On the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Maria Bondarenko was paralyzed by a sense of helplessness and bewilderment she had never experienced. This war plunged the Russian-born Montrealer — and millions of Vladimir Putin’s fellow citizens — into personal turmoil that illustrates the heartbreak caused by the brutal methods of the authoritarian leader.
“The 10 million Russian speakers who live outside Russia as well as millions of people in Russia experience an enormous feeling of guilt”, maintains the lecturer in Russian studies at the University of Montreal.
This specialist in Russia, who has lived in Montreal since 2007 and who has Canadian citizenship, recounts in impeccable French the discomfort felt by her and her compatriots. Maria Bondarenko talks about her Russian-speaking friends and acquaintances, opposed to the war, who say they are “ashamed to be Russians” and who fear for their loved ones who have remained in Putin’s country.
She quotes experts estimating that between 50% and 80% of the Russian population supports the president, who snatches loyalty through repression. It is true that Russian opponents can pay dearly for their dissent: journalists and opposition members are being killed or imprisoned, anti-war protesters risk being fined or imprisoned, and professors who refuse to teach the line of the party lose their positions.
To better understand the war in Ukraine
“This political climate has been installed slowly, little by little, over the past twenty years, through small daily decisions. If, at work, I am asked to make a flash mob to support Putin, I go there, why not, I keep my job and I have enough to eat. If the principal of a school where I want to work asks me for proof of who I voted for, why not, anyway, we vote once every four years, ”says Maria Bondarenko, according to stories gleaned during his research.
“Every time people ask themselves: ‘Am I accepting or is this too much?’ If they don’t have the capacity to immigrate or if they don’t accept the risks of speaking freely, they have no choice but to swallow the pill,” adds the 48-year-old professor, born in Soviet times in Vladivostok, on the border of Russia and China.
Fake news alert
This climate of fear creates unbearable discomfort. Like squeaky fingernails on a blackboard. Maria Bondarenko noted with horror that the reactions of the Russian people to Putin’s regime help her to understand those of the German people during the Second World War. “It’s a nightmare, to be honest,” she says.
The nightmare extends to relations between opponents and supporters of Putin. A climate of “psychological civil war” tears Russian families apart, often between elderly people, who support the leader, and their children, who are opposed to violence, explains the professor. She can no longer talk about politics with her mother, 75, who has remained in Russia: they consider each other mutually as victims of “fake news” – from Putin or from the West.
The serious economic crisis hitting Russia with the blows of international sanctions is increasing the anxiety of Russians. Sanctions affecting Moscow’s financial system also make it difficult for members of the diaspora to transfer funds to relatives in Russia. Maria Bondarenko also fears a rise in anti-Russian racism all over the world.
A painful conflict
Olga (fictitious name, to avoid reprisals against her family), a 26-year-old student of Russian origin who attends a Montreal university, is also going through dark times. She feels “ashamed” of the invasion of Ukraine, even though she has only lived in Russia for seven years. Olga knows people from both sides of the border. She understands Ukrainian.
“I feel so helpless,” she said in French. I want to defend Ukraine, but I would obviously be unwelcome with my Russian passport. All the Russians of her generation that she knows, from big cities, hate Putin, but they fear that they will end up in prison – or in the morgue – if they militate against the war.
The conflict is heartbreaking for Alla Stein-Lugovskaya, also a lecturer in Russian language at the University of Montreal. She was born during World War II in German-occupied Ukraine. The Red Army liberated Ukraine, which was part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) until the dissolution of the Soviet Empire in 1991.
“I lived most of my life in the Soviet Union. Russia and Ukraine were for me two native countries, rather two parts of the same homeland, ”says Alla Stein-Lugovskaya in a Zoom interview conducted in French.
I feel so helpless. I want to defend Ukraine, but I would obviously be unwelcome with my Russian passport.
World War III
Born into a Russian-speaking family near kyiv, she also speaks Ukrainian. The professor, who has relatives in her “two homelands”, fervently opposes the war. She criticizes both Putin and Ukraine’s leaders, who have made “serious mistakes” in the name of nationalism. She makes no attempt to justify Putin’s violence, but successive Ukrainian leaders have tried to eliminate the country’s Russian heritage, she says, for example by closing Russian schools.
According to her, President Volodymyr Zelensky is also making the mistake of refusing any compromise with Putin, among other things on the special status of the Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine. The teacher hopes that the two enemy brothers will put water in their wine (or their vodka). “After all, it is a question of avoiding a third world war. »