DIKOROSIA #0

M. 

A SILETN MANIFESTO

My name is Marika. That’s a Ukrainian name. In Russia, it would be Masha. On my passport, I’m Maria. My mother wanted to name me in memory of her mother. My dad resisted for a long time. He wanted a Ukrainian name like that of my elder brother - Taras. For several months after I was born, I didn’t have a name — while my parents argued. Unofficially, ‘struggle’ is probably my middle name; one that is with me all the time. 

After a few months later, my dad gave up, and registered me as Maria. But. This ‘but’ has been with me all my life. I’m 35. Despite the fact that I became Maria, my father said that I would never be called Masha. I would known as Marika, the Ukrainian version of the diminutive. My struggle began.

Mum’s relatives seemed outraged. In the family they call me anything — but not Marika. Like Manya, Marusya, Maria. I think they would be happy to use ‘Masha’, but my dad fought for his own Ukrainianness, trying to express it through his children: me and my brother. Before I could speak, he went to kindergarten and explained to the teachers that I was not Masha. After that, I did it myself. What was the difference: Masha or something else? But there was a difference, and it was a big difference.

My dad is Ukrainian. He learned the Ukrainian language with his mother, a Communist, and began to identify himself as a Ukrainian. In the 1960s, he studied and worked in the closed city of Dnepropetrovsk, then under the direct control of Moscow (because it made rockets). My dad joined the Ukrainian dissidents, many of whom would later spend many years in prison as political prisoners. Dad was lucky. He was a mathematician. The KGB decided that the techie was confused — and did not touch him.

Dad fled to Moscow, which, paradoxically, was the most liberal city in the USSR. He met many ‘hidden’ Ukrainians who could not be themselves in the authoritarian Soviet Union. 

After the collapse of the Union, my dad had his finest hour. His struggle for an independent Ukraine became the reality. He created a Ukrainian diaspora community in Russia. I went to Ukrainian school on Sundays, where we were taught Ukrainian language and culture. Dad even bought a VCR for $200, which was a lot for the 1990s. We had an agreement –- I went to school, and the VCR recorded Disney Club cartoons, which I would otherwise miss. To be honest, I went to school reluctantly. And I didn’t really want to speak Ukrainian.

The Ukrainian diaspora community in Russia is complex. For Georgians, Latvians, and Kazakhs, creating a diaspora is possible because they are obviously different from Russians, at least outwardly. But Russians can’t see the difference between Ukrainians and themselves. As they see it, Ukrainians have dissolved into Russians. In general, Ukraine has never existed. For Russians, Ukrainians are the same Russians, only on the periphery and they communicate in a ‘funny’ dialect. Why do these ‘younger’ Russians need their own diaspora community? They can’t understand. It’s as if a part of the body has separated off and suddenly declares that it is independent and — even more problematically — that it belongs to another organism. Russia could neither recognize nor accept such a thing.

Russia, the colonial empire, which does not consider itself as such, doesn’t want to lose its parts and rebuild itself. Russia colonized itself, as well as nearby territories. It is both victim and aggressor. At the right time, Russia presses one or the other button. So it's hard to argue. And what to do with those who don’t consider themselves Russians, but clearly identify themselves as Ukrainians, with a culture, language, traditions and consciousness different from Russian? If you do not recognize them then it’s like the Soviet Union when everyone was supposed to be ‘friends’.

This is what happened to the Ukrainian diaspora community in Russia. If, in the 1990s, the new Russia was just being built, just like an independent Ukraine, then in 2004, after the ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine, when the country allegedly chose the ‘wrong’ path, the first repressions began. Now, in 2022, as Russia invades Ukraine, the diaspora community has been physically destroyed. However, some of her voices still break through small holes in the iron door of a solitary confinement cell in a high-security prison called ‘Russia’.

So, having become Marika, and not Masha, I began life in a Russia, which was desperately looking for itself. Now I see that the new Russia failed to rebuild its consciousness, or to decolonize itself. The new Russia decided to restore the darkest sides of its past, based on a foundation of violence.

While I didn’t understand how Russian society and the Russian state are organized, I suffered greatly to be Marika in Russia. My father raised me as a Ukrainian. I didn't like it. As a child, I disliked family gatherings. When my mother's relatives came, dad spoke to me in Ukrainian. It pissed them off. They felt they were not respected by my dad. But for some reason they didn't want to respect dad's identity. There were quarrels. And I was caught in between, not understanding why my relatives did not like the Ukrainian language. Nor why my dad made me speak in a way that irritated others. As a result, I became ashamed of my Ukrainian identity, dreaming that my father was, for example, an Englishman. Speaking English was prestigious.

Many in the former colonial empire sought to speak English, posing as a victim of enslavement by the West at the same time as not wanting to recognize the right of its former subordinate parts to speak their own language. In 2011-12, I studied at the prestigious Strelka Institute in Moscow, where admiration for foreigners from the West was cultivated, but the subjectivity of Russians was suppressed. There I met Adeola, an anthropologist from New York. She studied my family, which she said was living on a frontier.

With her help, I realized that authoritarian Russian society is aggressive to any otherness. We raised the question: ‘Who is a real Muscovite?’. In Adeola's native New York, everyone who lived in it was a resident of the city. But in Moscow this is not the case. Muscovites were considered not only those who were born, but those who also had a Slavic appearance (as was often written in apartment listings) and, of course, spoke Russian without an accent. 

In modern Ukraine, which is being bombed by Russia, they came up with a word: ‘rashism’.

