This story arose from the personal email communication with my new Estonian friend, Herman. He mentioned some fights with relatives over the Russian war in Ukraine. And I was surprised someone would have these real fights these days, with people not living in Russia.
As if there could be any different interpretation to that!
Every time I see someone mentions they fight with their relatives about these essential topics, I am genuinely surprised. In my book, there are some things you cannot even argue with, some facts that are so clear, there’s nothing to talk about. It’s so very clear who’s the evil and who’s not. But then there’s this reality thing happens, and I realise, heck, no, it’s not like that, not that simple.
Not for everyone, at least.
I was thinking about it. It’s weird that I was surprised. Estonia was occupied too. Most of the population more likely know some Russian, at least to some minor degree. Some of the population is a subject to Russian propaganda too, more likely. There’s nothing to be surprised about. Yet, for some reason, I was.
My Fights
Perhaps, because my fights were quite a long time ago, about a decade ago. And longer too. My mum was born in Russia (named USSR back then). And at the age of 20, she migrated to Belarus, then officially occupied by the USSR.
Technically, it’s occupied till today. Though the nature of its occupation is different from recently occupied regions of Ukraine. The terror isn’t that striking, because most of the population is mostly russians. There are very little Belarusians left. The language is dead, there’s no nation. It’s just de-facto a russian gubernia.
My mum is over 70 now. She didn’t like Russia, and she wanted a better place, and Belarus was the best country she visited.
It’s hard to believe, as these days Belarus is literally the worst country I ever visited, including Laos (a pretty shitty place, but it’s beautiful, and has magnificent nature). When I visited Laos, I got the immediate vibes of Belarus. The depressed (almost) failed state, with no freedoms, people not smiling and you see that difference once you cross the border.
As far as I can remember, I’ve been fighting with my mother over everything. And since she divorced my father, a Ukrainian, when I was 2 or 3 or something, I remember two things from my childhood:
- Wondering why I’m not living with my dad, but her. Why wasn’t I given a choice? and
- At some random point in time, when I was a teenager him, after some usual fight with her, telling me he’s sad, and sorry for me living with her.
He died of a heart attack 14 years ago, and I migrated to Ukraine two years later. It wasn’t related, but it’s only after the full-scale invasion I started being interested in Ukrainian culture and history, and realised I did not know my father well enough, nor obviously my mother did.
This cultural difference is a very huge topic, actually, so I’ll skip it here right now.
But I just wonder how different this is with the Baltic states. Because for me — in a way, a kid from Russia — Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were always different countries. Some very different language, Latin symbols, a very different culture too.
For some reason, Ukraine felt all the same. As much as Belarus. Now, I understand that’s many factors: Russian propaganda, Russian culture and history being the stolen culture and history, mostly from Ukraine. Even their language. To learn and understand how different Ukraine and their history and culture… took me almost ten years in Lviv, which is the least damaged place of them all! I bet most Ukrainians don’t understand that difference of their own country to Russia, and only learning it these days.
Well, why I mentioned my mother, is that for me, the era of these fights, it was some ten to twenty years ago, and at some point I mostly gave up. I had another family, in Russia, they’re my mum’s twin sister and her family. Actually, she’s more a mother to me than my biological mother. I spent more time being with her than my biological mum. For various reasons, nothing too weird and unusual, actually.
Her husband, my uncle, he was a programmer, and more likely it’s him who influenced my interests. Maybe, I’d be super into computers regardless of him, but he nurtured my interest, mostly by example. We had some computer at home, and I used it too, super occasionally. The interesting detail is that his father, my cousins’ grandfather, he was Polish. And he was super-cool! I envied my cousins for having such an interesting grandfather. He was very intelligent, not your typical barbaric Russian. They were departed from Poland to a place called Komsomolsk-on-Amur. It’s only relatively recently, maybe a year ago or so, that I realised that it’s foundation date is 1932, and it was the Holodomor time, the genocide of Ukrainians.
I remembered, it was me reading Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder. I’m still reading that book. It’s very difficult to read, and I want to kill Russians even more. I mean, I’m not only want them to die, I want to physically kill them, all of them, one-by-one, myself, with my own hands. I want to see Holodomor on their territory! Not that the book is some hate-speech propaganda, you know. The usual (but very talented) piece of history book. The mostly hidden history. Honestly, I never knew that.
So, back to that family.
