I asked to see his supervisor. This man was substantially better informed on geopolitical composition of the world and sincerely tried to help me. I think, I may have not been his first customer who encountered this problem, but I was the first one unwilling to easily accept the abandonment of USSR from the list of birthplaces of naturalized American citizens. He finally called a higher up. I was not privy to their exchange. The result was this explanation “USSR in not in the computer, we can no longer use it.” I recall walking away, barely able to compose myself. It was very unfair that a former refugee from the USSR was barred from entering that county on her passport’s place of birth.
The Koreans and Vietnamese possibly have gone though the same, but I knew a few born in Palestine Palestinians who did not. I wonder if some other Africans did, however, because everything there has been rearranged a few times over.
Government decided to give me another birth country “Ukraine”, and I could not accept it in good consciousness for years. It was as if they marred me with a label similar to that of Nationality Line #5 of my very first passport, the USSR one.
Many with whom I shared this story say “Who cares?” or “It’s nonsense, why should it matter?”
Well, to some the labels on their clothing matter more than the labels in their passports. To others, their sexual orientation, or gender identity, or …the list is long. My place of birth matters to me, because I was born in and surrendered my Soviet citizenship in Kiev, the capital of Soviet Ukraine, the Mother of all Russia.
Today is March 3, 2022. Russia is at war with Ukraine.
I no longer have to say to Americans “I’m from Kiev, like in Chicken Kiev.” Every generation is able to find it now.
The news reporters struggle to pronounce the Ukrainian spelling of it, Kyiv. The “y” should be read like “I” in dim sum and the “i” in Kyiv should be read like the second of the double “i” in skiing. Everyone messes it up.
American-born Ukrainians correct my Russian way of spelling of Kiev, while I fight to preserve the integrity of my journey through life.
I had some Americans ask me if Kyiv and Kiev were two different cities, because they have been to Kiev when it was the USSR and now they cannot understand the spelling change.
And now this, as Americans are very busy pouring Russian vodkas down the actual, not proverbial, drain, even though most of these vodkas are distilled in Finland or Estonia, the cancel culture and the worst of the Ukrainian nationalist apparatus have begun to chase and persecute Russian residents of the United States like their great grandparents persecuted Jews of Ukraine in very scary and very famous pogroms. See Fiddler on the Roof, if you haven’t.
I have heard of some backlash, like Ukrainians with Yellow-Blue flag driving by the homes of neighboring Russians yelling hateful and even threatening things into their yards. In USA we are supposed to be equal and devoid of bullying and carrying out vendettas.
But I have already experienced it before.
I remember a concert of famous Soviet Pop stars on my alma mater campus of Queens College, New York in the summer of 1982.
USSR had invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Day 1979 and the Afghan students, who never backlashed at any of us former Soviets, had gathered by Aaron Copland auditorium and guilt-tripped many of the “Russian” students who already had tickets into joining them in throwing rotten eggs and tomatoes onto the heads of those brave concert-goers who dared to go through those gallows.
I got in. Because even then I knew that artists should not be punished for their county’s political behavior. Later, those “Russian” students attended many other Soviet artists’ performances in NY and other cities. Afghan students never organized such protest again. At least not while I was a student there. I was and remain suspect of who was organizing whom. KGB? CIA? FBI? Were they involved/
As Hillary Clinton would say dismissively later about another US involvement in the world, what difference does it make?
The main concern of any political power is personal gain made on the destruction of civilization as we know it, and I am so very glad that in USA we still have measures to protect its citizens from most dangerous displays of hatred.
Most of the time.