A look at an identity crisis spanning 15 years, or how I finally came to terms with who I am after cultural self-exile and ended up right where I started (sorry mom and dad)
Homeland—what a strange word. However, the word that is most often associated with Russia or the former Soviet Union is “Motherland.” Both are wrong. The actual translation is more along the lines of “Birthland,” which is why I always felt intimidated—it’s entirely inescapable. You can change your name, hair colour, political affiliations, even where you choose to bury your bones, and call it your homeland. But never birthland—its spectre will haunt you for the rest of your life as a marker of your very existence.
My cousin Masha and I in 18th century historical costumes at the Summer Palace on a trip to St. Petersburg. August 2016.
“I wish you’d finally shake the ashes of Russia off your feet.” A brilliant moment of poetic lucidity from my STEM-focused mother, remarked of course, in Russian. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Nor was the fact that it’s impossible to shake off our very essence.
I clearly remember the day that my dad stormed into my room, incensed over the fact that his six-year-old was watching Russian cartoons instead of English ones. And while now, more than 14 years later, I understand that his concern was over me becoming proficient in English, his response sent a clear message – Russia is bad, Canada is good. In school I was fed the same message, although in a slightly altered form of bullying and jibes over my accent and awkwardness—Russia is bad. So then, I was bad too, right? For the next decade, I received Russian culture in scraps from the table of my parent’s memories. My mom, God bless her soul, is an engineer and doesn’t have much of a knack for storytelling, so from a young age, I was retold movies, books, and historical events (no happily-ever-afters there) as bedtime stories. Most magical of all, though, were stories of my mom’s life in Moscow: how she flitted from play to ballet to opera, took walks in historic districts, bought cakes for her mom at that one bakery on that one street with the really cute archway at the end. What added to the enigma of our departure (officially “irreconcilable political differences”) was the fact that we had a cushy position in society (much more so than now). My mom was the daughter of a General and a successful banker in her own right, owning a flat in the middle of Moscow and dashing all over the world on business and pleasure trips alike. All of this had the effect of showcasing Russia as less of a decaying country from which we fled and more as an abandoned Eden, one that I was unnaturally denied. So, I decided to be Russian through culture. I thought that I could absorb it outside of politics. Boy oh boy was I wrong. That is not to say that it didn’t work at first—I recited poems and movie dialogue like prayers, devoured Bulgakov, Tolstoy, and the Strugatskys, got lost in the magic of Soviet cinema. It just begged the question: If we were capable of such beauty, then why weren’t we capable of change, why were we condemned, as my mom never tired of telling me?
My great-grandmother Ekaterina Janovna Visoktskaya (whose father was unjustly executed during Stalin’s purges) and her daughters; my great-aunt Elena (left) and grandmother Natalia (center). November 1952.
My mom always said that people deserve the government that they receive. As any dutiful daughter, I took her words as gospel, snobbishly sneering at the people left behind, thankful that we were in the luxurious lap of a functioning democracy. That is, I did until I would have my name mispronounced during attendance, and then I’d be reminded of exactly who I was again. The real problem was that at a certain point, I stopped seeing our immigration as something to be proud of and started seeing it as a simple relocation. Canada wasn’t better, just different. Russia wasn’t backward, it just needed some work.
From left to right: My mom Luba, me, my grandfather Lieutenant General Oleg Pavlovich Yaravoy, my aunt Katya, and my cousin Masha at my grandparents’ dacha. Victory Day 2006.
When I came to UofT, I realized something very important: I was no longer “the Russian girl.” I clearly remember that moment of realization: It was FROSH week 2018, “Trin of the Century,” and we were all gathered on the backfield of Trinity College waiting for the Bishop’s announcement. A guy came up to me and asked where I was from. I stammered through, asking if he meant where I was originally from—terrified that he had noticed the slight lilt left over from my accent—or where I was from currently. He seemed confused. “Moscow” I blurted out a little too loudly, “currently from Oakville.” God, I was mortified. This was a simple question, but one that I struggled to answer. As I began to discern that UofT had a great many of students who had a stronger claim of being “from Moscow” than I do, I settled on an answer—Oakville. I was from Oakville. It was a release, and I hoped that my torment would end there. I was wrong. Foolishly enough, I got myself into what is effectively a creative writing minor. This has two negative effects; the first is that it makes you question your decision of going to law school and seriously consider a career in the arts, and secondly, it forces self-reflection. Which is what lead me to writing poetry about cultural abandonment in vain hopes of trying to emulate the late great Marina Tsvetaeva. This is the state that I was in when I encountered the Russian opposition movement. It was like adding gunpowder to a bonfire. That’s when the protests happened.
Women’s Fencing OUAs at Queen’s University, February 8-9 2020.
What precipitated my political, patriotic, and second cultural awakening? Strikingly–COVID-19, in more ways than one. While yes, we like to blame most of our woes on the viral menace, and rightly so, but what it did give us was free time. A lot of free time. This led me to Alexei Navalny’s YouTube channel, where he posts vicious takedowns of corrupt politicians and hosts live weekly news shows. While I definitely knew his name and a few murky details, lawyer-turned-opposition leader, jailed, may or may not pay off youth to go to his rallies (the latter something I heard on state TV at 14)—it was interesting to see what the man was actually doing. What I expected, based on my perception of Russian society, was a fringe movement spearheaded by a well-meaning, albeit slightly out of touch idealist, who hadn’t yet accepted the inevitability of his situation. What I got was a robust community (following his poisoning via nerve agent, the channel just passed 2 million subscribers) of critically thinking individuals who were unafraid to voice their opinions and take to the streets, and who, most importantly, had not yet condemned themselves and their homeland to international inferiority and backwardness. Most importantly, the youth were rising. One of the up and coming leaders, Yegor Zhukov, who was already tried for “public agitation towards extremist actions” while protesting for free elections, is also a university student and just two years my senior. I longed to be part of it, to be writing the narrative of the wonderful Russia of the future. When pro-democracy and anti-Putin protests overtook Khabarovsk in July and people took to the streets of the neighbouring Belarus in August, I could feel that the tide changed irreversibly.
Pride is a national Russian characteristic that has been denied us for far too long. Some compensate by overt nationalism verging on the extreme, others by expunging their birthplace from their records. But I don’t want to be ashamed to say where I am from anymore. Maybe I am young and naïve, but I can truly see a future that my parents were too disenchanted to imagine. One where half of the population doesn’t live off of $7 a day, where one sixth of the earth’s landmass isn’t ruled by an incompetent and feeble imp, and where I can say “I’m Russian,” without adding “but I’ve been here for 15 years so I’m all good and proper now.”
Graduation 2018.