My mum and her sister, they’re Russians. My uncle was de-facto Polish, since his father was Polish, just departed to Siberia. They lived there, my aunt and uncle, and their kids, my cousins was born in that Khabarovsk Krai too. It’s almost Japan, if you didn’t bother to follow the link and explore. They returned to my aunt-mum’s home village at some point in life, when I was in my elementary school, about six or something. So, they’re the only Russian relatives I was in contact with. I personally saw some other relatives once or twice in my life, and mostly don’t even remember their names.
And the last time we had some fight and elevated tones conversation was when I was in St. Petersburg, visiting a friend.
I don’t like the city, it’s actually pretty mediocre in my book, it’s russians trying to copy-cat Europe, not understanding Europe. It looks pathetic, I’d say.
I visited Finland then, mostly Helsinki. It was the most contrast border crossing in my entire life. It was like teleporting into the future, like hundreds of years of civilisation difference.
These days, I’m seeing the world as mostly European, and Finland is a normal regular country to me. But in hindsight, back then, I was still closer to my childhood and still being partially Russian, even despite I was lucky to skip most of the culture. Weirdly, my wife knows more of their culture (e.g. some songs, advertisements, movies etc.) then I know. The magical power of TV and no internet.
I came back from Finland, and decided to visit these relatives of mine the very next day. They’re about another thousand of kilometres away, but it’s roughly a day trip. I’m used to that kind of exhausting travellings. I came there, and by that point I hadn’t been visiting them for almost a decade. It was 2017, by the way. And I was shocked to see this contrast.
About Estonia, Herman wrote ‘in 90s we had this and that, but mostly nothing, and these days we’re doing pretty great’ and I was thinking: ‘ha, in Russia it was the other way around. They had mostly nothing back then, but these days things are even worse there.’ Even in Belarus it’s not that bad. Well, what they have okay there in Russia are the TVs and smartphones. Plebs ought to consume all the mighty propaganda, after all.
Check out this photo of mine!
That’s my favourite! That’s a shared apartments building, that’s where my cousin lived back then, and that’s the living condition of the poorest. They’re packed with alcoholics, drug addicts and all the ‘funny’ people. The smell of urine and some empty snacks packs and bottles rolling over the floor upon entering the building would contribute to that atmosphere. And broken windows, of course. That’s the TV, a 40" TV, on the background. It’s a shared bathroom. It was so surreal, I couldn’t believe it. That’s pretty much Russia in a nutshell. That was my cousin’s place, and the year was 2014. They annexed Crimea by that time already. I’ve seen many things like that, but that TV, that made me really surprised, I didn’t expect to see this amidst these ruins.
When I had that heated debate with her mother, she were spilling all kinds of russian propaganda non-sense onto me. She was super angry, and basically challenged my simple phrase. I was telling them about Finland, and it was some natural surprise of mine, like ‘wow, it’s so pathetic and sad here, especially in comparison’. The nonsense included things like ‘they steal children from parents in Finland’ (apparently by removing parental rights from some socially unstable people, basically saving the kids) and ‘in the [United] States, their country look even worse … after a — wait for it — a hurricane!’ She saw it on the TV. I was repeatedly asking her whether she’s aware of what a hurricane is? It’s like, you know, bombed and ruined Ukrainian cities look like a typical Russian city now. Only that they were never bombed, these Russian cities. Same goes for a hurricane, they have their cities no different.
I remember the debate was intense, but pretty short. At some point I realised there’s no sense to talk reason to these people, they’re pretty much insane already. These days they support the war, by the way. Even they know I’m here, and I assume the aunt, she rather thinks that he has that niece of hers no longer (meaning the relationships thing, not my physical wellbeing) than she’s worried over me and my life. Pretty fascinating, I’d say. I might call that woman being closer to my biological mother. I believe there are stories like that for people closer to the modern-day front-lines, when some parents believe Russia is doing good, while some kids escape from the occupied territories to the mainland Ukraine.
For me, years passed since then, and I’ve got married, two kids, failed revolution attempt in Belarus, this full-scale invasion now … it all feels like not just a lifetime ago, but some few lives ago. So, yeah, that’s why I was somewhat surprised to learn someone might have similar fights with their relatives these days. My mother does not in contact with all her relatives these days, and thankfully at least she does not support the war, and there’s no ‘it’s so unclear’ narrative from her. Which is pretty suprising, considering the history of our fights. Maybe the war I had in Belarus — one day I cut the TV cable and said there won’t ever be a TV in this house, bought the then-released 1st gen. Chromecast and forced YouTube upon her — maybe that war of mine, it gave some results. These days, when we’re in contact, I keep reminding her there’s no point watching any news about Ukraine in Russian. She keeps falling to some Russian channels, ‘they’re from Ukraine! No Russia!’ she says, but there’s no much difference, actually. Just the propaganda is different and targeted at a different audience.
