April 8, 2022 

Editor: Grace Long
Artist: Chloe Edwards

I grew up going to Turkish restaurants, watching Russian cartoons, and eating Italian home-cooked meals, but what actually made me Ukrainian-American? With the current climate in Ukraine, reflecting on my nationality has become increasingly more important in understanding where my ancestors came from and how it has shaped my sisters and me. Despite my Ukrainian heritage, I grew up navigating my dual-identities: feeling and identifying more strongly as Russian, like many countries that were once part of the Soviet Union do. 

My parents emigrated from Ukraine before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, so calling myself “Ukrainian” was never the norm. Everyone told me I was just a Russian-American. To make matters more complex, the town my dad grew up in, called Mukachevo, had once been considered the territory of both Hungary and Czechslovaka. I vividly remember joining the Russian group for Multicultural Night in 4th grade because I was the only Ukrainian person in my whole school. So whenever anyone asked, I just called myself “Russian.” The energy of explaining the intricacies of my family’s background was just too much to bear. 

Fondness over my heritage was hard to express because of the circumstances involving my family’s immigration caused by religious oppression. Russian Jewry is a complex and slightly overlooked portion of history, and so when Russian Refusenik (the ban on Jewish emigration in the Soviet Union) ended in the 1970s, my grandparents uprooted their families to the United States to find a place that would accept us. 

Being Ukrainian has always been difficult to fathom because its unique culture was never instilled in neither me nor my sisters. The large age difference between my siblings and I affected the relationship with our Russian culture, but our Ukrainian background remained unacknowledged. After asking my oldest sister, Raquel, what being a Ukrainian-American meant to her, she simply replied, “I have no idea.” And that is no fault of our parents, we were just never introduced to our Ukrainian background so we became lumped into Russian culture. 

After immigrating to the United States, my parents had both of my sisters and raised them in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn  — a Russian-American hotspot — for the first few years of their lives. My parents immersed themselves in the culture of Brighton Beach to remind them of their hometowns as they assimilated to American culture. But by the time I was born, they had moved to Long Island, stopped going to Brooklyn as often, and hired a Romanian babysitter, rather than a Russian one. Both my parents and grandparents ensured that the kids spoke Russian at home—making it my first language. But by the time I started American school, I not only lost the language, but I also slowly began to lose touch with my roots.  

My parents, while proud of their immigrant stories, wanted my sisters and I to feel as connected to our American identity as possible. Like many who escaped from oppression, they feared that we would have to experience the hardships that they did when they were my age. Especially as the youngest child, I was quite sheltered and coddled as I grew into an adult because my parents took each American experience as a gift. The greater context of the situation trumped their desire to expand our awareness of my heritage. And, quite frankly, sticking out, especially growing up in public school, is a difficult thing to experience: we, as a family, wanted to fit into all the American customs, which my parents knew made me feel more included. 

I spent the better part of my adolescence neglecting that piece of myself that was instilled in my sisters. With parents who escaped an oppressive government, as they settled more into American culture, they wanted me to feel as American as possible, reserving traditions for special occasions. I never took the time to reclaim the Ukrainian within me because, bluntly speaking, we have never been part of the conversation – a sentiment clearly tactfully imprinted by the Russian government over the past 30 years. And, to my own fault, I also never took the time to discover the true distinctions between the two cultures. But now, preserving that portion of my identity and passing it along to my children is of the utmost importance to me.  

Although the circumstances are far less idealized than any of us would have liked, the overflow of support from not only my community, but across the globe, on the acknowledgment of Ukraine as a nation with cultures, traditions, and ideals has done a lot in terms of increasing visibility on an international stage. Despite my Russian upbringing, I do not feel conflicted at all about who I am and what I stand for – Ukraine deserves sovereignty. Connecting with this piece of myself that had never been as significant to me is something that I truly cherish, not only in terms of who I am, but also my family. The crisis in Ukraine sparked my interest in discovering this piece of myself that I so deeply buried to embrace more American ideals. Learning more from both of my parents about my family background and how fortunate I am to be raised in the United States just strengthens my admiration and love for them. Feeling a sense of identity to a place that needs our help right now and embracing my heritage has only molded me into a more passionate person – something I already see within my sisters as they continue on the ancestry, passing on our legacy to their own children.