Being Russian Is Not Easy

Being Russian is not easy. I grew up in America but I had spent the first four years of my life in a wonderful post Soviet orphange. Just enough time to remember the Babushka. I had always had an internal conflict within myself on which identity I should embrace. I always picked the Russian side as I could see the vaccination scar on my right arm. Of course there was that small discovery when I was sixteen that I was never granted American citizenship and was actually the proud owner of a green card.That definitely didn’t help my identity crisis. Growing up was confusing because the only thing that seemed to be associated with Russia was either the cold war or communism. Of course communism was the inherent evil of everything, or at least that's how they tried to teach it to me in history class. Ow, the days before social media and the modernization of the internet. 

The Mongols ruled us for a few hundred years and that genetic gene clearly traveled because the Romanovs ruled us for another few hundred years with a very similar mentality. Then the Soviets came around with the refined Cheka and Gulags. By the time the Soviet era came around, “ We” understood the order of things. At least we got the long awaited industrial push with the Soviets. I wonder if they told us about the accomplishment of Sputnik

I’m thirty now, and I think I understand now what being Russian means and being Russian is still not easy. I recently heard a person( before the war) say she loved Russian culture and all I seemed to think about was the gulags and the systemic oppression brought on by the Romanovs.Sure we have our moments in the spotlight with Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn but even that's depressing literature.Perhaps that's why the Russian women are so beautiful, we are making up for our minds. 

 You should be praying for Russia. While there is ethnically a difference between the the two nations, there is no historical difference between the two. It's just Russians trying to oppress Russians again. I’m waiting for either the gulags to start back up or the internment camps.