As Russia’s war against Ukraine grinds into its second ghastly year, I have gotten an upfront view on its impact on the lives of numerous ordinary people from both countries.
My fascination with Russia dates to my teen years when I became an ardent fan of the great Russian novelists including Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev and Mikhail Bulgakov. Though I began traveling in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, it seemed an impossible dream I would ever get into Russia or other parts of the Soviet Union. Following the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991, that dream quickly became a reality in 1992 when my job at Chicago’s City Hall netted me an invitation from Moscow city government to visit as part of an exchange program for municipal government finance officials.
My trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg was a potent eye-opener plainly showing what 68-plus years of communist rule had wrought in these imposing but bedraggled cities. A year into Russia’s abrupt shift to capitalism, private enterprise was still scant and local governments were desperately trying to piece together coherent, market-based tax and regulatory policies. Nevertheless, I was inspired to try to work with ordinary Russians in any way I could to help them build a free and fair society.
Beginning in 1998, I began serving as a regular host in Chicago for citizens from “developing democracies” around the world, including many from Russia and Ukraine. Since then, more than 15 Russians and Ukrainians spent upward of a month in my home as part of their cultural exchange programs. These programs were backed by the U.S. State Department’s Community Connections program and locally facilitated by Chicago-based nonprofits Citizen Bridges International and World Chicago.
Through these and other programs, I developed many new and long-lasting Russian and Ukrainian friends. Through the lens of these friendships, I have seen the hopes and dreams of many of my Russian friends go up in smoke in the past year. Most dramatically affected was Yuliy, a young Russian surgeon who was on the cusp of starting a new life in America when Vladimir Putin’s invasion last year abruptly changed his plans. The war has produced a de facto new Iron Curtain for Russians. And while he might have been able to flee as so many hundreds of thousands of his fellow countrymen had, the prospect of forever being cut off from family back home ultimately became a deal breaker for his dream of a new life in America.
For years, I stayed in touch with many of my former Russian houseguests through email and social media. Several of my friends warmly received me when I made a second trip to Russia in 2005. The passage of 13 years had allowed for a startling economic transformation of Moscow and St. Petersburg; both had shed their gray Soviet pasts to become vibrant, modern European cities. It filled me with hope for the country’s future.
Still, a fear that all this progress might be masking intractable dark impulses of the old Russia was palpable. One of my Russian hosts, Shamil, a former nuclear physicist in Soviet times, presciently warned that the then-seemingly reformist Putin was really an unapologetic dictator just waiting to happen.
During a pleasant afternoon visit to a Moscow park, my conversation with Shamil turned to Ukraine’s recent Orange Revolution when massive Ukrainian demonstrations upended Moscow-backed political corruption and domination. Soon, a sizable gathering of curious eavesdroppers joined in the conversation, largely expressing delight at Ukrainians’ moxie at pushing back against their would-be oppressors. The crowd made Shamil uneasy, and he insisted that we get away from the park quickly as he recognized an old KGB apparatchik lurking about. After Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, most of my Russian friends, including Shamil, stopped responding to emails and other communications — perhaps worried that Big Brother might be watching.
In November 2019, I helped host a group of Russian arts journalists as part of an exchange program in Chicago. They spoke of the constant fear they lived under as their relatively apolitical work was still a source of constant warnings from the Russian government to not spread unpatriotic thoughts. I later learned that upon their return home, the group was ambushed at the airport by members of Putin-friendly media who demanded to know why any Russian would ever visit America. The storm clouds were darkening. Following Russia’s full-out Ukraine invasion a year ago, even those who had maintained a Facebook presence went silent.
Meanwhile, communications with my Ukrainian friends continue, providing direct and heartbreaking accounts of the heartless assault on Kyiv and the rest of the country. Some families have suffered war deaths. Other families have become refugees.
While the suffering of my Ukrainian friends is clearly visible, I fear that the silence of my former Russian friends may be hiding private tortures of another kind.
