April Showers
April showers brings May flowers. Or so I hope! The Earth’s been crying Ukrainian tears for 6 weeks now with no end in sight.
I know I promised a recipe post, and I actually have a recipe ready, but the mood is still heavy. I’m trying to produce some kind of cheer but it’s not really coming out right. So we’re having another somber post today.
My hometown Kharkiv is still being heavily bombed, and many neighborhoods are completely destroyed now, including many historical buildings. Centuries old sites are dying right now. The city’s zoo, eco park, is demolished, and whatever animals are still left may have to be euthanized as not to let predators to roam the streets. It’s just barbaric! The city was established in 1654 and have endured a lot of changes and destruction during WWII but was rebuilt. Kharkiv was actually the first capital of the Ukrainian Republic from 1919 to 1934, after which Kyiv became one. It has always been a major historical, cultural, educational, and industrial site – a mixture of an old art and modern architecture. It’s where I was born and spent my childhood so the heart is very heavy, watching it being destroyed. My old neighborhood doesn’t exist anymore. Kyiv was actually established centuries prior to when Moscow was founded, and that’s how Kyivan Rus, the birth place of all modern Slavic cultures, started. You can say Moscow is destroying its own roots.
Most of my relatives and friends have left the city to other parts of Ukraine, mostly to the West, or are in Western Europe. I was finally able to get through to my best friend there and spoke for a couple minutes. They’re mostly hiding in the basement so cell service is iffy, and they don’t want to leave. My godson made it to Lviv though and is ok there. There are still friends we haven’t been able to reach but hope everyone is alive. It’s just devastating to think they may not be. Hearing their stories is difficult. I can’t even imagine being there. One friend has a newborn baby… Another friend is now caring for a sick dog… Someone else has elderly parents who can’t get out… Relatives are miraculously escaped a missile hitting their home… It’s all just too much! My generation grew up on WWII stories, and I’m a granddaughter of two distinguished war veterans, but we all thought that wars are behind us. Till now…
In the past several weeks many of my American friends wanted to hear more about my life in Ukraine when I was little, and most people wanted to know why I rarely shared it before and why we spoke Russian and not Ukrainian. Firstly, up until February 24, the only response I’d get if I told anyone I’m from Ukraine “wtf is Ukraine?”. (Now everyone knows it. It’s actually huge and very beautiful.) So I learned to say I’m Russian, because everyone knew Russia so it was easier. Secondly, Russian language was populated and propagated in all former Soviet Republics so it became a native language for everyone in the Soviet Union. We learned Ukrainian as a “second language” in school (I still understand it) but all business and everyday conversations were in Russian. Or rather it was region specific: some Western parts of Ukraine and many countryside villages saw a lot of usage of Ukrainian language. Where I grew up right near the boarder with Russia everyone spoke only Russian. This wasn’t just Ukraine specific as all Soviet Republics’ cultures endured the same faith of Russification. Of course now Ukraine has officially adapted Ukrainian language but many still continue speaking Russian. (That’s the thing: I spoke with many friends and relatives back home as all still communicate in Russian there but nobody has ever experienced any direct discrimination about the language as long as all official business is conducted in Ukrainian, so what are they being “liberated” from? I sincerely hope history will reveal the truth at the end.)
So, for now I’m leaving you with pictures of the way Kharkiv was, and with the hopes it’ll be like that again!
