SAN FRANCISCO, California – Sitting in an immigration office another day, I had to answer a few questions in order to extend my stay in the United States. An officer with a peculiar name, Mr. Ennis, was a grey-haired civil servant with a vacant look on his face. He began the procedure by looking at my application documents. “You were not born in Ukraine,” was his first reaction to my file. “You were born in the U.S.S.R.,” he added sternly, crossing out what I had written.
Mr. Ennis was technically right: Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union in 1982. But does that make me Soviet when it comes to defining nationality? Avoiding trouble, I didn’t ask him, but the thought crossed my mind. I am glad he left my Ukrainian-ness without further questioning.
It so happens that we are haunted by the ghosts of our geopolitical past through most of our life. Being labeled Soviet may sound derogatory to some people, but to others, it’s a part of identity that’s not worth fighting with. In my reports on culture, I circumvent sensitive subjects by referring to them as Slavic to please the crowd. Yes, I try to stay neutral. Because if I say that it’s a truly Ukrainian habit to drink tea leaving a teaspoon in a cup until you finish, someone would argue that Russians tend to enjoy this eye-poking experience just as much.
Weird, right? Or how about an odd tendency to answer any question with “da net,” or “yes no,”which essentially means “no?” Russians do it, Ukrainians do it, well, many Slavs do it.
So what makes me really Ukrainian? Perhaps, a habit of keeping medicine in the fridge. Or, a ritual of washing a new toothbrush in boiling water – to kill germs, as my mom would say. Or – even better – an annoying habit of washing plastic bags to reuse them again. Actually, no, Westerns do that too: mostly for the sake of nature, not the house economics as I do, though.
It turns out that Mr. Ennis was right. I think and act as someone born in the USSR, when speaking and thinking in Russian was mainstream. What could set me apart from that mentality, though, is the Ukrainian language.
Of course, one could argue that no one took it away from me by making Russian the regional language this week. Yet, being legally encouraged to speak Ukrainian has been giving me a sense of identity, which I may be in danger of losing in the aftermath of the latest legislative changes.
I have nothing against Russian. It’s the language I use every day, but I wish I had a chance to converse in Ukrainian instead. Most of my friends and family have always been using Russian for the same reasons as I was – they grew up in the U.S.S.R., where Ukrainian was not popular. We have been denied a chance to bargain with a street vendor in Ukrainian, to read popular press in Ukrainian or discuss the Second World War with our grandfathers in Ukrainian.
Yet, being legally encouraged to speak Ukrainian has been giving me a sense of identity, which I may be in danger of losing in the aftermath of the latest legislative changes.— Yulia Popova
So far, apart from rare trips to Lviv, my peers and I have been denied a habit of hearing Ukrainian on the streets in the capital of the country, where Ukrainian is a state language.
My brain’s been muddled with a mixture of Soviet, Russian and Ukrainian leftovers. I don’t frankly know what it means to be Ukrainian, and when I hear politicians on talk shows throw speeches about national pride, I catch myself thinking it means nothing to me, for I have not been raised with it. It is a rather disconcerting thought, a lingering doubt of who and what I am, which affects my life choices greatly.
I sometimes envy the Russians, who despite their government’s support of the villains of the world, have a tremendous sense of pride and belief in their country.
While my generation is perhaps a lost case, I think that sidelining our language further away is denying a sense of identity and belonging to the country’s future offspring. Legalizing Russian as a second official would be fine, but only after we build our national sense of pride and togetherness with the help of Ukrainian street signs, college tests and news broadcasts. It seems to be that glue that can hold everything together. It stretches far beyond flying yellow-and-blue flags on our cars during the Euro 2012 football championship.
It is something that could actually make Mr. Ennis and his colleagues scratch out USSR from their reference books, when it comes to Ukraine.
Yuliya Popova, the Kyiv Post’s former lifestyle editor, is now living in San Francisco, California.
