February 26, 2022Mir in UkraineJulia Kolchinsky Dasbach

“Putin’s Feb 21nd speech rewrites history, questioning Ukrainian sovereignty and making false claims legitimizing its always having been a part of Russia. While this colonial narrative is not new, hearing it spoken in my mother tongue—Russian—while being myself born in Dnipro, Ukraine, and then reading and thinking through it in English, has carried a particular sting and anxiety in the days that followed. I coped by taking on an erasure of all 11-pages of his drivel in order to give back some of the agency and voice I felt were taken from my birthplace and its people in Putin’s twisted version of history and present moment. But today, thousands of miles away, safe behind a screen, as my birthplace is invaded, I have no words for the pain and paralysis I feel. I am holding my kin on this soil close and wishing those friends abroad on Ukrainian chernozem safety. War has begun, and I am terrified for what tomorrow will bring. I emigrated from Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when I was six years old, in 1993, two years after Ukraine declared her independence from the Soviet Union in a referendum supported by 93% of Ukraine’s citizens. While going through various political regimes, Ukraine has known sovereignty since 1991. I am aching at the threat of its loss. Aching for my birthplace. Her language and culture. Her identity. For her people—my people. For the mothers who first sent their kids to school wearing stickers identifying their blood type in the event of military catastrophe and are now sheltering from missile strikes in basements and subway stations. I am aching for what I cannot change, so the process of poetic erasure of a dictator’s language lets me reclaim some sense of power, for both myself and my reader, if only for a moment, if only in the lyric space of the page, to reach for mir-мир, the word for peace in both Russian and Ukrainian. Even though now, this reaching, this hope has been completely shattered.”