Also, for folks in Russia or Belarus, and even Ukraine (mostly eastern), they know no EU, and so they fall into some weird narratives. When I forced my mother to visit Sweden with me, she was like ‘okay, they’re all transgenders, gays, and transvestites there, so I’ll have no issue to find boots of my size’ (she’s tall, as Swedes, and so it might be difficult to find bigger shoes for her). It wasn’t even like ‘hey, Swedes are tall’ narrative, the ‘they’re all divas there.’ Also, she expected Swedes to speak or at least understand Russian. It was hilarious and soooo embaracing too! One day, my dad visited us, and he was super drunk that day, he could barely walk. We were in the elevator, going up to my 11th storey. There was some random neighbour, I didn’t even know that dude, and dad was like ‘hey, that’s my son!’ super-proudly. And I was like ‘fuck, no, dad, whatcha doin’?!’, it was both humiliating and embarassing. (They guy was like, ‘shrug, o-kay’.) But it’s very funny today, I was in some kind of Simpsons episode. Perphaps it was the same with the mother forcing Swedes into Russian. When she did not open her mouth, they took us either for locals or Germans (since we were not locals). Yeah, funny moments.
Well. I’m wishing your family / relatives gatherings, if you still have something like that, to be peaceful. While I understand the need for all these folks to wake up, and be re-persuaded into a more sane mentality, sometimes I just hope (against hope) they’ll do the job on their own. That cousin of mine, the one I had that heated debate after Finland, he wrote me the usual ‘9th of May Victory Day shit congratulations’ email. (They banned me in messengers long ago, since I was super aggressive back then, and super-experienced from my early internet days at various chat rooms, you might know that kind of time too.)
‘Yeah, read the room, dude, read the room’ was my first impression. I replied him that while of course that’s a bit weird to write me things like that, considering they’re literally genociding us right fuckign now, I also reminded him that actually war is a pretty expensive endavour, and boasting about winning the war 80 years later is also pretty silly and actualy pathetic. Especially considering the fact that they do celebrate that victory with ‘we can repeat’ slogans, and not mourn for the dead. And considering the fact they defeated Germany only with the help of the US and other allies. Plus, it were us, Belarusians, Ukrainians (and maybe Baltic states too, I’m unaware of that), who fought back, not Russians. And hence they got the most casualties. Actually, no war ever happened in the location of that cousin, which is a couple of hundreds of kilometers east to Moscow. Neither Hitler, no Napoleon got that far. Yet, they won the war, you know.
He spew a pile of russian dirty propaganda on me, that we’re all fascists, and that’s why we do not celebrate the holy victory! Blah-blah, I mostly ignored his passages, still finding a couple of inconsistences to fight back, like ‘I see your society needs no medicine or infrastructure, and it’s better to ruin the neighbour’s house instead’ kind of line. Also, I asked him how they’re doing by the way, how life’s going, etc. The reply to that was some weeks later, and it was pretty interesting too. The cousin, he’s 42, he lives with his mother, never married (nor having a girlfriend), they live in some abandoned village, it’s pretty pathetic, but not as pathetic as Russia can get. It’s even some luxury village, by Russian standards, they even have running water and even gas! Even gas sounds super hilarious, considering the fact that’s basically the only thing Russia do for the world. So he wrote me something like mom is getting old, but she’s trying to be strong (they were an olympics athletes, our mothers, half a century ago), and he doesn’t know what to do if she’ll die. He has no job, no profession, even despite he was super smart in his twenties and attended the most prestigious Moscow university, but dropped out for health reasons. (He was kind of genius kid, I’m some pale shadow of him.) They have goats, and they sell some milk to locals. Not too impressive. I brought the context of mothers being old, saying that if my mother (or his) would die anytime soon, I won’t be able to come. Neither to Belarus, nor to Russia, it’s too dangerous for me, having a Ukrainian identity and documents. Well, things might change within ten or fifteen years, but I don’t believe they will. Especially for Russia, their problems are not about someone occupying them, but deeply rooted into their society. And the thing that caught my attention is him saying he has most of his teeth being rotten. Here’s this Finland-Russia difference kicks in. Because when you’re a part of Russian society, fourties or fifties are pretty much old age for them. Very middle-ages-ish. But for a EU state, I’m pretty sure it’s as savage as for us here. We have dentists, and pretty great and modern clinics, all over the town. Off the top of my head, in a walking distance, I can recall three of four clinics. They all are less then 10 minutes of walk away. They all are super-modern. And not arm-and-leg expensive, by the way. The usual check would go from €20 to €50. (My friend paid like almost a thousand in San-Francisco for some pretty average health check-up.)