I did not notice how Russia became fascist. It all happened slowly; step by step. Exceptions because of appearance and language were common in Russia. I once said to Adeola: ‘You know, I realized that if I don’t express my Ukrainianness in any way, then I don’t have problems in Moscow, my appearance helps me to be ‘a real Muscovite’. But it all works until I make a choice to express my Ukrainianness. Then I become ‘alien’. And despite the fact that I was born in Moscow and have a Slavic face, I cease to be considered a Muscovite, I become a foreigner’.

This is what a woman in line at the store said to me and my dad when she heard us speaking in Ukrainian: ‘Oh, the foreigners have arrived’. She said it not without disdain. We were very hurt, dad suggested that I show my passport as a proof that I am not a foreigner, but a ‘real Muscovite’. Dad has lived in Moscow for most of his life, but he always remained a ‘Khokhol’, who, for some reason, did not want to go home.

In 2000, I went to study Ukrainian at a class that the Ukrainian Embassy opened at the Lyceum of Foreign Languages ​​in Moscow. This is a very prestigious school. When the director announced to all the students that Ukrainian as a foreign language would now be taught at the lyceum, there was laughter.

But we proved our right to exist — and waited for teachers and students to accept us. Not as ‘inferior’, but as normal people. It worked out. But I was shocked when the students wrote on the blackboard in our class: ‘khokhols, go home’. We erased this shame, drawn in chalk.

In 2022, city workers in St. Petersburg painted over a ‘No to war’ sign scratched into the ice. The Russian authorities do not understand that this ‘decoration’ will not help; that paint can be washed off; that even through its layers the essence is visible. The war that the Russian government started against Ukraine will always be an icy shower for our bruised bodies. 

Throughout my 35 years in Russia, I have tried to find a way to express my Ukrainian identity, each time pushing through the barriers and maneuvering through the obstacles of the Russian system, which is trying to bring everyone to a sterilized unity and kill our diversity. Sometimes I fell into despair, blamed my father, and dreamt of a simple name. It was difficult to introduce myself as Marika. Where did this name came from? Was it a real name? Was it a nickname? Why didn’t I want to go home? But, where could I go? I was born in Moscow; Moscow is my home. ‘I am a Ukrainian who was born in Moscow and I am at home’ –  it was impossible for those around me to understand and accept this.

At university, my English teacher refused to call me Marika. Only Masha. He offered me a choice: either Masha or Semenenko (my surname). In the end, I was Semenenko. I did not become Masha.

My German teacher also could not accept my Ukrainian identity, hinting that it was shameful to be Ukrainian. Once, I came in a fur coat that my uncle had given me as a gift. She suggested that the son of Yulia Tymoshenko had given it to me. Did Tymoshenko have a son? This sort of nonsense is difficult to analyze. I kept silent. She didn't teach us German; she mostly slept in class. But, in my German exam, she gave me a 3, while in other exams I almost always got 5. She was uncompromising: I am Ukrainian, which means I should be humiliated. In my diploma, I go a 4 in German, although this was not fair.

I have many more stories from my life about how people in Russia do not like Ukrainians who identified themselves that way. 

At the age of 34, a psychiatrist diagnosed me with a personality disorder, for which I began treatment. Now, it seems as if Russia has a disorder, not me. Therapy helps, but how to spread it to a whole country? It's not just about the government, it's about the people. Many do not accept Ukraine as a nation; and still call it ‘Small Russia’.

In Yerevan, to where I have emigrated, I met other Russians, just like me. One was trying to understand the situation and said he did not understand how people related by blood could fight each other. At first, I did not want to speak in terms of family ties. But this concept is so deeply rooted in the minds of Russians that I had to.

If Russia and Ukraine are one family, then it is important to understand that family relationships are different. It’s not necessary to maintain family ties if one relative kills another. Russia does not want to see, hear, or recognize Ukraine as a person. As in an authoritarian family, Russia wants Ukraine to listen, obey, keep silent and suffer. In order for Ukraine to remain an individual, it needs to abandon such family ties until Russia changes its attitude.

I believe that the concept of ‘family’ in relation to states should be abandoned. It was invented by Stalin. And it was a disguise for violence.

Ukraine is an independent nation distinct from Russia. Even though Ukraine was a part of the Russian Empire, and then the USSR, it doesn’t mean that such a nation does not have the right to exist. And it does not mean that Ukraine is a part of Russia. Contemporary Russia is a nation-state struggling to restore its own empire. Despite something in common, Russia and Ukraine exist in different contexts.

In the war between Russia and Ukraine, I cannot see any other outcome apart from Russia losing. But that would be a victory: of light over darkness, of reason over violence, of good over evil. Russia must decolonize its consciousness and not cling to the myths of the past. It must look to the future and see the present. It must make a choice in favor of plurality and diversity. It must… but can it?

Russia must if it wants to save itself as a nation. And be free. Ukraine is strong, proud, self-sufficient and independent —  and will solve its own problems.

If Russia does not want an ocean of blood, then it must remember who it is as soon as possible. Otherwise, this war will be followed by numerous civil wars.

Russia is a federation where many different peoples live. It makes no sense for them to ‘fight’ for the ‘Russian world’, exterminating difference, and forcing everyone to be ‘Orthodox Slavs’. These scars cannot be hidden, city employees simply cannot just paint over them. They paper over all our numerous and diverse identities. All our different lands.

Despite the propaganda and sterilization of the media, we know that white will still be white and black will be black. And I was, am and always will be Marika.

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