What a sad and terrifyingly common story your family has!

I spent my childhood in Russia, and Belarus too. And I have some pure hate for Russians, like some other sort of hate. You grow up among them and just hate everything you see and understand that’s not what the life should look like. My grandfather was born in Poland, I believe (I have no real proof beyond the surname, and he’s long gone, that’s a long story), he was deported to Siberia, far far East of Russia. My father was from Ukraine, he died years before the war (in 2014) started, I bet he’d die on the battlefield otherwise. To my shame, I had very little knowledge and understanding of the past. Nobody from my family managed to keep that knowledge, and I had all the fucking chances to become Russian (by identity). I think I was just too lucky to get a real paying job as a kind of software engineer, if we can say so, and just experience the bigger world, the one that speaks English. That was quite a long journey, both physically and mentally. I have managed to migrate to Ukraine pre-war, and at this point in life, I partially forgot Russian language as a traumatic experience and it triggers me when I hear it on the streets. Especially as I live west of Ukraine, not many people speak Russian here. Thankfully to my English knowledge, I managed to fill the gaps in the history. It was such a piece of shit subject in my school, I managed to not even open a book, was one of the worst students ever. I still get some ‘history exam’ nightmares sometimes, even despite I’m not that bad now. I’m thankful to some real history authors like Serhii Plokhy and Timothy Snyder. I’m reading Bloodlands currently, was in a bus just not so long ago, reading it from my Kindle. I think it’s the year two of me still reading that book. It’s very difficult to read, each reading session, it triggers so much hate and rage, it’s even worse than the modern days click-bait internet in that regard. It’s the real history of the lands that I lived through most of my life.

I didn’t think I can hate Russians more, but upon reading it, I feel there’s no fucking limit to that. I wasn’t aware of the Holodomor, I wasn’t aware of all the fucking terrors of the 20th century, of the degree of it, that Stalin slaughtered more people, and more Jews than Hitler did. I just wish every fucking one of them ruzzianz to become ‘good’ as we say here. Temporarily, I’m not able to join the army, and it’s this weird situation when I do wish the war to end sooner than I’d be able to join, as for me it would take some years, unless some black swan event (hopefully not), but at the same time I’d wish I could just eliminate them physically myself. On the other hand, I’d like that operation to be as successful and efficient as possible, so probably the ideal planning is to actually make sure they’d never be able to repeat these horrors. We need to make Russia small again, and it’s not just some funny little joke, but a real thing that needs to be done if the world wants peace and stability. It must be a set of independent nations, not a hegemony it is today, that soaks everything from the territories it occupied to Moscow. Moscow, my opinion, should stop existing. I’m all in for nukes there. But I afraid that would never happen. We need 1812 back again, when they themselves set the cursed city on fire.

It was only this morning I was reading that piece from Bloodlands with Hitler occupying Poland, annexing it, and willing to use it against the Soviet Union, and about that timeline. Oh, that’s exactly what Russians are doing, a copycat of Hitler’s doings. Ironic that their propaganda painted things very black-and-whiteish! Where Hitler was (last time I checked) like an absolute evil. I believe they had this narrative that modern day’s Ukraine is a neo-fascist state that joined Hitler’s ideology, blah blah blah. Accusation in a mirror, isn’t it?

My wife’s been telling me stories about her grandparents, the stories they had. They were occupied by the Germans first, then the Soviets after the WWII. The German soldiers would give them kids candies, they would build hospitals, infrastructure. Their family has a story of some kid in family (a grandmother or someone) who was saved by Germans, because they built that hospital and healed the kid. The stories of Russians are all barbaric. They would not just never give a candy to a kid, they’d take the candy from them. Hospital, they’d destroy it. That’s what we’re experiencing a century later.

I have a friend from far east Russia, his grandmother was from Ukraine, or her parents were, I’m not sure on the details. She died a few days into full-scale invasion of a heart attack, Feb 2022. She was old, but the news of the attack killed her. He’s one of not many Russians that I personally know, who’s supportive and do not support the war. Yet, to my knowledge he’s not very vocal about it in his region, it must be not very safe. But I know almost no Russians who are supportive of us and can say something like them being against the war, even in private. That’s despite I have quite some number of people I knew from my childhood. Most of them are like ‘well, it sucks, anyway, whatever, I don’t really care.’ Some are openly supportive of war. Yes, some of them are fed with the wrong truth, but it’s their problem (I mean, ours too, but) we cannot take their responsibly off only because they are unwilling to know. To get some critical thinking working, to read some other news, not even need to learn another language. Plenty of news even in Russian.

Thanks for your input and insight, and support too. With this attitude you’d do plenty of good during your lifetime, God bless you with a long and healthy life! It’s all just small daily steps for each of us, I believe.