That’s where I just remembered that village. They might have one or two dentists like half an hour bus ride away. And no other dentists within hunderds of kilometers. It’s forests, and a highway.
Sorry for that gore. I mean, of course, you do understand that weird things. I’m not trying to persuade you into something ‘Russia is bad’ narrative. It’s just some Vietnamese flash-backs of mine, triggered by this ‘conversations with relatives’ discussion.
Well, before I returned to this computer hardware funny thing. Since I already wasted your time on reading this (unless you skipped), I think I’d want to ask for an advice. Or rather ‘what you think’ kind of thing. That cousin, I was pretty close to him in my chilhood, he’s just 6 years older, but actually he was the only one from all my relatives, who was taking an effort to educate me and teach me something. He was never a typical drinking vodka smoking Belomorcanal (the cheapest brand of cigarretttes, typically associated with the lowest class, usually of prisoners) Russian. He was a pretty educated one, and actually he’s still is. The thing is, the last 25 years he’s rather a pretty educated on Russian propaganda guy. I did various attempts to bring him back to life, but the thing is, they would trust the TV much more than they would trust people they know personally. The ‘I’ve been there, seen that’ kind of personal story is killed with ‘what you know, stupid boy, I’ve seen it all on the TV’ kind of narrative. (So here you might have some thoughts over this, if you will. I’m rather curious what you think, should we continue our attempts at explaining something to this kind of people, or it’s rather the solitude and abandonment what may clean their heads.)
But my question lies in the computer hardware department. Years ago, after that weird talk after my Finland, I tried to bring some computer to my cousin. I bought him then not-too-old Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone (enhanced with LineageOS), so he’d have some alternative information. But turned out — obviously — that Russian part of the internet is pretty much heavily targeted by their propaganda, and some of it is pretty natural (being from real people who believe that kind of shit). So without having no other languages knowledge, there’s mostly no way to read the proper information, unless one has a strong will to research. All Russian news, even from the so-called ‘good russians’ (they call them liberals in russia), is pretty much biased (and is a huge topic too). So there’s really an escape only when you want to learn to read other language, preferably English.
I had some grand-master-plan for that, I bought a cheap (used, no screen) laptop for him, so he’d connect it to the cheap computer display he has at home, and he’d have some computer. I thought I’d tech him some Linux, he’d learn some basics by just using the system, and I’d be putting some English things to him. I even offered him a ‘job’ by translating some things from English to Russian (for cheap). These plans never happened due to us having a huge online fight and his mother got super hysterical I’m offending her little boy. (My line was always ‘you’re not that stupid and I’d like you to explore some other things from what you’ve said from the TV’.) That year (2018) they had Putin’s re-elections, and coincidentally his smartphone stopped working (he killed some charging board, by keeping it at charge 100% of the time). They have no maintenance services, nor money even if they had these places. And so he went offline (from the inernet, but not TV) for a year or two. And so I had no contact with him (well, except from snail mail, which I won’t use these days). And she was strongly against me, as a bad influence. So there was no way to deliver him anything, he should know about the delivery at least, to be able to receive it.
Then, a couple of years later, his mother managed to buy some cheap Xiaomi device for him. But by that point I was married, having our first (autistic) kid, and all the family chores to do. I had the real child to care, not some overgrown mommys’ dude.
That project halted. It’s still partially in my head (otherwise I won’t remember it), but these days I’m not too sure it’s worth it, making this attempt at helping him. He’s completely on his own, and there’s no way for him to ever buy a computer (sounds weird for 2025, right? Considering we have these SBCs being not too bad for this). And me babysitting him with small steps. (However, feels like not a different thing to do, to write him an email once a month, sending him some topics to explore, if he’ll ever do that.)