Unfortunately, Yes

reflections 1 Minute

On Tuesday, I was making dinner at the ODS, and after the dinner was made, and everyone who was around ate, we sat down chatting in the common area. One of the newest residents asked me the usual “where I was from,” and then whether I ever go back, and what part of Russia I was from, and whether I had even been to Moscow. And finally, he asked: what’s the best time to visit Moscow? I paused for a moment and replied: When the war is over. And when Putin is out. To his credit, he immediately understood why I replied that way, but his questions perfectly illustrated the fact that the war in Ukraine is completely out of sight for most Americans. People do not think about Russia as one of the parties in the war. And they do not understand that when I reply, “I am from Russia,” I feel it as saying, “I am responsible for that bloodshed.”

In my mind, that’s somehow related to another story my friend told me. She was at a store, where an older Pole with very limited English was trying to communicate something to a store clerk. Later, after my friend and her daughter left the store, that person left right after them, and upon hearing them speaking Russian, he said: Well, I should have asked you for help in the store! My friend turned to him and asked him in Russian: “Oh, do you speak Russian?” He looked at her with a deep pain in his eyes and said, “Unfortunately, yes!”

My friend told me that she will never forget this person and a pain in his eyes.

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Published by Hettie D.

My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996. I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future. I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life. As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.

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2 thoughts on “Unfortunately, Yes”

  1. I have no problems with the Russian language as such, and I have no intention of trying to forget it again the way I did in the misguided patriotism of my youth. Things have only become awkward with Ukrainians online who don’t want to use it anymore, but we have no other language in common, and things have become completely crazy in mixed post-Soviet companies where almost everybody knows at least one other language, but it may be anything from Belarussian to Hebrew, while the older Russians (if there are any still around), know only Russian. I have now become much better at understand Ukrainian, but still far from actively using it, and of course the Ukrainians don’t understand half of my Bulgarian and the machine translations are terrible.And no, I don’t hold you personally responsible from anything, and my Russian friend who did protest against the war from inside Russia is now a refugee in Germany to avoid imprisonment after he got beaten up for “resisting arrest” and detained for a month with no lawyer or connection with the outside world, not even that one phone call.*hugs*

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  2. Dear Dari, great to see you :). With you and Russia, the situation is different because Bulgaria was never occupied by Russian, except for the ideological influence. However, people from many countries that were occupied along with those that see it as a very real thread, feel differently.

    And as for me, I hold myself responsible, and I have very good reasons for it, which I’ve blogged about multiple times, It does not matter what other people think about me, that’s all about how I feel. Apologies, if I was not clear enough explaining this.

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