1917
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The year was 1917, and the location was Latvia. It was a poor and mostly agrarian country in Northern Europe’s Baltic region bordered to the north by Estonia and to the south by Lithuania. My grandparents were children at the time. As the saying goes; “timing is everything,” and theirs could not have been much worse. The Bolshevik Revolution began in October of that year starting in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg). It was quickly followed by another civil war – later to be coined the Russian Revolution – and spread throughout the various countries doomed to become possessions of the Soviet Union. It would be bloody and last until 1922. My great-grandfather became a casualty when a local preacher turned him in as a dissident, and he was shot. Having personally witnessed the cold-blooded murder of his father, my grandfather would flee to the United States, leaving behind a world and relatives he would never see again. He met a woman, also of Latvian heritage, and together they started a new life in Western Pennsylvania.
Vladimir Lenin got his wish and rose to prominence, becoming Russia’s most powerful figure. The State was to become godlike. Human rights and the individual spirit were quashed. Citizens feared whispering a word of opposition for Siberia or worse would be a likely punishment. The seeds of the KGB had been sown, and personal rights were altogether nonexistent.
Growing up I always thought it was kind of cool that part of my heritage was Irish and Swiss, but I was also ½ Latvian. Who had ever heard of Latvia? For the longest time, it didn’t even exist since it had been swallowed whole buy the former Soviet Union in much the same manner Russia is attempting to take Ukraine. My grandparents would not talk much of their homeland, which was likely the aftereffect of seeing firsthand what happens to those who speak out against a government. They would also not speak their language and when pressed, they would state – “we are in America; you speak English.” So, everything and everyone they knew was sacrificed for the promise of freedom. Once in the mid-1970’s my dad tried to find the lost Latvian relatives of his Mother-in-law and Father-in-law by contacting the Russian Consulate in Washington DC. He was met with an abrupt answer – “we don’t do dat.” Over the years, the ignorance of youth subsided, and I learned to understand and be proud of my Eastern European heritage. Even so, most of it is lost, never to be found, which is common for descendants of immigrants of repressive regimes.
For more than a year now, we have again witnessed good vs. evil. Mr. Putin has placed his name forever alongside the likes of Stalin and Hitler. With talk of Ukraine joining NATO, hopefully, a peaceful resolution can be accomplished before this war escalates into something no reasonable person wants.
