I feel doubly or triply connected to the war in the Ukraine because my grandparents on my mother’s side of the family came from the Ukraine, escaped with their lives and little else, though they managed to bring a samovar for tea. In the 1980s, family members returned to seek relatives and came up empty handed and saddened. My Ukrainian ancestors were killed by either the fascists, or the communists, or so the survivors of World War II told my family members. My father’s parents were from Russia, not far from the border with Poland. They spoke Russian and thought of themselves as Russians. So did I when I was a boy, though I didn’t advertise the fact. In the 1950s, during some of the worst days of the Cold War and also during the hot war in Korea, kids my own age who somehow or other knew my family history would tell me, “Go back to Russia.” That hurt plenty.
I have often thought that my parents settled in northern California when they retired because the Russians once lurked in this part of the world, and also because the river is the Russian and because Fort Ross was an outpost for their fur trade.
Commies in my own family insisted that the Soviet Union was a workers’ paradise, but I had no desire or intention to go there. The Russians didn’t have cowboy pictures on TV, the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team, or American burgers on buns and with French fries. I have never been to Russia and never to the Soviet Union, either, though years ago I did want to go when a friend of mine opened a branch of Citibank in Moscow. His tales of Soviet life were fascinating; One detail: Moscow had no telephone books or directories, though some Moscovites had archaic phones. The first thing they did when they met people for the first time was to obtain their phone numbers and to treasure them.
I hope the Russian army is defeated in the Ukraine and that the casualties aren’t astronomical, as they were for the Russians in Afghanistan. I hope the Ukranians don’t suffer terribly. I hope that Putin doesn’t impose a totalitarian regime, but given the deep seated resistance by the Ukranians I don’t see why or how he won't impose an iron heel. I know the West hasn't been blameless. NATO missiles in Poland can’t have made for peace and coexistence. But that’s no excuse for the invasion that Putin ordered. May it come back to haunt him. May the Russian people and people all over the world protest against Putin’s War and against his “evil empire,” a term that seems more fitting now than ever before. All empires are evil.
I never thought that the Cold War ended, not even when Reagan met the Russians, or when Trump cozied up to Putin and Putin cozied up to him. If anyone wants proof that the Cold War is alive and well, look at the Ukraine today where Ukrainian blood is staining Ukrainian soil. I am thankful that my mother’s parents escaped from the Ukraine more than 100 years ago, but I still feel connected to the Ukraine and to the Ukrainian people, more than ever before, now that they're resisting Russian tyranny.
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