During my senior year of college, I taught a half-credit house course on Russian culture with some good friends. At that point in my life, I was still trying to fit in with my Russian relatives, the same people who’d abused me for “looking too Ukrainian,” — but I also understood the literature and had my favorites (Ivan Bunin, not the dreadful Dostoevsky), spoke the language and had, at that point, been to Russia several times.
Russians never considered me Russian, but I “got” Russia, and was excited to teach the course.
During our first session in a classroom tucked away inside a Collegiate Gothic building that’s surely haunted by a ghost or two (will our ghosts also haunt that place one day? Does a part of us remain there now?), we went around the room to hear our students’ impressions of Russian culture, and one guy said something that stuck with me for decades, “Russians seem very proud to be Russian.” He found this relatable, and rightly so.
I come back to his words often now. What will be left of that pride once Russian state fascism, inevitably, forces a reckoning in one way or another? Then, I tell myself to stop thinking about these things. They are not my questions to grapple with. I’ve had to let go. I’ve had to focus on my reality as someone who’s had her life and soul torn in two by Russia’s war on Ukraine (and remember, I’m one of the lucky ones).
This week, my besieged native country of Ukraine won its first ever Oscar, for the documentary 20 Days in Mariupol. Director Mstyslav Chernov said in his acceptance speech that he wished he never had to make such a movie. Two years on since the full-scale invasion, millions of Ukrainians know exactly how he feels.
Few people outside Ukraine know how the footage that made 20 Days in Mariupol was smuggled out of the city, and how Ukrainian policeman Volodymyr Nikulin risked his life alongside the creators of the movie to make sure that the truth about Russian barbarism in Mariupol is told.
Volodymyr is an older man who reminds me of my father, whose name was also Volodymyr. He has a warm, bruised smile, and is a little bit uncomfortable in front of the camera. Men like Volodymyr should be looking forward to a peaceful retirement, not wondering if their country is going to be overrun by genocidal sadists.
20 Days in Mariupol is a story of fear and horror and pain. The fear part I hate to focus on, because I’ve learned long ago that there are Russians who love our fear and feed off of it like ticks. It’s hard to be human around them, like it’s hard to be human around any fascist.
“But not all Russians…” I hear that a lot, and the truth is, I don’t need to hear it. I gave birth to my wonderful son in horrific Moscow (still trying, for all of the years, to appease the people in my life who told me I must be like them, and live the life they wanted — how glad I am to have eventually snapped out of it and run off with just one suitcase and my child). I had Russian friends who escaped that place, leaving everything they loved behind. I have Russian friends who could not escape, and met terrible fates. I don’t need to hear it, because I know it.
But just like Germany faced a reckoning, so must Russian society. And it must be forced to do so, because fascism doesn’t understand anything but the language of force.
Fascism doesn’t stop when it’s fed and appeased. That’s because fascism is a zombie, and it simply moves on to the next victim. It has a hunger that can’t be sated by normal means, because it is itself an aberration.
Cowardly political “realists” may insist otherwise, but they are, and have always been, puffed-up morons who want to make friends with a monster. They remind me of the showman in another great movie, Nope, who thinks he has a gentleman’s agreement with a creature that simply wants to feed on him.
The true nature of fascism is hard to bear, hard to comprehend. It inflicts wounds on entire generations, which are never meant to fully heal. I am OK with that now, I think. I can’t be whole, and that’s alright.
But I keep coming back to that classroom in our senior year of college, and to that moment: “Russians seem very proud to be Russian.” I hear the screams of the people of Mariupol. “Are you proud?”, I ask the shadows that gather in the corners of every room I walk into. Are you proud?