by Diana Gor
“A dense and hoary primeval forest in Volhynia. The scene is a spacious glade in the heart of the forest, dotted with willows and one very old oak. At one end the glade turns into tussocks and reedy growths, and then into a vivid green marsh, the shore of a woodland lake formed by a stream which runs through the forest… The spot is wild and mysterious but not gloomy, filled with the tender, pensive beauty of Polissya, the wooded part of the province of Volhynia.”
This is a description of the world of Act 1 in Lesya Ukrainka's Forest Song. This play was my first encounter with Ukrainian literature, which happened about a year and a half ago.
My cultural identity has always been difficult to narrow down. Growing up in Southern Brooklyn in NYC, every single classmate was a child of immigrants, and being in a neighborhood populated entirely by Soviet immigrants and their children, many of us were bilingual in the same languages: English and Russian. In our own private circles, we were able to distinguish ourselves as Ukrainian, Georgian, Moldavian, etc, but when interacting with non-Soviet immigrants or full-blooded Americans, our linguistic commonalities made us all identify as Russian; it was easier than trying to explain a country we had never been to or were removed from very young. In Ukrainian nature, of course, my family always emphasized the distinction between being Russian and Ukrainian, but living in a Russian-speaking household, and being raised on Cheburashka and Nu Pogodi, the distinction was always blurred, so much so that I simply identified as a product of Soviet culture. As I got older, English began to replace my Russian, and my rooted New Yorker side established its grounding. Yet, I have never been able to completely dedicate myself to one side. Undoubtedly, I knew I’m not Russian, and I didn’t want to call myself American and erase my culture; after all, I could never fully connect to Americans, and they don’t understand the joy of having an entire aisle dedicated to pickles at Netcost Market. But, calling myself Ukrainian felt like a lie. I wasn’t raised on the traditions or the language, I was just raised by Ukrainian parents, and so I felt like I could never be enough for any label.
Reading Lesya Ukrainka’s work was the first time I finally felt an unexplainably deep connection to my roots. Ukrainka is known for her heartfelt connection and dedication to Ukraine within her writing, and that connection was something that truly struck me in a way that I related to and latched onto. As a dramaturg and theater student, reading lots of plays is part of the work, but I had never gone through such a sensorial experience reading words off a page as I did with Forest Song. I could quite literally see and hear the forest; I knew exactly what color the leaves were with every act, which ones were beginning to dry out before the rest of them, and how they swayed with the wind. Somehow though, it didn’t feel like just a forest, it felt like a Ukrainian forest.
However, I can't say that I know the difference between a forest and a Ukrainian forest, nor can I say if what I imagined even is a Ukrainian forest, because I have never been to Ukraine. Ukraine has only ever been something I could imagine and romanticize. I would always hear all about my parents' upbringing there, and I would always try to visualize it in my mind. My mom would tell me about the chickens in her backyard, the underground cellar that stored all their canned, home-grown fruits and vegetables, the brutal winters, and the trek to school through them. My dad would tell me about his camping trips as a boy and the trouble he created around Odesa. And I would sit in our Brooklyn apartment and try to imagine what it all would look and feel like to be there; all the beauty of the old buildings and vast landscapes, the warmth of my family’s embrace, the coziness of a dacha, the vibrance of downtown.
Of course, the disconnect from the homeland only worsens my identity crisis. I’ve spent my whole life looking at Ukraine through old photographs my parents immigrated with, Facebook posts from relatives I’ve never met, Instagram pictures from classmates posting about their summer vacations there, the street view on Google maps, and of course regular Google searches. Looking at maps, I always managed to find Ukraine by finding Crimea first, because I always thought the peninsula looked like the side profile of an elf-like figure. When my mom would Skype relatives, the most I could do was wave and say “привіт!” because of the language barrier. All of my connections to Ukraine have been experienced through a screen. While I’m grateful to have the technology to be connected at least in some way, the divide is a painful feeling to handle; it's a messy conglomerate rock of guilt, helplessness, contempt, insecurity, and dazed confusion that cuts with its sharp edges.
Since reading Forest Song, I came to a point where I began to look for ways to finally go and visit Ukraine. If my parents weren’t going to take me, I was going to find a way myself, and so I started looking at programs like the Fulbright Program to teach English and Dogs of Chornobyl to volunteer, study abroad opportunities, and just general travel options that were affordable. But, with the pandemic, obligations like work and school, and the expense, I hesitated. I had hoped that once I graduated college, I could finally take a trip to Ukraine to witness its “pensive beauty,” to see my visions and fantasies of Ukraine realized.
On the night of February 23rd, as I did my homework for my Russian theater class, those fantasies of when I would get to Ukraine were destroyed by the sounds of missiles in Kyiv that I heard through my phone. The next morning, there were sounds of family friends and relatives unable to flee crying through my mom's phone. There was smoke and explosions on my TV, Russian propaganda on Twitter, World War 3 memes on Facebook, and now infographics about why people should care about Ukraine on my Instagram stories. Instead of picturesque sites, Google Images began showing war zones when you would look up “Ukraine.” The maps I would look at were now color-coded to show how much territory has been occupied. The sites I had dreamed of visiting now had the threat of becoming ruins, or had already been ruined. The screens that once let me see the greatest parts of my family’s homeland were now showing me how they were all being destroyed.
