We have all been deeply upset by the outbreak of war between Putin’s Russian army and Ukraine. It has shocked us, because Ukraine is an independent country, and it should be free to choose its own destiny as a sovereign state. It is not a territory of Russia, and yet Putin – against the counsel of his closest advisors – saw fit to invade it.

It has been a very emotional time for me

The images of people fleeing their homes with hastily packed belongings and their pets, families being separated, and innocent people being killed, has been deeply disturbing; not only because of a natural sympathy we feel for people in that kind of situation, but also from a fear that what has been happening to them, could happen to us, if some crazed despot decided it was within his rights to attack Australia.

There is another reason why what’s been happening has been unsettling for me

It has been a very emotional time for me. At the same time the war was unfolding, I was writing my own family history about my grandmother and mother fleeing from Shanghai, taking only a few possessions, and leaving behind a home they loved, as the Chinese communist army encircled the city. They got out on the second last ship – by paying a Spanish smuggler in gold nuggets. Once out at sea, the ship started to take on water, and they were fortunately rescued by the US navy and placed in a refugee camp on a tiny island in the Philippines. You will recognise the background for my novel, White Gardenia, no doubt, but now I am writing the non-fiction account (more on this in the next newsletter!). I was feeling their fear and distress as I was writing, and then the fear and distress of the people in Ukraine that I was seeing on television. I ended up finding it very difficult to sleep.

There is another reason why what’s been happening has been unsettling for me. I am Russian on my mother’s side. (My father is Australian born with a Scottish-Irish background). My mother was born in China, but my grandparents were both Russian. My grandfather, a colonel in the White Russian Army fighting the communists, rode out of Russia on horseback into China. My grandmother was living there with her parents, her father being an engineer on the Trans-Siberian railway.

Russia and Ukraine are at war with each other, it is truly brothers and sisters fighting

Before I continue, I need to explain what ‘Russian’ means. Many people classified as Russian do not have pure Slavic backgrounds. In my own family the ethnic mix is Russian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Polish and Swedish. Ukraine is a nation not a region (that’s why we don’t say ‘the Ukraine’ anymore, as you might have learned to do at school) and people born there are called Ukrainian. But theirs is not a pure race either. Because of the natural movement of people around the Russian Empire in the past, many Ukrainians will also have mixed ethnicities in their family trees. So, when Russia and Ukraine are at war with each other, it is truly brothers and sisters fighting.

My mother had relatives who were executed in gulags and in front of firing squads for opposing the communists in Russia

A strange thing has happened. My ties to Russia’s President Putin are tenuous to say the least: I’m born in Australia and have English as my first language, and my mother was born in China. But since the war broke out, I have been feeling a sense of threat that I never imagined I would personally experience in Australia. I have had comments made to me at social gatherings and other places, as well as some online, that were meant to shame me for what is going on in Eastern Europe, a situation over which I have no control. Friends have been concerned for me when they have witnessed what has been happening. The sense of hostility has been worse for later arrivals who were born in Russia and have Russian accents, and even for their Australian-born children.

The uncomfortable atmosphere took me back to a frightening episode in my childhood when Australia and the rest of the world were in a Cold War with the Soviet Union. My grandparents had relatives who were executed in gulags and in front of firing squads for opposing the communists in Russia, and my grandfather had been in the White Army on the side of the Tsar, so you could describe my family as staunchly anti-communist.

My mother was so terrified that she never spoke to me in Russian again

Although my mother had become an Australian citizen, and she grew to love this country passionately, she and many other Russians living here had a deep-seated fear of being sent to the Soviet Union, where they too, would be executed. Therefore, they were always on their ‘best behaviour’ around Australians. But my mother also loved her Russian heritage. One day, when I was four years old, we were standing at a set of lights waiting to cross the road. We had just been shopping together and were laughing and enjoying ourselves. My mother was speaking to me in Russian and then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a man appeared and screamed right into my mother’s face: ‘Speak in English! Bloody Communist!’

I was scared because I had no idea why the man was angry. But my mother was so terrified that she never spoke to me in Russian again. Ever! I have often wondered what it was like for my mother to have to speak to her children in her second language, not her first language. Her heart language. What a great loss for her and for me.

We must be aware of this kind of attitude in Australia. It breaks my heart to know that during the first World War German shepherd dogs and dachshunds were destroyed simply because they were German breeds. When there are Islamic terrorist attacks, people with Muslim backgrounds hunker down, knowing there might be unjust reprisals on themselves and their families. Even Sikhs, who have nothing to do with the issue, worry about wearing their turbans in public. Perhaps the most absurd manifestation was in the mid-nineties, when Australians vehemently opposed the French carrying out nuclear tests in the Pacific. Employees from the baguette and pastry chain, Deli-France, were getting death threats. Ironic to say the least, when you realise Deli-France was a chain of cafes offering a schmaltzy faux-Parisian atmosphere, and many of the people who worked there were International Asian students.

I am repeatedly hearing on the news: ‘The Russians have attacked ….’; ‘Russian atrocities discovered …’ Unfortunately, this is associating the terrible things that are happening with an entire race of people instead of a government and its military. It cements in our minds that all Russians are bad.

The greater understanding we have of each other’s histories, the greater understanding we will have of each other

This understanding of ourselves might give us a greater understanding of how people in Russia might be processing the propaganda played out continuously in support of Putin’s war. The word ‘Nazi’ has terrible connotations for everyone, but along with Jewish people, it is Russians who feel the terror of the word the most. For Russians who remember the Second World War or have heard the stories from their parents and their grandparents, the word conjures up the memory that 27 million Russians died because of the Nazi invasion of their country. Cities were destroyed and villages razed to the ground. Leningrad was held in a siege for 872 days! People were forced to cook and eat their shoes, their pets, and even cadavers. One million people died.

It’s a very emotive word to the Russian people. Putin uses it with great effect when he puts it alongside the word, ‘Ukraine’.

My book, Sapphire Skies, gives an insight to the history of Russia that influences the thinking of the people today. It is a book you might find particularly interesting to read at this time. Putin made it illegal in Russia to compare Stalin to Hitler. But I would say that the similarities between Putin and Stalin, and the way Putin keeps the Russian people in fear and under his thumb, are truly terrifying. The greater understanding we have of each other’s histories, the greater understanding we will have of each other.

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