Larissa Kosmos is a Ukrainian-American author. Her essays have appeared in The New York Occasions, The Washington Submit, The Christian Science Monitor and in different varied retailers. She additionally works as a copywriter for Adcom.
When my grandmother fled the Soviet invasion of Ukraine in 1944 with my then three-year-old mom in tow, the household caravan of horse-drawn wagons only a day or two forward of the advancing Purple Military, she carried her late father’s warfare medal along with her.
The Cross of Simon Petlura — a small black cross inlaid with a silver sword and the Ukrainian trident, hooked onto a blue, yellow and black striped ribbon — had been awarded to him in recognition of his service throughout battles for Ukraine’s independence.
Between 1918 and 1920, he had defended the cities of Kharkiv, Poltava, Kremenchuk and Proskuriv from the Bolsheviks, who had stormed Ukraine below Vladimir Lenin’s command. Then taken captive by the Russians, my great-grandfather managed to flee, discovering his method to a brand new regiment in Berdychiv.
As a toddler, my grandmother was struck by the distinguished scar on his again — a mark of a extreme damage and a everlasting reminder of his struggle for an impartial Ukraine.
At the moment, over 100 years since my great-grandfather battled Russian forces, writing in English however kindled by a Ukrainian coronary heart because the American-born descendant of 4 Ukrainian immigrant grandparents, I observe information of the warfare carefully, my ache and pleasure interlocked.
Six months into this merciless actuality, I’m sure my motherland will prevail. We’ve persevered towards Russia’s power, violent want to smother Ukraine for generations, and we are going to without end persist — individually and collectively, each in Ukraine and within the diaspora.
We’ll proceed elevating people of energy and character.
Our energy can’t be manufactured or imported by railway or measured in stockpiles. It’s borne from a legacy of braveness, conviction and perseverance. Simply because the Ukrainian Rebel Military fought tirelessly within the 1940’s towards each the Soviets and the Nazis, so too are right this moment’s warriors a mannequin of resistance and tenacity. Past defiance, what they’ve inherited from their forebears is humility, and the understanding that Ukraine’s proper to independence is bigger than any of our single Ukrainian lives.
We’ll maintain our tradition thriving.
Our pysanky — exquisitely and intricately painted Easter eggs, so delicate within the palm of a hand — are impenetrable to the power of Russian missiles. Our Ukrainian Bandurist Refrain — that includes our nation’s distinctive 60-stringed instrument, the bandura — has survived for over a century; and because the voice of Ukraine, the bandura won’t ever be silenced.
Our vibrant dancers — with colourful ribbons on the ladies’s wreaths, fluttering as they spin, and the lads with their astounding acrobatics —can be executing a triumphant hopak as Russia’s tanks stall and rust. When one technology concludes the dance, the following will decide up the place they left off, a recurring storm of Ukrainian vitality. And our well-known borsch? Arms off, Russia. It’s ours.
We’ll guarantee our youngsters know Ukraine’s historical past.
Via our diaspora’s Saturday colleges and scout organizations, by means of our writing and movies, by means of our museums and archives, by means of the work of our historians and professors, and thru our personal willpower and company, we are going to assist protect Ukraine’s story and relay it to the following technology.
We’ll illuminate the true model of occasions, leaving Russia’s fabrications within the shadows. Our historical past can be shared not solely publicly however privately. “Pay attention,” my grandmother would say to me in Ukrainian as she started unspooling her World Struggle II tales, “in order that .”
As so a lot of our grandparents did earlier than, right this moment’s survivors will convey their experiences of trauma and resilience, fixing these realities within the minds of their grandchildren.
We’ll honor our victims, and we are going to increase the world’s consciousness of them.
Our Holodomor Memorial in Washington stands as a tribute to the tens of millions who starved to loss of life between 1932 and 1933 in Joseph Stalin’s engineered famine — a genocide during which Ukrainian farmers’ grain, crops and livestock have been confiscated. We’ve endeavored to grant these tens of millions of souls a measure of dignity, a everlasting marker on the earth and in reminiscence, with the creation of a bronze wall in america capital.
At the moment’s victims can be honored too: The troopers killed in battle, the civilians tortured and executed, the kids and girls raped, the innocents maimed by explosives buried below rubble . . . We’ll memorialize them and pursue justice for his or her ache.
We can be led by our heroes.
The strongest metal is solid within the hottest hearth, and now within the throes of hell, Ukraine’s heroes are multiplying. Whereas the blood being spilled is inciting super grief because it runs all through the land, seeping even past the nation’s borders, it’s additionally nourishing august pleasure. Ukraine is amassing a military of function fashions that can be inspirational and immortal.
We’ll rebuild Ukraine — no matter how lengthy it takes.
Ukrainians worldwide will contribute cash and muscle to reconstruction. With the identical tenacity that constructed St. Sophia’s Cathedral, the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves and Potocki Palace, we are going to see it by means of — each brick changed, each shard of hatred eliminated, each beam standing tall as soon as extra. No quantity of destroy can destroy our will to resurrect our homeland.
And we are going to steadfastly help Ukraine.
Ukrainians within the diaspora have all the time helped the motherland. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, we started serving as election observers in a newly free Ukraine. Many people moved there to work, investing our abilities and energies into growing the nation’s nascent democratic authorities and free-market financial system. Fueled by the descendants of World Struggle II refugees, philanthropic organizations started rising in Ukraine, and our youth started lending a hand, touring to volunteer at summer time camps for Ukrainian orphans.
When Russia invaded jap Ukraine within the spring of 2014, grassroots teams just like the Cleveland Maidan Affiliation mobilized to help warfare efforts, supplying overwhelmed hospitals with medical help and funding the acquisition of ambulances to move injured troopers. A few of the wounded have been delivered to the U.S. for specialised surgical procedures, and have been welcomed into the properties of Ukrainians they’d by no means earlier than met and who supported their restoration.
For the final six months of Russia’s invasion, the diaspora has been equally serving to to maintain Ukraine, extensively, passionately and tirelessly. Quite a few organizations within the U.S. and Europe are contributing: dispatching protecting helmets and vests for civil resistance; shopping for turbines; sending donated firefighter gear for emergency service personnel; mobilizing communities to pack particular person first-aid kits for troopers; sending medical provides and gear to hospitals and help to refugee camps; and bringing pediatric most cancers sufferers, and their households, out of the battle zone for continued medical care.
For these of us born exterior of Ukraine, our citizenship and proximity to the nation have by no means mattered. We’re one Ukrainian household, devoted to one another for all times.
We’ll persevere, regardless of our accidents and profound losses. When right this moment’s preventing ends, the brand new scar on Ukraine’s again will remind our youngsters of their legacy — and their obligation. 100 years from now, and past, we are going to defend and help our homeland.
My great-grandfather’s warfare medal, which my grandmother safeguarded by means of her nine-month escape in a coated wagon, 4 years in Germany’s refugee camps, a two-week voyage throughout the Atlantic to the Port of New York, and a lifetime of working and elevating a household in Cleveland — not residing an American dream however recovering from a Russia-inflicted nightmare — is now in my care.
I’ve instructed my kids to donate it to Cleveland’s Ukrainian Museum Archives after I’m gone, in order that others may additionally see this small, concrete image of Ukraine’s long-standing struggle for freedom.