My family and I have attached ourselves to our technology since the full-scale invasion, trying to keep up with updates from the news and our friends and family. If we’re not scrolling through social media watching war crimes unfold in real-time, we’re on news channels checking which regions were hit with missiles, on WhatsApp hoping our loved ones respond, or looking for people and places to donate to or support the economy. I have found myself following Ukrainian influencers, reading their educational content, sharing parts of our culture I had never known about, and seeking online communities to grapple with the complicated feelings of loneliness that have come out from all of this.
Paradoxically, technology has also become a way to cope with this new reality. On YouTube, my parents watch pre-war videos from Ukrainian travel bloggers exploring cities like Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Odesa, and Kharkiv. While these ways of coping guiltily encompass the “ignorance is bliss” motto, for a second, it feels real. It makes us pretend that the streets where my family once walked aren’t now blocked by Czech hedgehogs, or the city where my friends are from hasn’t been completely leveled to the ground. And to me, it makes me feel like I’m there, even if just for a second, completely enamored by the unbelievable beauty of Ukraine.
My parents also came across driving and walking tours of small cities. There’s no talking, no site-seeing, just a cameraman, a Go-Pro attached to his dashboard, and his route across town. They are the true POV experience; it lets me see everyday life like the supermarkets, the street signs, and the stone-cold faces crossing the street, and it gives me a chance to look through a perspective that genuinely feels like I'm behind the wheel. One night when we were watching one of Uman, where my mom is from, the cameraman had started to drive down a main road, and after passing a certain street, my dad said, "If he would have turned left there, we would have been at mom's house."
That moment was a stark reminder that I was still in Brooklyn, and suddenly the gap between Ukraine and myself became wider. My mom’s childhood home was built by my grandfather with his own two hands, and I had never known him because he died when I was very young. In the same vein with the house, I had never seen it, and never will, because it was sold several years ago after being empty for many years before that. And now, all I could think about was how many more years I’ll need to wait before I can fly out, and how much more of the land will be destroyed before I can see what’s left of it. In essence, how much have I never seen, and how much will I never get to see?
In this digital journey of trying to navigate my reality with the reality of war in Ukraine, I’ve constantly felt a push and pull within my identity and what I should be doing. I go back and forth between “I’m not Ukrainian enough” and “Many Ukrainians share my experience;” “I should book a flight and go volunteer” and “I should be home, where it's safe, doing what I can here;” “I have a responsibility to stay up-to-date on the news” and “I need to give myself a break;” “I want to explode” and “I need to keep it together.” The only thing that could quiet my thoughts was studying; it gave me something to do, I love learning, and to study Ukraine felt like something I could do for myself and for Ukraine simultaneously. Thankfully, with the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute, and a very generous scholarship, I was able to take Serhiy Bilenky’s course, Tradition and Modernity in Ukraine, 19th and 20th Centuries.
This summer, class became another screen I needed to be attached to for three hours a day, twice a week, continuing the saga of my digital expedition across Ukraine, only this time through its history. Our Zoom room became a gallery of historical images of Ukraine throughout the centuries. I got the chance to witness Uman not just as my mother’s hometown, but as the second largest shtetl in Imperial Russia. I saw Odesa both in its conception and in its modern form, even watching Battleship Potemkin for homework and seeing the famous Potemkin stairs that my parents once walked down. I learned about major figures I had never heard of before and cultural and political movements that aren’t spoken about enough. What I found most compelling, though, were our classroom debates and online community, as they introduced nuance, discussion, and a sense of uncertainty that was, in many strange ways, comforting.
Our debates required us to split up into two opposite stances, based on the readings we had for homework. Without fail, every time we were sent off to our breakout rooms, a handful of us would find it difficult to come up with an argument because our personal agreements lay on the other side. Yet, in trying to come up with something to discuss, it emphasized the point that Ukrainian history is multi-faceted, with many perspectives, many opinions, and many gaps, especially in the face of colonialism. We may have been split into two sides, but our points eventually fragmented into dozens of ideas. In most instances, we could never arrive at a conclusion because we were all stating the truth.
Similarly, the community of the classroom encapsulated the same diversity of our debate points. My classmates were from all over the world, some even in Ukraine right now, all from various ethnic backgrounds. Many were from the Ukrainian diaspora community, with parents from different parts of the country, and others were not Ukrainian at all but shared a passionate common interest in the culture and history. Being able to share the same virtual space and discuss our experiences and opinions on different topics, our lectures occasionally became a reflection of our own identities, family history, and reactions to what is happening today, and just like our debates, it was impossible for our conversations to arrive at a conclusion.
The inconclusive and uncertain nature of studying history feels very relatable to reconciling with my own Ukrainian identity. Just as history is written through different lenses, and just as Ukrainian history is different in every region, it is linked to my own history, tangled in its variability, disquietude, and oscillation. Consequently, I realized that there is no conclusive, correct way to be Ukrainian; all I have to do is be.
For now, no one can say what will happen to Ukraine. In the meantime, I will continue to be stuck to my screens, watching both the information war and literal war, but also engaging with resources online to continue learning and talking about Ukraine; after all, our survival depends on it. The homeland will continue to remain, as Ukrainka put it, “wild and mysterious,” but moving forward, I will be certain of my Ukrainian pride, and certain of my uncertain Ukrainian identity.