Thread by @wiczipedia

82 years ago this week, my grandfather, aged 10, was deported along with his family from present day Ukraine (then Poland) to a Soviet work camp.

In part because of his deportation, I’m sitting on Twitter tonight, writing about current Russian threats to the same land. (1/)

My family was deported because they were Polish (my ethnic Ukrainian blood is on the other side of the family); Poles like them, who had moved East in the interwar period thanks to land grants from the Polish govt, were an impediment to Soviet influence expanding Westward. (2/)

So they were packed into cattle cars and shipped north and east. My family ended up in a work camp near the Arctic Circle. One of my great aunts, Teresa, who I apparently resemble, died of TB and is buried in an unmarked grave there. One day I hope to locate it. (3/)

When the Soviets allied with the US and UK, the Poles, my family among them, were freed from the camps. My family traveled across the USSR to Persia.

(Here’s my grandfather and a great aunt there.)

(4/)

I’m skipping a lot, but eventually they wound up in England, where my grandfather met my grandmother. My family came to the US as refugees in the early 50s. If you’ve read my book, you’ll know that this story is what drove me to study Russia and Central/Eastern Europe. (5/)

In 2017, while living in 🇺🇦, I was able to travel to the village where my grandfather was born, where no one in my family had set foot since 1940. I stood on the bank of the pond that powered my family’s mill and walked in the yard of the church my great grandfather helped build.

Though I visited them on a peaceful, hazy June Sunday, those were places that had seen a lot of ugliness at one time. The priest had been murdered in the church locked inside as it was machine gunned. All the Polish families were sent away, never to return. (7/)

Such needless violence. Families torn apart. Atrocities committed. Cultured suppressed. All to create and preserve spheres of influence, denying millions freedom.

My family had a relatively happy ending. They were lucky. As we’ve seen recently, not all refugees are. (8/)

So while the world debates whether the insecurities of a dictator responsible for his own atrocities and abuses and rejections of freedom should be heard and catered to, I beg you to think instead of the 40+ million Ukrainians who deserve to have a say in their future. (9/)

Ukraine has already suffered and sacrificed so much—1 million displaced, 14,000 dead—in defense of its dignity.

Ukrainians don’t want war. Neither do the US or its allies. Everything we’ve seen today is an attempt to avoid that while preserving Ukrainian self determination. 10/

(And just in case there’s any doubt what a majority of Ukrainians want… take a gander at these polls from NDI and IRI.) (11/)

I hope that my family’s saga, which started 82 years ago this week, has helped you grasp the very real human cost that Russia’s desire to send Ukraine backwards in time will have on those living there today. I hope we can avoid that scenario. (12/12)