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Published September 21, 2026

The Beginning

The war began long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It lives within my family.
“The beginning: The story of my grandparents, their relationship, and the impact of their history on me.” A woman holds a corded phone to her ear, but she doesn’t say anything. Neither does the person on the other end of the line.
Grandmother: “Hey, detochka [honey], come have lunch!” Narration: “It’s me, 9 years old. I’m doing my homework at granny’s. I don’t suspect there’s anything unusual about my family. Because no one told me the real story.”
Narration: “In the 1960s, about twenty years after WWII, my grandpa met my grandma. So, Feodor meets Tamara in St. Petersburg. He’s from a small village in Ukraine, She’s from the south of the Russian Republic. Both are highly educated.” Feodor: “Hmm…how about a walk after work?” Tamara thinks, “Oh, dear…”
Narration: “Back then, memory of the victory over fascism kept growing, polished and glamorised year by year.”
A boy playing soccer yells: “Hey, you, nemets!” Narration: “The official slogan of that time was “drujba narodov” [the friendship of nations]. But others still called people “nemets,” [someone of German nationality, in Russian.] In real life it still mattered where you were from, what your first language was, what your face looked like, and what color your skin was. And that was even after the Holodomor [the disastrous famine caused by the soviet authority] and numerous other famines, repression and everything else of the totalitarian regime.”
Narration: “Some time later, Tamara and Feodor were raising a boy, my father, and a girl, my aunt. I’m not entirely sure when it happened, but my father and aunt had to choose sides. Their Ukrainian-speaking father on one side, and their Russian-speaking mother on the other. Was it my dear granny who first forbade her spouse’s mother language words?”
Narration: “…and each child only spoke one language. My father mastered Ukrainian on his own, with no help or support but from his father. My aunt only spoke Russian. If she used any Ukrainian words, it was just to mock them.”
Narration: “Both siblings grew up, had families and children of their own.” Her father bends down, saying: ”…from now on, call me tato [daddy in Ukrainian], and not papa [daddy in Russian]” A young girl, labeled: “This is me at 3 years old.”
Narration: “This war began long before 2022 [full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine] or 2014 [first Russian troops in Donbas, Ukraine.] This war was somewhere near (and with) me before I could even encounter it. And somehow it is still with me. I am still trying to reconcile it for myself.
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